Surface Speciation in Microwave-Assisted CO Oxidation over Perovskites─The Role of Water and Activation Pretreatment.

As a model for the energy-efficient aftertreatment of exhaust gas components, we studied microwave-assisted (MW) CO oxidation over a (La,Sr)CoO (LSC) perovskite oxide catalyst under dry and humidified conditions. We found that the use of a MW-based process can offer multiple advantages over traditional thermocatalysis in this scenario, as the nature of the MW-solid interaction offers quick, adaptive, and energy-efficient heating as well as improved yield and lower light-off temperatures. As found by combined CO and water MW-desorption experiments, the presence of technically relevant amounts of water leads to a competition for surface active sites and thus slows the reaction rate without indications for a fundamental change in the mechanism.

Touchscreen response precision is sensitive to the explore/exploit tradeoff.

The explore/exploit tradeoff is a fundamental property of choice selection during reward-guided decision making. In perceptual decision making, higher certainty decisions are more motorically precise, even when the decision does not require motor accuracy. However, while we can parametrically control uncertainty in perceptual tasks, we do not know what variables - if any - shape motor precision and reflect subjective certainty during reward-guided decision making.