Sex-specific association between psychopathic traits and electrodermal reactivity in children.

This study investigated the relationship of skin conductance response (SCR) to a child psychopathy measure. Blunted electrodermal activity is a theoretically important characteristic of psychopathy, but it has not been fully explored in preadolescents or females. The authors tested the hypothesis that reduced SCR magnitude is associated with psychopathic-like traits in boys and girls. Participants were drawn from an ethnically diverse community sample of 9- to 10-year-old twins. Given the fact that members of each twin pair were rated by the same individual (i.e., their caregiver) on the Child Psychopathy Scale, the authors examined individual differences at the within-family level. Skin conductance data were collected during a passive auditory task consisting of 75-dB tones as well as miscellaneous sounds (e.g., baby cries, bird noises, and speech-like stimuli). Reduced SCR magnitude (hyporeactivity) was characteristic only of boys with higher psychopathy scores. More specifically, electrodermal hyporeactivity was linked to the interpersonal facet of psychopathy, suggesting that it is a biological marker of a manipulative and deceitful orientation in males. No association was found between SCRs and psychopathic traits in girls, indicating the importance of sex specific etiologies of psychopathy in childhood. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of potassium ion on the stability and release rate of hydrogen peroxide encapsulated in silica hydrogels

Hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) is encapsulated in silica hydrogels using sol‐gel method and the effects of the K⁺ : Na⁺ ion ratio on gelation time, hydrogel structure, stability, and release rate of H₂O₂ were investigated. As the amount of K⁺ ions increased relative to the amount of Na⁺ ions at the same pH, the gel structure became less compact and the pore diameter increased. Hydrogen peroxide retention values up to 90 and 80% were observed at the end of 7 and 20 days, respectively, in the presence of K⁺ ions at low pH values when the initial H₂O₂ concentration was 19.9 wt %. Release rate of hydrogen peroxide decreased with decreasing pH for the two K⁺ : Na⁺ ion ratios studied. This work presents an environmentally friendly, low cost, and easy to scale up method to increase the stability of high initial concentrations of H₂O₂ at room temperature and customize the release rate. © 2016 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 63: 409–417, 2017     

Removal of phosphate by using copper‐loaded poly(N‐vinylimidazole) hydrogels as polymeric ligand exchanger

Polymeric ligand exchangers (PLE) are generally composed of a crosslinked hosting resin that can firmly hold a transition metal ion which can act as terminal functional groups. In this study, poly(N‐vinylimidazole) (PVIm) hydrogels were synthesized by free radical polymerization/crosslinking of N‐vinylimidazole in aqueous solution. Swelling behavior of PVIm hydrogels was investigated and the gel with minimum amount of crosslinking agent, hence showing maximum swelling was selected as the optimum gel system for further studies. To prepare the corresponding PLE for the removal of phosphate, PVIm hydrogels were loaded with Cu(II) ions. Copper loading capacity of PLE was determined to be 5 mmol of Cu(II)/g of dry gel. For removal of phosphate, adsorption experiments were performed in batch mode at different pH (3–9) and phosphate concentrations. It was found that phosphate adsorption capacity did not change significantly within this pH range. The effect of initial concentration of phosphate on the adsorption behavior of PLE was determined for 10 different phosphate concentrations (0.1–1000 mg/L) at pH 7. NaCl solution was used for regeneration of phosphate adsorbed Cu(II) loaded PVIm hydrogels with 100% regeneration efficiency. The new PLE showed high affinity for phosphate; the highest uptake was found to be 218 mg/g dry PLE from 1000 mg/L phosphate solution. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2011     

Synthesis and physical gels of pH- and thermo-responsive tertiary amine methacrylate based ABA triblock copolymers and drug release studies

A series of novel pH-responsive ABA triblock copolymer gelators have been synthesized by using poly[2-(diisopropylamino)ethyl methacrylate] (PDPA) as the A block and poly[2-(dimethylamino)ethyl methacrylate] (PDMA) as the B block via group transfer polymerization. While the PDPA-b-PDMA-b-PDPA triblock copolymers are molecularly soluble in acidic aqueous media due to protonation of all tertiary amine groups, they formed either gels by the chain-end hydrophobic interactions with relatively high polymer concentration (10 wt%) or near monodisperse “flower” micelles with low polymer concentration at neutral and basic aqueous solutions. The hydrophobic model drug release was studied in a sustained manner from the gels at pH 7.4 by varying the polymer concentration, the polymer molecular weight and the temperature of the medium. Preliminary studies indicate that both slow, sustained release and fast, triggered release of a model hydrophobic drug, dipyridamole, can be achieved by tuning the solution pH, polymer concentration, polymer molecular weight and temperature of the gel.     

An electron spin resonance (ESR) investigation of the dosimetric potential of potassium tartrate

While unirradiated potassium tartrate (PT) samples do not exhibit any electron spin resonance signal, irradiated ones contain many resonance signals. A power function of the radiation dose was found to describe well the dose-response curve of the central resonance signal, and adjusting the microwave power and modulation amplitude to be 2 mW and 1 mT, respectively, was found to increase the sensitivity of PT. The radiation sensitivity of PT and the accuracy of the measured radiation dose were found to be G = 0.42 and 6 %, respectively.     

A genetic algorithm approach for multi-objective optimization of supply chain networks

Supply chain network (SCN) design is to provide an optimal platform for efficient and effective supply chain management. It is an important and strategic operations management problem in supply chain management, and usually involves multiple and conflicting objectives such as cost, service level, resource utilization, etc. This paper proposes a new solution procedure based on genetic algorithms to find the set of Pareto-optimal solutions for multi-objective SCN design problem. To deal with multi-objective and enable the decision maker for evaluating a greater number of alternative solutions, two different weight approaches are implemented in the proposed solution procedure. An experimental study using actual data from a company, which is a producer of plastic products in Turkey, is carried out into two stages. While the effects of weight approaches on the performance of proposed solution procedure are investigated in the first stage, the proposed solution procedure and simulated annealing are compared according to quality of Pareto-optimal solutions in the second stage.     

A steady-state genetic algorithm for multi-product supply chain network design

Supply chain network (SCN) design is to provide an optimal platform for efficient and effective supply chain management (SCM). The problem is often an important and strategic operations management problem in SCM. The design task involves the choice of facilities (plants and distribution centers (DCs)) to be opened and the distribution network design to satisfy the customer demand with minimum cost. This paper presents a solution procedure based on steady-state genetic algorithms (ssGA) with a new encoding structure for the design of a single-source, multi-product, multi-stage SCN. The effectiveness of the ssGA has been investigated by comparing its results with those obtained by CPLEX, Lagrangean heuristic, hyrid GA and simulated annealing on a set of SCN design problems with different sizes.