The effects of solution properties and polyelectrolyte on electrospinning of ultrafine poly(ethylene oxide) fibers

The effects of solution properties and polyelectrolyte on the electrospinning of poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) solutions were investigated. Ultrafine PEO fibers without beads were electrospun from 3, 4, 7 and 7 wt% PEO solutions in chloroform, ethanol, (dimethylformamide) DMF and water, respectively. At these concentrations, the values of [η]C were ∼10 for all solutions. The average diameters of PEO fibers were ranged from 0.36 to 1.96 μm. The higher the dielectric constant of solvent was, the thinner PEO fiber was. The average diameters of electrospun PEO fibers from PEO/water solutions were decreased and their distributions were narrowed by adding 0.1 wt% poly(allylamine hydrochloride) (PAH) and poly(acrylic acid sodium salt) (PAA) due to the increased charge density in solutions. The addition of PAH and PAA lowered the minimum concentration for electrospinning of a PEO/water solution to 6 wt%.     

弯曲受力时中空管以及混凝土填充纤维复合管的有限元模型:部分填充优化和杆设计方法

非线性有限元模型的拓展与验证在相关的论文(Son J,Fam A.中空管以及混凝土填充纤维复合管的有限元模型:第一部分——抗弯模型拓展与验证)中已被用于研究部分填充混凝土纤维增强复合材料线杆的抗弯性能。为提高抗弯强度和稳定性,建议采用部分填充厚壁管来降低造价。对不同直径与厚度比以及不同分层结构的悬臂单杆进行混凝土部分填充长度优化。研究发现,当下列任意一种情况出现时,优化长度会减少:当直径与厚度比变小时;当纤维角度相对于弯曲管纵向轴夹角增加时;当弯曲管中纵向纤维减少时;当采用侧向分布荷载代替端部集中荷载时。建立了计算中空管和混凝土填充FRP管承载力矩的简单表达式,基于同时发生在中空管和混凝土填充管处的破坏,结合简单的设计方法体系来优化混凝土填充管的长度。同时提出了计算锥形线杆的程序。     

Operating margin for radioactive effluent released to the environment from korean pressurized water reactors compared to the effluent control limits,obtained by monitoring the concentration of radioactive effluent with radioactive effluent monitors

Korean pressurized water reactors (PWRs) generally use radioactive effluent monitors for monitoring the concentration of radioactive effluents released to the environment. In this study, the operating margins for radioactive effluent monitors were analyzed to determine the levels of real-time concentration of effluents compared to effluent control limits (ECLs), the regulatory limits. The results show that the concentration of radioactive effluents released from Korean PWRs complied with the ECLs during the years 2012–2016. It was also found that outages at Korean PWRs did not impact the operating margins for radioactive effluent monitors; that is, there was no remarkable difference of the concentration of effluents between normal operation and maintenance periods. In terms of simultaneous effluent releases, the results demonstrate that exceeding the ECLs is unlikely to occur even under the hypothetical condition of coincident effluent releases from multiple discharge points at a Korean PWR.     

Characterization of wines from grape varieties through multivariate statistical analysis of H NMR spectroscopic data

¹H NMR spectroscopic analysis coupled with multivariate statistical data was used to characterize wines vinified from four grape varieties: Muscat Bailey A (Vitis labrusca), Campbell Early (V. labrusca B.), Kyoho (V. labrusca L.) and Meoru (Vitis coignetiae). Pattern recognition methods, such as principal component analysis (PCA) and orthogonal projection to latent structure discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA), showed clear differentiation between wines made from these grape varieties. Metabolites responsible for the differentiation were identified as 2,3-butanediol, glycerol, malate, citrate, tartrate, succinate, lactate, proline, alanine, choline and trigonelline. The PCA score plot of quantitative analysis of targeted profiling data also showed clear separation between the wines. The highest levels of glycerol, 2,3-butanediol, succinate and alcohol were found in Kyoho wines, suggesting higher sugar content in the Kyoho grape berry compared to other grape varieties. Higher contents of citrate and trigonelline in Muscat Bailey A wines, alanine in Campbell Early wines and proline, malate and choline in Meoru wines demonstrated that the metabolites of the wines vary with the grape variety. This study provides insight into the relationship between grape variety and its wine through global and targeted analysis of ¹H NMR spectral data.     

Magnetohydrodynamics around a cylindrical wire carrying electric currents

Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology - Vortex shedding phenomenon is closely linked with noise and vibration, many studies that consider the associated environmental or structural safety...     

Flexible Transparent Reduced Graphene Oxide Sensor Coupled with Organic Dye Molecules for Rapid Dual‐Mode Ammonia Gas Detection

Flexible chemical sensors utilizing chemically sensitive nanomaterials are of great interest for wearable sensing applications. However, obtaining high performance flexible chemical sensors with high sensitivity, fast response, transparency, stability, and workability at ambient conditions is still challenging. Herein, a newly designed flexible and transparent chemical sensor of reduced graphene oxide (R‐GO) coupled with organic dye molecules (bromophenol blue) is introduced. This device has promising properties such as high mechanical flexibility (>5000 bending cycles with a bending radius of 0.95 cm) and optical transparency (>60% in the visible region). Furthermore, stacking the water‐trapping dye layer on R‐GO enables a higher response as well as workability in a large relative humidity range (up to 80%), and dual‐mode detection capabilities of colorimetric and electrical sensing for NH₃ gas (5–40 ppm). These advantageous attributes of the flexible and transparent R‐GO sensor coupled with organic dye molecules provide great potential for real‐time monitoring of toxic gas/vapor in future practical chemical sensing at room conditions in wearable electronics.     

Development of a microbial time-temperature integrator system using lactic acid bacteria

A microbial time-temperature integrator (TTI) system was developed using lactic acid bacteria (Weissella koreensis) obtained from baechukimchi. Activation energy (Ea), which represents the temperature dependence of the TTI response, was calculated using the Arrhenius equation. Ea values for the color change (ΔE value), maximum specific growth rate (μ_max), and pH change of the TTI measured under different isothermal conditions (5, 10, 15 and 20°C) were 99.88, 95.91, and 93.38 kJ/mol, respectively. According to the time taken to reach the TTI endpoint by the initial inoculum level of W. koreensis (6.2, 5.5, 4.5, and 3.4 log CFU/mL), a negative correlation was observed in 63.5, 101.8, 115.1 and 166.6 h. In addition, initial bacterial counts decreased significantly up to almost 4% at 20°C in 3 months when W. koreensis viability was measured at the freezing point of the microbial TTI system (20 and ?80°C) for 1 week, 1 month, 2 months, and 3 months. However, viability was about 95% at 80°C. This microbial TTI system would be useful to monitor the quality of food with similar Ea values during storage or distribution.     

High‐performance and robust operation of anode‐supported solid oxide fuel cells in mixed‐gas atmosphere

We demonstrate the high‐performance and robust operation of anode‐supported solid oxide fuel cells under a mixed‐gas atmosphere applying a novel cell structure and characterization method, useful for minimizing the conventional problems of mixed‐gas operation with anode‐supported solid oxide fuel cells. To achieve the exothermic methane (CH₄) partial oxidation and sufficient difference in oxygen partial pressure even in mixed‐gas mode, a composite of metallic rhodium and cerium dioxide (CeO₂) was chosen as the optimized reforming and oxygen barrier layer after the comprehensive catalytic experiment. We also obtained increased cell operation reliability through the combination of anode pre‐reduction, an optimized material system, and a customized characterization jig (including cathode‐ahead layout and impinging jet flow). According to the cell test at 600°C under a feeding gas of CH₄ and O₂, an open‐circuit voltage and maximum power density of 0.916 V and 0.422 W/cm², respectively, were successfully achieved. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Art‐photographic detail enhancement

We present a novel method for enhancing details in a digital photograph, inspired by the principle of art photography. In contrast to the previous methods that primarily rely on tone scaling, our technique provides a flexible tone transform model that consists of two operators: shifting and scaling. This model permits shifting of the tonal range in each image region to enable significant detail boosting regardless of the original tone. We optimize these shift and scale factors in our constrained optimization framework to achieve extreme detail enhancement across the image in a piecewise smooth fashion, as in art photography. The experimental results show that the proposed method brings out a significantly large amount of details even from an ordinary low‐dynamic range image.