Thermal‐ and Sun‐Promoted Generation of Silver Nanoparticles Embedded into Poly(vinyl alcohol) Films

Nanocomposites based on poly(vinyl alcohol) and silver nanoparticles were efficiently prepared by sun‐ and thermal‐promoted reduction processes. Uniaxial drawing of the Ag/PVA nanocomposites favoured the anisotropic distribution of silver particles, providing oriented films with polarisation‐dependent tunable optical properties. These dichroic properties were more pronounced for nanocomposites produced by sun exposition, which provided more compact and interacting metal clusters. The results obtained suggest the nanocomposite films could find potential applications as colour polarising filters, radiation responsive polymeric objects and smart flexible films in packaging applications.

     

Spectrally reconfigurable pixels for dual-color-mode imaging sensors

The use of full color-sensitive photodetectors with three electrically tunable spectral responses allows the design of sensors that can be real-time reconfigured for different color acquisition modes. All the (physically identical) pixels can be biased in the same way, each giving the same set of RGB spectral responses: in this situation the conversion from the sensor color space to a reference color space can be implemented as usual, giving typical color errors ΔE(a,b) in the order of 2-3. Alternatively, pixels can be biased in two different ways (e.g., row by row), forming pairs: by joining the information from adjacent pixels, the sensor has six spectral responses, with a reduced resolution. By exploiting this plurality of spectral responses, color reproduction accuracy can be increased. In this work, an improved design of the Transverse Field Detector, a filterless and tunable three-color pixel, is used as the experimental device to propose a dual-color-mode reconfigurable sensor.     

Antioxidant vitamins and prevention of cardiovascular disease: Epidemiological and clinical trial data

Naturally occurring antioxidants such as vitamin E, β-carotene, and vitamin C can inhibit the oxidative modification of low density lipoproteins. This action could positively influence the atherosclerotic process and, as a consequence, the progression of coronary heart disease. A wealth of experimental studies provide a sound biological rationale for the mechanisms of action of antioxidants, whereas epidemiologic studies strongly sustain the “antioxidant hypothesis”. To date, however, clinical trials with β-carotene supplements have been disappointing, and their use as a preventive intervention for cancer and coronary heart disease should be discouraged. Only scanty data from clinical trials are available for vitamin C. As to vitamin E, discrepant results have been obtained by the Alpha-Tocopherol, Beta Carotene Cancer Prevention Study with a low-dose vitamin E supplementation (50 mg/d) and the Cambridge Heart Antioxidant Study (400–800 mg/d). The results of the GISSI-Prevenzione (300 mg/d) and HOPE (400 mg/d) trials suggest the absence of relevant clinical effects of vitamin E on the risk of cardiovascular events. Currently ongoing are several large-scale clinical trials that will help in clarifying the role of vitamin E in association with other antioxidants in the prevention of atherosclerotic coronary disease.     

Ray-chaotic footprints in deterministic wave dynamics: a test model with coupled Floquet-type and ducted-type mode characteristics

Ray chaos, manifested by the exponential divergence of trajectories in an originally thin ray bundle, can occur even in linear electromagnetic propagation environments, due to the inherent nonlinearity of ray-tracing maps. In this paper, we present a novel (two-dimensional) test example of such an environment which embodies intimately coupled refractive wave-trapping and periodicity-induced multiple scattering phenomenologies, and which is amenable to explicit full-wave analysis. Though strictly nonchaotic, it is demonstrated that under appropriate conditions which are inferred from a comprehensive parametric database generated via the above-noted rigorous reference solution, the high-frequency wave dynamics exhibits trends toward irregularity and other peculiar characteristics; these features can be interpreted as "ray-chaotic footprints", and they are usually not observed in geometries characterized by "regular" ray behavior. In this connection, known analogies from other disciplines (particularly quantum physics) are briefly reviewed and related to the proposed test configuration. Moreover, theoretical implications and open issues are discussed, and potential applications are conjectured.     

Comparative Effects of Graphene and Molybdenum Disulfide on Human Macrophage Toxicity

Graphene and other 2D materials, such as molybdenum disulfide, have been increasingly used in electronics, composites, and biomedicine. In particular, MoS₂ and graphene hybrids have attracted a great interest for applications in the biomedical research, therefore stimulating a pertinent investigation on their safety in immune cells like macrophages, which commonly engulf these materials. In this study, M1 and M2 macrophage viability and activation are mainly found to be unaffected by few‐layer graphene (FLG) and MoS₂ at doses up to 50 µg mL^?1. The uptake of both materials is confirmed by transmission electron microscopy, inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry, and inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy. Notably, both 2D materials increase the secretion of inflammatory cytokines in M1 macrophages. At the highest dose, FLG decreases CD206 expression while MoS₂ decreases CD80 expression. CathB and CathL gene expressions are dose‐dependently increased by both materials. Despite a minimal impact on the autophagic pathway, FLG is found to increase the expression of Atg5 and autophagic flux, as observed by Western blotting of LC3‐II, in M1 macrophages. Overall, FLG and MoS₂ are of little toxicity in human macrophages even though they are found to trigger cell stress and inflammatory responses.     

Effect of ageing on the morphology and creep and recovery of polymer-modified bitumens

Polymer additives are used to improve the properties of road bitumens including their oxidative resistance. However, their usage as anti-oxidative materials remains relatively unclear. This study aims to investigate the changes in the morphology and the rheological response of polymer modified bitumens used in road pavement construction caused by ageing. An elastomer (radial styrene butadiene styrene, SBS) and a plastomer (ethyl vinyl acetate, EVA) polymer were mixed with one base bitumen at three polymer concentrations. The bitumens were RTFO and PAV aged. The morphology of the bitumens was captured by fluorescence microscopy while the rheological properties were measured by means of the multiple stress creep and recovery (MSCR) test. The results show that the morphology of the SBS modified bitumen degrades with ageing as a function of polymer concentration and dispersion, with higher dispersion being more resistant. The morphology of the EVA modified bitumen has a low ageing susceptibility irrespective of polymer concentration. The MSCR response of EVA modified bitumens does not differ from that found for unmodified bitumen, where the hardening produces a decrease in the non-recoverable compliance. In the case of SBS modified bitumen, the degradation of the polymer backbone affects the bitumen hardening as much as the polymer phase dispersed and networked in the bitumen phase. Furthermore, in the case of the elastomer, the average percent recovery is in agreement with the variation of the morphology with ageing. Therefore, the use of the average percent recovery as a valuable rheological index of the integrity of the polymer network can be advocated.     

An integrated symbolic/connectionist architecture for parsing italian sentences containing pp-attachment ambiguities

This paper describes a hybrid (symbolic/connectionist) system that performs PP-attachment disambiguation by taking advantage of three distinguishing features of neutral networks: distributed representation, functional compositionality, and inductive learning. The connectionist part of the system follows all the steps performed by the symbolic parser, and drives the parser's behavior by inducing a bias towards the most semantically plausible attachment choices. The sentence to be parsed is read one word at a time. When the symbolic parser has more than one production to apply, the connectionist module has already developed an inner representation of the sentence and a distribution of probabilities over the possible choices. The parser continues its work according to such a distribution.     

A domain decomposition technique for finite element based parametric sweep and tolerance analyses of microwave passive devices

A domain decomposition approach is here applied to the finite element solution of a multiport waveguide passive device. The approach allows separating the problem in multiple, coupled subproblems which can be solved individually. By appropriately defining one of these subdomains as containing all the possible variations to be studied it is hence possible to restrict the tolerance analysis to this latter, smaller domain. Numerical results showing the gain in computing time are presented. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2009.