Deacetylated Cellulose Acetate/Polyurethane Composite Nanofiber Membranes with Highly Efficient Oil/Water Separation and Excellent Mechanical Properties

Nowadays, oil pollution has become more serious, which causes great threats both to the ecological environment and human life. In this study, a novel type of multifunctional deacetylated cellulose acetate/polyurethane (d-M_CA:M_TPU) composite nanofiber membranes for oil/water separation are successfully fabricated by electrospinning, which show super-amphiphilicity in air, super-hydrophilicity in oil, and oleophobicity in water. All the d-M_CA:M_TPU composite nanofiber membranes with different mass ratios can be used as water-removing, oil-removing, and emulsion separation substance only by gravity driving force. The highest separation flux for water and oil reaches up to 37 000 and 74 000 L m⁻² h⁻¹, respectively, and all the separation efficiencies are more than 99%. They have outstanding comprehensive mechanics performance, which can be controlled by simply adjusting the mass ratios. They show excellent antifouling and self-cleaning ability, endowing powerful cyclic stability and reusability. Those results show that d-M_CA:M_TPU composite nanofiber membranes have great application prospects in oil/water separation.     

Crystallization,structure, and enhanced mechanical property of ethylene-octene elastomer crosslinked with dicumyl peroxide

Crosslinking of polyolefin elastomer (POE, ENGAGE™ 8480) with Dicumyl Peroxide (DCP) can have effects on its crystallization dynamics, crystal structure, and properties. The POE crosslinked uniformly has significantly lower crystalline ability than the one with only amorphous phase crosslinked, which, in turn, has weaker crystalline ability than neat POE. The crystallinity and melting point depend on how the POE is crosslinked. The neat POE and POE crosslinked in amorphous phase only, are investigated with DSC and in-situ tensile/synchrotron radiation (WAXD/SAXS). In situ tensile/synchrotron X-ray during a uniaxial stretching process indicates that severe crystal fragmentation is observed at a strain around 45%, and with further increase in strain. The stress in the crosslinked POE is significantly larger than neat POE. For both samples, crystal orientation increases sharply within the strain range up to 88% where orientation-induced new crystals aligned in stretching direction are observed. The long period increases more in stretching direction for the crosslinked POE, consistent with larger stress in this sample, and the stress difference is more pronounced at large strains (27.3 vs. 10.9 MPa at a strain 435%). Permanent set of the crosslinked POE is smaller, consistent with less oriented crystals observed after the test for permanent set.     

MicroRNAs,Parkinson’s Disease,and Diabetes Mellitus

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that affects 1% of the population over the age of 60. Diabetes Mellitus (DM) is a metabolic disorder that affects approximately 25% of adults over the age of 60. Recent studies showed that DM increases the risk of developing PD. The link between DM and PD has been discussed in the literature in relation to different mechanisms including mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress, and protein aggregation. In this paper, we review the common microRNA (miRNA) biomarkers of both diseases. miRNAs play an important role in cell differentiation, development, the regulation of the cell cycle, and apoptosis. They are also involved in the pathology of many diseases. miRNAs can mediate the insulin pathway and glucose absorption. miRNAs can also regulate PD-related genes. Therefore, exploring the common miRNA biomarkers of both PD and DM can shed a light on how these two diseases are correlated, and targeting miRNAs is a potential therapeutic opportunity for both diseases.     

Influence of pH on the DSSC Performance of Template Assisted SnO2 Nanostructures

Journal of Inorganic and Organometallic Polymers and Materials - This paper reports the performance of alizarin based SnO2 dye-sensitized solar cells. A novel template assisted method has been...     

Novel TiC-based composites with enhanced mechanical properties

Novel TiC-based composites were synthesized by reactive hot-pressing at 1800 °C for 1 h with ZrB₂ addition as a sintering aid for the first time. The effects of ZrB₂ contents on the phase composition, microstructure evolution, and mechanical properties were reported. Based on the reaction and solid solution coupling effects between ZrB₂ and TiC, the product ZrC may be partially or completely dissolved into the TiC matrix, and then phase separation within the miscibility gap is observed to form lamellar nanostructured ZrC-rich (Zr, Ti)C. The TiC-10 mol.% ZrB₂ (starting batch composition) exhibits good comprehensive mechanical properties of hardness 27.7 ± 1.3 GPa, flexural strength 659 ± 48 MPa, and fracture toughness of 6.5 ± 0.6 MPa m^1/2, respectively, which reach or exceed most TiC-based composites using ceramics as sintering aids in the previous reports.     

Spatiotemporal Magnetocaloric Microenvironment for Guiding the Fate of Biodegradable Polymer Implants

The degradation behavior of implants is significantly important for bone repair. However, it is still unprocurable to spatiotemporally regulate the degradation of the implants to match bone ingrowth. In this paper, a magneto-controlled biodegradation model is established to explore the degradation behavior of magnetic scaffolds in a magnetothermal microenvironment generated by an alternating magnetic field (AMF). The results demonstrate that the scaffolds can be heated by magnetic nanoparticles (NPs) under AMF, which dramatically accelerated scaffold degradation. Especially, magnetic NPs modified by oleic acid with a better interface compatibility exhibit a greater heating efficiency to further facilitate the degradation. Furthermore, the molecular dynamics simulations reveal that the enhanced motion correlation between magnetic NPs and polymer matrix can accelerate the energy transfer. As a proof-of-concept, the feasibility of magneto-controlled degradation for implants is demonstrated, and an optimizing strategy for better heating efficiency of nanomaterials is provided, which may have great instructive significance for clinical medicine.     

Adaptive Synchronization-Based Approach for Finite-Time Parameters Identification of Genetic Regulatory Networks

Neural Processing Letters - This paper presents an approach to identify the unknown parameters of genetic regulatory network (GRN) in finite-time. The adaptive synchronization-based method is used...     

Dual effect synergistically triggered Ce:(Y,Tb)3(Al,Mn)5O12 transparent ceramics enabling a high color-rendering index and excellent thermal stability for white LEDs

Ce:Y₃Al₅O₁₂ transparent ceramics (TCs) with appropriate emission light proportion and high thermal stability are significant to construct white light emitting diode devices with excellent chromaticity parameters. In this work, strategies of controlling crystal-field splitting around Ce³⁺ ion and doping orange-red emitting ion, were adopted to fabricate Ce:(Y,Tb)₃(Al,Mn)₅O₁₂ TCs via vacuum sintering technique. Notably, 85.4 % of the room-temperature luminescence intensity of the TC was retained at 150 °C, and the color rendering index was as high as 79.8. Furthermore, a 12 nm red shift and a 16.2 % increase of full width at half maximum were achieved owing to the synergistic effects of Tb³⁺ and Mn²⁺ ions. By combining TCs with a 460 nm blue chip, a warm white light with a low correlated color temperature of 4155 K was acquired. Meanwhile, the action mechanism of Tb³⁺ ion and the energy transfer between Ce³⁺ and Mn²⁺ ions were verified in prepared TCs.     

Preparation and Evaluation of a Self-Nanoemulsifying Drug Delivery System Loaded with Heparin Phospholipid Complex

A self-nanoemulsifying drug delivery system (SNEDDS) was developed to enhance the absorption of heparin after oral administration, in which heparin was compounded with phospholipids to achieve better fat solubility in the form of heparin-phospholipid (HEP-Pc) complex. HEP-Pc complex was prepared using the solvent evaporation method, which increased the solubility of heparin in n-octanol. The successful preparation of HEP-Pc complex was confirmed by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), Fourier-transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, NMR, and SEM. A heparin lipid microemulsion (HEP-LM) was prepared by high-pressure homogenization and characterized. HEP-LM can enhance the absorption of heparin after oral administration, significantly prolong activated partial thromboplastin time (APTT) and thrombin time (TT) in mice, and reduce fibrinogen (FIB) content. All these outcomes indicate that HEP-LM has great potential as an oral heparin formulation.     

Phase formation,structure and properties of light-weight aluminosilicate proppants based on clay-diabase and clay-granite binary mixes

One of the drawbacks of fusible clays is the narrow sintering interval due to a sharp increase in the amount of iron-silicate melt at a temperature of 1000–1100 °C, which hardens in the form of a glass phase upon cooling. This leads to a relatively low mechanical strength of the calcined samples and causes the danger of melting the granular material surface from such clays during the firing process. To increase the strength of samples of fusible clays, the influence of diabase and granitoid rocks was considered. It was found that the strengthening effect of diabase and granitoid rock additives in an amount of 20–50% in a mixture with fusible clay is due to an increase of total content of the crystalline phase (mullite, cristobalite and residual quartz) from 18–20% in clays without additives to 22–28 % - in mixtures with diabase and to 28–34% - with granitoid additives) at a temperature of 1050–1100 °C. This increase is due to the activation of synthesis processes of secondary mullite and crystallization from alkali-rich feldspar melt of amorphous silica, released from the structure of clay minerals. The established influence of the igneous rocks used made it possible to develop compositions and propose process flow sheet for producing aluminosilicate proppants based on fusible clays. The use of granitoid and diabase rocks in an amount of 20–70% with fusible clays produces lightweight aluminosilicate proppants with bulk density of 1.40–1.46 g/cm³ at temperature range of 1050–1100 °C, which can endure destructive pressures up to 34.5–52 MPa.