Fabrication of protective-coated SiC reinforced tungsten matrix composites with reduced reaction phases by spark plasma sintering

SiC reinforced tungsten matrix composites were fabricated via the spark plasma sintering process. In order to prevent an interfacial reaction between the SiC and tungsten during sintering, TiOx coated SiC particles were synthesized by a solution-based process. TiOx layer coated SiC particles were treated in high temperature nitriding conditions or annealed in a high temperature vacuum to form TiN or TiC coated SiC particles, respectively. The TiC layers coated on SiC particles successfully prevented tungsten from reacting with SiC; hence the proposed process resulted in successful fabrication of the SiC/W composites. The mechanical properties such as compressive strength and flexural strength of the composites were measured. Additionally, the effect of SiC on the high temperature oxidative ablation of tungsten was also investigated. The addition of SiC resulted in an improved oxidative ablation resistance of the tungsten-based composites.     

Development of spark plasma sintered conductive SiC–TiB2 composites for electrical discharge machining applications

Highly dense electrically conductive silicon carbide (SiC)–(0, 10, 20, and 30 vol%) titanium boride (TiB₂) composites with 10 vol% of Y₂O₃–AlN additives were fabricated at a relatively low temperature of 1800°C by spark plasma sintering in nitrogen atmosphere. Phase analysis of sintered composites reveals suppressed β→α phase transformation due to low sintering temperature, nitride additives, and nitrogen sintering atmosphere. With increase in TiB₂ content, hardness increased from 20.6 to 23.7 GPa and fracture toughness increased from 3.6 to 5.5 MPa m^1/2. The electrical conductivity increased to a remarkable 2.72 × 10³ (Ω cm)^–1 for SiC–30 vol% TiB₂ composites due to large amount of conductive reinforcement, additive composition, and sintering in nitrogen atmosphere. The successful electrical discharge machining illustrates potential of the sintered SiC–TiB₂ composites toward extending the application regime of conventional SiC-based ceramics.     

Exploring Pharmacological Functions of Alternatively Spliced Variants of the Mu Opioid Receptor Gene,Oprm1, via Gene-Targeted Animal Models

The mu opioid receptor has a distinct place in the opioid receptor family, since it mediates the actions of most opioids used clinically (e.g., morphine and fentanyl), as well as drugs of abuse (e.g., heroin). The single-copy mu opioid receptor gene, OPRM1, goes through extensive alternative pre-mRNA splicing to generate numerous splice variants that are conserved from rodents to humans. These OPRM1 splice variants can be classified into three structurally distinct types: (1) full-length 7 transmembrane (TM) carboxyl (C)-terminal variants; (2) truncated 6TM variants; and (3) single TM variants. Distinct pharmacological functions of these splice variants have been demonstrated by both in vitro and in vivo studies, particularly by using several unique gene-targeted mouse models. These studies provide new insights into our understanding of the complex actions of mu opioids with regard to OPRM1 alternative splicing. This review provides an overview of the studies that used these gene-targeted mouse models for exploring the functional importance of Oprm1 splice variants.     

Cu-K/Al2O3 based catalysts for conversion of carbon dioxide to methane and carbon monoxide

Abstract

A series of Cu-K/Al₂O₃ catalysts were synthesized by wet impregnation technique. The reduced catalysts were further used for conversion of carbon dioxide to methane and carbon monoxide. Moreover, the fresh and used catalysts were characterized to investigate the changes in the surface morphology, metal dispersion, surface area, crystalline phases, and functional groups of studied catalysts. The SEM analysis of fresh and spent catalysts showed no remarkable difference in surface morphology with irregular shaped agglomerated particles. Furthermore, TEM micrographs presented the well distribution of metal catalyst over alumina support. The decrease in surface area from 115 to 77?m²/g for Cu_1.62-K_0.5/Al₂O₃ after reaction was related to sintering and oxidation of catalyst during reaction. XRD revealed the disappearance of some minor peaks which can be associated with the sintering of spent catalyst. FTIR also presented some new peak for spent catalyst which can be linked with metal oxides. Moreover, various reaction conditions of temperature (230, 400, and 600?°C), pressure (1 and 7?bar), and feed molar ratio of H₂/CO₂ (2:1 and 4:1) were investigated using different Cu loading (0, 1, 1.25, 1.62, and 4 weight percent). A maximum CO₂ conversion of 63% with 39% CH₄ selectivity was achieved by using Cu_1.62-K_0.5/Al₂O₃ at 600?°C, molar ratio of H₂/CO₂ 4 under 7?bar. The presence of K on the surface of synthesized catalyst increased the CO₂ conversion from 48% (Cu₁/Al₂O₃) to 55% (Cu₁-K_0.5/Al₂O₃) at above mentioned reaction conditions which suggested the promoter effect of K during conversion of carbon dioxide.     

Corrosion behaviour of some stainless steels in chlorinated Gulf seawater

The corrosion resistance of conventional and high alloy stainless steels (specifically 316L, 317L, 904L, duplex 2205, 3127hMO, 1925hMO, 254SMO, 654SMO and Remanit-4565) was determined electrochemically in chlorinated and unchlorinated Arabian Gulf Seawater at 25 and 50 °C. The stainless steels 316L and 317L were used as reference alloys. The electrochemical potentiodynamic cyclic polarization method was used to determine the passive film break down potential (E _b), protection potential (E _prot) and maximum current attained on scan reversal (I _max). It was found that at 25 °C in chlorinated and unchlorinated seawater and at 50 °C in unchlorinated seawater, stainless steels 316L and 317L have poor resistance to corrosion, Stainless steels 904L and duplex 2205 at 25 °C in chlorinated and unchlorinated seawater showed good resistance to corrosion but at 50 °C these steels failed to resist. The high alloy stainless steels such as 3127hMO, 1925hMO, 254SMO, 654SMO and Remanit-4565 showed better corrosion resistance under all the test conditions.     

Synthesis and structural characterization of an alternating double aquo-bridged and single cyano-bridged polymeric barium–iron complex: {[Ba2(phen)4(H2O)6Fe(CN)6]·Cl·2(phen)·3H2O}n

A new alternating double aquo-bridged and single cyano-bridged polymeric complex {[Ba₂(phen)₄(H₂O)₆Fe(CN)₆]·Cl·2(phen)·3H₂O}_n (1) (phen = 1,10-phenanthroline) has been synthesized and structurally characterized. In the crystal structure the two centrosymmetric [Ba₂(phen)₄(H₂O)₆] units are bridged through two trans CN groups of [Fe(CN)₆]³⁻ ion, which results in the formation of a zig-zag polymeric chain. In each [Ba₂(phen)₄(H₂O)₆] unit, the two Ba centers are joined by double aquo bridges. Both the Ba atoms are 9-coordinated with distorted mono-capped square antiprismatic geometry. An elaborate hydrogen bonding system holds the parallel polymeric chains together.     

Novel Detection Scheme for LSAS Using Power Allocation in Multi User Scenario with LTE-A and MMB Channels

Massive MIMO (also known as the “Large-Scale Antenna System”) enables a significant reduction of latency on the air interface with the use of a large excess of service-antennas over active terminals and time division duplex operation. For large-scale MIMO, several technical issues need to be addressed (e.g., pilot pattern design and low-antenna power transmission design) and theoretically addressed (e.g., channel estimation and power allocation schemes). In this paper, we analyze the ergodic spectral efficiency upper bound of a large-scale MIMO, and the key technologies including channel uplink detection. We also present new approaches for detection and power allocation. Assuming arbitrary antenna correlation and user distributions, we derive approximations of achievable rates with linear detection techniques, namely zero forcing, maximum ratio combining, minimum mean squared error (MMSE) and eigen-value decomposition power allocation (EVD-PA). While the approximations are tight in the large system limit with an infinitely large number of antennas and user terminals, they also match our simulations for realistic system dimensions. We further show that a simple EVD-PA detection scheme can achieve the same performance as MMSE with one order of magnitude fewer antennas in both uncorrelated and correlated fading channels. Our simulation results show that our proposal is a better detection scheme than the conventional scheme for LSAS. Also, we used two channel environment channels for further analysis of our algorithm: the Long Term Evolution Advanced channel and the Millimeter wave Mobile Broadband channel.

     

Initial rapid wetting in metallic systems

The initial rapid wetting of a solid surface by a liquid phase is an important step in many industrial processes. Liquid-phase sintering of powder metallurgical steels is one such industrial process, where metallic powders of micrometer size are used. Investigating the dynamic wetting of a high-temperature metallic drop of micrometer size experimentally is very challenging. Here, a phase-field-based numerical model is first implemented and verified by accurately capturing the initial dynamic wetting of millimeter-sized metal drops and then the model is extended to predict the dynamic wetting of a micrometer-sized metal drop. We found, in accordance with recent observations, that contact line friction is required for accurate simulation of dynamic wetting. Our results predict the wetting time for a micrometer-sized metal drop and also indicate that the dynamic wetting patterns at the micro- and millimeter length scales are qualitatively similar. We also found that the wetting process is much faster for a micrometer-sized metal drop compared to a millimeter-sized metal drop.     

Receive antenna selection for MIMO systems over correlated fading channels

In this letter, we propose a novel receive antenna selection algorithm based on cross entropy optimization to maximize the capacity over spatially correlated channels in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless systems. The performance of the proposed algorithm is investigated and compared with the existing schemes. Simulation results show that our low complexity algorithm can achieve near-optimal results that converge to within 99% of the optimal results obtained by exhaustive search. In addition, the proposed algorithm achieves near-optimal results irrespective of the mutual relationship between the number of transmit and receive antennas, the statistical properties of the channel and the operating signal-to-noise ratio.