Dilated cardiomyopathy can be broadly defined as heart failure with an enlarged left ventricular chamber, but with no evidence of ischemic heart disease or myocardial infarction. Recent studies from patients and animal models show that dilated cardiomyopathy results in a decrease in myocardial content of adenosine-50-triphosphate (ATP) and phosphocreatine and a decrease in the capacity for mito...

We have investigated the growth and reactivity of chromium layers deposited onto a thin alumina film at room temperature and at 570 K. The interaction between Cr and the Al2O3/NiAl(1 1 0) surface leads to partial oxidation to Cr2þ and Cr3þ species. Complete oxidation to Cr3þ was achieved using moderate O2 doses at room temperature in vacuum. Cr has also been deposited in an O2 background pressu...

We have studied metallic and oxidized chromium layers on thin ordered alumina films grown on a NiAl~110! substrate using x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The interaction between the chromium layers and the substrate has been characterized after deposition at room temperature and after oxidation at 300 and 700 K. Our results indicate partial oxidation of the deposited chromium with the fraction...

The temporal evolution of atoms and molecules in a laser-produced plasma was investigated using optical emission spectroscopy for several metal targets (i.e., Al, Ti, Fe, Zr, Nb, Ta). Plasmas from were generated by focusing 1064 nm, 6 ns pulses an Nd:YAG laser. Gas-phase oxidation/plasma chemistry initiated adding O2 (partial pressures up to ≈20%) N2 environment where the total background press...

A compact reformer to generate hydrogen for portable fuel cell applications is presented. This reformer is a conventional type single-path tubular reactor packed with granular catalyst particles in which steam reforming and catalytic partial oxidation reactions take place in series using a mixture of methanol and water as a feed. The novel feature of this reformer is in the interlacing of the f...

Nanostructured vanadia model catalysts, i.e. highly dispersed vanadium oxide supported on mesoporous silica SBA-15 (VOx/SBA-15), were prepared. The mechanism for the synthesis of VOx/SBA-15 was elucidated by detailed characterization of the individual synthesis steps using XPS and vibrational spectrocopy. The resulting surface vanadium oxide species (0 – 2.3 V/nm), grafted on the inner pores of...