Improving core bond strength and dimensional stability of particleboard using polymer powder in core layer

Low density polyethylene powder (LDPE) was used as polymer binder in the core layer of three layer particleboard. In the first phase, six levels of the LDPE powder (5–30 wt.%) based on the composition by weight, were mixed with the core particles with 8 wt.% urea–formaldehyde (UF) resin. In the second phase, the LDPE powder content was kept constant at 10 wt.% in all treatments and the UF resin content applied to the core layer was decreased gradually from 8 to 4 wt.%. Thickness swelling and water absorption of the particleboards significantly decreased with increasing the LDPE content in the core layer. Similarly, incorporation of the LDPE powder into the core layer of the particleboard greatly improved internal bond strength. The flexural properties of the particleboards, the modulus of rupture (MOR) and modulus of elasticity (MOE), were positively affected by increasing LDPE content up to 10 wt.% but the further increment of the LDPE decreased the MOR and MOE. The UF resin content can be reduced in the core layer of the particleboard as a function of increasing the LDPE powder.     

Bovine follicular dynamics, oocyte recovery, and development of oocytes microinjected with a green fluorescent protein construct.

The present study was carried out to 1) evaluate the viability of in vitro fertilized zygotes after microinjection of DNA, 2) assess the influence of oocyte quality upon the development rate of embryos when injected with DNA, and 3) determine the integration frequency of green fluorescent protein DNA into microinjected embryos. Oocytes were aspirated from ovaries of nine nonlactating Holsteins and were categorized into grades A, B, C, and D. At 16 h after in vitro fertilization, approximately half of the pronuclear stage presumptive zygotes were classified as having 1 pronucleus or 2 pronuclei, and they were microinjected with DNA constructs. A potential predictor of DNA integration frequency at d 10 was assessment of the incidence of green fluorescing embryos. The proportion of cleaved embryos that developed to morulae or blastocysts was not different between groups with 1 pronucleus injected (45%), 1 pronucleus uninjected (64%), or 2 pronuclei injected (49%). However, the development of morulae or blastocysts was higher in the group with 2 pronuclei uninjected (69%). The overall developmental score of green fluorescent protein-positive embryos was higher for grade A oocytes (1.3 +/- 0.1) than for grade B (0.8 +/- 0.1), C (0.6 +/- 0.1), or D (0.3 +/- 0.1) oocytes. The results show that production of transgenic bovine blastocysts can occur from the microinjection of a presumptive zygote having only one visible pronucleus. Initial oocyte quality is an important factor in selection of oocytes suitable for microinjection of DNA and for preimplantation development to produce bovine transgenic embryos.     

A Low Power Pseudo-Random BIST Technique

Peak power consumption during testing is an important concern. For scan designs, a high level of switching activity is created in the circuit during scan shifts, which increases power consumption considerably. In this paper we propose a pseudo-random BIST scheme for scan designs, which reduces the peak power consumption as well as the average power consumption as measured by the switching activity in the circuit. The method reduces the switching activity in the scan chains and the activity in the circuit under test by limiting the scan shifts to a portion of the scan chain structure using scan chain disable. Experimental results on various benchmark circuits demonstrate that the technique reduces the switching activity caused by scan shifts.     

Advanced authoring of paper-digital systems

Over the last decade, there has been an increasing interest in paper-digital systems that allow regular paper documents to be augmented or integrated with digital information and services. Although a wide variety of technical solutions and applications have been proposed, they all rely on some means of specifying links from areas within paper pages to digital services where these areas correspond to elements of the document’s artwork. Various frameworks and tools are available to support the development of paper-digital applications, but they tend to either require some programming skills or focus on specific application domains. We present an advanced publishing solution that is based on an authoring rather than programming approach to the production of interactive paper documents. Our solution is fully general and we describe how it uses concepts of templates and variable content elements to reduce redundancies and increase the flexibility in developing paper-digital applications.