Vicious cycle during chemical degradation of sulfonated aromatic proton exchange membranes in the fuel cell application

Weak phase separation and vulnerable linking groups between aromatic units are common setbacks of sulfonated aromatic proton exchange membranes (PEMs) from durability point of view. In this study, sulfonated poly(ether ether ketone) (SPEEK) membranes were exposed to Fenton's solution for a specific time, ranging from 10 to 60 minutes. Chemical structure and morphology evolution, decay in mechanical and thermal stability, and H₂ permeability of SPEEK membranes were evaluated during the chemical degradation. Less-entangled polymeric chains with lower average molecular weight of degraded SPEEK samples diminished mechanical rigidity. In addition, reduction of aromatic rings in each repeat unit led to higher thermal decomposition rate. Furthermore, randomly distributed micro-defects in the SPEEK morphology and an increase in water sorption can reduce the fatigue strength of membranes in the wet-dry cycles. Eventually, hydrogen cross-over rate was gradually increased, and henceforth, accelerated destructive radical formation and degradation can be predicted.     

Applying multiple decomposition methods and optimization techniques for achieving optimal cost in mixed materials heat exchanger networks

The optimization of the total annual cost in heat exchanger networks has been one of the overarching goals when synthesizing these networks. Several methodologies and techniques have been developed to achieve optimal costs in mixed material heat exchanger networks. This paper demonstrates the application of two decomposition methodologies (total decomposition and partial decomposition) for typical cost rules. The objective function was defined as the optimization and minimization of the total annual cost in mixed materials heat exchanger network. Three optimization algorithms, hybrid genetic‐particle swarm optimization (GA‐PSO), shuffled frog leaping algorithm (SFLA) techniques, and ant colony optimization (ACO), were used to further optimize the total cost in mixed materials heat exchanger network. The results indicate that the total annual cost in partial decomposition method was smaller than that in full integration method and total decomposition method. The reduction of the total annual cost was about 27% for GA‐PSO algorithm, 24% for SFLA and 10% for ACO relative to the results reported in this work. In partial decomposition method, at least one mixed material of heat exchanger was used to reduce the hot and cold utility for decreasing the total annual cost. Partial decomposition method resulted in the highest reduction of the total annual cost compared with other methods. Percentage of difference of the total annual cost were 0.36%, 1.92%, and 5.05% for full integration, total decomposition, and partial decomposition methods, respectively, in comparison with the previous studies. Results have been compared with the results of other studies to demonstrate the accuracy of the applied algorithms.     

A privacy-preserving distributed transfer learning in activity recognition

Telecommunication Systems - Along with the widespread use of smartphones, activity recognition using embedded inertial sensors has intrigued researchers. The learning and employing activity...     

Trend Analysis and Spatial Prediction of Groundwater Levels Using Time Series Forecasting and a Novel Spatio-Temporal Method

Water Resources Management - Overexploitation of groundwater in the Malayer Plain has resulted in a continuous decline of groundwater levels over recent years with associated risks to water...     

Spray-dried pH-sensitive microparticles: effectual methodology to ameliorate the bioavailability of acid labile pravastatin

Pravastatin is a promising drug utilized in the treatment of hyperlipidemia, yet, its main clinical limitation is due to gastric liability which fractions its oral bioavailability to less than 18%. The purpose of the current study is to encapsulate pravastatin into Eudragit^®-based spray-dried microparticles aspiring to overcome its acid liability. With the aim to optimize the microparticles, formulation and process parameters were studied through acid resistance challenging test. Physicochemical characterization of the optimized spray-dried pH-sensitive microparticles namely; in-vitro dissolution, surface morphology, compatibility, and solid-state studies were performed. Moreover, in-vivo evaluation of the microparticles and accelerated stability studies were carried out. The results outlined that polymer to drug ratio at 5:1 and pravastatin concentration at 1%w/w in spray-drying feed solution showed 38.55% and 53.97% encapsulation efficiency, respectively. The significance of process parameters specifically; the flow rate and the inlet temperature on microparticles surface integrity were observed, and optimized until encapsulating efficiency reached 72.37%. The scanning electron microscopical examination of the optimized microparticles illustrate uniform smooth surface spheres entrapping the drug in an amorphous state as proved through Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) and Fourier Transfer Infrared (FTIR) studies. The in-vivo evaluation demonstrated a 5-fold enhancement in pravastatin bioavailability compared to the marketed product. The results provided evidence for the significance of spray-dried pH-sensitive microparticles as a promising carrier for pravastatin, decreasing its acid liability, and improving its bioavailability.     

LSMAT Least Squares Medial Axis Transform

The medial axis transform has applications in numerous fields including visualization, computer graphics, and computer vision. Unfortunately, traditional medial axis transformations are usually brittle in the presence of outliers, perturbations and/or noise along the boundary of objects. To overcome this limitation, we introduce a new formulation of the medial axis transform which is naturally robust in the presence of these artefacts. Unlike previous work which has approached the medial axis from a computational geometry angle, we consider it from a numerical optimization perspective. In this work, we follow the definition of the medial axis transform as ‘the set of maximally inscribed spheres’. We show how this definition can be formulated as a least squares relaxation where the transform is obtained by minimizing a continuous optimization problem. The proposed approach is inherently parallelizable by performing independent optimization of each sphere using Gauss–Newton, and its least‐squares form allows it to be significantly more robust compared to traditional computational geometry approaches. Extensive experiments on 2D and 3D objects demonstrate that our method provides superior results to the state of the art on both synthetic and real‐data.     

Social factors and compulsory detention of psychiatric patients in the U.K. The role of the approved social worker in the 1983 Mental Health Act

Low-density lipoprotein (LDL) is known to be a mitogenic factor for vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs), fibroblasts, and endothelial cells. In the current study, we describe possible intracellular mechanisms by which LDL elicits its mitogenic effects. Stimulation of VSMCs with LDL resulted in a pertussis-toxin (PTX)-sensitive stimulation of the 44-kDa mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase (p44(mapk)) and 42-kDa MAP kinase (p42(mapk)) isoforms as well as in a PTX-sensitive increase in intracellular free Ca2+ concentration ([Ca2+]i). Binding of the LDL-induced increase in [Ca2+]i to the intracellular Ca2+ chelator bis(2-amino-5-methylphenoxy)ethane-N,N,N',N'-tetraacetic acid tetraacetoxymethyl ester resulted in a 2-fold increase in the phosphorylated p44(mapk) and p42(mapk) isoforms but did not influence the LDL effect of VSMC DNA synthesis. PD 98059, a MAP kinase kinase inhibitor, remarkably attenuated the LDL-induced activation of MAP kinases and DNA synthesis. Treatment of normal human skin fibroblasts and human fibroblasts isolated from patients with familial hypercholesterolemia homozygote class 1 mutations, which are not able to produce the classic LDL receptor, resulted also in a PTX-sensitive increase in cell DNA synthesis and stimulation of the p44(mapk) and p42(mapk) isoforms in both cell types. These results demonstrate that the mitogenic effect of LDL is mediated by a PTX-sensitive Gi-coupled receptor that is independent of its classic receptor and involves activation of MAP kinase isoforms. Furthermore, the mitogenic effect of LDL may be mediated by the activation of the MAP kinase pathway. In contrast, the LDL-induced increase in [Ca2+]i may be implicated in this process only in conjugation with other signaling components.