No description available.

Dissertation submitted in partial compliance with the requirements for the Master's Degree in Technology: Homoeopathy, Technikon Natal, 2001. / This study investigated the effect of different homoeopathic potencies of abscisic acid (ABA) in the presence of gibberellic acid (GA3) on the production of a.-amylase in the de-embryonated endosperm half-seeds of barley (Hordeum vulgare) in order to investigate whether these potencies were able to produce a biological effect. The aleurone layer of the barley (Hordeum vulgare) grain secretes hydrolases that mobilise endosperm reserves during germination. The synthesis and secretion of these hydrolases (principally a.-amylase) is under hormonal regulation. Gibberellic acid (GA) stimulates the synthesis and secretion of a.-amylase and abscisic acid (ABA) reverses this effect. It is for this reason that barley aleurone has been used extensively as a model system for the study of signal transduction in response to GA and ABA (Ritchie, McCubbin, Ambrose, Kao and Gilroy, 1999). For this research five different homoeopathic potencies were used namely - the 4CH, 9CH, 15CH, 30CH and the 200CH. Two methods were used in this experiment namely - spectrophotometry and radial diffusion. For each method three replications were used. Each replication consisted of: five groups of 20 half-seeds treated with the various potencies (the 4CH, 9CH, 15CH, 30CH and the 200CH) of ABA, with a dilution at GA3 at 1x 10.g;five groups of 20 half-seeds treated with the of GA3 at 1X 10.9 (the control) and five groups of 20 half-seeds treated with only the incubation buffer (calcium nitrate). An a.-amylase curve was constructed for both methods using pure a.-amylase at 1350 enzyme units /mg / M

Dissertation submitted in partial compliance with the requirements for the Master's Degree in Technology: Homoeopathy, Technikon Natal, 2001. / The potentisation process during which homoeopathic preparations are produced, raises the concern that these remedies have a placebo effect, since they contain no active molecule of the substance used to prepare them (in ultra high dilutions) by the time they are administered to a patient. Plant models therefore offer a more direct method of examining the efficacy of homoeopathically prepared solutions. This study investigated the effects of homoeopathic preparations of gibberellic acid on the germination of barley seeds (Hordeum vulgare L.) as measured by a germination index. The effects of GA3 at potencies of 4cH, lScH, 30cH and 200cH on germination rate and seedling development were tested on barley seeds of high-, medium- and low- vigour. The index used comprised the rate at which seeds germinated, which was the time it took for 50 percent of those seeds that did germinate, to germinate (i.e. Tso); seedling development experiments as assessed by taking final germination counts 7 days after start of imbibition, shoot and root lengths, and seedling dry mass. Biological activity of homoeopathically prepared GA3 at lScH was evident in medium vigour seeds, since this treatment resulted in significantly long root development. Highvigour barley seeds imbibed in GA3 (0.5 g L\xB7l ) were found to germinate the fastest of all treatment groups, and high-vigour seeds imbibed in homoeopathically prepared GA3 at 4cH, 30cH and 200cH, germinated faster than those seeds not receiving GA3 in any form (the control). Amongst high-vigour seeds, prior imbibition with homoeopathically / M

No description available.

This investigation was begun in order to determine the nature of the 104 degree melting compound prepared by Ashmore and to determine which isomers and their relative amounts are produced during bromination of phenylmercaptoacetic acid.

The purpose of this investigation is two-fold. Some new complex compounds, where one of the bidentate molecules is an optically active amino acid, were prepared, and attempts to separate those complex isomers by different methods were made. The replacement of the amino acids by optically inactive ligands was studied.

The sweet corrosion profiles of X-52 carbon steel in 0.l% NaCl at 30, 40, 50 and 60°C were analysed. The corrosion tests lasted for a period of one month. They were performed using a flow loop under a total gas pressure of 1 atm. containing carbon dioxide (99.95% & 100 vpm O2). The corrosion profiles were obtained by scanning the corroded surfaces with a stylus. The results were analysed and compared with linear polarisation resistance (LPR) data. lt has been found that the (LPR) data at 40°C, i the absence of significant pitting, progressively underestimated the actual metal loss values. It has been proposed that the above discrepancy is due to the occurrence of small scale localised corrosion. The above effect was found to be exaggerated at 60°C, where extensive pitting occurred. Attempts to find a correlation between the (LPR) measurements and the actual metal loss distributions were unsuccessful. Furthermore, although sudden increase of the instantaneous corrosion rates for passive samples appeared to signal the onset of localised attack, i the absence of prior knowledge of the relative spread of the localised corrosion, it was not possible to quantify the observed errors. The range of the metal loss distributions was found to increase with time. This was most notíceable at 60°C. The progress of localised corrosion therefore, appears to have extended the distributions towards the extreme values. It has been proposed that, in the absence of severe pitting, the sweet corrosion profiles can be approximated by the Weibull statistical function. For pitted samples, where the localised attack resulted i metal loss on different scales, the upper 10% of the values were also found to be approximated by the Weibull function. The Weibull function was used for predicting the progress of the metal loss values with time. The analysis of the top 10% values, for pitted surfaces at 60°C, however, suggested the occurrence of an accelerating rate of attack. The original model was therefore improved to provide a time dependent sweet corrosion model. It has been estimated that the corrosion rate at 60°C increases with time at intervals of approximately 8 days. The effect of methanol on the sweet corrosion of X-52 carbon steel in 1% NaCl was also studied under stagnant conditions at 4, 40 and 60°C. The partial pressure of carbon dioxide was maintained at 0.3 bar. lt has been found that the corrosion rate decreases with increasing methanol concentration. The data was used to develop a predictive model within the range of 10 to 60% vol. methanol.

No description available.

Soil samples were collected from the major horizons of Scottish upland Calluna moorland podzols derived from quartzite, Devonian and Torridonian sandstone, or granite or granitic tills. All soil was subjected to routine chemical analysis and the soil derived from granite was also mineralogically analysed. The results were studied in relation to finding evidence for potential acidification effects of atmospheric deposition. Strong relationships were observed between acid deposition parameters, particularly the mobile anion concentrations, and soil pH measured in water and soil extractable Al in all the horizons from podzols derived from sandstones and quartzites. These are discussed in Chapter 2. When looking for ameliorative effects, less clear trends were observed between atmospheric base cation inputs and soil "damage" parameters, possibly due to the distribution of the data. Soils derived from granite or granitic till showed relationships between soil pH in water or in CaCl2 pastes and H+ deposition, and between soil extractable Al and H+ deposition (Chapter 3). In addition, atmospheric inputs of base cations showed strong acid ameliorative properties in these soils. The relative importance of marine- and non-marine base cations in the calculation of critical loads for soil is examined in Chapter 4. The accumulation of N in the surface horizons along a pollution gradient is discussed in Chapter 5. At low to moderate total and NH4+ deposition (i.e., 10 and 5 kg ha-1 yr-1 respectively), soil total N and soil C:N ratio increased linearly with atmospheric N deposition. In spite of the N accumulation, C accumulated relatively faster than N, to increase the C:N ratio at sites with low to moderate N deposition. At total N or NH4+ deposition values above 8.8 and 4.0 kg ha-1 yr-1 respectively, the C:N ratio declined with increasing N deposition.

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