Factors influencing the formation of complexes between oxidized lipids and proteins

Complexes were formed between egg albumin and oxidized lipids, such as thermally oxidized corn oil and autoxidized linoleic acid, under a standardized set of conditions. No complex could be obtained under these conditions when lysine, glycine, bactopeptone, gelatin or sodium caseinate were substituted for egg albumin. Lactalbumin was equally as reactive, casein much less and fresh egg white superior to egg albumin in their complexing ability with oxidized corn oil. As the time of reaction was increased, the amount of the complex formed also increased. Optimum complex formation took place at a concentration of 1% protein, a pH of 7 and 60C. The ease of formation of these complexesin vitro indicated that similar complexing could readily take placein vivo under suitable pathological conditions. This work was supported by research grant no. C-1932 from the National Institutes of Health, U. S. Public Health Service, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.     

Graft copolymerization of acrylonitrile and methacrylonitrile onto gelatin by mutual irradiation method

In order to improve upon certain properties of gelatin graft copolymerization of acrylonitrile (AN) and methacrylonitrile (MAN) onto gelatin has been studied in aqueous medium using γ rays as a source of initiation. Optimum conditions for affording maximum percentage of grafting have been evaluated as a function of various reaction parameters. The grafted polyacrylonitrile (PAN) was isolated from the graft copolymer by acid hydrolysis, and the average molecular weight (M_v) of the isolated polymer has been determined viscometrically. The graft copolymers were characterized by IR spectroscopic methods and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). Acrylonitrile was found to be more reactive than methacrylonitrile toward graft copolymerization. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Melt‐stable poly(1,4‐dioxan‐2‐one) (co)polymers by ring‐opening polymerization via continuous reactive extrusion

Bulk polymerization of ?‐caprolactone (CL), 1,4‐dioxan‐2‐one (PDX), and mixtures of PDX and CL was carried out by initiation with Al(O^secBu)₃ in a co‐rotating twin‐screw extruder through a fast single‐step process. Both homopolymerizations and copolymerization of PDX and CL proceed very rapidly and reach almost complete (co)‐ monomer(s) conversion as soon as 8 mol% of CL are added in the feed. Even though poly(1,4‐dioxan‐2‐one) (PPDX) is known to thermally degrade mainly through unzipping depolymerization promoted from the hydroxyl end‐groups and yielding PDX monomer, it turns out that the thermal stability of PPDX chains is substantially improved by the copolymerization of PDX with limited amounts of CL. Interestingly, DSC analysis of the so‐obtained P(PDX‐co‐CL) copolymers has demonstrated that a CL molar fraction as high as 11 mol% does not prevent the crystallization of the resulting copolymer, which retains a melting temperature close to 95°C. This last observation has been explained by the formation of a blocky‐like copolymer structure, in which short PPDX and PCL sequences are randomly distributed. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 45:622–629, 2005. © 2005 Society of Plastics Engineers.     

Microstructural Evolution and Deformation Behavior of a Hot-Rolled and Heat Treated Fe-8Mn-4Al-0.2C Steel

The microstructural evolution following tensile deformation of a hot-rolled and heat treated Fe-8Mn-4Al-0.2C steel was studied. Quenching in the range of 750-800 °C followed by tempering at 200 °C led to a ferrite-austenite mixed microstructure that was characterized by excellent combination of tensile strength of 800-1000 MPa and elongation of 30-40%, and a three-stage work hardening behavior. During the tensile deformation, the retained austenite transformed into martensite and delayed the onset of necking, thus leading to a higher ductility via the transformation-induced plasticity (TRIP) effect. The improvement of elongation is attributed to diffusion of carbon from δ-ferrite to austenite during tempering, which improves the stability of austenite, thus contributing to enhanced tensile ductility.     

He ion irradiation damage in Fe/W nanolayer films

We report on the evolution of microstructure and mechanical properties of Fe/W multilayers subjected to helium ion irradiations. Sputtered Fe/W multilayers with individual layer thickness, varying from 1 to 200 nm, were subjected to He⁺ ion irradiation with a peak displacement per atom value of 6 at ambient temperatures. Helium bubbles, 1-2 nm in diameter, were observed in Fe and W, and more so along layer interfaces. The magnitude of hardness variation after radiation depends on the individual layer thickness. Radiation hardening is observed in specimens with individual layer thickness of ?5 nm. At smaller layer thickness, the hardness barely changes. Analysis indicates that radiation hardening may originate mainly from dislocation loops and partially from He bubbles.     

A fast iterated conditional modes algorithm for water-fat decomposition in MRI

Decomposition of water and fat in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is important for biomedical research and clinical applications. In this paper, we propose a two-phased approach for the three-point water-fat decomposition problem. Our contribution consists of two components: 1) a background-masked Markov random field (MRF) energy model to formulate the local smoothness of field inhomogeneity; 2) a new iterated conditional modes (ICM) algorithm accounting for high-performance optimization of the MRF energy model. The MRF energy model is integrated with background masking to prevent error propagation of background estimates as well as improve efficiency. The central component of our new ICM algorithm is the stability tracking (ST) mechanism intended to dynamically track iterative stability on pixels so that computation per iteration is performed only on instable pixels. The ST mechanism significantly improves the efficiency of ICM. We also develop a median-based initialization algorithm to provide good initial guesses for ICM iterations, and an adaptive gradient-based scheme for parametric configuration of the MRF model. We evaluate the robust of our approach with high-resolution mouse datasets acquired from 7T MRI.     

Hydrogen evolution reaction: The role of arsenene nanosheet and dopant

The state-of-the-art density functional theory (DFT) is employed to study the catalytic activity of arsenene for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER). We have included dispersion correction to get accurate adsorption energy on the individual catalytic surface (top site). Using binding energy calculation, arsenene is shown to be a potential candidate for HER. Here we investigate the stability and electronic properties of the honeycomb structure of the arsenene system using first-principles calculation to find the effect of different dopants on the fundamental band gap, which is one of the primary parameters in the photocatalytic water splitting. Further, we sieved the dopant for better HER catalytic activity by substituting one of the arsenene (As) atoms by B, N, O, Ge, Ga and Se atoms to make arsenene a better candidate for HER. Our studies depict that HER activity is increased by 82% for O-doped arsenene and OER activity by 87% for B-doped arsenene as compared to pristine arsenene.     

Induced doping by sodium ion in poly(m-aminophenol) through the functional groups

Poly(m-aminophenol) (PmAP) was synthesized by the oxidative polymerization of m-aminophenol in sodium hydroxide medium using ammonium persulfate oxidant at room temperature. The synthesized polymer showed very good solution processability as it was well soluble in aqueous sodium hydroxide, dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO), dymethylformamide (DMF), etc. A free-standing film was cast from thermal evaporation of DMSO solution of the synthesized PmAP. The film was then doped with aqueous sodium hydroxide and methanol mixture by solution doping technique at room temperature. The doping conditions were standardized in terms of the DC-conductivity of the doped film. The doped PmAP was characterized by ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, Electron dispersion spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction spectroscopy, elemental analysis by atomic absorption spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis and DC-electrical conductivity. The DC-electrical conductivity of PmAP film was increased to 2.34 × 10^?5 S/cm from <10^?12 S/cm due to sodium ion doping. From all the above characterizations it was confirmed that the sodium ions were not the reason for the conduction. The incorporated sodium cation in the polymer through free –OH groups of the polymer chain was induced the electron cloud of the polymer and so the polymer became conducting.     

A note on the long-run elasticities from the energy consumption–GDP relationship

The goal of this paper is to examine the long-run elasticities of the impacts of energy consumption on GDP and GDP on energy consumption. The energy consumption–GDP relationship is amongst the most popular relationships examined in the energy economics literature. The bulk of the extant literature has assumed a positive relationship between energy consumption and real GDP. Our analysis shows that in only around 60% of the countries considered the relationship is positive.