Synergistic Enhancement of Luminescent and Ferroelectric Properties through Multi-Clipping of Tetraphenylethenes

Synergistically enhancing luminescent and ferroelectric ( SELF ) properties are observed from a tetraphenylethene ( TP ) substituted with clipping groups ( C ), where the C is consisting of a 4-[3,5-bis-(3-decyloxy-styryl)-styryl]-phenyl ( DOS ) unit. The DOS units of TPCn are self-assembled via intermolecular interaction to clip themselves and induce TP aggregation, as evidenced by clip-induced quenching of emission at DOS units ( E _clip ) accompanied by aggregation-induced emission enhancement of TPs ( E _AIE ). TPC4 demonstrates strong photoluminescence in a dilute chloroform solution and large E_AIE in aqueous (>50%) THF solution. TPCn demonstrates SELF properties in film state, with high quantum yields of photoluminescence (>80%) and ferroelectric switching. Due to the introduction of four clips, TPC4 has a higher remnant polarization ( P _r  =  2.27 µC cm⁻²) at room temperature than TPC1. TPC4 is successfully employed in a light-emitting electrochemical cell to achieve over 1290 cd m⁻² under pulsed current conditions. The TPC4 film on a flexible substrate produced a piezoelectric output voltage of up to 0.13 V and a current density of 1.14 nA cm⁻² upon bending. These results indicate that the side chain clipping and TP aggregation resulted in unprecedented flexible SELF properties in a single compound, offering simultaneous enhancement of electroluminescence, mechanical sensitivity, and energy harvesting capacity.     

Improved model-free adaptive predictive control based on recursive least-squares estimation algorithm

Data-driven control has received increasing attention by researchers in recent years because no system modeling procedure is required. By combination of data-driven and model predictive control, this paper discusses an improved model-free adaptive predictive control approach with application to vibration reduction of an elastic crane. For system linearization, instead of using traditional compact-form dynamic linearization, this contribution considers the partial-form dynamic linearization (PFDL) technique in case of multivariable systems. A linearized output predictive model of the unknown system is constructed locally. To estimate and predict the time-varying parameter matrices, namely, pseudo-Jacobian matrix (PJM), recursive least-squares algorithms are utilized for online estimation improvement. As a result, an improved PFDL-based model-free controller is designed and applied firstly to the ship-mounted boom crane representing a typical flexible system. Simulation results indicate that significant reduction of the elastic boom and payload oscillations are achieved, and better control performance can be observed in comparison with other traditional methods.     

Incorporation of germinated mung bean flour with rice flour to enhance physical,nutritional and sensory quality of gluten-free cookies

Quality of the cookies substituted with germinated mung bean flour (GMF) to rice flour (RF) to produce gluten-free cookies were investigated in this study. The GMF was used to formulate with the RF to obtain the composite flours with different total protein contents of 6, 9, 12, 15, 18 and 21 (%, d.b). The increase in the substituted amounts of GMF contributed to the lower baking loss, diameter and spread ratio, but the higher thickness and hardness of the cookies as compared to the RF-based cookie. The cookies with more GMF substitution expressed lower lightness (L*) values, but higher redness (a*) and yellowness (b*) values than the others. The cookies substituted with 60% of the GMF (60-GMFC) exhibited similar baking loss, thickness, diameter, spread ratio and lightness values to the wheat flour (WF)-based cookies. The total amounts of essential amino acids and the sum of histidine, lysine and methionine of the composite flour-based cookies were 3.90% and 1.64%, significantly higher than those of the RF-based cookie (1.93% and 0.66%, respectively) or the WF-based cookie (1.70% and 0.58%, respectively). As a result, healthy gluten-free cookies could be prepared using the RF with the substitution of the germinated mung bean flour.     

Photocatalytic Disinfection of E. coli Using Silver-Doped TiO2 Coated on Cylindrical Cordierite Honeycomb Monolith Photoreactor Under Artificial Sunlight Irradiation

In this paper, TiO₂ and Ag-doped TiO₂ photocatalysts were coated on the cylindrical cordierite honeycomb monolith (CHM) to evaluate their photocatalytic disinfection against Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria under artificial sunlight irradiation. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns showed a single-phase anatase structure for TiO₂ samples calcined at 500 °C for 2 h. With the presence of Ag, the bandgap of TiO₂ becomes narrower, and the absorption edge shifts toward the visible region. 6 mol% Ag-doped TiO₂ (6Ag-T) showed a reduction of bandgap energy to 2.2 eV. TiO₂ and Ag-doped TiO₂ solutions were prepared and coated on the channels’ surface of CHM for antibacterial applications. Although monolithic TiO₂ caused a slight decrease in the number of alive E. coli, Ag dopant showed significant improvement in antibacterial properties. 6 mol% Ag-doped TiO₂ coated on CHM (6Ag-T/S10/M) showed strong antibacterial effectiveness against E. coli that the bacterial cell concentration dropped to zero after 1 h of exposure. Impressively, reusability tests with these materials showed superior performance, where the antibacterial remains unchanged after five or seven successive operation cycles.

Graphical Abstract

     

High Catalytic Activity of a Nickel Phosphide Nanocatalyst Supported on Melamine-Doped Activated Carbon for Deoxygenation

Topics in Catalysis - Nickel-based catalysts are inexpensive and exhibit high catalytic activity; therefore, they have been extensively explored in deoxygenation reactions. Employing catalyst...     

Clarification on phase transition behaviors by local strain engineering in Bi1/2Na1/2TiO3–SrTiO3-based ternary ceramics

The stabilization of ergodicity plays an important role in realizing large strain in a Bi_1/2Na_1/2TiO₃ (BNT)-based relaxor, which is strongly related to the degree of random fields with respect to the randomly distributed different cations. To clarify the effects of different ionic radii, this study investigated and compared the microstructures, crystal structures, phase transition behaviors, and electrical properties of BNT–ST-based ternary ceramics by modifying BiMeO₃ (where Me = Al and Fe). It was observed that the stabilized relaxor states are different between BiFeO₃-/and BiAlO₃-modified BNT–ST ternary ceramics. As a result, it is suggested that phase transition (more precisely, the stabilization of ergodicity) can be influenced by the different internal strain in BNT–ST-based ternary ceramics.     

ActiveSpaces: Exploring dynamic code deployment for extreme scale data processing

Managing the large volumes of data produced by emerging scientific and engineering simulations running on leadership‐class resources has become a critical challenge. The data have to be extracted off the computing nodes and transported to consumer nodes so that it can be processed, analyzed, visualized, archived, and so on. Several recent research efforts have addressed data‐related challenges at different levels. One attractive approach is to offload expensive input/output operations to a smaller set of dedicated computing nodes known as a staging area. However, even using this approach, the data still have to be moved from the staging area to consumer nodes for processing, which continues to be a bottleneck. In this paper, we investigate an alternate approach, namely moving the data‐processing code to the staging area instead of moving the data to the data‐processing code. Specifically, we describe the ActiveSpaces framework, which provides (1) programming support for defining the data‐processing routines to be downloaded to the staging area and (2) runtime mechanisms for transporting codes associated with these routines to the staging area, executing the routines on the nodes that are part of the staging area, and returning the results. We also present an experimental performance evaluation of ActiveSpaces using applications running on the Cray XT5 at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Finally, we use a coupled fusion application workflow to explore the trade‐offs between transporting data and transporting the code required for data processing during coupling, and we characterize sweet spots for each option. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

6,5-Fused Ring,C2-Salvinorin Ester,Dual Kappa and Mu Opioid Receptor Agonists as Analgesics Devoid of Anxiogenic Effects**

Current common analgesics are mediated through the mu or kappa opioid receptor agonism. Unfortunately, selective mu or kappa receptor agonists often cause harmful side effects. However, ligands exhibiting dual agonism to the opioid receptors, such as to mu and kappa, or to mu and delta, have been suggested to temper undesirable adverse effects while retaining analgesic activity. Herein we report an introduction of various 6,5-fused rings to C2 of the salvinorin scaffold via an ester linker. In vitro studies showed that many of these compounds have dual agonism on kappa and mu opioid receptors. In vivo studies on the lead dual kappa and mu opioid receptor agonist demonstrated supraspinal thermal analgesic activity while avoiding anxiogenic effects in male mice, thus providing further strong evidence in support of the therapeutic advantages of dual opioid receptor agonists over selective opioid receptor agonists.     

BAPRP: a machine learning approach to blackhole attacks prevention routing protocol in vehicular Ad Hoc networks

International Journal of Information Security - One of the network performance challenges of Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANET) is the Black Hole attack. This destructive attack severely damages the...