ABSTRACThas always been a challenge in soil mapping (Hole and Campbell, 1985; Hudson, 1992;McKenzie et al., 2000). Some problems in traditional soil mapping-high cost, high subjec-To date defining the soil-environment relationship for tivity, poor documentation, and low accuracy and precision-have motivated the development of a knowledge-based fuzzy soil mapping soil mapping purpose is still largely a mental process system, named SoLIM (Soil Land Inference Model). The rule-based (Hudson, 1992;McKenzie et al., 2000). A well-trained method of the current SoLIM has its limitations. It requires explicit and experienced soil scientist is capable of properly knowledge of the details of soil-environment relationships and it grasping the soil-environment relationships in a certain assumes that the environmental variables are independent from each area and using these relationships to infer the spatial other. This paper presents a case-based reasoning (CBR) approach distribution of soils over the area. , and this is at least partially due edge. For the study area, the result from the CBR inference engine is more accurate than that from the traditional soil mapping process.to the inconsistency in the manual mapping process. Case-based reasoning can be a good solution for a knowledge-basedAnother problem is that the knowledge is hard to prefuzzy soil mapping system. serve in this field and training a qualified soil scientist is expensive. This is because the manual mapping is largely a personal operation that lacks a scheme to guar-S oil mapping is basically an inference process based antee good documentation of the knowledge. Still anon Jenny's model (Jenny, 1941(Jenny, , 1980. In routine soil other problem is with the polygon-based model. This survey and mapping, this model can be represented as model assumes that the soils are the same everywhere within a polygon and are to be of the type assigned to S ϭ f(E)[1] this polygon, and they change abruptly at the polygon where S denotes soil, E denotes environmental variboundary. Apparently, in most situations this assumpables, and f denotes the soil-environment relationship tion is not valid, as soils often change continuously over (soil-landscape model). According to this model, if the both geographical and property spaces (e.g., Burrough environmental conditions at a given location and the et al. , 1997; McBratney and Odeh, 1997;Zhu, 1997a). soil-environment relationship are known, then it is posThe manual mapping does not allow this continuous sible to infer the conditions of soil at that given location.variability of soils to be precisely represented, even if With today's spatial information technologies, including the soil scientists do know the continuous nature of geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, soil variation. and the Global Positioning System (GPS), it is possible These problems have motivated the development of to characterize the environmental conditions in details.knowledge-based systems and the application of fuzzy Defining the soil-envir...

The preparation of solid solutions of the sulfides of zinc, cadmium, and lead has been attempted by low-temperature pyrolysis (150-400°C) of metal bis(benzylthiolate) precursors. The (Zn,Cd)S shows solid solution behavior at 200-400°C and crystallite sizes of ∼5 nm. The CdS-PbS system was also prepared by the precursor decomposition method, exhibiting interesting behavior in the lead-rich region. The 150°C pyrolysis of Pb(SBn) 2 leads to nanocrystalline (20-40 nm) PbS single crystals distributed throughout the nanocrystalline (∼2-5 nm) regions of CdS. Pyrolysis at 200°C produced 40-60 nm PbS cubes dispersed throughout nanocrystalline (∼2-5 nm) CdS. The solids produced were characterized by X-ray powder diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, selected area electron diffraction, energy-dispersive X-ray analysis, and elemental analysis.

Sorbent polymers can be designed to target molecular interactions with a variety of hazardous chemicals including explosives, chemical agents, narcotics, and toxic industrial chemicals. Applications of functionalized sorbent polymers include preconcentrator devices, SPME fibers, membrane introduction systems, chromatographic stationary phases and coatings for chemical sensors. One common feature of a wide range of hazardous chemicals is their hydrogen bond (h-b) basicity. In this work, we report on the synthesis and characterization of a h-b acidic hyperbranched carbosilane fluoroalcohol based sorbent polymer (poly(methyldi(1,1,1-trifluoro-2-trifluoromethyl-2-hydroxypent-4-enyl)silane; HCSFA2), which is suitable for sorbing these hazardous h-b basic analytes. Multiple batches of HCSFA2 were characterized with routine composition, spectroscopic, thermal analysis, and inverse gas chromatography (iGC) to evaluate polymer physicochemical properties. In comparison with previously developed h-b acidic polymers (e.g., FPOL and SXFA), HCSFA2 exhibits a sorption improvement of 10-15 fold for h-b basic analytes. V C 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 48: 3000-3009, 2010

Fluoropolyol, a sorbent chemoselective oligomer, has been deposited using a matrix-assisted laser-based deposition technique. A comparison of films deposited with infrared (2.94 μm) and ultraviolet (UV) (193 nm) radiation shows that photochemical and/or photothermal modification of the oligomer occurs for the UV-deposited films while the IR-deposited films appear to be identical to the starting material. In addition, it is shown that even ablating the matrix alone causes a film to be deposited when using a UV laser. Therefore, unless photochemical interactions are a desired outcome, the use of a UV laser for most matrix-assisted laser ablation and deposition techniques is unfavorable.

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