Flexible poly(styrene-ethylene-butadiene-styrene) hybrid nanofibers for bioengineering and water filtration applications

Among the thermoplastic elastomers that play important roles in the polymer industry due to their superior properties, styrene-based species and polyurethane block copolymers are of great interest. Poly(styrene-ethylene-butadiene-styrene) (SEBS) as a triblock copolymer seems to have the potential to meet many demands in different applications due to various industrial requirements where durability, biocompatibility, breaking elongation, and interfacial adhesion are important. In this study, the SEBS triblock copolymer was functionalized with natural (Satureja hortensis, SH) and synthetic (nanopowder, TiO₂) agents to obtain composite nanofibers by electrospinning and electrospraying methods for use in biomedical and water filtration applications. The results were compared with thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) composite nanofibers, which are commonly used in these fields. Here, functionalized SEBS nanofibers exhibited antibacterial effect while at the same time improving cell viability. In addition, because of successful water filtration by using the SEBS composite nanofibers, the material may have a good potential to be used comparably to TPU for the application.     

A novel compact circuit for 4-PAM energy-efficient high speed interconnect data transmission and reception

Transmission of signals, whether on-chip or off-chip, places severe constraints on timing and extracts a large price in energy. New silicon device technologies, such as back-plane CMOS, provide a programmable and adaptable threshold voltage as an additional tool that can be used for low power design. We show that one particularly desirable use of this freedom is energy-efficient high-speed transmission across long interconnects using multi-valued encoding. Our multi-valued CMOS circuits take advantage of the threshold voltage control of the transistors, by using the signal-voltage-to-threshold-voltage span, in order to make area-efficient implementations of 4-PAM (pulse amplitude modulation) transceivers operating at high speed. In a comparison of a variety of published technologies, for signal transmission with interconnects of 10-15 mm length, we show up to 50% improvement in energy for on-chip signal transmission over binary encoding together with higher limits for operating speeds without a penalty in circuit noise margin.     

五轴铣削加工中心坐标转换数学模型的建立及应用

首先以 HERMLE C1200 U 为例分析了五轴铣削加工中心的基本结构,然后据此给出了涉及多轴铣削加工中心后置处理角度分配和坐标变换的数学模型,最后介绍了以此数学模型为核心,为UG 软件开发的后置处理软件 UG-HERP1.0的解决方案。     

Delayed neurological symptoms from the spontaneous migration of a bullet in the lumbosacral spinal canal. Case report

In a patient wounded by a gunshot in the abdomen, the bullet was radiologically located intradurally at S1 level. Although she had no neurological deficit at admission, she developed pain and motor weakness a few days later. At operation the bullet was found at L4 level and its removal resulted in complete neurological recovery.     

Interaction of Yttria with Uranium Fluoride Gases (UFn, n= 4, 6) at High Temperatures

The corrosion mechanism and microstructural characteristics of yttria (Y₂O₃) exposed to uranium hexafluoride (UF₄) and uranium tetrafluoride gases at temperatures above 900°C were investigated. Processed yttria samples were exposed for times ranging from 5 to 40 min. A weight increase was observed after each test exposure. An outer corrosion scale composed of UO₂ and YF₃, and an inner corrosion layer of YF₃, were observed following the UF₆ reaction at nearly 1200 K. During the UF₄ exposure, an outer layer containing a liquid mixture of fluoride, oxygen, yttrium, uranium compounds, a secondary reaction layer of UO₂ followed by an inner layer composed of a solution of Y₂O₃ and YF₃, possibly in the form of YOF inner layer, were observed. It was found that the corrosion process is controlled by the diffusion which is evidenced by the parabolic growth rate of the secondary layer. After completion of the solidification process, the formation of a eutectic region and dendrites were observed throughout the outer scale. In general, at temperatures above 1173 K, high corrosion rates were observed, and yttria did not appear to be a viable containment material for UF₄ and UF₆.     

Development of a suitable model for characterizing photovoltaic arrays with shaded solar cells

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of non-uniform solar irradiation distribution on energy output of different interconnected configurations in photovoltaic (PV) arrays. In order to find which configuration is less susceptible to mismatch effects, a PV module model is developed. This model can take into consideration the effects of bypass diodes and the variation of the equivalent circuit parameters with respect to operating conditions. The proposed model can provide sufficient degree of precision as well as solar cell-based analysis in analyzing large scale PV arrays without increasing the computational effort. In order to produce more reliable and robust simulations, improved and extended algorithms are presented. Some results are discussed in detail and some recommendations are extracted by testing several shading scenarios.     

Comparative study in chemistry of microbially and electrochemically induced pitting of 316L stainless steel

Ennoblement of stainless steel (SS) by microbially deposited manganese oxides can lead to pitting corrosion at low chloride concentrations, causing unexpected material failures. We exposed 316L SS to manganese oxidizing bacteria Leptothrix discophora under well-defined laboratory conditions, and then placed the ennobled coupons in a 0.5 M sodium chloride solution until pitting developed. Using time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectroscopy we demonstrated that the pits and their immediate vicinity associated with microbial influenced corrosion had different chemical signatures than those associated with electrochemically induced pitting, suggesting a possibility that the microorganisms were directly involved in pit initiation. Based on the differences in the chemical signatures we were able to distinguish the microbially induced pits from those induced by anodic polarization.     

Detection of COVID-19 and its pulmonary stage using Bayesian hyperparameter optimization and deep feature selection methods

Since the first case of COVID-19 was reported in December 2019, many studies have been carried out on artificial intelligence for the rapid diagnosis of the disease to support health services. Therefore, in this study, we present a powerful approach to detect COVID-19 and COVID-19 findings from computed tomography images using pre-trained models using two different datasets. COVID-19, influenza A (H1N1) pneumonia, bacterial pneumonia and healthy lung image classes were used in the first dataset. Consolidation, crazy-paving pattern, ground-glass opacity, ground-glass opacity and consolidation, ground-glass opacity and nodule classes were used in the second dataset. The study consists of four steps. In the first two steps, distinctive features were extracted from the final layers of the pre-trained ShuffleNet, GoogLeNet and MobileNetV2 models trained with the datasets. In the next steps, the most relevant features were selected from the models using the Sine–Cosine optimization algorithm. Then, the hyperparameters of the Support Vector Machines were optimized with the Bayesian optimization algorithm and used to reclassify the feature subset that achieved the highest accuracy in the third step. The overall accuracy obtained for the first and second datasets is 99.46% and 99.82%, respectively. Finally, the performance of the results visualized with Occlusion Sensitivity Maps was compared with Gradient-weighted class activation mapping. The approach proposed in this paper outperformed other methods in detecting COVID-19 from multiclass viral pneumonia. Moreover, detecting the stages of COVID-19 in the lungs was an innovative and successful approach.