Optimization of vacuum casting process parameters to enhance tensile strength of components using design of experiments approach

Vacuum casting is one of the widely used methods for small-volume production of plastic parts. The main challenge of this method is to choose the optimal w     

A comparative study on hygroscopic and physiochemical properties of chicken powders obtained by different drying methods

Abstract

Different drying methods (spray drying (SD), vacuum drying (VD), microwave vacuum drying (MVD), and infrared vacuum drying (IFVD)) were applied in order to compare the hygroscopicity behavior of chicken powders. The hygroscopicity curves and glass transition temperature were used to evaluate the influence of ambient humidity and temperature on moisture absorption of powders. The results showed that the chicken powder dried by MVD had the lowest moisture absorption, followed by IFVD, VD, and SD. The hygroscopicity of SD chicken powders was different from other three kinds of chicken powders due to the physical properties of particles and the changes of protein secondary structure as detected by the Fourier transform-infrared spectrometer. For the three vacuum drying methods, the difference of protein secondary structure was the main reason of differences in hygroscopicity. Although MVD chicken powders were slightly inferior to SD chicken powders in taste, MVD chicken powders were the best in terms of smell and color as suggested by instrumental sensory parameter evaluations. It was found that MVD had a positive effect on reducing moisture absorption and maintaining sensory quality of chicken powders.     

Passive micromixer with baffles distributed on both sides of microchannels based on the Koch fractal principle

Since the beginning of the 21st Century, the development of microfluidic chip technology has been very rapid and has attracted the attention of more and more scholars. As an important part of the microfluidic chip, the performance of the micromixer is critical. The fractal structure in the microchannels helps to improve the mixing performance of the micromixer and improve the mixing efficiency of the micromixer. The research results of other scholars are of great significance to the research of the present paper, which mainly studies the effect of changing the baffle state on the mixing efficiency of the micromixer based on the Koch fractal principle. Through simulation analysis, it was found that the mixing efficiency of the baffles distributed on both sides of the microchannel was higher than the mixing efficiency of the baffles distributed on the microchannel side. When the distance between adjacent baffles was divided into 0.15, 0.25 and 0.35 mm, simulated data suggested that the baffle distance of 0.15 mm was best. Increasing the number of baffles from six to eight groups increased the mixing path of the fluid in the microchannel and improved mixing efficiency. A comparison of mixing efficiencies of the 0°, 15° and 30° baffle angles revealed that very significant improvement in mixing efficiency was obtained at 30°. © 2019 Society of Chemical Industry     

iRGD-reinforced,photo-transformable nanoclusters toward cooperative enhancement of intratumoral penetration and antitumor efficacy

Nano Research - Insufficient intratumoral penetration greatly hurdles the anticancer performance of nanomedicine. To realize highly efficient tumor penetration in a precisely and spatiotemporally...     

Reconstructing gene regulatory networks with a memetic-neural hybrid based on fuzzy cognitive maps

Reconstructing gene regulatory networks (GRNs) plays an important role in identifying the complicated regulatory relationships, uncovering regulatory patterns in cells, and gaining a systematic view for biological processes. In order to reconstruct large-scale GRNs accurately, in this paper, we first use fuzzy cognitive maps (FCMs), which are a kind of cognition fuzzy influence graphs based on fuzzy logic and neural networks, to model GRNs. Then, a novel hybrid method is proposed to reconstruct GRNs from time series expression profiles using memetic algorithm (MA) combined with neural network (NN), which is labeled as MANN_FCM-GRN. In MANN_FCM-GRN, the MA is used to determine regulatory connections in GRNs and the NN is used to determine the interaction strength of the regulatory connections. In the experiments, the performance of MANN_FCM-GRN is validated on both synthetic data and the benchmark dataset DREAM3 and DREAM4. The experimental results demonstrate the efficacy of MANN_FCM-GRN and show that MANN_FCM-GRN can reconstruct GRNs with high accuracy without expert knowledge. The comparison with existing algorithms also shows that MANN_FCM-GRN outperforms ant colony optimization, non-linear Hebbian learning, and real-coded genetic algorithms.

     

MPE: a mobility pattern embedding model for predicting next locations

World Wide Web - The wide spread use of positioning and photographing devices gives rise to a deluge of traffic trajectory data (e.g., vehicle passage records and taxi trajectory data), with each...     

急性炎性疾病患者乳酸林格氏液液体动力学

目的:探索炎性疾病患者的乳酸林格氏液（Ringer's lactate,RL）液体动力学特征以及炎性生物标记物是否可以作为协变量影响RL分布和排泄。方法:本研究为前瞻性队列研究。选择40例美国麻醉医师分级（ASA）I-II级，腹腔镜下择期胆囊切除术（胆囊炎组，n=20）或者腹腔镜下急诊阑尾切除术（阑尾炎组，n=20）。所有患者麻醉诱导前开始输注RL，按15 mL/kg，35 min内输毕。采用酶联免疫（enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay,ELISA）方法测定血浆炎症（TNF-α,IL-10和CRP）或者内皮损伤生物标记物（syndecan-1,SDC-1）；利用血红蛋白（Hb）稀释-时间曲线和尿量，使用Phoenix软件，采用非线性混合效应模型分析计算RL液体动力学参数和协变量的影响。结果:与胆囊炎组相比，阑尾炎组RL从组织间隙到血浆的转运速率常数（k21）显著降低（14×10-3min-1 versus 35×10-3min-1;P=0.012）。阑尾炎组C反应蛋白（CRP）升高［中位数38.1(1.8-143.6) μg/mL versus 1.3(0.1-159.0) μg/mL;P<0.001］；与清醒状态相比，麻醉期间（输液开始后30～45 min），液体从中央室中到外周室的转运速率常数（k12）显著增加（57×10-3min-1 versus 32×10-3min-1；P<0.01）。清除速率常数（k10）降低90%（0.6×10-3min-1 versus 5.3×10-3min-1;P<0.001）。无论在清醒状态还是麻醉状态下低血压均能降低液体清除；炎症或者内膜损伤的生物标记物不能作为显著影响RL液体动力学参数的协变量。结论:阑尾炎或者胆囊炎患者术前输入液体后“炎症反应的生物标记物”不是RL的液体动力学的协变量，但是两组患者中，全身麻醉期间输入液体的清除率下降。