Pyrite oxidation under initially neutral pH conditions and in the presence of Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans and micromolar hydrogen peroxide

Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) at a micromolar level played a role in the microbial surface oxidation of pyrite crystals under initially neutral pH. When the mineral-bacteria system was cyclically exposed to 50 μM H2O2, the colonization of Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans onto the mineral surface was markedly enhanced, as compared to the control(no added H2O2). This can be attributed to the effects of H2O2 on increasing the roughness of the mineral surfaces, as well as the acidity and Fe2+ concentration at the mineral-solution interfaces. All of these effects tended to create more favourable nanoto micro-scale environments in the mineral surfaces for the cell adsorption. However, higher H2O2 levels inhibited the attachment of cells onto the mineral surfaces, possibly due to the oxidative stress in the bacteria when they approached the mineral surfaces where high levels of free radicals are present as a result of Fenton-like reactions. The more aggressive nature of H2O2 as an oxidant caused marked surface flaking of the mineral surface. The XPS results suggest that H2O2 accelerated the oxidation of pyrite-S and consequently facilitated the overall corrosion cycle of pyrite surfaces. This was accompanied by pH drop in the solution in contact with the pyrite cubes

Crumpling wires in two dimensions

An energy-minimal simulation is proposed to study the patterns and mechanical properties of elastically crumpled wires in two dimensions. We varied the bending rigidity and stretching modulus to measure the energy allocation, size-mass exponent, and the stiffness exponent. The mass exponent is shown to be universal at value $D_{M}=1.33$. We also found that the stiffness exponent $\alpha =-0.25$ is universal, but varies with the plasticity parameters $s$ and $\theta_{p}$. These numerical findings agree excellently with the experimental results

Stabilizing Randomly Switched Systems

This article is concerned with stability analysis and stabilization of randomly switched systems under a class of switching signals. The switching signal is modeled as a jump stochastic (not necessarily Markovian) process independent of the system state; it selects, at each instant of time, the active subsystem from a family of systems. Sufficient conditions for stochastic stability (almost sure, in the mean, and in probability) of the switched system are established when the subsystems do not possess control inputs, and not every subsystem is required to be stable. These conditions are employed to design stabilizing feedback controllers when the subsystems are affine in control. The analysis is carried out with the aid of multiple Lyapunov-like functions, and the analysis results together with universal formulae for feedback stabilization of nonlinear systems constitute our primary tools for control designComment: 22 pages. Submitte