Synthesis and characterization of functional gradient copolymers of glycidyl methacrylate and butyl acrylate

Epoxy-functional spontaneous gradient copolymers of glycidyl methacrylate (G) and n-butyl acrylate (B) were synthesized via atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP). The copolymerization reactions were carried out in toluene solution at 70 °C, using methyl 2-bromopropionate (MBrP) as initiator and copper chloride with N,N,N′,N′′,N′′-pentamethyldiethylenetriamine (PMDETA) as the catalyst system. The kinetic behaviour of the statistical copolymerizations was studied in a wide composition interval with molar fractions of G ranging from 0.10 to 0.75. The synthesized copolymers were characterized by size exclusion chromatography (SEC) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. ¹H NMR was employed to determine the copolymer composition, demonstrating the gradient character of the copolymers along the main chain in the whole monomer conversion interval. Apart from this, the sequence distribution and stereoregularity were analyzed. These microstructural experimental data agreed well with those calculated from Mayo-Lewis terminal model (MLTM) and a Bernoullian statistic with an isotacticity parameter of σ_G = 0.28 and a coisotacticity parameter of σ = 0.30.     

Environmental Problems in Sao Paulo: The Challenge for Co-Responsibility and Innovative Crisis Management

This article describes and analyzes the main environmental problems that affect the city of Sao Paulo. The article views the impacts of the local dynamics of urbanization and its effects on daily life. The discussion is centered on the complexity of the environmental management processes and the implementation of conventional and non-conventional policies and programmes to prevent environmental degradation. Possible solutions to alleviate the effects of floods and climate factors on households are debated as well as the possibilities of formulating more participatory oriented policies to engage citizens in the knowledge of environmental risks. These issues represent a very complex challenge to the urban government of Sao Paulo.     

Screening of supports for the immobilization of pectinmethylesterase from acerola (Malpighia glabra L)

A partially purified extract of pectinmethylesterase (PME) from acerola fruit was immobilized on various supports: glass, celite, chrysotile, agarose, concanavalin A Sepharose 4B, egg shell, polyacrylamide and gelatin. In addition, reticulation with glutaraldehyde was assessed, as well as the use of gelatin in the presence of celite, glass and silica. The highest immobilization yields were obtained when the pectinmethylesterase was immobilized in concanavalin A Sepharose 4B (81.7%) and in gelatin‐water (78.0%). Copyright © 2004 Society of Chemical Industry     

MODELING WATER LOSS DURING FRYING OF POTATO STRIPS: EFFECT OF SOLUTE IMPREGNATION

The effect of solute impregnation on water loss and oil uptake during potato strip frying was studied. Blanched potato strips were impregnated at 25°C by soaking in a solution of sucrose-NaCl-water, 20-5-75% by weight. After rinsing and air drying, strips were deep fried in sunflower oil at 160, 170 and 180°C. A control treatment, consisting of potato strips blanched but not soaked and later air dried was also conducted. Solute impregnation provided a decrease of the oil uptake. Two models, based on Fick's law were used to describe water loss during frying. The first one is the classic model with an effective moisture diffusion coefficient assumed a constant value. The second model considers that diffusion coefficient varies during the frying process. For a given frying temperature, constant diffusion coefficient for control potatoes resulted in lower values than the impregnated ones. The variable diffusivity model showed a two-stage behavior: during the first stage of frying, diffusion coefficient increased with frying temperatures, but from a given time on an inverse behavior began. This last fact was found to be related to an increase of the measured peak force needed to penetrate the potato crust.     

Modal Kalman filtering based impedance relaying

An algorithm is presented for computer distance relaying. It is based on modal Kalman filtering (MKF) to estimate fundamental phasors, MKF exploits all the measurement information available from a three-phase line and is founded on enhanced models of the electromagnetic transients noise. To support the modeling of noise for different faults, a study of nontrivial electrical networks with accurate electromagnetic transients modeling is made for 400 kV transmission lines. MKF fits the behavior of the different modal noise for the Clarke phasors, but it is invariant for each type of fault, assuring robustness and minimum error variance. To computer distance, Clarke αB phasors are transformed to +/- symmetrical components, and then a well-known expression is used to computer the positive impedance. Statistical analysis if presented to assess observation time versus estimation accuracy for the different types of line faults     

Influence of pencil lead hardness on voltammetric response of graphite reinforcement carbon electrodes

This work studied the voltammetric response of graphite reinforcement electrodes made of different pencil lead hardness. The studies showed that harder graphite leads, regardless of their manufacturer, are more appropriate as electrode material for voltammetric purposes due to their higher peak currents, increasing sensitivity and reproducibility, with ΔEp closer to the theoretical value for a reversible system.     

Chitosan particles agglomerated scaffolds for cartilage and osteochondral tissue engineering approaches with adipose tissue derived stem cells

In the XML file of the original article, H. Redl’s affiliation is incorrect. It is listed correctly in both the paper and PDF versions of the article, and can be found below: The online version of the original article can be found at     

Improving the performance of Invertible Bloom Lookup Tables

Invertible Bloom Lookup Tables (IBLTs) have been recently introduced as an extension of traditional Bloom filters. IBLTs store key-value pairs. Unlike traditional Bloom filters, IBLTs support both a lookup operation (given a key, return a value) and an operation that lists out all the key-value pairs stored. One issue with IBLTs is that there is a probability that a lookup operation will return “not found” for a key. In this paper, a technique to reduce this probability without affecting the storage requirement and only moderately increasing the search time is presented and evaluated. The results show that it can significantly reduce the probability of not returning a value that is actually stored in the IBLT. The overhead of the modified search procedure, compared to the standard IBLT search procedure, is small and has little impact on the average search time.