New nanocomposite materials based on polymerization of [oligo(oxyethylene) methacrylates] in the presence of montmorillonite clay

Intercalation of poly[oligo(oxyethylene) methacrylates] onto sodium montmorillonite (MMT) clay has been investigated. A polymer–clay hybrid has been synthesized through intercalation of the monomer followed by its solution free‐radical polymerization. Eight polymer–clay hybrids were prepared using different weight ratios of clay, different oligo(oxyethylene) lengths and different proportions of crosslinker. Evidence of the development of nanostructures is obtained from scanning electron microscopy, and wide‐angle X‐ray diffraction studies support these results which show disappearance of the peak characteristic to d₀₀₁ spacing. In this hybrid MMT is dispersed homogeneously in the polymer matrix. © 2003 Society of Chemical Industry     

Anomaly Detection for Industrial Internet of Things Cyberattacks

The evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT) has empowered modern industries with the capability to implement large-scale IoT ecosystems, such as the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). The IIoT is vulnerable to a diverse range of cyberattacks that can be exploited by intruders and cause substantial reputational and financial harm to organizations. To preserve the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of IIoT networks, an anomaly-based intrusion detection system (IDS) can be used to provide secure, reliable, and efficient IIoT ecosystems. In this paper, we propose an anomaly-based IDS for IIoT networks as an effective security solution to efficiently and effectively overcome several IIoT cyberattacks. The proposed anomaly-based IDS is divided into three phases: pre-processing, feature selection, and classification. In the pre-processing phase, data cleaning and normalization are performed. In the feature selection phase, the candidates’ feature vectors are computed using two feature reduction techniques, minimum redundancy maximum relevance and neighborhood components analysis. For the final step, the modeling phase, the following classifiers are used to perform the classification: support vector machine, decision tree, k-nearest neighbors, and linear discriminant analysis. The proposed work uses a new data-driven IIoT data set called X-IIoTID. The experimental evaluation demonstrates our proposed model achieved a high accuracy rate of 99.58%, a sensitivity rate of 99.59%, a specificity rate of 99.58%, and a low false positive rate of 0.4%.     

Synthesis and Characterization of Magnetically Retrievable Fe3O4/Polyvinylpyrrolidone/Polystyrene Nanocomposite Catalyst for Efficient Catalytic Oxidation Degradation of Dyes Pollutants

Recently, the application of metal oxides such as Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles have wide interest for environmental remediation and treatment of wastewater especially contaminated with azo dyes owing to its high degradation efficacy and low toxicity. The recovery of magnetic catalysts without losing their efficiency is an essential feature in the catalytic applications. The aim of this article is to investigate and synthesis of magnetically retrievable Fe₃O₄/polyvinylpyrrolidone/polystyrene (Fe₃O₄/PVP/PS) nanocomposite for the catalytic degradation of azo dye acid red 18 (AR18). Fe₃O₄/PVP/PS nanocomposite was prepared in two steps. Firstly, PVP/PS microsphere was synthesized by γ-irradiation polymerization of styrene in presence of PVP solution. Secondly, deposition of Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles on PVP/PS microsphere was achieved by the alkaline co-precipitation of Fe³⁺/Fe²⁺ ions. The chemical structural and morphological properties of PVP/PS microsphere and Fe₃O₄/PVP/PS nanocomposite were examined by XRD, TEM, DLS, FTIR, EDX and VSM techniques. TEM results showed homogeneous morphology, spherical shaped and well-dispersed Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles with average particle size of 26 nm around PVP/PS microspheres. The VSM measurements of Fe₃O₄/PVP/PS nanocomposite exhibit excellent magnetic response of saturation magnetization 26.38 emu/g which is suitable in magnetic separation. The effect of the synthesized Fe₃O₄/PVP/PS nanocomposite on the catalytic degradation of AR18 in presence of hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) as a heterogeneous Fenton-like catalyst was examined. The catalyst Fe₃O₄/PVP/PS/H₂O₂ played basic role in promoting the oxidation degradation efficiency of AR18 of initial concentration 50 mg/L to 94.4% in 45 min with excellent recyclability till the sixth cycles under the best conditions of pH 3, 2% v/v H₂O₂ and 0.3 g catalyst amount. Furthermore, the Fe₃O₄/PVP/PS/H₂O₂ hybrid catalyst system supports high capability for oxidation degradation of mixture of different dyes. The Fe₃O₄/PVP/PS nanocomposite catalyst had high magnetic and recyclability characters which are acceptable for the treatment of wastewater contaminated by various dyes pollutants.

     

Synthesis and Characterization of Cationic Surfactants Based on N‐Hexamethylenetetramine as Active Microfouling Agents

Four cationic surfactants of quaternary hexammonium silane chloride based on hexamethylenetetramine and alkyl chloride were synthesized. The chemical structures of the prepared cationic surfactants were elucidated using Fourier transform infrared (FT‐IR) spectroscopy and mass spectrometry analysis. The surface and thermodynamic properties of the prepared surfactants were also studied. The performance of these cationic surfactants as microfouling agents against two strains of Gram‐negative bacteria, namely, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Escherichia coli, and two strains of Gram‐positive bacteria, namely, Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus subtilis, were evaluated as antimicrobial agents. The results showed that the maximum antimicrobial activity was detected for N‐hexamethylenetetramine‐N‐ethyl silane ammonium trichloride (Ah). The maximum and minimum antimicrobial activities were 73 and 60 % against S. aureus and E. coli, respectively, at a concentration of 5 mg/l, pH 7, and 37 °C.     

Facile development,characterization, and optimization of new metformin-loaded nanocarrier system for efficient colon cancer adjunct therapy

Purpose: Metformin hydrochloride (MF) repurposing as adjuvant anticancer therapy for colorectal cancer (CRC) proved effective. Several studies attempted to develop MF-loaded nanoparticles (NPs), however the entrapment efficiency (EE%) was poor. Thus, the present study aimed at the facile development of a new series of chitosan (CS)-based semi-interpenetrating network (semi-IPN) NPs incorporating Pluronic^® nanomicelles as nanocarriers for enhanced entrapment and sustained release of MF for efficient treatment of CRC.

Methods: The NPs were prepared by ionic gelation and subsequently characterized using FTIR, DSC, TEM, and DLS. A full factorial design was also adopted to study the effect of various formulation variables on EE%, particle size, and zeta-potential of NPs.

Results: NPs had a spherical shape and a mean particle size ranging between 135 and 220?nm. FTIR and DSC studies results were indicative of successful ionic gelation with the drug being dispersed in its amorphous form within CS-Pluronic^® matrix. Maximum EE% reaching 57.00?±?12.90% was achieved using Pluronic^®-123 based NPs. NPs exhibited a sustained release profile over 48?h. The MF-loaded NPs sensitized RKO CRC cells relative to drug alone.

Conclusion: The reported results highlighted the novel utility of the developed NPs in the arena of colon cancer treatment.     

Preparation and study of functionalized polymers containing pendent pesticide-active groups

A number of pesticide monomers containing pentachlorophenol as active group attached to vinyl groups, through oxyethylene as spacer group, have been prepared. The resulting monomers were homopolymerized under free-radical conditions and also copolymerized with styrene and 2-(2-hydroxyethoxy)ethyl methacrylate to introduce hydrophobic and hydrophilic nature to the resulting polymers. In addition, crosslinked copolymers were prepared by using different ratios of divinylbenzene. Data on the pentachlorophenol released through hydrolysis show that the degree of crosslinking, the hydrophilicity and the spacer group, as determined by the chemical structure and the polymer composition, as well as the pH, time and temperature appear to be major factors governing the rate at which a given polymer undergoes hydrolysis.     

Proportional integral-fractional filter controller design for first order lag plus time delay system

In this work, a design approach of proportional integral-fractional filter (PI-FF) controller for first order plus time delay (FOPTD) system is proposed in order to enhance the feedback control system performances characteristics. The controller design method is drawn up such that the transfer function of the overall closed-loop system is equivalent to the transfer function of the general fractional Bagley–Torvik reference model whose behaviour ranges from relaxation to oscillation for different values of the fractional order derivative and the damping ratio-like parameter. The tuning parameters of the PI-FF controller are derived analytically from the FOPTD process model and the general fractional Bagley–Torvik reference model parameters. Illustrative examples were presented to test the effectiveness and the usefulness of the proposed PI-FF controller on the feedback control system performance characteristics enhancement.     

Dynamic Modeling and Inverse Optimal PID with Feed-forward Control in <Emphasis Type="Italic">H</Emphasis><Subscript>∞</Subscript> Framework for a Novel 3D Pantograph Manipulator

This paper affords dynamic modeling and control for a new 3D pantograph manipulator. The new manipulator possesses pure decoupled translational motions and it is characterized by large workspace to size ratio, high speed, rigidity, and accuracy. Euler-Lagrange first type method is used to get the dynamic model. However, the resulted dynamic model is too complex to be used in model-based control techniques. Therefore, a simplified nominal plant is proposed. It allows the inverse dynamic solution efficiently. However, an explicit form of the nominal Coriolis and centrifugal matrix cannot be obtained due to the complicated kinematic terms. Considering these dynamic characteristics as well as the required robust trajectory tracking performance of the manipulator, a new controller is proposed. The new controller is called inverse optimal PID with Feed-Forward Control which is designed in H_∞ framework. The new controller has the following merits; robustness, optimality, simple implementation, and efficient execution without the need of explicit forms of dynamic matrices. The extended disturbance in the proposed controller is smaller than that in the inverse optimal PID control (IPID) and contains one type of error contrary to the nonlinear robust motion controller (NRIC). The performance of the proposed controller is compared with those of IPID and NRIC controllers for different trajectories and payloads. The dynamic simulation results via co-simulation of MSC-ADAMS® and MATLAB®/Simulink software prove the robustness of the proposed controller against speed/payload variations. The proposed controller is found to have higher performance compared with IPID and NRIC controllers. These results assure the feasibility of the 3D pantograph manipulator with the proposed controller for pure translational tracking applications.     

An improved PSO algorithm with genetic and neighborhood-based diversity operators for the job shop scheduling problem

The job shop scheduling problem (JSSP) is an important NP-hard practical scheduling problem that has various applications in the fields of optimization and production engineering. In this paper an effective scheduling method based on particle swarm optimization (PSO) for the minimum makespan problem of the JSSP is proposed. New variants of the standard PSO operators are introduced to adapt the velocity and position update rules to the discrete solution space of the JSSP. The proposed algorithm is improved by incorporating two neighborhood-based operators to improve population diversity and to avoid early convergence to local optima. First, the diversity enhancement operator tends to improve the population diversity by relocating neighboring particles to avoid premature clustering and to achieve broader exploration of the solution space. This is achieved by enforcing a circular neighboring area around each particle if the population diversity falls beneath the adaptable diversity threshold. The adaptive threshold is utilized to regulate the population diversity throughout the different stages of the search process. Second, the local search operator based on critical path analysis is used to perform local exploitation in the neighboring area of the best particles. Variants of the genetic well-known operators “selection” and “crossover” are incorporated to evolve stagnated particles in the swarm. The proposed method is evaluated using a collection of 123 well-studied benchmarks. Experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed method in producing excellent solutions that are robust and competitive to recent state-of-the-art heuristic-based algorithms reported in literature for nearly all of the tested instances.     

Design and Analysis of a Novel 3D Decoupled Manipulator Based on Compliant Pantograph for Micromanipulation

A novel 3D compliant manipulator for micromanipulation is introduced based on pantograph linkage. The proposed manipulator provides decoupled 3DOF translational motions. The key design feature is the use of parallelograms, which maintain the orientation of the end-effector fixed. The proposed manipulator provides advantages over its counterparts in the literature. It has significantly higher workspace to size ratio if its pantograph acts as a magnification device. On the other hand, it has higher resolution if its pantograph acts as a miniaturizing device. This provides great flexibility in the design process to account for the limited variety of the micro-actuators and the large variety of the micro-scale tasks in terms of workspace and resolution. Thus, the proposed system possesses the characteristics of gearing (speed up or speed down). A suitable choice of flexure hinges and material is done. The position and velocity kinematic analysis are carried out. Analytical expressions are derived for singularity-free-workspace boundaries in terms of physical constraints of the flexure joints. Dexterity analysis is performed to evaluate the design performance. A synthesis methodology of the proposed manipulator is developed. A finite element analysis is carried out and a prototype is manufactured to validate the conceptual design. Simulation and experimental results have successfully demonstrated the linearity and consistency between input and output displacements with acceptable parasitic motions. Moreover, the manipulability of the proposed manipulator is found to be configuration independent. Also, the manipulator could have isotropic performance over its workspace for certain actuator setup.