Poly(lactide)/cellulose nanocrystal nanocomposites by high-shear mixing

There is currently considerable interest in developing stiff, strong, tough, and heat resistant poly(lactide) (PLA) based materials with improved melt elasticity in response to the increasing demand for sustainable plastics. However, simultaneous optimization of stiffness, strength, and toughness is a challenge for any material, and commercial PLA is well-known to be inherently brittle and temperature-sensitive and to show poor melt elasticity. In this study, we report that high-shear mixing with cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) leads to significant improvements in the toughness, heat resistance, and melt elasticity of PLA while further enhancing its already outstanding room temperature stiffness and strength. This is evidenced by (i) one-fold increase in the elastic modulus (6.48 GPa), (ii) 43% increase in the tensile strength (87.1 MPa), (iii) one-fold increase in the strain at break (∼6%), (iv) two-fold increase in the impact strength (44.2 kJ/m²), (v) 113-fold increase in the storage modulus at 90°C (787.8 MPa), and (vi) 10³-fold increase in the melt elasticity at 190°C and 1 rad/s (∼10⁵ Pa) via the addition of 30 wt% CNC. It is hence possible to produce industrially viable, stiff, strong, tough, and heat resistant green materials with improved melt elasticity through high-shear mixing.     

Correction to: Two New Co(II) Complexes of Picolinate: Synthesis,Crystal Structure,Spectral Characterization, α-Glucosidase İnhibition and TD/DFT Study

Journal of Inorganic and Organometallic Polymers and Materials -     

Trans-differentiation of human adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells into cardiomyocyte-like cells on decellularized bovine myocardial extracellular matrix-based films

In this study, we aimed at fabricating decellularized bovine myocardial extracellular matrix-based films (dMEbF) for cardiac tissue engineering (CTE). The decellularization process was carried out utilizing four consecutive stages including hypotonic treatment, detergent treatment, enzymatic digestion and decontamination, respectively. In order to fabricate the dMEbF, dBM were digested with pepsin and gelation process was conducted. dMEbF were then crosslinked with N-hydroxysuccinimide/1-Ethyl-3-(3-dimethylaminopropyl)-carbodiimide (NHS/EDC) to increase their durability. Nuclear contents of native BM and decellularized BM (dBM) tissues were determined with DNA content analysis and agarose-gel electrophoresis. Cell viability on dMEbF for 3rd, 7th, and 14th days was assessed by MTT assay. Cell attachment on dMEbF was also studied by scanning electron microscopy. Trans-differentiation capacity of human adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells (hAMSCs) into cardiomyocyte-like cells on dMEbF were also evaluated by histochemical and immunohistochemical analyses. DNA contents for native and dBM were, respectively, found as 886.11?±?164.85 and 47.66?±?0.09?ng/mg dry weight, indicating a successful decellularization process. The results of glycosaminoglycan and hydroxyproline assay, and sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE), performed in order to characterize the extracellular matrix (ECM) composition of native and dBM tissue, showed that the BM matrix was not damaged during the proposed method. Lastly, regarding the histological study, dMEbF not only mimics native ECM, but also induces the stem cells into cardiomyocyte-like cells phenotype which brings it the potential of use in CTE.     

Bias voltage effect on the dielectric properties of organic–inorganic blend SiNWs elaborated via metal assisted chemical etching

The electrical proprieties of poly (3-hexylthiophene): Silicon nanowires (P3HT: SiNWs) nanocomposite was investigated by impedance spectroscopy technique. The effect of bias voltage under and without illumination was discussed. Indeed, the imaginary part of the impedance shows a high relaxation frequency related to Maxwell–Wagner–Sillars (MWS) polarization. The relaxation time was found in the range of ms and it was shifted towards high frequency with increasing the bias voltage especially at 0.6 V At bias voltage equal to V_th and under illumination, the conductivity increases because the trapped charges acquire the necessary energy to escape from the interface and the hopping time found was reduced. This indicates a change of the conduction mechanism. The Cole–Cole diagram was excellently fitted through an equivalent circuit including a chemical capacitance Cµ, a contact electrical resistance Rs and recombination resistance Rp.     

Synergistic effect of iodide ions and bark resin of Schinus molle for the corrosion inhibition of API5L X70 pipeline steel in H2SO4

The synergistic effect of bark resin of Schinus molle (BRSM) and iodide ions in 0.5 M sulfuric acid has been studied for the first time by potentiodynamic polarization and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy measurements; also, the surface morphology has been analyzed by scanning electron microscopy–energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopic analysis in the present work. The results show that the BRSM and iodide ions have an evident synergistic inhibition effect in a 0.5-M sulfuric acid solution. The adsorption of the BRSM/iodide ion system follows the Langmuir adsorption isotherm and acts as a mixed-type inhibitor in sulfuric acid. The BRSM/iodide ion system is an effective inhibitor for API5L X70 pipeline steel in the 0.5-M sulfuric acid solution. The maximum percentage inhibition efficiency is equal to 99% at 1 g/L BRSM + 2 mM KI.     

Copy-move forgery detection of duplicated objects using accurate PCET moments and morphological operators

This paper presents a new method for copy-move forgery detection of duplicated objects. A bounding rectangle is drawn around the detected object to form a sub-image. Morphological operator is used to remove the unnecessary small objects. Highly accurate polar complex exponential transform moments are used as features for the detected objects. Euclidian distance and correlation coefficient between the feature vectors are calculated and used for searching the similar objects. A set of 20 forged images with duplicated objects is carefully selected from previously published works. Additional 80 non-forged images are edited by the authors and forged by duplicating different kinds of objects. Numerical simulation is performed where the results show that the proposed method successfully detect different kinds of duplicated objects. The proposed method is much faster than the previously existing methods. Also, it exhibits high robustness to various attacks such as additive white Gaussian noise, JPEG compression, rotation, and scaling.