Triacylglycerol Species of Less Common Edible Vegetable Oils

Chromatographic and spectroscopic methods used for the detection and quantification of triacylglycerol (TAG) species present in less common edible vegetable oils (almond, hazelnut, pumpkin seed, safflower, sesame, walnut, and wheatgerm oils) are reviewed. For these oils, as well as for thistle oil and high-oleic sunflower oil, for which no data exist on their TAG composition, both high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and gas chromatography (GC) chromatographic plus spectrometric techniques have also been performed. Triacylglycerol comparison of the data found in the literature is also presented. Five fatty acyl moieties (palmitoyl-, stearoyl-, oleoyl-, linoleoyl-, and linolenoyl-) are found to mainly contribute to the formation of TAG species of the aforementioned edible vegetable oils, whereas six more (palmitoleoyl-, arachidoyl-, gadoleoyl-, heptadecenoyl-, margaroyl-, and erucoyl-) are reported as minors. Only 19 to 33 TAG make up the mass of these oils. These TAG are also found in most common edible oils, thus indicating a “uniformity” in the minor and main TAG composition of edible vegetable oils. Trioleoyl-glycerol predominates in almond (13.3-48.6%), hazelnut (35.3-57.9%), and high oleic sunflower (44.2% and 52.9%) oils, trilinoleoyl-glycerol in safflower (40.1-49.7%), thistle (36.9% and 46.0%), walnut (25.9-38.1%), and wheatgerm (15.7-33.0%) oils. Sesame and pumpkin seed oils are rich in dioleoyl-linoleoyl-glycerol (5.9-17.5%, 9.5% and 18.6%, respectively) and oleoyl-dilinoleoyl-glycerol (8.0-18.7% and 12.8-21.1%, respectively).     

Recurrent Meesmann''s corneal epithelial dystrophy after penetrating keratoplasty

Endoscopic treatment of chronic pancreatitis has drawn benefits from endoscopic procedures previously described for the main bile duct. Endotherapy is developing throughout the world. Cyst drainage procedures certainly represent the largest step forward in that non-surgical approach, whatever it is either direct (through the stomach or the duodenum) or indirect through the papilla in the duodenum. This procedure gives similar results to surgery with a lower morbidity. Pancreatic duct drainage associated with stone clearance is feasible and provides good results which have not yet been compared with those obtained thanks to surgery. Nonetheless, when the duct is not widely dilated it has been proven to be a satisfactory alternative to surgery. By contrast, chronic cholestasis does not appear to be a good indication of endotherapy.     

Electromigration in sputtered copper film on plasma-treated hydrogen silsesquioxane dielectric

Electromigration (EM) damage is one of the major causes for the failure of interconnects. Plasma treatment, such as dry etching, is frequently employed in the fabrication of multilevel interconnection patterns. This work investigates the hydrogen silsesquioxane (HSQ) and copper integrated systems and the effect of H₂ plasma treatment on the EM of Cu. Hydrogen plasma bombardment induces a rough HSQ surface and results in a coarse morphology of the Cu film deposited on HSQ. The crystallographic texture of Cu is also affected by the plasma treatment. A decrease in the Cu I(111)/I(200) peak ratio is observed for a specimen treated with H₂ plasma. The activation energy for EM in Cu and the EM lifetime of the Cu interconnect decreases with an increased degree of plasma treatment. The activation energies obtained, ranging from 0.76 eV to 0.94 eV, suggest that the electromigration in copper proceeds via an interfacial diffusion path. Possible mechanisms for the effects of plasma treatment are explored. The rough surface and the retarded Cu (111) orientation induced by H₂ plasma bombardment are the major causes for the decrease of activation energy and EM lifetime.     

The application of neural networks in self-tuning constant force control

The constant force control gradually becomes an important technique of modern manufacturing processes. For example, the constant turning or cutting force is a useful approach for increasing the metal removal rate and increasing the tool life. The variation of machining condition may cause the robustness of a classical control theory (PID) to become ineffective, even make a control system unstable. The pole placement self-tuning control (PSTC) theory with a recursive least square parameters estimator is proposed to adapt the environmental variety. Unfortunately, the adaptability and the robustness of a self-tuning control system cannot be maintained in good condition simultaneously all the time. In this paper, a self-tuning controller equips with a neural network parameter classifier in conjunction with a least square estimator is developed to improve the adaptability and the robustness in suffering the obvious environmental variation. In order to verify the applicability of this control method, a prototype system is designed and constructed to resemble the feed rate mechanism of lathe. The dynamic responses of this force control system with different estimators are compared based upon the experimental data. The contact force is measured from a load cell and adjusted by regulating the feed rate.     

Dual-band planar inverted F antenna for GSM/DCS mobile phones

A compact dual-band planar inverted F antenna suitable for the application as a global system for mobile communication/digital communication system (GSM/DCS) dual-band mobile phone internal antenna is proposed and implemented. The proposed antenna has three resonant elements, two meandered metallic strips of slightly different lengths and one nearly-rectangular patch, which are printed on a supporting FR4 substrate and arranged in a compact configuration. These three resonant elements share a common shorting pin, and for the GSM (890-960 MHz) operation, the proposed antenna is operated with the two meandered strips both resonated as a quarter-wavelength structure, leading to a wide bandwidth formed by two resonant modes. For the upper band of the proposed antenna, three resonant modes are generated, two from the second higher-order modes of the two meandered strips and one from the nearly-rectangular patch, leading to a wide bandwidth covering the DCS band (1710-1880 MHz). The antenna design and experimental results are presented.     

A unified K-BKZ model for residual stress analysis of injection molded three-dimensional thin shapes

The flow-induced and thermally induced residual stresses during injection molding of a thin part with complex geometries are predicted. The injection molding precess was considered to consist of a filling and a post-filling stage (packing coupled with cooling). Additionally, the analysis were applied to successive stages of the process. The model takes into account the viscoelasticity of the molding polymer, which has been neglected in most previous works, because of the complexity of its inclusion. A unified K-BKZ viscoelastic constitutive model, capable of modeling both the fluid-rubbery state and the glass state of amorphous polymers, was employed for simulating this problem. For the flow-induced residual stress predictions of the filling stage, a quasi-steady state approximation was employed for each element of the part, for the calculation of stress profile and subsequent stress relaxation after cessation of flowf. Stress calculations were provided for the thermally induced residual stress predictions of the post-filling stage. These explicit calculations led to the results of pressure and temperature distributions of the part during the post-filling stage into the viscoelastic constitutive model. Additionally, the pressure and asymmetric temeprature profiles of the post-filling stage were based on finite element packing analysis coupled with a boundary element cooling analysis of the molding process. Finally, the total residual stress in the part was obtained via superposition of the flow-induced and thermally induced residual stresses. An example is provided to demonstrate the entire concept. The results indicate that thermally induced residual stress is higher than the flow-induced residual stress by one to two orders of magnitude.     

Simulations for thermal warpage and pressure nonlinearity of monolithic CMOS pressure sensors

The operation function of a piezoresistive pressure sensor utilizes a voltage output to detect the magnitude of pressure. The basic design concept for monolithic pressure sensors is to fabricate a standard submicron CMOS process with appropriate modifications to integrate on-chip signal conditioning circuits with anisotropic-etched piezoresistive sensing elements. In this study, thermal stress simulations with applied pressure loadings are used to estimate the electromechanical behavior of a new monolithic sensing element concept design. The major tasks are to predict the ripple deformation of a silicon diaphragm due to the thermal residual stresses from multiple passivation layers and estimate the pressure nonlinearities on the transducer. More detailed approaches with design and performance concerns are also discussed.     

Inhibitory effects of interleukin-1 blockers on corneal fibroblast proliferation

The regulation of would healing is one of the most important fields of research in ophthalmology today. Rabbit corneal fibroblast cultures were used to study the effects of interleukin-1 (IL-1) blockers on the proliferation of fibroblasts which is closely related to the wound healing. It was found that IL-1 blockers, such as CK-17, CK-101A, CK-2 and CK-103A, suppress fibroblast proliferation in a concentration-dependent manner. DNA synthesis was significantly inhibited by CK-17 and CK-103A but not by CK-101A and CK1-102. Although the synthesis of mRNA was reduced by all CK-compounds at most concentration tested, the synthesis of protein was only slightly reduced or unaffected. These results indicate that CK-compounds are potent fibroblast inhibitors but not cytolytic agents.