No abstract

In a nationwide survey in 2011, multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB) was found in 5.2% and 40.8% of patients with new and previously treated TB, respectively. These levels of drug resistance are among the highest ever documented in Africa and the Middle East. This finding presents a serious challenge for TB control in Somalia.

The recently developed dynamic plane source (DPS) technique for simultaneous determination of the thermal properties of fast thermally conducting materials with thermal conductivities between 200 and 2 W/mK has now been extended for studying relatively slow conducting materials with thermal conductivities equal or below 2 W/mK. The method is self-checking since the thermal conductivity, thermal diffusivity specific heat, and effusivity of the material are obtained independently from each other. The theory of the technique and the experimental arrangement are given in detail. The data evaluation procedure is simple and makes it possible to reveal the distortions due to the nonideal experimental conditions. The extension to the DPS technique has been implemented at room temperature to study the samples of cordierite-based ceramic Cecorite 130P (thermal conductivity equal to 1.48 W/mK), rubber (0.403 W/mK), and polycarbonate (0.245 W/mK). The accuracy of the method is within ±5%.

The thermal conductivity and diffusivity of lithium sulphate have been measured simultaneously, using the transient plane source technique over the temperature range 300 - 900 K. The thermal conductivity decreases slowly up to about 640 K, whereupon a distinct rise occurs, indicating the onset of a pre-transitional behaviour, which causes a continuous growth of the conductivity up to the structural phase transition at 851 K, whereupon a very sharp increase occurs. A similar behaviour has been observed for the thermal diffusivity, for which a very sharp dip occurs at the transition point due to the exceptionally large transition enthalpy. The pre-transitional behaviour of heat transport is associated with the librational disorder of the sulphate anions known from Raman scattering studies of both phases (and neutron scattering from the cubic phase), whereas the translational disorder of lithium cations is of hardly any importance. It is thus possible to link the `paddle-wheel' concept of ion migration in the cubic phase to the enhancement of heat transport observed in the `pre-transition' region, as well as to the large difference in heat-transport rates between the monoclinic and cubic phases.

A technique is developed for the simultaneous determination of specific heat, thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity of metals. The method is of a transient heat-flow type where the heating element serves both as a heat source and the temperature detector. The experiment is arranged in such a way that the temperature development in the sample is close to adiabatic. The method has been tested on samples of pure iron (99.95% of purity), cast iron (SIS 2140) and austenitic stainless steel (SIS 2343). The results obtained were in an excellent agreement with the literature data for these materials. The accuracy of determination of specific heat has been additionally tested on an Al sample.