Thermal decomposition and micropore formation in PEK,PEEK and PES

At strain rates greater than about 10 the deformation of polymers is an adiabatic process which can lead to the generation of very high localized temperatures. These may be well in excess of the temperatures required for thermal decomposition of the polymer to occur. It is speculated that gaseous products arising from such decomposition may act as the source of microcavities and craze initiators. Experiments are described in which the thermal decomposition reaction parameters of polyetherketone, polyetheretherketone, and polysulphone are measured using differential scanning calorimetry and thermogravimetric analysis, and the decomposition products analysed by mass spectrometry. The results indicate that the proposed mechanism could act as a source of micropores with total pore volumes amounting to several per cent of the material volume.     

Composition for the protection of aluminum alloys against exfoliation corrosion

Translated from Khimiya i Tekhnologiya Topliv i Masel, No. 10, pp. 21–22, October, 1992.     

Interleukin-1 beta-converting enzyme mediates cisplatin-induced apoptosis in malignant glioma cells

Increasing the susceptibility of tumor cells to apoptotic cell death following chemotherapy is of importance to the outcome of cancer treatment. Although the tumor suppressor gene p53 is required for efficient induction of apoptosis by chemotherapeutic agents, it is not the only apoptosis mediator gene. The molecular mechanisms mediating apoptosis following chemotherapy via p53-dependent or p53-independent pathways remain unclear. We show here that cis-diamminedichloroplatinum (cisplatin) induces the expression of interleukin-1 beta-converting enzyme (ICE), a mammalian homologue of the Caenorhabditis elegans cell death gene ced-3, in murine and human malignant glioma cells during apoptosis regardless of their p53 status. Furthermore, overexpression of the murine ICE gene induces apoptosis in these tumor cells. The apoptosis induced by cisplatin treatment or murine ICE overexpression can be suppressed by the tetrapeptide ICE inhibitor Ac-YVAD-CMK or the apoptosis inhibitors bcl-2 or bcl-2-related bcl-XL gene. These findings suggest that ICE may mediate apoptosis induced by chemotherapy, and its induction could represent a novel approach for the effective treatment of malignant glioma.     

Designing circuits with partial scan

In this scan design methodology, only selected faults are targeted for detection. These faults are those not detected by the designer's functional vectors. The test generator decides exactly which flip-flops should be scanned using one of two methods. In the first method, all possible tests are generated for each target fault, and the set of tests requiring the fewest flip-flops is selected. In the second method, only one test is generated for each fault, and the use of flip-flops is avoided as much as possible during test generation. Examples of actual VLSI circuits show a savings of at least a 40% in full-scan overhead     

Personality similarity in twins reared apart and together.

We administered the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ) to 217 monozygotic and 114 dizygotic reared-together adult twin pairs and 44 monozygotic reared-apart adult twin pairs. A four-parameter biometric model (incorporating genetic, additive versus nonadditive, shared family-environment, and unshared environment components) and five reduced models were fitted through maximum-likelihood techniques to data obtained with the 11 primary MPQ scales and its 3 higher order scales. Solely environmental models did not fit any of the scales. Although the other reduced models, including the simple additive model, did fit many of the scales, only the full model provided a satisfactory fit for all scales. Heritabilities estimated by the full model ranged from .39 to .58. Consistent with previous reports, but contrary to widely held beliefs, the overall contribution of a common family-environment component was small and negligible for all but 2 of the 14 personality measures. Evidence of significant nonadditive genetic effects, possibly emergenic (epistatic) in nature, was obtained for 3 of the measures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

New equipment for a continuous heat-treatment line for motor-vehicle gas cylinders

All-Union Scientific-Research Institute of Pipes (VNITI). Il'ich Zhdanov Metallurgical Combine. Translated from Metallurg, No. 9, pp. 39–40, September, 1988.     

True 3D animation for displaying VLSI modeling data

The authors report on a flexible system that provides visual feedback to VLSI designers with a novel display method. The basic problem is to display simultaneously two or more functions f ₁, f₂, . . ., each of which depends on the two spatial variables x and y. The method is based on results from visual perception experiments, which indicated that the human visual system can view simultaneously two or more images that are separated in depth, even if they are combined (superimposed) over a common spatial domain. Two display modes have been implemented: a gray-level mode and a contour mode in which only the edges separating adjacent regions are displayed in an effort to make things easier for the user. This depth-separation technique allows the viewer to register spatially the x,y distribution of multiple variables in an animation sequence. The technique can be applied to many other situations in which a single-plane episode involves several variables