Correlation between steady state flow curve and molecular weight distribution for polyethylene melts

This article uses Graessley's theory of viscosity to predict the flow curve for several high-density and low-density polyethylene melts using the molecular weight distribution data obtained from the gel permeation chromatograph. The agreement with the experimental flow curve obtained from the Weissenberg rheogoniometer and the Instron rheometer was not quantitative for many high-density polyethylenes studied here. For the low-density polyethylenes, it was shown that the agreement between the theory and the experiment was good even though the molecular weight distribution data were not corrected for long-chain branching. For these samples, the experimental relaxation time τ₀ obtained by superposition of the data with the theoretical master curve was of the order of the Rouse relaxation time τ_R. The systematic increase in the ratio τ_R/τ₀ was ascribed to the increase in the molecular weight or to the increased number of long-chain branches.     

Application of a constitutive equation to polymer melts

Yamamoto's integral constitutive equation in which the memory function is dependent on the second invariant of the rate of deformation tensor at past times has been found to be successful in predicting many of the nonlinear viscoelastic functions from the linear viscoelastic data for melts of linear polyethylenes, polypropylenes, and polystryene but not for those of branched polyethylenes with high level of long-chain branching. A specific functional form for the rate-dependent relaxation spectrum is used and is based on the physical meaning resulting from the molecular entanglement theory of Graessley on steady shearing flow. No arbitrary constant is involved in such an interconversion scheme. The data examined are dynamic storage modulus and loss modulus, steady flow viscosity, first normal stress difference, and parallel superimposed small oscillations on steady shear flow. The theory predicts that in such parallel superimposed experiments, storage modulus G′(ω,\documentclass{article}\pagestyle{empty}\begin{document}$ {\rm \dot \gamma } $\end{document}) divided by the square of frequency shows a maximum under finite shear and that G′(ω,\documentclass{article}\pagestyle{empty}\begin{document}$ {\rm \dot \gamma } $\end{document}) would itself become negative at a frequency whose value is about one third the superimposed rate of shear. The experiments are in line with such predictions. Possible reasons for the failure of the theory for branched polyethylenes are considered, and a possible approach is suggested so that the interconversion scheme may be successful for such resins.     

Modelling VBR video over networks end-to-end using deterministic smoothing at the source

Video traffic is expected to become increasingly important with the large scale deployment of broadband ISDN. In the literature, it is suggested that smoothing variable bit rate (VBR) video traffic^1,2 before transmitting it onto the network would help reduce the probability of cell loss. In this paper we show why deterministic smoothing at the source approximates the minimum achievable loss over the network end-to-end of all possible smoothing schemes. Furthermore, we develop a powerful yet simple analytical technique that can efficiently calculate the loss probability at any point in a network carrying video traffic. We validate our analytical results using traces of actual video segments. The results can be used for admission control and traffic management. We find that in the case of highly correlated traffic such as motion JPEG video, the way to control loss is to ensure that the fraction of time the arrival process exceeds the service process is small. We also find that for such sources increasing the buffer size only marginally decreases the loss.     

Novel modified tripeptide inhibitors of alpha 4 beta 7 mediated lymphoid cell adhesion to MAdCAM-1

MAdCAM-1 specifically binds the lymphocyte integrin alpha 4 beta 7 and participates in the homing of leukocytes to intestinal mucosal sites. The LDT sequence located on the CD loop of MAdCAM-1 is an important binding site for MAdCAM-1/alpha 4 beta 7 interactions. N-Terminus acylation of the LDT motif and modification of the C-terminus carboxamide with amines led to low micromolar MAdCAM-1 inhibitors.     

Correlation of blown film optical properties with resin properties

The optical properties of conventional, free-radical polymerized low density polyethylene (LDPE) blown films are due essentially to surface irregularities that develop during fabrication. Past studies have shown that the extent to which these irregularities occur (and therefore optical properties) correlates well with the melt elasticity of the resin. Specifically, it has been shown that resins with higher melt elasticity result in films with poorer optical properties. However, it was recently reported that the optical properties of film blown from a Sci of three generically similar LDPE resins were found to correlate with the crystallization kinetics of the resins. Specifically, it was reported that the resins that exhibited faster crystallization rates produced films with better optical properties. This present work shows, however, that this apparent correlation is only coincidental. It has been shown that resins exhibiting faster crystallization rates do not necessarily result in films with better optical properties. On the other hand, it has been shown that resins with higher melt elasticity consistently result in films with poorer optical properties.     

Delay and Capacity Trade-Offs in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks: A Global Perspective

Since the original work of Grossglauser and Tse, which showed that mobility can increase the capacity of an ad hoc network, there has been a lot of interest in characterizing the delay-capacity relationship in ad hoc networks. Various mobility models have been studied in the literature, and the delay-capacity relationships under those models have been characterized. The results indicate that there are trade-offs between the delay and capacity, and that the nature of these trade-offs is strongly influenced by the choice of the mobility model. Some questions that arise are: (i) How representative are these mobility models studied in the literature? (ii) Can the delay-capacity relationship be significantly different under some other "reasonable" mobility model? (iii) What sort of delay-capacity trade-off are we likely to see in a real world scenario? In this paper, we take the first step toward answering some of these questions. In particular, we analyze, among others, the mobility models studied in recent related works, under a unified framework. We relate the nature of delay-capacity trade-off to the nature of node motion, thereby providing a better understanding of the delay-capacity relationship in ad hoc networks in comparison to earlier works.     

Opportunistic transmission scheduling with resource-sharingconstraints in wireless networks

We present an “opportunistic” transmission scheduling policy that exploits time-varying channel conditions and maximizes the system performance stochastically under a certain resource allocation constraint. We establish the optimality of the scheduling scheme and also that every user experiences a performance improvement over any nonopportunistic scheduling policy when users have independent performance values. We demonstrate via simulation results that the scheme is robust to estimation errors and also works well for nonstationary scenarios, resulting in performance improvements of 20%-150% compared with a scheduling scheme that does not take into account channel conditions. Last, we discuss an extension of our opportunistic scheduling scheme to improve “short-term” performance     

A predictive flow control scheme for efficient network utilization and QoS

In this paper, we develop a new predictive flow control scheme and analyze its performance. This scheme controls the nonreal-time (controllable) traffic based on predicting the real-time (uncontrollable) traffic. The goal of the work is to operate the network in a low congestion, high throughput regime. We provide a rigorous analysis of the performance of our flow control method and show that the algorithm has attractive and useful properties. From our analysis we obtain an explicit condition that gives us design guidelines on how to choose a predictor. We learn that it is especially important to take the queueing effect into account in developing the predictor. We also provide numerical results comparing different predictors that use varying degrees of information from the network.