There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

THE DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF EXPERIMENTS. By Oscar Kempthorne. New York, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1952. 631 pp. $8.50. This book by a teacher of statistics (as well as a consultant for \"experimenters\") is a comprehensive study of the philosophical background for the statistical design of experiment. It is necessary to have some facility with algebraic notation and manipulation to be able to use the volume intelligently. The problems are presented from the theoretical point of view, without such practical examples as would be helpful for those not acquainted with mathematics. The mathematical justification for the techniques is given. As a somewhat advanced treatment of the design and analysis of experiments, this volume will be interesting and helpful for many who approach statistics theoretically as well as practically. With emphasis on the \"why,\" and with description given broadly, the author relates the subject matter to the general theory of statistics and to the general problem of experimental inference. MARGARET J. ROBERTSON

The Design and Analysis of Experiments

Char black carbon (BC), the solid residue of incomplete combustion, is continuously being added to soils and sediments due to natural vegetation fires, anthropogenic pollution, and new strategies for carbon sequestration (“biochar”). Here we present a molecular-level assessment of the physical organization and chemical complexity of biomass-derived chars and, specifically, that of aromatic carbon in char structures. Brunauer−Emmett−Teller (BET)−N2 surface area (SA), X-ray diffraction (XRD), synchrotron-based near-edge X-ray absorption fine structure (NEXAFS), and Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy are used to show how two plant materials (wood and grass) undergo analogous but quantitatively different physical−chemical transitions as charring temperature increases from 100 to 700 °C. These changes suggest the existence of four distinct categories of char consisting of a unique mixture of chemical phases and physical states: (i) in transition chars, the crystalline character of the precursor ma...

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Dynamic molecular structure of plant biomass-derived black carbon (biochar)

and Fuels Changzhi Li,† Xiaochen Zhao,† Aiqin Wang,† George W. Huber,†,‡ and Tao Zhang*,† †State Key Laborotary of Catalysis, iChEM (Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials), Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian 116023, China ‡Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of WisconsinMadison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, United States

Zhongyang Luo

Papers

Lignocellulosic biomass pyrolysis mechanism: A state-of-the-art review

X-ray diffraction patterns of graphite and turbostratic carbon

Mechanism study of wood lignin pyrolysis by using TG–FTIR analysis

The activity and characterization of CeO2-TiO2 catalysts prepared by the sol-gel method for selective catalytic reduction of NO with NH3.

Influence of the interaction of components on the pyrolysis behavior of biomass.