Enhancement of mechanical properties of high modulus polypropylene grade for multilayer sewage pipes applications

Advances in technology have provided fresh generations of stiff polypropylene block copolymers for gravity sewerage applications. The aim of this study is to further enhance the stiffness of these materials through the incorporation of inorganic fillers. In this study, three talc filled PP and one glass fiber filled PP composites were characterized in order to be used as a middle layer in a three-layer sewage pipe. The obtained results showed an increase of approximately more than 100% and 250% in tensile and flexural moduli by the use of 30%–50 wt% talc-filled PP and 30 wt.% glass fiber-filled PP, respectively. This high increase in the rigidity of the material would allow manufacturing pipes with improving ring stiffness. Composites filled with 30 wt% talc or glass fiber showed good filler-matrix interaction and good filler distribution and dispersion. However, reduced filler-matrix interaction was observed in the case of the composite filled with 50 wt% talc. In addition, the use of Differential Scanning Calorimetry analysis revealed that the addition of fillers enhanced the crystallization temperature of the polypropylene matrix. Furthermore, Thermogravimetric Analysis showed that the high modulus PP grade retained its thermal stability in the various composites.     

The Role of Alginates in Regulation of Food Intake and Glycemia: A Gastroenterological Perspective

Regulation of food intake through modulation of gastrointestinal responses to ingested foods is an ever-growing component of the therapeutic approaches targeting the obesity epidemic. Alginates, viscous and gel-forming soluble fibers isolated from the cell wall of brown seaweeds and some bacteria, are recently receiving considerable attention because of their potential role in satiation, satiety, and food intake regulation in the short term. Enhancement of gastric distension, delay of gastric emptying, and attenuation of postprandial glucose responses may constitute the basis of their physiological benefits. Offering physical, chemical, sensorial, and physiological advantages over other viscous and gel-forming fibers, alginates constitute promising functional food ingredients for the food industry. Therefore, the current review explores the role of alginates in food intake and glycemic regulation, their underlying modes of action and their potential in food applications.     

Local Mechanical Perturbation Provides an Effective Means to Regulate the Growth and Assembly of Functional Peptide Fibrils

Mucin 1 (MUC1) peptide fused with Q11 (MUC1‐Q11) having 35 residues has previously been shown to form amyloid fibrils. Using time‐dependent and high‐resolution atomic force microscopy (AFM) imaging, it is revealed that the formation of individual MUC1‐Q11 fibrils entails nucleation and extension at both ends. This process can be altered by local mechanical perturbations using AFM probes. This work reports two specific perturbations and outcomes. First, by increasing load while maintaining tip‐surface contact, the fibrils are cut during the scan due to shearing. Growth of fibrils occurs at the newly exposed termini, following similar mechanism of the MUC1‐Q11 nucleation growth. As a result, branched fibrils are seen on the surface whose orientation and length can be controlled by the nuclei orientation and reaction time. In contrast to the “one‐time‐cut”, fibrils can be continuously fragmented by modulation at sufficiently high amplitude. As a result, short and highly branched fibrils accumulate and pile on surfaces. Since the fibril formation and assembly of MUC1‐Q11 can be impacted by local mechanical force, this approach offers a nonchemical and label‐free means to control the presentation of MUC1 epitopes, and has promising application in MUC1 fibril‐based immunotherapy.     

An Efficient Web Page Change Detection System Based on an Optimized Hungarian Algorithm

This paper describes an efficient Web page change detection system based on three optimizations that were implemented on top of the Hungarian algorithm, which we employ to compare trees that correspond to HTML Web pages. The optimizations attempt to stop the comparator algorithm that employs this O(n³) algorithm before it completes all its iterations based on criteria having to do with properties of HTML and heuristics. Analysis and experimental results prove the effectiveness of these optimizations and their ability to render O(n²) performance, where n denotes the number of nodes in the tree. A complete system was implemented and used to carry out the performance experiments. This system includes functionalities and interfaces for processing user requests, fetching Web pages from the Internet, allowing users to select zones in Web pages to monitor, and highlighting changes on the Web pages being monitored