Constructing Morphologically Tunable Copper Oxide-Based Nanomaterials on Cu Wire with/without the Deposition of Manganese Oxide as Bifunctional Materials for Glucose Sensing and Supercapacitors

Morphologically tunable copper oxide-based nanomaterials on Cu wire have been synthesized through a one-step alkali-assisted surface oxidation process for non-enzymatic glucose sensing. Subsequently, copper oxide-based nanomaterials on Cu wire as a supporting matrix to deposit manganese oxide for the construction of heterostructured Mn-Cu bimetallic oxide architectures through spontaneous redox reaction in the KMnO₄ solution for supercapacitors. Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), field emission transmission electron microscopy (FETEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) confirmed that morphological and phase transformation from Cu(OH)₂ to CuO occurred in copper oxide-based nanomaterials on Cu wire with different degrees of growth reaction. In non-enzymatic glucose sensing, morphologically tunable copper oxide-based nanomaterials owned the high tunability of electrocatalytically active sites and intrinsic catalytic activity to meet efficient glucose electrooxidation for obtaining promoted non-enzymatic glucose sensing performances (sensitivity of 2331 μA mM⁻¹ cm⁻² and the limit of detection of 0.02 mM). In the supercapacitor, heterostructured Mn–Cu bimetallic oxide-based nanomaterials delivered abundant redox-active sites and continuous conductive network to optimize the synergistic effect of Mn and Cu redox species for boosting the pseudo-capacitance performance (areal capacitance value of 79.4 mF cm⁻² at 0.2 mA cm⁻² current density and capacitance retention of 74.9% after 1000 cycles). It concluded that morphologically tunable copper oxide-based nanomaterials on Cu wire with/without deposition of manganese oxide could be good candidates for the future design of synergistic multifunctional materials in electrochemical techniques.     

Two-Stage Moisture Absorption Behavior and Hydrolysis of Cured Dicyanate Ester Resins

A two-stage moisture absorption behavior for the cured 4,4-dicyanato 1,1-diphenolethane (DCDPE) resins was found when they were exposed to 60C/100%RH environment. The first stage followed the Fickian diffusion, whereas the secondary stage was a swelling-controlled diffusion in that the diffusion coefficient was decreased with time. With increasing the sample thickness, the two-stage absorption behavior became less discernible. After long term exposure to moisture, DCDPE resins were prone to hydrolysis to form voids in the networks. When chromium acetylacetonate (Cr(acac)₃) was incorporated in the resin formulations as a curing accelerator, it also accelerated the hydrolysis, facilitating the formation of voids.     

Charge Conversion Polymer–Liposome Complexes to Overcome the Limitations of Cationic Liposomes in Mitochondrial-Targeting Drug Delivery

Mitochondrial-targeting therapy is considered an important strategy for cancer treatment. (3-Carboxypropyl) triphenyl phosphonium (CTPP) is one of the candidate molecules that can drive drugs or nanomedicines to target mitochondria via electrostatic interactions. However, the mitochondrial-targeting effectiveness of CTPP is low. Therefore, pH-sensitive polymer–liposome complexes with charge-conversion copolymers and CTPP-containing cationic liposomes were designed for efficiently delivering an anti-cancer agent, ceramide, into cancer cellular mitochondria. The charge-conversion copolymers, methoxypoly(ethylene glycol)-block-poly(methacrylic acid-g-histidine), were anionic and helped in absorbing and shielding the positive charges of cationic liposomes at pH 7.4. In contrast, charge-conversion copolymers became neutral in order to depart from cationic liposomes and induced endosomal escape for releasing cationic liposomes into cytosol at acidic endosomes. The experimental results reveal that these pH-sensitive polymer–liposome complexes could rapidly escape from MCF-7 cell endosomes and target MCF-7 mitochondria within 3 h, thereby leading to the generation of reactive oxygen species and cell apoptosis. These findings provide a promising solution for cationic liposomes in cancer mitochondrial-targeting drug delivery.     

Enhanced parallel cat swarm optimization based on the Taguchi method

In this paper, we present an enhanced parallel cat swarm optimization (EPCSO) method for solving numerical optimization problems. The parallel cat swarm optimization (PCSO) method is an optimization algorithm designed to solve numerical optimization problems under the conditions of a small population size and a few iteration numbers. The Taguchi method is widely used in the industry for optimizing the product and the process conditions. By adopting the Taguchi method into the tracing mode process of the PCSO method, we propose the EPCSO method with better accuracy and less computational time. In this paper, five test functions are used to evaluate the accuracy of the proposed EPCSO method. The experimental results show that the proposed EPCSO method gets higher accuracies than the existing PSO-based methods and requires less computational time than the PCSO method. We also apply the proposed method to solve the aircraft schedule recovery problem. The experimental results show that the proposed EPCSO method can provide the optimum recovered aircraft schedule in a very short time. The proposed EPCSO method gets the same recovery schedule having the same total delay time, the same delayed flight numbers and the same number of long delay flights as the Liu, Chen, and Chou method (2009). The optimal solutions can be found by the proposed EPCSO method in a very short time.     

MT-SIM a mixed-level transition fault simulator based on parallel patterns

This paper describes a mixed level, (i.e., switch-level and gate-level) transition fault simulator based on parallel patterns: MT-SIM. The switch-level allows the simulator to treat faults at the transistor level, while the gate-level conserves the simulation speed and the parallel pattern strategy further enhances the simulation speed for more than one order of magnitude. The simulator is built based on a set of operators which translate the switch-level signal propagation into Boolean operations and transform the gate-level logic elements into symbolic logic representations. The experimental results of the simulator show that it can exhibit a linear performance for the logic-level simulation if a longer word length is adopted.