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This study investigated the potential effects of changes in inorganics on aerosol water uptake and, thus, on secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation in wintertime haze based on the size-resolved measurements of non-refractory fine particulate matter (NR-PM2.5) in Xi'an, northwestern China. The composition of inorganic aerosol showed significant changes in winter 2018–2019 compared to winter 2013–2014, shifting from a sulfate-rich profile to a nitrate-rich profile. In particular, the fraction of sulfate and chloride decreased, but that of nitrate increased in the entire size range, while ammonium mainly increased at larger particle sizes. These changes thus resulted in a size-dependent evolution in water uptake. Increased water uptake was observed in most cases, mainly associated with enhanced contributions of both nitrate and ammonium, with the highest increase ratio reaching 5 %–35 % at larger particle sizes and higher relative humidity (RH>70 %). The non-negligible influence of chloride on aerosol water uptake was also emphasized. The random forest analysis coupled with a Shapley additive explanation algorithm (SHAP) further showed an enhanced relative importance of aerosol water in impacting SOA formation. Aerosol water exhibited a significant contribution to SOA formation during winter 2018–2019, particularly at larger particle sizes. The SHAP value of aerosol water increased alongside higher levels of aerosol water, indicating an enhanced contribution of aerosol water to SOA formation. This implies that the majority of enhanced aerosol water uptake at larger particle sizes and high RH might facilitate the efficient aqueous-phase SOA formation. This study highlights the key role of aerosol water as a medium to link inorganics and organics in their multiphase processes. As challenges to further improve China's air quality remain and because SOA plays an increasing role in haze pollution, these results provide insight into the size-resolved evolution characteristics and offer guidance for future controls.

Secondary organic aerosol (SOA) has been identified as a major contributor to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in the North China Plain (NCP). However, the chemical mechanisms involved are still unclear due to incomplete understanding of its multiple formation processes. Here we report field observations in summer in Handan of the NCP, based on high-resolution online measurements. Our results reveal the formation of SOA via photochemistry and two types of aqueous-phase chemistry, the latter of which include nocturnal and daytime processing. The photochemical pathway is the most important under high-Ox (i.e., O3 + NO2) conditions (65.1 ± 20.4 ppb). The efficient SOA formation from photochemistry (Ox-initiated SOA) dominated the daytime (65 % to OA), with an average growth rate of 0.8 µgm-3h-1. During the high-relative-humidity (RH; 83.7 ± 12.5 %) period, strong nocturnal aqueous-phase SOA formation (aqSOA) played a significant role in SOA production (45 % to OA), with a nighttime growth rate of 0.6 µgm-3h-1. Meanwhile, an equally fast growth rate of 0.6 µgm-3h-1 of Ox-initiated SOA from daytime aqueous-phase photochemistry was also observed, which contributed 39 % to OA, showing that photochemistry in the aqueous phase is also a non-negligible pathway in summer. The primary-related SOA (SOA attributed to primary particulate organics) and aqSOA are related to residential coal combustion activities, supported by distinct fragments from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Moreover, the conversion and rapid oxidation of primary-related SOA to aqSOA were possible in the aqueous phase under high-RH conditions. This work sheds light on the multiple formation pathways of SOA in ambient air of complex pollution and improves our understanding of ambient SOA formation and aging in summer with high oxidation capacity.

The Fenwei Plain, home to 50 million people in central China, is one of the most polluted regions in China. In 2018, the Fenwei Plain was designated as one of the three key regions for the “Blue Sky Protection Campaign”, along with the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) and Yangtze River Delta (YRD) regions. However, compared to BTH and YRD, our understanding of the current status of air pollution in the Fenwei Plain is limited partly due to a lack of detailed analysis of the transformation from precursor gases to secondary products including secondary organic aerosol (SOA) and ozone. Through the analysis of 7 years (2015–2021) of surface monitoring of the air pollutants in Xi'an, the largest city in the Fenwei Plain, we show that roughly two-thirds of the days exceeded either the PM2.5 or the O3 level-1 air quality standard, highlighting the severity of air pollution. Moreover, an increase in O3 pollution in the winter haze was also revealed, due to the constantly elevated reactive oxygenated volatile organic compounds (OVOCs), in particular formaldehyde, with an ozone formation potential of over 50 µg m−3, in combination with the reduced NO2. The abrupt decrease of NO2, as observed during the lockdown in 2020, provided real-world evidence of the control measures, targeting only NOx (70 % decrease on average), and were insufficient to reduce ozone pollution because reactive OVOCs remained constantly high in a volatile organic compound (VOC)-limited regime. Model simulation results showed that with NO2 reduction from 20 %–70 %, the self-reaction rate between peroxy radicals, a pathway for SOA formation, was intensified by up to 75 %, while the self-reaction rate was only reduced with a further reduction of VOCs of > 50 %. Therefore, a synergic reduction in PM2.5 and O3 pollution can only be achieved through a more aggressive reduction of their precursor gases. This study elucidates the status of ozone and PM2.5 pollution in one of the most polluted regions in China, revealing a general trend of increasing secondary pollution, i.e., ozone and SOA in winter haze. Controlling precursor gas emissions is anticipated to curb both ozone and SOA formation, which will benefit not just the Fenwei Plain but also other regions in China.

The passive suppression of combustion instability by quarter wavelength tube was hereby studied to absorb the oscillation pressure with large amplitudes caused by combustion instability. The suppression effects of quarter wavelength tube on combustion instability were systematically analyzed by combining the acoustic numerical simulation and the experimental research methods. Firstly, the influence of quarter wavelength tube on the acoustic characteristics of the system was analyzed using acoustic numerical simulation; and then, the acoustic absorption characteristics to external acoustic disturbance and the suppression effects on the self-excited combustion instability were experimentally studied. The results show that the quarter wavelength tube can effectively absorb the acoustic pressure when the dominant frequency of acoustic pressure is close to the resonance frequency of the system, and can effectively suppress the combustion instability under acoustic resonance. However, given that the quarter wavelength tube adds adjoint dominant frequencies after eliminating the original resonant frequency of the system, and the combustion instability is stabilized on the adjoint dominant frequencies, combustion instability suppression is different from noise suppression. In addition, the diameter of wavelength tube exercises obvious effects on the above characteristics. All these make it necessary to determine the best parameters and the maximum suppression efficiency by combining numerical simulation and experiments. The research results of this paper provide theoretical and technical supports for the suppression of combustion instability by the quarter wavelength tube.

Secondary organic aerosol (SOA) plays an important role in particulate air pollution, but its formation mechanism is still not fully understood. The chemical composition of non-refractory particulate matter with a diameter ≤2.5 µm (NR-PM2.5), OA sources, and SOA formation mechanisms were investigated in urban Xi'an during winter 2018. The fractional contribution of SOA to total OA mass (58 %) was larger than primary OA (POA, 42 %). Biomass-burning-influenced oxygenated OA (OOA-BB) was resolved in urban Xi'an and was formed from the photochemical oxidation and aging of biomass burning OA (BBOA). The formation of OOA-BB was more favorable on days with a larger OA fraction and higher BBOA concentration. In comparison, the aqueous-phase processed oxygenated OA (aq-OOA) was more dependent on the secondary inorganic aerosol (SIA) content and aerosol liquid water content (ALWC), and it showed a large increase (to 50 % of OA) during SIA-enhanced periods. Further van Krevelen (VK) diagram analysis suggests that the addition of carboxylic acid groups with fragmentation dominated OA aging on reference days, while the increased aq-OOA contributions during SIA-enhanced periods likely reflect OA evolution due to the addition of alcohol or peroxide groups.

Preceding a core-collapse supernova (CCSN), various processes produce an increasing amount of neutrinos of all flavors characterized by mounting energies from the interior of massive stars. Among them, the electron antineutrinos are potentially detectable by terrestrial neutrino experiments such as KamLAND and Super-Kamiokande (SK) via inverse beta decay interactions. Once these pre-supernova (pre-SN) neutrinos are observed, an early warning of the upcoming CCSN can be provided. In light of this, KamLAND and SK, both located in the Kamioka mine in Japan, have been monitoring pre-SN neutrinos since 2015 and 2021, respectively. Recently, we performed a joint study between KamLAND and SK on pre-SN neutrino detection. A pre-SN alert system combining the KamLAND detector and the SK detector was developed and put into operation, which can provide a supernova alert to the astrophysics community. Fully leveraging the complementary properties of these two detectors, the combined alert is expected to resolve a pre-SN neutrino signal from a 15 M _⊙ star within 510 pc of the Earth at a significance level corresponding to a false alarm rate of no more than 1 per century. For a Betelgeuse-like model with optimistic parameters, it can provide early warnings up to 12 hr in advance.

Among multimessenger observations of the next Galactic core-collapse supernova, Super-Kamiokande (SK) plays a critical role in detecting the emitted supernova neutrinos, determining the direction to the supernova (SN), and notifying the astronomical community of these observations in advance of the optical signal. In 2022, SK has increased the gadolinium dissolved in its water target (SK-Gd) and has achieved a Gd concentration of 0.033%, resulting in enhanced neutron detection capability, which in turn enables more accurate determination of the supernova direction. Accordingly, SK-Gd’s real-time supernova monitoring system has been upgraded. SK_SN Notice, a warning system that works together with this monitoring system, was released on 2021 December 13, and is available through GCN Notices. When the monitoring system detects an SN-like burst of events, SK_SN Notice will automatically distribute an alarm with the reconstructed direction to the supernova candidate within a few minutes. In this paper, we present a systematic study of SK-Gd’s response to a simulated Galactic SN. Assuming a supernova situated at 10 kpc, neutrino fluxes from six supernova models are used to characterize SK-Gd’s pointing accuracy using the same tools as the online monitoring system. The pointing accuracy is found to vary from 3° to 7° depending on the models. However, if the supernova is closer than 10 kpc, SK_SN Notice can issue an alarm with three-degree accuracy, which will benefit follow-up observations by optical telescopes with large fields of view.

To investigate the physio-chemical properties of aerosol transported from major pollution regions in China, observations were conducted ∼ 200 m above the ground at the junction location of the North China Plain and Fenwei Basin, which are two regions of top priority for China's Blue Sky Campaign. We identified three pollution transport sectors including those from Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH), urban Guanzhong Basin (GZB) and northern China and one clean transport sector from the rural Guanzhong Basin region. Secondary inorganic aerosol (SIA) constituted a major fraction (39 %–46 %) in all pollution transport sectors, with a high sulfur oxidation ratio (0.44–0.58) and a high nitrogen oxidation ratio (0.24–0.29), suggesting efficient formation of secondary inorganic aerosol during regional transport. More oxidized oxygenated organic aerosol (MO-OOA) played a dominant role in the source of organic aerosol in all sectors including the clean one, accounting for 42 %–58 % of total organic aerosol. Elemental analysis (O and C) shows that aerosol particles at this receptor site were much more oxidized than in urban regions, pointing that long-range transport contributed markedly to the organic aerosol oxidation and aging. Case studies of pollution events with high sulfate, nitrate and more-oxidized oxygenated organic aerosol production rate indicate the strong formation efficiency of secondary aerosol during regional transport in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei transport sector.

Epoxy acrylate (EA) resin, due to its thermo-mechanical properties, performs excellent shaper memory properties. 3D printing opens new opportunities to fabricated shape memory polymer (SMP), which contributed to a rising variety of applications, also requires 3D-printable capability with more advanced shape-memory function and mechanical performance of the material. In this paper, a new strategy was developed to fabricate high strain EA-based SMP through digital light processing (DLP) 3D printing, which took advantage of free radical copolymerization of epoxy acrylate-based oligomer and monomers. The 3D-printed SMP showed high strain at break (up to 90%), thermal stability, as well as excellent shape memory performance. In addition, the shape memory-based self-driven electronics was fabricated by combining shape memory polymer with light-absorbing and conductive ink. The device could change its configuration in response to light and temperature, which has great potential application for soft robotics, flexible electronics, and intelligent control devices.

In recent years, intense haze events in megacities such as Beijing have received significant attention. Although secondary organic aerosol (SOA) has been identified as a major contributor to such events, knowledge of its sources and formation mechanisms remains uncertain. We investigate this question through the first field deployment of the extractive electrospray ionisation time-of-flight mass spectrometer (EESI-TOF) in Beijing, together with an Aerodyne long-time-of-flight aerosol mass spectrometer (L-TOF AMS). Measurements were performed during autumn and winter 2017, capturing the transition from non-heating to heating seasons. Source apportionment resolved four factors related to primary organic aerosols (traffic, cooking, biomass burning, and coal combustion), as well as four related to SOA. Of the SOA factors, two were related to solid fuel combustion (SFC), one to SOA generated from aqueous chemistry, and one to mixed/indeterminate sources. The SFC factors were identified from spectral signatures corresponding to aromatic oxidation products, while the aqueous SOA factor was characterised by signatures of small organic acids and diacids and unusually low CO+/CO2+ fragment ratios measured by the AMS. Solid fuel combustion was the dominant source of SOA during the heating season. However, a comparably intense haze event was also observed in the non-heating season and was dominated by the aqueous SOA factor. During this event, aqueous chemistry was promoted by the combination of high relative humidity and air masses passing over high-NOx regions to the south and east of Beijing, leading to high particulate nitrate. The resulting high liquid water content was highly correlated with the concentration of the aqueous SOA factor. These results highlight the strong compositional variability between different haze events, indicating the need to consider multiple formation pathways and precursor sources to describe SOA during intense haze events in Beijing.

With the accelerated development of the global economy, the scale of UHV (Ultra High Voltage) large-capacity transmission lines has increased dramatically. Nevertheless, existing transmission line inspection methods rely on human inspectors detecting abnormal facilities from ground level or helicopters. Those methods not only require extremely high labor and equipment costs, but also are time-consuming. In this paper, a thin object 3D reconstruction method is proposed for the extraction of 3D structures of power lines from sequential oblique UAV images. The proposed method recovers the 3D structure of the power lines from three sequential images that depict the structure of power lines in 2D. Proposed method was tested in a typical transmission line corridor and the reconstructed results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

In order to estimate the soil water content of the plough layer using the surface soil spectrum, based on the water content data and hyperspectral data of 85 surface layers and ploughed soil samples in Jiyang County, Shandong Province, 10 transformation methods such as square root are used. The spectral reflectance of the topsoil is transformed, and the estimation factor is selected according to the principle of maximal correlation. Then, according to the correlation between the water content of the surface layer and the plough layer, two indirect estimation models are constructed.Six kinds of modeling methods such as multiple linear regression, partial least squares regression and support vector machine were used to estimate the soil water content of the cultivated layer, and the effectiveness of the two indirect estimation models was compared and analyzed. The results show that the decision coefficient R2 of the first mode is 0.8138, the average relative error is 9.6061% and the decision coefficient R2 of the second mode is 0.8115, the average relative error is 12.1403%. The researches show that it is feasible and effective to estimate the soil water content of the plough layer by using the surface soil spectrum. It provides a new idea for the rapid diagnosis of soil moisture and nutrients by using optical satellite remote sensing technology.

The chaotic advection of the interface between two miscible liquids inside a closed cavity, generated by a damped oscillatory buoyancy-driven (BD) regular flow field, is investigated experimentally for BD mixing. The Lagrangian history of interface motion, determined using the planar laser-induced fluorescence and the photographic full-field view method, is contrasted against the Eulerian flow field measured from particle image velocimetry. Chaotic advection stretches and folds the interface at an early stage to produce an asymmetric pairwise Rayleigh–Taylor (RT) morphology (RTM) structure from long wavelength RT instability and short-time Richtmyer–Meshkov instability and its fractal interface structure at a high impulsive-Reynolds number. The mechanism of folding, from global bifurcation of the flow field, caused by a hyperbolic point, served as an organizing center for multiple vortex interactions. The intermediate-stage kinematics of the RTM structure exhibits RT mixing and shows unfolding of the lamellar structure from the net effect of stretching, folding, and molecular diffusion prior to its breakdown; and it has a probabilistic outcome of exhibiting topological transitions through a breakup of the RTM structure in phase space from necking singularity and pinch-off, indicating sensitivity to the initial conditions. The effectiveness of mixing determined from mixing efficiency is contrasted against mechanical and lamellar models of mixing. The determination of topological entropy, from an approximate Gaussian distribution of the interface length stretch, yields time scale for information decay comparable to time scale for which a low-order horseshoe map emerges from flow, indicating local chaos of the interface. The late-stage breakdown of the RTM structure from internal and wall collision drives the interaction between advection and diffusion, which indicates that critical mixing time scales as the logarithmic of Peclet number, comparable to time-periodic sine flow and blinking vortex flow chaotic mapping models.

To investigate the sources and evolution of haze pollution in different seasons, long-term (from 15 August to 4 December 2015) variations in chemical composition of PM1 were characterized in Beijing, China. Positive matrix factorization (PMF) analysis with a multi-linear engine (ME-2) resolved three primary and two secondary organic aerosol (OA) sources, including hydrocarbon-like OA (HOA), cooking OA (COA), coal combustion OA (CCOA), local secondary OA (LSOA) and regional SOA (RSOA). The sulfate source region analysis implies that sulfate was mainly transported at a large regional scale in late summer, while local and/or nearby sulfate formation may be more important in winter. Meanwhile, distinctly different correlations between sulfate and RSOA or LSOA (i.e., better correlation with RSOA in late summer, similar correlations with RSOA and LSOA in autumn, and close correlation with LSOA in early winter) confirmed the regional characteristic of RSOA and local property of LSOA. Secondary aerosol species including secondary inorganic aerosol (SIA – sulfate, nitrate, and ammonium) and SOA (LSOA and RSOA) dominated PM1 during all three seasons. In particular, SOA contributed 46 % to total PM1 (with 31 % as RSOA) in late summer, whereas SIA contributed 41 % and 45 % to total PM1 in autumn and early winter, respectively. Enhanced contributions of secondary species (66 %–76 % of PM1) were also observed in pollution episodes during all three seasons, further emphasizing the importance of secondary formation processes in haze pollution in Beijing. Combining chemical composition and meteorological data, our analyses suggest that both photochemical oxidation and aqueous-phase processing played important roles in SOA formation during all three seasons, while for sulfate formation, gas-phase photochemical oxidation was the major pathway in late summer, aqueous-phase reactions were more responsible during early winter and both processes had contributions during autumn.

A better understanding of the discrepancies in multi-scale inventories could give an insight into their approaches and limitations as well as provide indications for further improvements; international, national, and plant-by-plant data are primarily obtained to compile those inventories. In this study we develop a high-resolution inventory of Hg emissions at 0.05° × 0.05° for Jiangsu, China, using a bottom-up approach and then compare the results with available global/national inventories. With detailed information on individual sources and the updated emission factors from field measurements applied, the annual Hg emissions of anthropogenic origin in Jiangsu in 2010 are estimated at 39 105 kg, of which 51, 47, and 2 % were Hg0, Hg2+, and Hgp, respectively. This provincial inventory is thoroughly compared to three downscaled national inventories (NJU, THU, and BNU) and two global ones (AMAP/UNEP and EDGARv4.tox2). Attributed to varied methods and data sources, clear information gaps exist in multi-scale inventories, leading to differences in the emission levels, speciation, and spatial distributions of atmospheric Hg. The total emissions in the provincial inventory are 28, 7, 19, 22, and 70 % larger than NJU, THU, BNU, AMAP/UNEP, and EDGARv4.tox2, respectively. For major sectors, including power generation, cement, iron and steel, and other coal combustion, the Hg contents (HgC) in coals/raw materials, abatement rates of air pollution control devices (APCDs) and activity levels are identified as the crucial parameters responsible for the differences in estimated emissions between inventories. Regarding speciated emissions, a larger fraction of Hg2+ is found in the provincial inventory than national and global inventories, resulting mainly from the results by the most recent domestic studies in which enhanced Hg2+ were measured for cement and iron and steel plants. Inconsistent information on large power and industrial plants is the main source of differences in spatial distribution of emissions between the provincial and other inventories, particularly in southern and northwestern Jiangsu, where intensive coal combustion and industry are located. Quantified with Monte Carlo simulation, uncertainties in the provincial inventory are smaller than those of the NJU national inventory, resulting mainly from the more accurate activity data of individual plants and the reduced uncertainties in HgC in coals/raw materials.

China's anthropogenic emissions of atmospheric mercury (Hg) are effectively constrained by national air pollution control and energy efficiency policies. In this study, improved methods, based on available data from domestic field measurements, are developed to quantify the benefits of Hg abatement by various emission control measures. Those measures include increased use of (1) flue gas desulfurization (FGD) and selective catalyst reduction (SCR) systems in power generation; (2) precalciner kilns with fabric filters (FF) in cement production; (3) mechanized coking ovens with electrostatic precipitators (ESP) in iron and steel production; and (4) advanced production technologies in nonferrous metal smelting. Investigation reveals declining trends in emission factors for each of these sources, which together drive a much slower growth of total Hg emissions than the growth of China's energy consumption and economy, from 679 metric tons (t) in 2005 to 750 t in 2012. In particular, estimated emissions from the above-mentioned four source types declined 3% from 2005 to 2012, which can be attributed to expanded deployment of technologies with higher energy efficiencies and air pollutant removal rates. Emissions from other anthropogenic sources are estimated to increase by 22% during the period. The species shares of total Hg emissions have been stable in recent years, with mass fractions of around 55, 39, and 6% for gaseous elemental Hg (Hg0), reactive gaseous mercury (Hg2+), and particle-bound mercury (Hgp), respectively. The higher estimate of total Hg emissions than previous inventories is supported by limited simulation of atmospheric chemistry and transport. With improved implementation of emission controls and energy saving, a 23% reduction in annual Hg emissions from 2012 to 2030, to below 600 t, is expected at the most. While growth in Hg emissions has been gradually constrained, uncertainties quantified by Monte Carlo simulation for recent years have increased, particularly for the power sector and particular industrial sources. The uncertainty (expressed as 95% confidence intervals) of Hg emissions from coal-fired power plants, for example, increased from −48–+73% in 2005 to −50–+89% in 2012. This is attributed mainly to increased penetration of advanced manufacturing and pollutant control technologies; the unclear operational status and relatively small sample sizes of field measurements of those processes have resulted in lower but highly varied emission factors. To reduce uncertainty and further confirm the benefits of pollution control and energy polices, therefore, systematic investigation of specific Hg pollution sources is recommended. The variability of temporal trends and spatial distributions of Hg emissions needs to be better tracked during the ongoing dramatic changes in China's economy, energy use, and air pollution status.

The Lower Rhine Delta, a transitional area between the River Rhine and Meuse and the North Sea, is at risk of flooding induced by infrequent events of a storm surge or upstream flooding, or by more infrequent events of a combination of both. A joint probability analysis of the astronomical tide, the wind induced storm surge, the Rhine flow and the Meuse flow at the boundaries is established in order to produce the joint probability distribution of potential flood events. Three individual joint probability distributions are established corresponding to three potential flooding causes: storm surges and normal Rhine discharges, normal sea levels and high Rhine discharges, and storm surges and high Rhine discharges. For each category, its corresponding joint probability distribution is applied, in order to stochastically simulate a large number of scenarios. These scenarios can be used as inputs to a deterministic 1-D hydrodynamic model in order to estimate the high water level frequency curves at the transitional locations. The results present the exceedance probability of the present design water level for the economically important cities of Rotterdam and Dordrecht. The calculated exceedance probability is evaluated and compared to the governmental norm. Moreover, the impact of climate change on the high water level frequency curves is quantified for the year 2050 in order to assist in decisions regarding the adaptation of the operational water management system and the flood defense system.

The effects of proton beams irradiating materials considered for targets in high-power accelerator experiments have been studied using the Brookhaven National Laboratory’s (BNL) 200 MeV proton linac. A wide array of materials and alloys covering a wide range of the atomic number (Z) are being scoped by the high-power accelerator community prompting the BNL studies to focus on materials representing each distinct range, i.e. low-Z, mid-Z and high-Z. The low range includes materials such as beryllium and graphite, the midrange alloys such as Ti-6Al-4V, gum metal and super-Invar and finally the high-Z range pure tungsten and tantalum. Of interest in assessing proton irradiation effects are (a) changes in physiomechanical properties which are important in maintaining high-power target functionality, (b) identification of possible limits of proton flux or fluence above which certain materials cease to maintain integrity, (c) the role of material operating temperature in inducing or maintaining radiation damage reversal, and (d) phase stability and microstructural changes. The paper presents excerpt results deduced from macroscopic and microscopic post-irradiation evaluation (PIE) following several irradiation campaigns conducted at the BNL 200 MeV linac and specifically at the isotope producer beam-line/target station. The microscopic PIE relied on high energy x-ray diffraction at the BNL NSLS X17B1 and NSLS II XPD beam lines. The studies reveal the dramatic effects of irradiation on phase stability in several of the materials, changes in physical properties and ductility loss as well as thermally induced radiation damage reversal in graphite and alloys such as super-Invar.

Perovskite-type LaSrMO4 (M = Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu) mixed oxides were prepared by the decomposition of amorphous citric and ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid complexes and investigated by the XRD, FTIR, BET, TPR, TPD and XPSmethods. Their catalytic behavior in the total oxidation of hexane was examined. The following activity order was found LaSrCoO4 > LaSrNiO4 > LaSrCuO4 > LaSrFeO4 > LaSrMnO4. This is explained in terms of oxygen vacancies and mobile lattice oxygen, particle size and BET surface area.

A series of 41 papers by H. Zhong et al. are retracted.

In the title compound, [CuCl2(C14H12N2)], the complex molecule has m symmetry, with the mirror plane oriented parallel to the planar molecule and the ligated CuII atom. The metal centre has a distorted tetrahedral coordination formed by two N atoms from one 2,9-dimethyl-1,10-phenanthroline ligand and two Cl atoms. There is intermolecular π–π stacking between adjacent 2,9-dimethyl-1,10-phenanthroline ligands, with a centroid–centroid distance of 3.733 (2)Å.

The paper by Zhong, Zeng, Yang & Luo [Acta Cryst. (2007), E63, m1567] is retracted.

The paper by Zhong, Zeng, Yang & Luo [Acta Cryst. (2007), E63, m1566] is retracted.

The title complex, [Pr2(C8H7O3)6(C12H8N2)2]n, which has an inversion centre midway between the two PrIII atoms of the structural unit, forms a one-dimensional polymer bridged alternately by either two bidentate, or two bidentate and two terdentate, phenoxyacetate carboxylate groups. Each PrIII atom is thus nine-coordinated by two N atoms of a 1,10-phenanthroline ligand and seven O atoms from six phenoxyacetate ligands. The coordination geometry at the PrIII atom is distorted tricapped trigonal prismatic. One phenyl ring is disordered over two positions; the site occupancy factors are ca 0.6 and 0.4.