Thermal degradation of cinnamoylated poly(vinyl alcohol)

Thermogravimetry and pyrolysis in combination with gas chromatography and infrared spectroscopy were the experimental techniques applied to the thermal degradation of cinnamoylated poly(vinyl alcohol) samples, constituted from vinyl alcohol-vinyl cinnamate photocrosslinkable copolymers. The thermal decomposition products include gases, liquids and solids. The gases are formed from saturated and unsaturated volatile hydrocarbons C₁? C₄, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. The liquid fraction includes aromatic hydrocarbons and some oxygenated organic compounds. The solid product identified in the greatest amount was cinnamic acid. The content in the thermal decomposition products varies considerably both with copolymer composition and temperature.     

Ion‐exchange resins. II. Acrylamide crosslinked copolymers as precursors for some ion exchangers

Crosslinked copolymers of acrylamide (AA) and ethylacrylate and some ion exchangers derived from them containing either primary amine groups, obtained by the Hofmann degradation of the amide groups, or carboxylic groups, obtained by the alkaline hydrolysis of the ester groups, were studied. Divinylbenzene and N,N′‐methylenebisacrylamide were used as crosslinkers. The starting copolymers and the corresponding ion exchangers were characterized by IR spectroscopy, swelling behavior, and thermogravimetric analysis. The ion‐exchanger properties were correlated with the crosslinker nature and the chemical reactions performed on the AA copolymers. The average molecular weight between two crosslinks, determined from the swelling data in water, was compared with that calculated on the basis of the copolymerization stoichiometry only for the carboxylic cation exchangers. In this way, the preservation of the crosslink density after the hydrolysis was revealed. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 89: 2701–2707, 2003     

Sorption of Cr(III)‐containing cations on strongly basic anion exchangers

It is shown that strongly basic anion exchangers AV‐17 and Varion‐AD in definite conditions are able to retain Cr(III)‐containing ions from Cr(III) sulfate solution. It is found that the sorption of Cr(III)‐containing ions on the polymers is essentially dependent on the pH, temperature, and Cr(III) sulfate concentration. The maximum temperature dependence of sorption was found to be about 60°C. The sorption isotherms are well described by Langmuir's equations. The sorption kinetics is determined by the diffusion of Cr(III)‐containing ions into polymer's phase. It is assumed that the Cr(III)‐containing ions are retained through formation, in polymer's phase, of the jarosite‐type mineral compounds: R₄N[Cr₃(OH)₆(SO₄)₂], H₃O[Cr₃(OH)₆(SO₄)₂], and K[Cr₃(OH)₆(SO₄)₂]. For comparison of sorptional capacities, the sorption of Cr(III)‐containing ions was determined on different cation and anion exchangers. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 102: 3978–3985, 2006     

Miscibility and properties of linear poly(l-lactide)/branched poly(l-lactide) copolyester blends

Polymer blends consisting of linear poly(l-lactide) (PLLA) and different proportions of dendritic PLLA-based copolyesters (hb-PLLA) characterized by different degrees of branching (DB) were obtained in melt. The solid-state properties of poly(l-lactide)s and their blends were investigated by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and stress-strain measurements. DSC and DMA methods proved miscibility of PLLA/hb-PLLA blends for the studied composition range. AFM indicated that no phase separation occurs in PLLA/hb-PLLA blends and that PLLA and hb-PLLA cocrystallize in one single lamellae type. The mechanical characteristics of PLLA/hb-PLLA blends deteriorated with an increase of the DB and with changing blend composition. Susceptibility of the blends to biodegradation was studied by measuring the weight loss in two different biodegradation media. PLLA/hb-PLLA blends showed more pronounced hydrophilic character and higher susceptibility to biodegradation with an increase in the degree of branching.     

Synthetic handwritten CAPTCHAs

CAPTCHAs (completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart) are in common use today as a method for performing automated human verification online. The most popular type of CAPTCHA is the text recognition variety. However, many of the existing printed text CAPTCHAs have been broken by web-bots and are hence vulnerable to attack. We present an approach to use human-like handwriting for designing CAPTCHAs. A synthetic handwriting generation method is presented, where the generated textlines need to be as close as possible to human handwriting without being writer-specific. Such handwritten CAPTCHAs exploit the differential in handwriting reading proficiency between humans and machines. Test results show that when the generated textlines are further obfuscated with a set of deformations, machine recognition rates decrease considerably, compared to prior work, while human recognition rates remain the same.     

Direct integration of micromachined pipettes in a flow channel forsingle DNA molecule study by optical tweezers

We have developed a micromachined flow cell consisting of a flow channel integrated with micropipettes. The flow cell is used in combination with an optical trap setup (optical tweezers) to study mechanical and structural properties of λ-DNA molecules. The flow cell was realized using silicon micromachining including the so-called buried channel technology to fabricate the micropipettes, the wet etching of glass to create the flow channel, and the powder blasting of glass to make the fluid connections. The volume of the flow cell is 2 μl. The pipettes have a length of 130 μm, a width of 5-10 μm, a round opening of 1 μm and can be processed with different shapes. Using this flow cell we stretched single molecules (λ-DNA) showing typical force-extension curves also found with conventional techniques. These pipettes can be also used for drug delivery, for injection of small gas bubbles into a liquid flow to monitor the streamlines, and for the mixing of liquids to study diffusion effects. The paper describes the design, the fabrication and testing of the flow cell     

Itanium 2 processor 6M: higher frequency and larger L3 cache

The third-generation Itanium processor targets the high-performance server and workstation market. To do so, the design team sought to provide higher performance through increased frequency and a larger L3 cache. At the same time, we had to limit the power dissipation to fit into the existing platform envelope. These considerations led to what we now call the Itanium 2 processor 6M: the latest generation of Itanium 2, which features a 6-Mbyte, 24-way set-associative on-die L3 cache. The design implements a 2-bundle 64-bit explicitly parallel instruction computing (EPIC) architecture and is fully compatible with previous implementations. Although this processors frequency is 50 percent higher than that of the previous generation, the maximum power dissipation holds flat at 130 W to ensure the platform's backward compatibility.