Tack and Shear Strength of Adhesives Prepared from Styrene-Butadiene Rubber (SBR) Using Gum Rosin and Petro Resin as Tackifiers

Tack and shear strength of styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR)-based pressure-sensitive adhesive were studied using gum rosin and petro resin as the tackifiers. The concentration of the tackifying resin was varied from 0 to 100 parts per hundred parts of rubber (phr). Toluene was used as the solvent throughout the experiment. The rolling ball technique was used to measure the tack of the adhesive, whereas, shear strength was determined by a TA-HDi Texture Analyser. Results show that the tack of the adhesive increases with increasing tackifier loadings for both tackifier systems. However, shear strength indicates the reverse behavior with increasing resin content, an observation which is attributed to the decrease in cohesive strength as the tackifier concentration is increased. Both tack and shear strength of the adhesives increases with molecular weight of SBR. Adhesive containing petro resin consistently exhibits higher values than the gum rosin system due to better wettability and compatibility in the former system.     

Anomaly detection in particulate matter sensor using hypothesis pruning generative adversarial network

The World Health Organization provides guidelines for managing the particulate matter (PM) level because a higher PM level represents a threat to human health. To manage the PM level, a procedure for measuring the PM value is first needed. We use a PM sensor that collects the PM level by laser-based light scattering (LLS) method because it is more cost effective than a beta attenuation monitor-based sensor or tapered element oscillating microbalance-based sensor. However, an LLS-based sensor has a higher probability of malfunctioning than the higher cost sensors. In this paper, we regard the overall malfunctioning, including strange value collection or missing collection data as anomalies, and we aim to detect anomalies for the maintenance of PM measuring sensors. We propose a novel architecture for solving the above aim that we call the hypothesis pruning generative adversarial network (HP-GAN). Through comparative experiments, we achieve AUROC and AUPRC values of 0.948 and 0.967, respectively, in the detection of anomalies in LLS-based PM measuring sensors. We conclude that our HP-GAN is a cutting-edge model for anomaly detection.     

Absorbed‐dose estimation and quality attributes of gamma‐irradiated fresh shiitake mushrooms

BACKGROUND: The general use of food irradiation requires reliable identification methods as well as extensive quality characterization. Shiitake (Lentinus edodes) mushrooms, packed in polystyrene trays and covered with polyvinylchloride film, were investigated for dose‐dependent identification and quality characterization upon gamma irradiation (0, 1, 2, and 3 kGy). RESULTS: Thermoluminescence (TL) analysis of separated minerals provided excellent results to characterize the irradiated mushrooms. Low‐dose re‐irradiation (200‐600 Gy), medium‐dose re‐irradiation (1‐3 kGy) and high‐dose re‐irradiation (2‐6 kGy) were performed and compared using an additive dose method. An electronic‐nose analysis showed a difference in the volatile profiles of mushrooms following irradiation. One‐kGy‐irradiated mushrooms showed similar or better quality attributes to those of the control samples. Scanning electron microscopy revealed the dose‐dependent degradation in microstructure of mushrooms upon irradiation. CONCLUSION: An absorbed dosed estimation was possible using TL analysis in which 1‐3 kGy re‐irradiation technique gave most promising results. An E‐nose analysis effectively distinguished the samples based on irradiation history. The best quality attributes were observed at 1 kGy irradiation. However, the drastic effects of irradiation were prominent in 2 and 3 kGy‐irradiated mushrooms. © 2012 Society of Chemical Industry     

Micro-porous silicon structure with low optical reflection

A porous silicon structure with good physical and optical characteristics was made by a novel method. In this method, an amorphous silicon film with many fine grains was used as micro-mask. When the sample was subjected to etching process, the presence of fine grain boundaries resulted in selective etching on the surface of silicon wafer. The completed sample showed a low-reflective silicon wafer with a complex morphology. When a light illuminated on this proposed structure, there was nearly no optical reflection to be detected. This indicates that the new porous silicon structure can act as a good light-trapper.     

Parallel divide‐and‐conquer scheme for 2D Delaunay triangulation

This work describes a parallel divide‐and‐conquer Delaunay triangulation scheme. This algorithm finds the affected zone, which covers the triangulation and may be modified when two sub‐block triangulations are merged. Finding the affected zone can reduce the amount of data required to be transmitted between processors. The time complexity of the divide‐and‐conquer scheme remains O(n log n), and the affected region can be located in O(n) time steps, where n denotes the number of points. The code was implemented with C, FORTRAN and MPI, making it portable to many computer systems. Experimental results on an IBM SP2 show that a parallel efficiency of 44–95% for general distributions can be attained on a 16‐node distributed memory system. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Shear–rotation–warp volume rendering

Shear–warp volume rendering has the advantages of a moderate image quality and a fast rendering speed. However, in the case of dynamic changes in the opacity transfer function, the efficiency of memory access drops, as the method cannot exploit pre‐classified volumes. In this paper, we propose an efficient algorithm that exploits the spatial locality of memory references for interactive classifications. The algorithm inserts a rotation matrix when factorizing the viewing transformation, so that it may perform a scanline‐based traversal in both object space and image space. In addition, we present solutions to some problems of the proposed method, namely inaccurate front‐to‐back composition, the occurrence of holes, and increased computation. Our method is noticeably faster than traditional shear‐warp rendering methods because of an improved utilization of cache memory. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Homogeneous 2D MoTe2 p–n Junctions and CMOS Inverters formed by Atomic‐Layer‐Deposition‐Induced Doping

Recently, α‐MoTe₂, a 2D transition‐metal dichalcogenide (TMD), has shown outstanding properties, aiming at future electronic devices. Such TMD structures without surface dangling bonds make the 2D α‐MoTe₂ a more favorable candidate than conventional 3D Si on the scale of a few nanometers. The bandgap of thin α‐MoTe₂ appears close to that of Si and is quite smaller than those of other typical TMD semiconductors. Even though there have been a few attempts to control the charge‐carrier polarity of MoTe₂, functional devices such as p–n junction or complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) inverters have not been reported. Here, we demonstrate a 2D CMOS inverter and p–n junction diode in a single α‐MoTe₂ nanosheet by a straightforward selective doping technique. In a single α‐MoTe₂ flake, an initially p‐doped channel is selectively converted to an n‐doped region with high electron mobility of 18 cm² V^?1 s^?1 by atomic‐layer‐deposition‐induced H‐doping. The ultrathin CMOS inverter exhibits a high DC voltage gain of 29, an AC gain of 18 at 1 kHz, and a low static power consumption of a few nanowatts. The results show a great potential of α‐MoTe₂ for future electronic devices based on 2D semiconducting materials.     

Cellular Regulation of Kynurenic Acid-Induced Cell Apoptosis Pathways in AGS Cells

Kynurenic acid was included in the three compounds (caffeic acid, chlorogenic acid, and kynurenic acid) that showed high antioxidant and anti-inflammatory potential among the phenolic compounds contained in Gynura procumbens. In this study, the mechanism of cancer cell death induced by kynurenic acid (KYNA), which has the highest molecular binding affinity, in the gastric cancer cell line AGS was confirmed in molecular docking analysis. KYNA showed the most cancer cell death effect on AGS cells among several gastric cancer cell lines (MKN, AGS, and SNU). AGS cells were used for later experiments, and KYNA concentrations of 0, 150, 200, and 250 µM were used. KYNA inhibited cell migration and proliferation in AGS cells in a concentration-dependent manner. G2/M phase cell cycle arrest and reduction of related proteins (Cdc25C, CDK1 and CyclinB1) were confirmed in KYNA-treated AGS cells. Apoptosis of KYNA-treated AGS cells was confirmed by Annexin V/propidium iodide (PI) staining flow cytometry analysis. As a result of morphological chromatin condensation through DAPI (4′,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole), intense blue fluorescence was confirmed. The mechanism of apoptosis induction of KYNA-treated AGS cells was confirmed by western blotting. In the extrinsic pathway, apoptosis induction markers FasL, Fas, and Caspase-3 and -8 were increased in a concentration-dependent manner upon KYNA treatment. In the intrinsic pathway, the expression of anti-apoptotic factors PI3K, AKT, and Bcl-xL was down-regulated, and the expression of apoptosis-inducing factors BAD, Bak, Bax, Cytochrom C, and Caspase-9 was up-regulated. Therefore, in the present study, we strongly imply that KYNA induces apoptosis in AGS gastric cancer cells. This suggests that KYNA, a natural compound, could be the basis for drug for the treatment of gastric cancer.