Pulsed corona induced plasma chemical process (PPCP) has been investigated for the simultaneous removal of NO(x) (nitrogen oxides) and SO2 (sulfur dioxide) from the flue gas emission. It is one of the world's largest scales of PPCP for treating NO(x) and SO2 simultaneously. A PPCP unit equipped with an average 120 kW modulator has been installed and tested at an industrial incinerator with the gas flow rate of 42 000 m3/h. To improve the removal efficiency of SO2 and NO(x), ammonia (NH3) and propylene (C3H6) were used as chemical additives. It was observed that the pulsed corona induced plasma chemical process made significant NO(x) and SO2 conversion with reasonable electric power consumption. The ammonia injection was very effective in the enhancement of SO2 removal. NO removal efficiency was significantly improved by injecting a C3H6 additive. In the experiments, the removal efficiencies of SO2 and NO(x) were approximately 99 and 70%, respectively. The specific energy consumption during the normal operation was approximately 1.4 Wh/m3, and the nanopulse conversion efficiency of 64.3% was achieved with the pulsed corona induced plasma chemical process.

Reductions in hippocampal neurite complexity and synaptic plasticity are believed to contribute to the progressive impairment in episodic memory and the mild cognitive decline that occur particularly in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Despite the functional and therapeutic importance for patients with AD, intervention to rescue or normalize dendritic elaboration and synaptic plasticity is scarcely provided. Here we show that overexpression of neuritin, an activity-dependent protein, promoted neurite outgrowth and maturation of synapses in parallel with enhanced basal synaptic transmission in cultured hippocampal neurons. Importantly, exogenous application of recombinant neuritin fully restored dendritic complexity as well as spine density in hippocampal neurons prepared from Tg2576 mice, whereas it did not affect neurite branching of neurons from their wild-type littermates. We also showed that soluble recombinant neuritin, when chronically infused into the brains of Tg2576 mice, normalized synaptic plasticity in acute hippocampal slices, leading to intact long-term potentiation. By revealing the protective actions of soluble neuritin against AD-related neural defects, we provide a potential therapeutic approach for patients with AD.

The Pohang Light Source (PLS) has operated for 14 years successfully. To meet the request of the increasing user community, the PLS-II that is the upgrade project of PLS has been completed. Main goals of the PLS-II are to increase beam energy to 3 GeV, to increase number of insertion devices by the factor of two (20 IDs), to increase beam current to 400 mA and to reduce beam emittance below 10 nm with existing PLS tunnel and injection system. The PLS-II had been commissioned over the six months. During commissioning, we achieved 14 insertion devices operation and top-up operation with 100 mA beam current and 5.8 nm beam emittance. In this paper, we report the experimental results from the PLS-II commissioning.

Let H be a Hardy field (a field consisting of germs of real-valued functions at infinity that is closed under differentiation) and let f ∈ H be a subpolynomial function. Let P = {2, 3, 5, 7, . . . } be the (naturally ordered) set of primes. We show that (f (n)) n∈N is uniformly distributed mod 1 if and only if (f (p)) p∈P is uniformly distributed mod 1. This result is then utilized to derive various ergodic and combinatorial statements which significantly generalize the results obtained in [BKMST].

International audienceWe establish new results on sets of recurrence and van der Corput sets in Z^k which refine and unify some of the previous results obtained by Sarkozy, Furstenberg, Kamae and Mendes France, and Bergelson and Lesigne. The proofs utilize a general equidistribution result involving prime powers which is of independent interest