Effect of hyperbranched poly(citric polyethylene glycol) with various polyethylene glycol chain lengths on starch plasticization and retrogradation

A series of hyperbranched poly(citric polyethylene glycol) (PCPEG) materials with varied polyethylene glycol (PEG) chain lengths as plasticizers were mixed with maize starch (MS) via cooking and film‐forming. The structure, pasting property, plasticization, aging property, moisture absorption and compatibility of plasticized starches were studied by means of Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X‐ray diffraction, rapid viscosity analysis, tension testing, moisture absorption measurements and scanning electron microscopy. Compared with PEG and citric acid, PCPEG was more effective in promoting starch chain movement and inhibiting the retrogradation of starch film. Also, PCPEG/MS had smaller moisture content. The longer the plasticizer chain, the better were the aging resistance and moisture resistance of starch. But with an increase of PEG chain length, mechanical properties of PCPEG/MS deteriorated and the compatibility between PCPEG and MS decreased. The hyperbranched derivative of PEG with longer chain exhibited improved plasticization and compatibility with starch. © 2019 Society of Chemical Industry     

TiO2/MXene-Assisted LDI-MS for Urine Metabolic Profiling in Urinary Disease

Cancer remains an intractable medical problem. Rapid diagnosis and identification of cancer are critical to differentiate it from nonmalignant diseases. High-throughput biofluid metabolic analysis has potential for cancer diagnosis. Nevertheless, the present metabolite analysis method does not meet the demand for high-throughput screening of diseases. Herein, a high-throughput, cost-effective, and noninvasive urine metabolic profiling method based on TiO₂/MXene-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (LDI-MS) is presented for the efficient screening of bladder cancer (BC) and nonmalignant urinary disease. Combined with machine learning, TiO₂/MXene-assisted LDI-MS enables high diagnostic accuracy (96.8%) for the classification of patient groups (including 47 BC and 46 ureteral calculus (UC) patients) from healthy controls (113 cases). In addition, BC patients can also be identified from noncancerous UC individuals with an accuracy of 88.3% in the independent test cohort. Furthermore, metabolite variations between BC and UC individuals are investigated based on relative quantification, and related pathways are also discussed. These results suggest that this method, based on urine metabolic patterns, provides a potential tool for rapidly distinguishing urinary diseases and it may pave the way for precision medicine.     

Software assurance practices for mobile applications

Mobile software applications have to cope with a particular environment that involves small size, limited resources, high autonomy requirements, competitive business models and many other challenges. To provide development guidelines that respond to these needs, several practices have been introduced; however, it is not clear how these guidelines may contribute to solve the issues present in the mobile domain. Furthermore, the rapid evolution of the mobile ecosystem challenges many of the premises upon which the proposed practices were designed. In this paper, we present a survey of the literature on software assurance practices for mobile applications, with the objective of describing them and assessing their contribution and success. We identified, organized and reviewed a body of research that spans in three levels: software development processes, software product assurance practices, and software implementation practices. By carrying out this literature survey, we reviewed the different approaches that researchers on Software Engineering have provided to address the needs that raise in the mobile software development arena. Moreover, we review the evolution of these practices, identifying how the constant changes and modernization of the mobile execution environment has impacted the methods proposed in the literature. Finally, we introduced discussion on the application of these practices in a real productive setting, opening an area for further research that may determine if practitioners have followed the proposed assurance paradigms.     

Intrinsic CFRP-metal-hybrids with rubber interface for the improvement of the damping behaviour

This paper presents an integrated passive damping approach in hybrid metal-CFRP parts for structural applications. In this concept a viscoelastic material is embedded in the joint zone of the hybrid component. To examine the connection strength single-lap-joint specimens were produced and tested and the influence of the used material combinations, different surface structures, and different process parameters i.e. the moment of cross-linking were evaluated. Afterwards, the metal-CFRP hybrids were tested in quasi-static tests to assess their connection strength and failure behaviour. Dynamic cyclic tensile tests with step-wise increased loading conditions were performed to determine the specimens damping behaviour and to estimate their fatigue performance. Finally, these results are compared to a state of the art metal-CFRP hybrid with rivets connecting both materials.     

On stochastic comparisons of finite mixtures for some semiparametric families of distributions

In this paper, we consider the classical finite mixture model, which is an effective tool for modeling lifetime distributions for random samples from heterogeneous populations. We discuss new results on stochastic comparison for two finite mixtures when each of them is drawn from one of the following semiparametric families, i.e., proportional hazards, accelerated lifetime and proportional reversed hazards.     

Is the List of Incomplete Open Cubes Complete?

Variations of Incomplete Open Cubes is the major project by the twentieth-century conceptual artist Sol LeWitt. In this paper we interpret the enumerative component of the project as embeddings of graphs. This formulation permits use of an algorithm to check the completeness of the list of the structures produced by the artist. Our conclusion is that the artist found the correct number of structures (that is, 122), but that his list contains a mistake in the presentation of a pair of incomplete cubes, a discovery that appears not to have been noted before.