A novel polyurethane modified with biomacromolecules for small-diameter vascular graft applications

There is a growing demand for small-caliber tissue-engineered vascular grafts to replace damaged vessels. Fabricated scaffolds are unable to precisely mimic the mechanical properties of native vessels, provide long-term patency and support cell adhesion and growth, in particular support endothelialization. In this study, a new biodegradable poly(ether ester urethane) urea (PEEUU) was synthesized. The synthesized polyurethane was then functionalized by introducing free amino groups through aminolysis for further surface modification by immobilization of biomacromolecules on the surface of vascular grafts. The modified surfaces were then characterized using attenuated total reflectance-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, water contact angle measurement and atomic force microscopy. The mechanical properties of the fabricated scaffolds were analyzed, revealing mechanical properties close to that of the natural vessels. Surface modifications led to improved cell–scaffold interactions, showing appropriate cell attachment and function on the scaffolds. A confluent layer of endothelial cells was formed on biomacromolecule-immobilized PEEUU vascular grafts. The preliminary results of this study demonstrated that the new polyurethane modified with biomacromolecules can be considered as a candidate material for vascular tissue engineering application with capability to support endothelialization of fabricated vascular grafts.     

Enhancement of Critical Current Density of MgB<Subscript>2</Subscript> by Glutaric Acid Doping: a Simultaneous Improvement on the Intrinsic and Extrinsic Properties

In this study, we report an enhancement of critical current density of bulk MgB₂ superconductors by glutaric acid (C₅H₈O₄) doping. The effects of glutaric acid doping on MgB₂ lattice resulted in a record self-field J _c of the order of 10⁶ A/cm². A simultaneous improvement in the connectivity, pinning force, and H _c2 is the major factor that determined excellent J _c performance. X-ray diffraction analysis showed that samples were single-phase MgB₂ with a minor trace of impurities. A dramatic change in grain morphology and homogeneity in grain distribution was found in the SEM images of doped samples. We observed that homogeneity in grain distribution played a crucial role in the connectivity and the upper critical field (H _c2) of the doped samples. We were able to introduce a new dopant through a two-step mixing approach which is suitable to overcome the degradation of low field and self-field J _c reported for carbon-doped MgB₂ superconductor samples.     

Calculation of AC Magnetizing Loss of ReBCO Superconducting Tapes Subjected to Applied Distorted Magnetic Fields

In recent years, there are fast-increasing concerns on the utilizations of superconducting rotating electrical machines in different application areas, such as ship propulsion systems, aircraft drivers, and wind turbine generators, since these machines exhibit the merits of high current density, compact design, high power density, light weight, high torque density as well as high efficiency. One of the main limitations in front of the vast use of superconducting tapes in the fabrication of electrical machineries is AC magnetizing loss when tapes are exposed to an external magnetic field, which can decrease the critical current density of wires, as well. In the literature, most of the research works have been done on calculation of the AC magnetizing loss under a pure external magnetic field, while in reality, magnetic flux lines in AC electrical machines are usually distorted with harmonics because of different reasons such as distorted leakage flux, distributed coils of a winding in several slots, cogging fields, mechanical faults, etc. Since these distorted fields contain harmonics, then in this paper, the AC magnetizing loss of superconducting tapes has been electromagnetically modeled and calculated when they are subjected to nonsinusoidally distorted external magnetic fields. The magnetic field dependency of critical current density has been considered in a proposed finite element model. The results have shown that the AC magnetizing loss increases significantly under a distorted applied field compared with a sinusoidal one. In addition, the loss increase depends on the harmonic content which would increases drastically with total harmonic distortion of the applied magnetic field.     

Numerical Simulation of Non-cooperative and Cooperative Equilibrium Solutions for a Stochastic Government Debt Stabilization Game

Computational Economics - In this article, we consider the impact uncertainty has on policies and realization of targets aimed at the stabilization of government debt. The problem is motivated by...     

An adaptive technique for trajectory tracking control of a wheeled mobile robots without velocity measurements

This paper addresses an adaptive method for designing a sensorless trajectory tracking control scheme for a wheeled mobile robot. In order to reduce the cost of the robot, a new Nonlinear Observer (NOB) is used to leave out velocity sensors in the robot. Also, an adaptive model reference technique is used for designing the dynamic controller. In order to ensure the implementability of proposed controller, dynamic controller and nonlinear observer are designed in the presence of uncertainties. In addition, the Observer-based Kinematic Controller (OKC) is designed in the presence of sliding velocity. In order to improve the performance of the kinematic controller, sliding velocity is estimated and used for modification of kinematic controller. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by simulations.     

New Recommender Framework: Combining Semantic Similarity Fusion and Bicluster Collaborative Filtering

Collaborative filtering (CF) systems help address information overload, by using the preferences of users in a community to make personal recommendations for other users. The widespread use of these systems has exposed some well‐known limitations, such as sparsity, scalability, and cold‐start, which can lead to poor recommendations. During the last years, a great number of works have focused on the improvement of CF, but they do not solve all its problems efficiently. In this article, we present a new approach that applies semantic similarity fusion as well as biclustering to alleviate the aforementioned problems. The experimental results verify the effectiveness and efficiency of our approach over the benchmark CF methods.     

Closed‐form solution to finite‐horizon suboptimal control of nonlinear systems

Finite‐horizon optimal control of input‐affine nonlinear systems with fixed final time is considered in this study. It is first shown that the associated Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman partial differential equation to the problem is reducible to a state‐dependent differential Riccati equation after some approximations. With a truncation in the control equation, a near optimal solution to the problem is obtained, and the global onvergence properties of the closed‐loop system are analyzed. Afterwards, an approximate method, called Finite‐horizon State‐Dependent Riccati Equation (Finite‐SDRE), is suggested for solving the differential Riccati equation, which renders the origin a locally exponentially stable point. The proposed method provides online feedback solution for controlling different initial conditions. Finally, through some examples, the performance of the resulting controller in finite‐horizon control is analyzed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A computational method for solving two‐dimensional nonlinear variable‐order fractional optimal control problems

In this paper, a new class of two‐dimensional nonlinear variable‐order fractional optimal control problems (V‐OFOCPs) is introduced where the variable‐order fractional derivative is defined in the Caputo type. The general procedure for solving theses systems is expanding the state variable and the control variable based on the Legendre cardinal functions in the matrix form. Hence, we derive their operational matrix of derivative (OMD) and operational matrix of variable‐order fractional derivative (OMV‐OFD). More significantly, some properties of these basis functions are proved to be exploited in our approach. Using these achieved results, we simply expand the matrix form of the nonlinear performance index in terms of the Legendre cardinal functions and subsequently convert it to an algebraic equation. We emphasize that it is a valuable advantage of applying cardinal functions in approximation theory. Then, we implement the OMD and the OMV‐OFD of the Legendre cardinal functions to transform the variable‐order fractional dynamical system to a system of algebraic equations. Next, the method of constrained extremum is applied to adjoin the constraint equations including the given dynamical system and the initial‐boundary conditions to the performance index by a set of undetermined Lagrange multipliers. Finally, the necessary conditions of the optimality are derived as a system of nonlinear algebraic equations including the unknown coefficients of the state variable, the control variable and the Lagrange multipliers. The applicability and efficiency of the proposed approach are investigated through the various types of test problems.     

Design of a Modified Wilkinson Power Divider with Size Reduction and Harmonics Suppression using Triangle-Shaped Resonators

Wireless Personal Communications - Over the past few years, Internet of Things security has attracted the attention of many researchers due to its challenging and constrained nature. Particularly...     

Plasmonic Color Filters as Dual‐State Nanopixels for High‐Density Microimage Encoding

Plasmonic color filtering has provided a range of new techniques for “printing” images at resolutions beyond the diffraction‐limit, significantly improving upon what can be achieved using traditional, dye‐based filtering methods. Here, a new approach to high‐density data encoding is demonstrated using full color, dual‐state plasmonic nanopixels, doubling the amount of information that can be stored in a unit‐area. This technique is used to encode two data sets into a single set of pixels for the first time, generating vivid, near‐full sRGB (standard Red Green Blue color space)color images and codes with polarization‐switchable information states. Using a standard optical microscope, the smallest “unit” that can be read relates to 2 × 2 nanopixels (370 nm × 370 nm). As a result, dual‐state nanopixels may prove significant for long‐term, high‐resolution optical image encoding, and counterfeit‐prevention measures.