Microstructural and technological investigation of bone China reformulated with nepheline syenite and quartz addition

In this study, bone china body was reformulated by completely replacing Cornish stone with nepheline syenite and quartz. Effect of controlled milling/mixing on the technological properties and microstructural evolution was also studied. Specimens prepared both from reformulated and controlled milled/mixed bodies were sintered between 1200 and 1250°C with 25°C increment. Sintering and technological properties of reformulated bodies were not being adversely affected but conversely, the measured flexural strength values (55 MPa) were half of the value that was published for bone china (100 MPa). Microstructural investigations showed that enlarged pore formation was the reason for strength reduction. However, improvement in particle packing by controlled milling/mixing eliminated enlarged pore formation and in response, flexural strength values increased to conventionally quoted levels. Detailed microstructural investigations revealed that the reason behind enlarged pore formation was heterogeneous distributions of body components, especially CaO and quartz grains. It was suggested that variations of CaO and SiO₂ to form improper ratio between them would affect the viscosity of glassy phase and crystallization, which would prevent gases in pores to dissolve away. The obtainment of homogenous distribution of body components by controlled milling/mixing has a strong influence on the evolution of microstructure and improvement of technological properties.     

Investigation of the electro-oxidation of artificial Black Sea water by cyclic voltammetry on molybdenum (II)

The electro-oxidation of H₂S in Black Sea water to generate electricity was investigated. MoS₂ exhibited catalytic activity toward the oxidation of H₂S in artificial sea water. The catalytic activity of molybdenum sulfide was found to depend on the electrolyte pH and on the temperature. Cyclic voltammograms taken in the artificial sea water containing hydrogen sulfide at pH = 14 exhibited a peak at 500 mV related to the oxidation of HS⁻. Furthermore, the peak current of the MoS₂ electrode increased to 400 mA g⁻¹ from 250 mA g⁻¹ (approximately 1.6-fold) when the temperature was increased from 353 K to 363 K.     

Automatic diagnosis of diabetes using adaptive neuro‐fuzzy inference systems

Abstract: A new approach based on an adaptive neuro‐fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) is presented for diagnosis of diabetes diseases. The Pima Indians diabetes data set contains records of patients with known diagnosis. The ANFIS classifiers learn how to differentiate a new case in the domain by being given a training set of such records. The ANFIS classifier is used to detect diabetes diseases when eight features defining diabetes indications are used as inputs. The proposed ANFIS model combines neural network adaptive capabilities and the fuzzy logic qualitative approach. The conclusions concerning the impacts of features on the diagnosis of diabetes disease are obtained through analysis of the ANFIS. The performance of the ANFIS model is evaluated in terms of training performances and classification accuracies and the results confirm that the proposed ANFIS model has potential in detecting diabetes diseases.     

Combining recurrent neural networks with eigenvector methods for classification of ECG beats

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the accuracy of the recurrent neural networks (RNNs) trained with Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm on the electrocardiogram (ECG) beats. Four types of ECG beats (normal beat, congestive heart failure beat, ventricular tachyarrhythmia beat, atrial fibrillation beat) obtained from the Physiobank database were analyzed. Decision making was performed in two stages: feature extraction by eigenvector methods and classification using the RNN trained on the extracted features. The RNNs were implemented for classification of the ECG beats using the statistical features as inputs. The ability of designed and trained Elman RNNs, combined with eigenvector methods, were explored to classify the ECG beats. The classification results demonstrated that the combined eigenvector methods/RNN approach can be useful in analyzing the ECG beats.     

The usability analysis with heuristic evaluation and analytic hierarchy process

Today people increasingly expect more from the functionality of a web site, so the web usability has emerged as an important topic. It is generally hard to renew the existing web sites to meet the changing demands of users. Therefore, the present study is aimed at detailing the usability problems of web sites. To this end, Heuristic Evaluation (HE) is used to identify the usability problems, and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used to rate their severity. Finally, for a more user-friendly web site, a new approach to judging severity of usability problems is developed by integrating AHP into HE.

Relevance to industry

There is an increasing importance for higher usability in the web development industry and communities. Different usability evaluation techniques have been developed and incorporated into the process of web site design and development. This study proposes a new approach to reveal usability problems on a web site and to define solution priority of these problems.     

An advanced human error assessment approach: HEART and AV‐DEMATEL

Human error assessment and reduction technique (HEART) is one of the most commonly used human error assessment approaches which computes human error probability (HEP) to prioritize errors related to human actions. HEART is a powerful tool considering error producing conditions (EPCs) which increase the HEP for generalized task versions named as generic task types (GTTs). HEART can give a solution including prevention of human‐related errors (HREs) and reduction of the HREs’ impacts via implementing additional controls. However, it has many shortcomings for real‐life error assessments. In this context, this study aims to improve effective usage of HEART through an advanced version of decision‐making trial and evaluation laboratory (AV‐DEMATEL). The reason to perform AV‐DEMATEL is to show the complex effect relations between main tasks (MTs), subtasks (STs), and EPCs in a process. For this aim, an integrated effect relation matrix is proposed for DEMATEL and importance weights of MTs, STs, and EPCs are computed based on this matrix. In addition, not only HREs are considered but also machine‐related errors (MREs) are taken into account to make error assessment for the process. The proposed approach also provides flexibility to categorize STs in different GTTs. Finally, a new term “process error probability” including HREs’ probabilities and MREs’ probabilities is recommended to compute error probability in an integrated manner for the process. To utilize the proposed approach, an example of a steam boiler daily control process is given.     

Genetic Logic Gates Enable Patterning of Amyloid Nanofibers

Distinct spatial patterning of naturally produced materials is observed in many cellular structures and even among communities of microorganisms. Reoccurrence of spatially organized materials in all branches of life is clear proof that organization is beneficial for survival. Indeed, organisms can trick the evolutionary process by using organized materials in ways that can help the organism to avoid unexpected conditions. To expand the toolbox for synthesizing patterned living materials, Boolean type “AND” and “OR” control of curli fibers expression is demonstrated using recombinases. Logic gates are designed to activate the production of curli fibers. The gates can be used to record the presence of input molecules and give output as CsgA expression. Two different curli fibers (CsgA and CsgA‐His‐tag) production are then selectively activated to explore distribution of monomers upon coexpression. To keep track of the composition of fibers, CsgA‐His‐tag proteins are labeled with nickel–nitrilotriacetic acid (Ni–NTA‐) conjugated gold nanoparticles. It is observed that an organized living material can be obtained upon inducing the coexpression of different CsgA fibers. It is foreseen that living materials with user‐defined curli composition hold great potential for the development of living materials for many biomedical applications.     

Combined effect of a plasticizer and carvacrol and thymol on the mechanical,thermal, morphological properties of poly(lactic acid)

In this study, the effects of the monotherpenic phenol concentration on the properties of biocomposites containing plasticized poly(lactic acid) (PLA) with acetyl tributyl citrate (ATBC) were investigated. The monotherpenic phenols carvacrol (C) and thymol (T) were added to PLA by a melt‐blending method. The prepared samples were characterized by means of tensile testing, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, differential scanning calorimetry, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and antibacterial activity tests. The addition of ATBC to PLA resulted in hydrogen bonding between ATBC and PLA. We observed that ATBC, C, and T reduced the glass‐transition temperature of PLA. The presence of C and T decreased the maximum degradation temperature slightly. Because of the plasticization effect of the additives, the tensile strength and Young's modulus of PLA decreased, whereas the extent of elongation they experienced before failure increased. This effect was also observed with SEM analysis in terms of plastic deformation at break. The antibacterial activity tests showed that samples containing high concentrations of C demonstrated an improved antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella typhimurium, and Listeria monocytogenes bacteria. We observed that C exhibited a higher inhibition against bacterial strains than T. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2018 , 135, 45895.