Thermodynamic and Experimental Investigations of High-Temperature Refractory Corrosion by Molten Slags

Corrosion mechanisms between MgO refractory substrates and FeNi slags were investigated. The FeNi slags taken into consideration represent a simple synthetically mixed slag with specific oxides and a real slag from a ferroalloy producer. The MgO refractory substrates with the specimens of FeNi slag were heated in a hot-stage microscope at 10 K/min from room temperature to three different temperatures 1573 K, 1723 K, and 1923 K (1300 °C, 1450 °C, and 1650 °C). The experiments were carried out under a controlled gas atmosphere that simulates the relevant process conditions. The corrosion mechanisms of each system were followed by scanning electron microscope analyses. The results obtained showed that slag corrosion dominates, with a pronounced partial dissolution of refractory fines forming Mg-silicates of type forsterite. It was also observed that iron oxide present in the slag diffused into the coarse refractory grains forming magnesiowustite. Finally, the results obtained were compared with those predicted by FACTSAGE software to understand the corrosion mechanisms and draw implications for improving the refractory performance and lifetime.     

Engineering cell attachments to scaffolds in cartilage tissue engineering

One of the challenges of tissue engineering, a promising cell-based treatment for damaged or diseased cartilage, is designing the scaffold that provides structure while the tissue regenerates. In addition to the scaffold material’s biocompatibility, mechanical properties, and ease of manufacturing, scaffold interactions with the cells must also be considered. In cartilage tissue engineering, a range of scaffolds with various degrees of cell attachment have been proposed, but the attachment density and type have yet to be optimized. Several techniques have been developed to modulate cell adhesion to the scaffold. These studies suggest that the need for cell attachment in cartilage tissue engineering may vary with cell type, stage of differentiation, culture condition, and scaffold material. Further studies will elucidate the role of cell attachment in cartilage regeneration and enhance efforts to engineer cell-based cartilage therapies.     

Identification and Structure–Activity Relationship Studies of Small‐Molecule Inhibitors of the Methyllysine Reader Protein Spindlin1

The methyllysine reader protein Spindlin1 has been implicated in the tumorigenesis of several types of cancer and may be an attractive novel therapeutic target. Small‐molecule inhibitors of Spindlin1 should be valuable as chemical probes as well as potential new therapeutics. We applied an iterative virtual screening campaign, encompassing structure‐ and ligand‐based approaches, to identify potential Spindlin1 inhibitors from databases of commercially available compounds. Our in silico studies coupled with in vitro testing were successful in identifying novel Spindlin1 inhibitors. Several 4‐aminoquinazoline and quinazolinethione derivatives were among the active hit compounds, which indicated that these scaffolds represent promising lead structures for the development of Spindlin1 inhibitors. Subsequent lead optimization studies were hence carried out, and numerous derivatives of both lead scaffolds were synthesized. This resulted in the discovery of novel inhibitors of Spindlin1 and helped explore the structure–activity relationships of these inhibitor series.     

In vitro release profiles of β-carotene encapsulated in PHBV by means of supercritical carbon dioxide micronization technique

The main objective of this work was to investigate the characteristics of the in vitro release of β-carotene encapsulated in poly(hydroxybutyrate-co-hydroxyvalerate) (PHBV) using the solution enhanced dispersion by supercritical fluids (SEDS) technique. The release tests were performed using encapsulated complex with solute loading from 2.24 to 27.5% and encapsulation efficiency from 7.75 to 55.54%. The release profile assays were performed in ethyl acetate, n-hexane and anhydrous ethanol, and monitored by UV-vis spectrophotometer concentration analysis. Results indicated higher initial release rates in ethyl acetate and in n-hexane, with cumulative release percentage varying from 31.50 to 69.58% and from 42.08 to 55.96%, respectively. For anhydrous ethanol the maximum concentration was reached at 180 min, 300 min and 10 days, depending on the initial amount of β-carotene, with cumulative release ranging from 45.27 to 88.22%. In general, the β-carotene release can be controlled by the organic solvent used and by the initial amount of solute encapsulated, aspects that help the selection of the conditions to achieve the desired release profiles for a specific application.     

An integrated fine-grain runtime system for MPI

Fine-grain MPI (FG-MPI) extends the execution model of MPI to allow for interleaved execution of multiple concurrent MPI processes inside an OS-process. It provides a runtime that is integrated into the MPICH2 middleware and uses light-weight coroutines to implement an MPI-aware scheduler. In this paper we describe the FG-MPI runtime system and discuss the main design issues in its implementation. FG-MPI enables expression of function-level parallelism, which along with a runtime scheduler, can be used to simplify MPI programming and achieve performance without adding complexity to the program. As an example, we use FG-MPI to re-structure a typical use of non-blocking communication and show that the integrated scheduler relieves the programmer from scheduling computation and communication inside the application and brings the performance part outside of the program specification into the runtime.     

Reversible Amorphous‐to‐Amorphous Transitions in Chalcogenide Films: Correlating Changes in Structure and Optical Properties

Structural transitions in materials are accompanied by appreciable and exploitable changes in physical‐chemical properties. Whereas reversible optically‐driven atomistic changes in crystal‐to‐amorphous transitions are generally known and exploited in applications, the nature of the corresponding polyamorphic transitions between two structurally distinct meta‐stable amorphous phases is an unexplored theme. Direct experimental evidence is reported for the nature of the atomistic changes during fully reversible amorphous‐to‐amorphous switching between two individual states in the non‐crystalline As₅₀Se₅₀ films prepared by pulsed‐laser deposition and consequent changes in optical properties. Combination of surface sensitive X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy and spectroscopic ellipsometry show that the near‐bandgap energy illumination and annealing induce reversible switching in the material's structure by local bonding rearrangements. This is accompanied by switching in refractive index between two well‐defined states. Exploiting the pluralism of distinct structural states in a disordered solid can provide new insights into the data storage in emerging optical memory and photonic applications.