Transmittance and cathodoluminescence of AlN ceramics sintered with Ca3Al2O6 as sintering additive

Aluminum nitride ceramics were prepared by sintering with 0–4.8 mass% of Ca₃Al₂O₆ (C₃A) as a sintering additive. The transmittance in the range of 260–550 nm increased with increasing amount of C₃A. The cathodoluminescence intensity attributed to oxygen-induced defects decreased with increasing amount of C₃A. From the results, the increase of the transmittance in the range of 260–550 nm was considered to be related to the decrease of the oxygen-induced defect density.     

R & D Needs - Drying of Ceramics

New research and development needs for the drying of ceramics are prooosed. The researches on the ceramic drying are briefly reviewed and the role of the drying in the ceramic production process iS summarized. The drying must deal with molded materials and the problem is of significant difference from another drying with particulate materials. It means that the drying must be performed with keeping the molded feature and the insufficient completion of drying and the careless operation influence directly on the product quality The importnance of the R & D on the heat and moisture transfer. shrinking mechanism. the deformation behavior and the strain-stress formation in the molded clay issuggested. The subjects are also pointed out for the further improvement of the ceramic drying process and the precise design of molding with high quality.     

Drying-Induced Strain and Stress: A Review

This paper is to review the works on strains and suesses in materials during drying.The strains and suesses are caused when temperature and moisture gradients are generated in mterials whose volume changes with heating and moisture removal. In such materials. failure and irregular deformion may be generated which affect considerably the qudity of the products after drying. In the first part. modeling procedure is introduced for the analysis of the strain-stress behavior in elaslic. viscous and visccelastic materials combined with heat and moisture transfer. An overview of the works on swains and stresses and drying characteristics are presented for malerials such as porous media. clay. sol-gels. agricultural products and foods in the second part. There are some materials that show both elasticity of the solid phase and viscosity of the fluid phase ( water or solvena∥ or viscoelasticiry. The suesses are often correlated with a suction pressure of fluids in pores and the flow rate is based on Dacy's equation for the elastic and viscous tnedia and a kind of viscoelastic media. The general canstitulive equalions. for suains and svesses are often analyzed with the stain behavior given by a function of moisturr for some media ai well. The emohasis is on the inuoduclion of comprehensive criteria for undersunding the problems of strain and stress development in materials subjected to drying.     

Transiliac catheterization of the inferior vena cava for long-term venous access in children

In infants and children requiring prolonged, multiple central venous (CV) catheterizations, the superior (SVC) and inferior vena cava may become thrombosed or stenotic, making CV access a difficult problem. Use of the iliac vein may be an acceptable alternative. We report a patient with thrombosis of the SVC in whom the external iliac vein was accessed through a retroperitoneal approach for placement of an implantable port. This technique is easy to perform, and there are no special materials or patient positioning required.     

Carbon fiber from natural biopolymer Bombyx mori silk fibroin with iodine treatment

Carbon fibers were prepared from silk fibers after an iodine treatment and the carbon yield, fiber morphology, structure and mechanical properties were investigated. A single or multi-step carbonization process was used for the preparation. In the single step process, silk fibroin (SF) fibers were heated from 25 to 800 °C with a heating rate of 5 °C min⁻¹ under Ar atmosphere. However, the carbon fiber obtained was partially melted and was too fragile to handle. For better performance, SF fibers were treated with iodine vapor at 100 °C for 12 h and untreated and iodinated SF fibers were heated from 25 to 800 °C by a multi-step carbonization process, which was defined based on the optimum thermal degradation rate of silk. In this multi-step process, the carbon fibers obtained from iodinated SF were structurally intact and stable in appearance, and the carbon yield achieved was ca. 36 wt.%, much higher than the value for untreated SF. X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopic observation revealed that the obtained carbon fibers from both untreated and iodinated SFs had a basically amorphous structure. The strength of carbon fibers prepared from iodinated SF using the multi-step carbonization was considerably increased compared to that of untreated SF. According to viscoelastic measurement, by heating above 280 °C the iodine introduced intermolecular cross-linking of the SF, and its melt flow was inhibited which produced a higher yield and better performance of the carbon fiber.     

Geometrically Nonlinear Buffeting Response of a Cable-Stayed Bridge

A geometrically nonlinear buffeting analysis of a cable-stayed bridge in the time domain is described. The bridge structure is modeled with three-dimensional thin-walled beam elements and three-dimensional elastic catenary cable elements. Spatially correlated wind velocity fluctuations are modeled and simulated using an algorithm for generating sample functions of a stationary, multivariate stochastic process according to its prescribed cross-spectral density matrix. Aerodynamic damping and aerodynamic stiffness are formulated based on experimentally determined flutter derivatives. The focus of this paper is on the effect of fluctuating components of the spatially correlated wind velocity on the geometrically nonlinear buffeting response for an 870 m cable-stayed bridge.     

Reconnaissance of Golcuk 1999 Earthquake Damage Using Satellite Images

This study utilizes remotely sensed pre- and post-disaster images in order to detect any change specifically associated with structural and major regional damage caused by natural disasters such as a strong earthquake. Currently, postdisaster reconnaissance is conducted using mostly ground-truth teams. Although by using this method high-resolution assessment can be provided, it is very time consuming, costly and sometimes not practical. This study investigates an unsupervised near near-time method of reconnaissance using a pair of coregistered remotely sensed images of the same scene acquired at different times as input. The output is an image (mostly binary) in which “changed” pixels are separated from “not-changed” ones. The approach is fully deterministic using principal component analysis, normalization and further setting a threshold to classify pixels. For verification, a set of multispectral images from Golcuk-Turkey 1999 earthquake was used. It is concluded the program generates very similar results as obtained by ground-truth teams.     

Dimethyl Fumarate Induces Apoptosis via Inhibition of NF-κB and Enhances the Effect of Paclitaxel and Adriamycin in Human TNBC Cells

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) has the poorest prognosis of all breast cancer subtypes. Recently, the activation of NF-κB, which is involved in the growth and survival of malignant tumors, has been demonstrated in TNBC, suggesting that NF-κB may serve as a new therapeutic target. In the present study, we examined whether dimethyl fumarate (DMF), an NF-κB inhibitor, induces apoptosis in TNBC cells and enhances the apoptosis-inducing effect of paclitaxel and adriamycin. Cell survival was analyzed by the trypan blue assay and apoptosis assay. Protein detection was examined by immunoblotting. The activation of NF-κB p65 was correlated with poor prognosis in patients with TNBC. DMF induced apoptosis in MDA-MB-231 and BT-549 cells at concentrations that were non-cytotoxic to the normal mammary cell line MCF-10A. Furthermore, DMF inhibited NF-κB nuclear translocation and Survivin, XIAP, Bcl-xL, and Bcl-2 expression in MDA-MB-231 and BT-549 cells. Moreover, DMF enhanced the apoptosis-inducing effect of paclitaxel and adriamycin in MDA-MB-231 cells. These findings suggest that DMF may be an effective therapeutic agent for the treatment of TNBC, in which NF-κB is constitutively active. DMF may also be useful as an adjuvant therapy to conventional anticancer drugs.     

Improvement of both adsorption performance of silica gel and heat transfer characteristics by means of heat exchange modulation for a heat pump

In order to provide high performance silica gel for an adsorption heat pump (AHP), gels were synthesized using the sol-gel process modified with a new method of controlling the primary gel particle growth by the addition of aluminum ion. In this process, the pores of the silica gel synthesized became smaller when aluminum ion was added in the washing process. Furthermore, this silica gel adsorbed more water at a low region of water vapor pressure and its adsorption ability did not change after 100 repetitive times of adsorping/desorping water vapor. The experimental results from the water vapor adsorption on the silica gel agreed well with theoretical results obtained under the Lump model for heat transfer and intraparticle diffusion model for mass transfer. A new direct heat exchange silica gel module (DS-module) for the AHP was provided, and the heat transfer characteristics during the operation for the adsorption of water vapor were both experimentally and theoretically determined. The period of the adsorption for the DS-module was shorter than that for a silica gel/tube module. Therefore, with the addition of the DS-module the heat transfer in the AHP adsorber was sufficiently enhanced and the maximum heat generation power for the 2-mm-thick DS-module was obtained. © 1997 Scripta Technica, Inc. Heat Trans Jpn Res, 25(7): 420–433, 1996