Polymerization of propylene over titanium exchanged Y-zeolite

Summary It was found that isotactic polymerization of propylene took place over titanium ion-exchanged Y-zeolite without organometallic compounds. The results obtained have led to the conclusions that Ti⁴⁺ species as well as Ti³⁺ species are active for the polymerization and that neither Ti-alkyl bonds nor Cl ligands are necessarily essential for polymerization of propylene.     

Granulation of a hardmetal powder for spark plasma sintering

A fluidized bed granulation method, pressure swing granulation (PSG), was applied to granulation of a hardmetal powder without pressing lubricants for making the upstream process of spark plasma sintering (SPS) more efficient.

The properties of the granules were examined and compared with those of spray dried granules and extruded ones under the present system using a sieve.

Spherical granules between 0.15 and 0.84 mm in diameter difficult to obtain by the spray drying were obtained with high yield. The flowability of the granules was far better than that of spray dried granules and similar to that of extruded ones. Iron contamination and oxidization during pressure swing granulation were tolerable to the real production.     

Characterization and application of polypropylene films modified with stimuli‐sensitive copolymers with an Ar‐plasma postpolymerization technique

Surface‐modified polypropylene (PP) films with thermally and photochemically sensitive copolymers consisting of N‐(2‐hydroxypropyl)methacrylamide (HPMA) and 4‐(4‐methoxyphenylazo)phenyl methacrylate (MPAP), poly(HPMA‐co‐MPAP)‐g‐PP (abbreviated g‐PP) film, were prepared by graft copolymerization with an Ar‐plasma postpolymerization technique. The surfaces of the g‐PP films were characterized by means of X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy; the percentage grafting of poly(HPMA‐co‐MPAP) with a number‐average molecular weight of 3.28 × 10⁴ was 7.12%, and the molar ratio of HPMA–MPAH in the copolymer was 0.75:0.25. The stimuli‐sensitive adsorption of albumin and polystyrene microspheres on the g‐PP film was also measured. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 90: 143–148, 2003     

Prooxidant effects of inorganic chromium compounds in the autoxidation of methyl linoleate

The prooxidant property of inorganic chromium compounds was determined in methyl linoleate free from natural antioxidants and metals. Prooxidant properties of inorganic chromium compounds appeared in order of sodium chromate > chromium (VI)-oxide > chromium chloride > potassium chromate > chromium (III)-oxide > potassium dichomate. In comparison with the control, additions of chromium compounds induced different amounts of autoxidation products derived from methyl linoleate, such as small amounts of hydroperoxides and conjugated dienes and large amounts of hydroxy groups,α,β,γ,δ-unsaturated carbonyls, isolatedtrans double bonds, polymers, and free radicals. From these analytical data, the catalysis of chromium compounds in the autoxidation of methyl linoleate seemed to be based on their abilities of abstracting a hydrogen from methyl linoleate and decomposing hydroperoxides derived from the autoxidation of methyl linoleate.     

Autoxidation of ethyl eicosapentaenoate and docosahexaenoate

The extent of oxidation of ethyl esters of eicosapentaenoic (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acids (DHA) was compared quantitatively with that of ethyl linoleate (Lo) and ethyl linolenate (Ln) by oxygen uptake and formation of conjugated diene, hydroperoxide and secondary oxidation products. EPA and DHA esters were oxidized rapidly even at 5 C in the dark after an induction period of 3–4 days, while the induction periods of Ln and Lo esters were 20 days and more than 60 days, respectively. Oxygen uptake of EPA and DHA esters after the induction period was 5.2 and 8.5 times faster than that of ethyl Ln, respectively. Hydroperoxides of EPA and DHA esters are much less stable than those of ethyl Lo. The peroxide value is not necessarily a good indication of oxidation in these polyenoic acids because a considerable amount of secondary products is formed at the early stage of oxidation. Polymers were found to be major secondary products in these polyenoic esters.     

Adaptive interpolation scheme for NURBS curves with the integration of machining dynamics

This paper develops a comprehensive interpolation scheme for non-uniform rational B-spline (NURBS) curves, which does not only simultaneously meet the requirements of both constant feedrate and chord accuracy, but also real-time integrates machining dynamics in the interpolation stage. Although the existing work in this regard has realized the importance to simultaneously consider chord error and machining dynamics, none has really incorporated these in one complete interpolation scheme. In this paper, machining dynamics is considered for three aspects: sharp corners or feedrate sensitive corners on the curves, components with high frequencies or frequencies matching machine natural ones and high jerks. A look-ahead module was developed for detecting and adaptively adjusting the feedrate at the sharp corners. By Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) analysis with a moving window in the interpolation stage identified were some special frequency components such as those containing high frequencies or with frequencies matching machine natural ones. Then, the notch filtering or time spacing method was used to eliminate these components. To more completely reduce feedrate and acceleration fluctuations, the jerk-limited algorithm was also developed. Finally, the interpolated feedrate was further smoothened with B-spline fitting method and the NURBS curves were re-interpolated with the smoothened feedrate. During the interpolation, the chord error was repeatedly checked and confined in the prescribed tolerance. Two NURBS curves were used as examples to test the feasibility of the developed interpolation scheme.     

Quantitative structural analysis of twin boundary in alpha-Zn7Sb2O12 using HAADF STEM method

The structure and composition of the 1/4{110} twin boundary in alpha-Zn7Sb2O12 have been determined by using quantitative high-angle annular dark field scanning transmission electron microscopy (HAADF STEM) analysis. The noise in the experimental HAADF STEM images is reduced by using the maximum entropy method and average processing, and the parameters used in dynamical simulations are experimentally determined. From the analysis, it has been found that octahedral sites in the twin boundary slightly shift parallel to the [110] direction, and a reduction of the Sb concentration at the octahedral sites on the plane adjacent to the twin boundary was detected. The reduction was measured from three regions in the same twin boundary, and the Sb concentrations were 4 +/- 3, 8 +/- 3 and 19 +/-2 at% from 33 at%.     

Clinicopathological significance of intratubular giant macrophages in progressive glomerulonephritis

Very large macrophages, which we have termed "giant macrophages" (G-M phi), have been found in renal tubules, some containing cytoplasmic vacuoles. To elucidate their pathophysiological roles, we examined renal biopsy tissues from various primary glomerulonephritis (GN) and tubulointerstitial nephritis (TIN) using immunohistochemistry with monoclonal antibodies against M phi and other cell surface markers. Giant macrophages were absent or rare in TIN, minimal change nephrotic syndrome, and minor glomerular abnormalities, but G-M phi was plentiful in progressive glomerulonephrides such as IgA nephropathy with crescents, membranoproliferative GN, focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, and especially in crescentic GN. These G-M phi were usually seen in the lumen of renal tubules, but occasionally were found in the Bowman's spaces and glomerular tufts, and similar cells were also found in urine. Moreover, they frequently made contact with tubular epithelial cells expressing intercellular adhesion molecule-1, and the tubular epithelial cells in such lesions often had degenerative changes. Giant M phi may damage tubular epithelial cells from the luminal side. Phenotypically, G-M phi showed activated (CD71+) and mature (25F9+) characteristics along with features of M phi (CD68+), and the cytoplasm contained a great deal of lipids. The numbers of G-M phi in renal tissues closely correlated with the degree of hematuria (rho = 0.5, P < 0.001), serum creatinine value (r = 0.63, P < 0.001) in GN patients (N = 96) and with proteinuria in IgA nephropathy patients (r = 0.89, P < 0.001, N = 27). These data suggest that G-M phi are M phi that were activated and matured in certain active inflammatory sites, which flowed into tubules and then into urine. Thus, the existence of G-M phi in biopsy tissue or urine reflect the activity of GN and may have a predictive value for the progression of GN.     

Unsupervised WSD by Finding the Predominant Sense Using Context as a Dynamic Thesaurus

We present and analyze an unsupervised method for Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD). Our work is based on the method presented by McCarthy et al. in 2004 for finding the predominant sense of each word in the entire corpus. Their maximization algorithm allows weighted terms (similar words) from a distributional thesaurus to accumulate a score for each ambiguous word sense, i.e., the sense with the highest score is chosen based on votes from a weighted list of terms related to the ambiguous word. This list is obtained using the distributional similarity method proposed by Lin Dekang to obtain a thesaurus. In the method of McCarthy et al., every occurrence of the ambiguous word uses the same thesaurus, regardless of the context where the ambiguous word occurs. Our method accounts for the context of a word when determining the sense of an ambiguous word by building the list of distributed similar words based on the syntactic context of the ambiguous word. We obtain a top precision of 77.54% of accuracy versus 67.10% of the original method tested on SemCor. We also analyze the effect of the number of weighted terms in the tasks of finding the Most Frecuent Sense (MFS) and WSD, and experiment with several corpora for building the Word Space Model.