Negative electrodes for nickel-cadmium accumulators: their properties as determined by impregnation procedure

Sintered negative electrodes for nickel-cadmium secondary cells were studied. Model electrodes prepared by means of three different impregnation methods were evaluated. It was demonstrated that the impregnation procedure may affect properties of active mass and the service life of electrodes in a significant way.     

Study of rotational mobility of stable nitroxide radicals in solid polymers

The rotational mobility of stable nitroxide radicals in PS, PMMA, PVC, PP and PE has been studied over a wide temperature range by the e.s.r. method. At temperatures T lower than T_g, spin probes act as kinetically independent particles, the rotational frequency of which is deter mined mainly by the micropore dimensions of the polymer and depends indirectly on the mobility of segments or side groups.     

Ensemble-based noise detection: noise ranking and visual performance evaluation

Noise filtering is most frequently used in data preprocessing to improve the accuracy of induced classifiers. The focus of this work is different: we aim at detecting noisy instances for improved data understanding, data cleaning and outlier identification. The paper is composed of three parts. The first part presents an ensemble-based noise ranking methodology for explicit noise and outlier identification, named Noise- Rank, which was successfully applied to a real-life medical problem as proven in domain expert evaluation. The second part is concerned with quantitative performance evaluation of noise detection algorithms on data with randomly injected noise. A methodology for visual performance evaluation of noise detection algorithms in the precision-recall space, named Viper, is presented and compared to standard evaluation practice. The third part presents the implementation of the NoiseRank and Viper methodologies in a web-based platform for composition and execution of data mining workflows. This implementation allows public accessibility of the developed approaches, repeatability and sharing of the presented experiments as well as the inclusion of web services enabling to incorporate new noise detection algorithms into the proposed noise detection and performance evaluation workflows.     

Characterisation of cut and chip behaviour for NR,SBR and BR compounds with an instrumented laboratory device

ABSTRACT

Understanding the cut and chip (CC) effect in rubber is important for successful product development for tires used in off-road or poor road conditions and for other demanding applications of rubber. This research describes a laboratory testing method for characterising the CC fracture behaviour of rubber using a device that controls and records multiple applied loads and displacements during cyclic impact to the surface of a solid rubber specimen to mimic and quantify the CC damage experienced by tire tread compounds. To study the capabilities of the instrument, three model compounds were studied that are based on carbon black reinforced compounds of common elastomers used in tire treads: natural rubber (NR), styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR), and butadiene rubber (BR). These polymers have well-established CC tendencies in field performance of tire treads, with NR exhibiting the best CC resistance followed by SBR and finally BR. The same trend was found with the rubber impact testing approach that allowed the CC behaviour to be quantified using a new physical parameter which is the CC propensity (P). The relative ranking for CC resistance for the three compounds followed the fatigue crack growth resistances of the materials but was exactly opposite to the ranking of DIN abrasion resistance. This provides evidence that CC damage from impact by mm-scale asperities and abrasion of rubber against μm-scale asperities exhibit distinct characteristics in rubber.     

Effect of temperature on the separation of some Δ9-cis-trans isomers of methyl esters of fatty acids by open tubular gas chromatography

The influence of temperature on the gas chromatographic separation ofcis-trans isomers of the methyl esters of some monounsaturated fatty acids was studied on capillary columns coated with Apiezon L, BDS and DEGS. As far as methyl oleate and methyl elaidate are concerned, the separation is better at lower temperatures on Apiezon L (180–210 C) and at higher temperatures on polyester phases (BDS, DEGS; 150–180 C). The influence of temperature on the separation ofcis-trans isomers on the three stationary phases under study is explained by the higher values of δECL/δt forcis isomers. The variation of the equivalent carbon chain length with temperature can be used for the identification ofcis-trans isomers in natural mixtures.     

The participation of block copolymers in the increase in the number of tie molecules

Three-block copolymers polyamide-block-polyX-block-polyamide (where X is styrene, ethylene-co-1-butene, and others) are able to improve substantially the toughness of poly(ϵ-caprolactam). Outer blocks of these copolymers are able to take part in folding lamellae of semi-crystalline polyamide, inner blocks are not. They operate as a spacer, meaning that the end blocks of copolymers capable of folding become parts of different lamellae, or that the unfoldable part of a block copolymer is pushed out of a folding lamella with a certain probability of the remaining outer block taking part in folding another lamella. This increases the number of tie-molecules.     

The potentiometric behaviour of copolymers of methacrylic acid in water-ethanol solutions

Summary The synthesis is reported of copolymers of styrene with methacrylic acid and of methyl methacrylate with methacrylic acid by radical copolymerization, of copolymers of methyl methacrylate with methacrylic acid by partial alkaline hydrolysis of poly(methyl methacrylate), and of block copolymers of styrene with methacrylic acid. Modified titration curves of all these copolymers were recorded in water and water-ethanol solutions. In a solution containing 50 mass.% ethanol, only small differences could be observed between the potentiometric behaviour of the individual copolymers and polymethacrylic acid. Also, there were no essential differences in any of the solvents used between the potentiometric behaviour of block copolymers of styrene with methacrylic acid, on the one hand, and polymethacrylic acid, on the other. On the contrary, maxima and minima were always observed on the modified titration curves of statistical copolymers with a higher content of the hydrophobic comonomer in solutions with a high water content. Thus, using the modified titration curves, it is possible to decide whether a given copolymer is of the block or statistical type.     

Microstructure and physical properties of transparent thoria-yttria ceramics

The investigation of microstructure, some electrical and optical parameters of transparent ThO₂-15 mol % yo_1.5 ceramics has shown: (a) a very low porosity, close to zero; (b) a higher electrical conductivity than is usual for ThO₂ ceramics of the same composition, with the activation energy 1.12 eV; (c) a relative permittivity _r 33 under the given conditions; (d) confirmation of a single-phase fluorite-type cubic structure by means of Raman and infrared spectra.     

Fusion of smartphone sensor data for classification of daily user activities

Multimedia Tools and Applications - New mobile applications need to estimate user activities by using sensor data provided by smart wearable devices and deliver context-aware solutions to users...