The development of silicotic lesions was studied in the lungs of rats pre-exposed to a pulmonary load of coal fly ash. Exposure to quartz alone increased the wet weight, dry weight, and collagen content of the lungs. These changes were associated with an increase in the activity of lactate dehydrogenase, total proteins, and the cellularity of bronchoalveolar lavage. When the lungs of rats were ...

We developed a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) based molecular ruler that measures the length of surface immobilized, hydrated biopolymers (DNA and proteins). These biopolymers acted as stakes that solidified surrounding liquid at high frequency vibration in QCM measurements, which led to a simple linear frequency-thickness relation.

In line with the continually advancing ma turity of the electronics field as a whole, the portion of the field concerned with frequency control has made significant forward strides in recent years. As a result, high-precision fre quency standards employing quartz resonators presently achieve stabilities of a part in 109 per day or better, while atomic standards ex hibit accuracies of one or two...

This article describes an rf ion source with a back-streaming electron dump. A quartz tube, brazed to a metal plug at one end, is fused in the center of a flat quartz plate. rf power (at 13.6 MHz) is coupled to generate hydrogen plasma using a planar external antenna bonded to the window. Bonding the water-cooled rf antenna to the quartz window significantly lowers its temperature. The water-co...

The study of water in minerals with infrared spectroscopy is reviewed with emphasis on natural and synthetic quartz. Water can be recognized in minerals as fluid inclusions and as isolated molecules and can be distinguished from hydroxide ion. The distinction between very small inclusions and aggregates of structurally bound molecules is difficult. New studies of synthetic quartz using near-inf...

Conventional electro-mechanical inertial sensors are being replaced by MEMS versions which are miniature in size, light weight, cost effective, more reliable and sensitive, low power consuming and VLSI compatible. Although silicon is the most widely used material for MEMS, quartz has some advantage for realizing inertial sensors due to its piezoelectric property. The R&D activities undertaken i...

A new approach to detecting a weak photoacoustic signal in a gas medium is described. Instead of a gas-filled resonant acoustic cavity, the sound energy is accumulated in a high- Q crystal element. Feasibility experiments utilizing a quartz-watch tuning fork demonstrate a sensitivity of 1.2x10(-7) cm(-1) W/ radicalHz . Potential further developments and applications of this technique are discus...

We fabricated a He-3 immersion cell for transport measurements of semiconductor nanostructures at ultra low temperatures and in strong magnetic fields. We have a new scheme of field-independent thermometry based on quartz tuning fork Helium-3 viscometry which monitors the local temperature of the sample's environment in real time. The operation and measurement circuitry of the quartz viscometer...