Copper Immobilization on Fe3O4@Agar: An Efficient Superparamagnetic Nanocatalyst for Green Ullmann-Type Cross-Coupling Reaction of Primary and Secondary Amines with Aryl Iodide Derivatives

Journal of Inorganic and Organometallic Polymers and Materials - Immobility of copper on magnetic nanoparticles was performed using surface rectification of Fe3O4 with Agar. The magnetic...     

The effect of rice bran on physicochemical,textural and glycaemic properties of ready-to-eat extruded corn snacks

In this work, corn extruded snack products were enriched with rice bran (RB) at 10% and 15%. A co-rotating twin-screw extruder was used with a feed moisture content of 16 g 100 g⁻¹, a screw speed of 240 r.p.m. and four heating sections of the barrel (100, 140, 150 and 150 °C). The impact of RB inclusion on nutritional profile, starch digestion, physicochemical and textural properties of snack products was evaluated. RB-enriched extrudates showed a lower specific volume and hardness and higher crispness than control. RB at 15% gave a water-holding capacity lower than control. Rheology of extrudate dispersions indicated an increase in elastic interactions and solid-like behaviour with RB supplementation. Differences in rheological properties resulted in attenuation of predictive glycaemic response for RB-enriched snacks.     

The effects of surface-modified graphene nanoplatelets on the sliding wear properties of basalt fibers-reinforced epoxy composites

Possessing unique designs and properties absent in conventional materials, nanocomposites have made a remarkable imprint in science and technology. This is particularly true regarding the polymer matrix composites when they are further reinforced with nanoparticles. In this study, the effects of different weight percentages (0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, and 0.5) of surface-modified graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) on the microhardness and wear properties of basalt fibers/epoxy composites were investigated. The GNPs were surface modified by silane, and the composites were made by the hand lay-up method. The wear tests were conducted under two different loads of 20 and 40 N. The best wear properties were achieved at 0.3 wt % GNPs as a result of the GNPs' self-lubrication property and the formation of a stable transfer/lubricating film at the pin and disk interface. Moreover, the friction coefficient was lower at the higher normal load of 40 N. The microscopic studies by FESEM and SEM showed that the presence of GNPs up to 0.3 wt % led to the stability of the transfer/lubricating film by enhancing the adhesion of the basalt fibers to the epoxy resin. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2019 , 136, 47986.     

Evolving an Accurate Decision Tree-Based Model for Predicting Carbon Dioxide Solubility in Polymers

Solubility is one of the most indispensable physicochemical properties determining the compatibility of components of a blending system. Research has been focused on the solubility of carbon dioxide in polymers as a significant application of green chemistry. To replace costly and time-consuming experiments, a novel solubility prediction model based on a decision tree, called the stochastic gradient boosting algorithm, was proposed to predict CO₂ solubility in 13 different polymers, based on 515 published experimental data lines. The results indicate that the proposed ensemble model is an effective method for predicting the CO₂ solubility in various polymers, with highly satisfactory performance and high efficiency. It produces more accurate outputs than other methods such as machine learning schemes and an equation of state approach.     

Characterization,in vitro bioactivity and biological studies of sol-gel-derived TiO2 substituted 58S bioactive glass

Bioactive glasses (BGs) have been used for bone formation and bone repair processes in recent years. This study investigated the titanium substitution effect on 58S BGs (Ti-BGs) 60SiO₂-(36 − X)CaO-4P₂O₅-XTiO₂ (X = 0, 3, and 5 mol.%) prepared by the sol-gel technique, and the main goal was to find the optimum amount of titanium in Ti-BGs. Synthesized BGs, which were investigated after immersion in simulated body fluid (SBF), were tested by X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and scanning electron microscopy. Moreover alkaline phosphate (ALP) activity, 3-(4,5dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay, and antibacterial studies were employed to investigate the biological properties of Ti-BGs. According to the FTIR and XRD test results, hydroxyapatite (HA) formation on Ti-BGs surfaces was confirmed. Meanwhile, the presence of 5 mol.% compared to 3 mol.% increased the HA grain distribution and their size on the Ti-BGs surface. Additionally, MTT and ALP results confirmed that the optimal amount of titanium substitution in BG was 5 mol.%. Since 5 mol.% Ti incorporated BG (BG-5) had the highest biocompatibility level, antibacterial properties, maximum cell proliferation, and ALP activity among the synthesized Ti-BGs, it is presented as the best candidate for further in vivo investigations.     

CdSnO3/SnD NPs as a Nanocatalyst for Carbonylation of o-Phenylenediamine with CO2

Catalysis Letters - In order to carbonize o-phenylenediamine with CO2, an effective approach was used with UV light irradiation by Sn(IV) doping DFNS (SnD) supported CdSnO3 as a catalyst...     

Thermal Bending Analysis of Doubly Curved Composite Laminated Shell Panels with General Boundary Conditions and Laminations

Thermal bending analysis of doubly curved laminated shell panels with general boundary conditions and laminations is presented. The equations of equilibrium are derived in the form of two coupled sets of ordinary differential equations based on a general shell theory and solved through the state-space approach in a repeated manner. It is depicted that the results of the present method are in great agreement with analytical solutions. Cylindrical shell panels with general boundary conditions and laminations, where no analytical solution is available, are solved. It is found that the present method exhibits a high convergence rate as well as presenting accurate results in all cases.     

Selectivity Enhancement to the Exclusive Formation of Ethyltoluenes and Hydrogen During Dehydroalkylation of Toluene with Ethane

The dehydroalkylation of toluene with ethane to the isomeric ethyltoluenes was studied on 0.4Pt/H-ZSM-5 at varying contact times (1/WHSV). At a high contact time of 1.0 h, toluene disproportionation and hydrogenolysis reactions dominate, resulting in low selectivity to the desired ethyltoluenes via the alkylation reaction. However, at a low contact time of 0.12 h side reactions are eliminated, resulting in maximum selectivities to the kinetically favored ethyltoluenes and hydrogen. Results at high selectivities to ethyltoluenes provide significant insight into reaction pathways.     

Reconstruction of reflectance spectra using weighted principal component analysis

The weighted principal component analysis technique is employed for reconstruction of reflectance spectra of surface colors from the related tristimulus values. A dynamic eigenvector subspace based on applying certain weights to reflectance data of Munsell color chips has been formed for each particular sample and the color difference value between the target, and Munsell dataset is chosen as a criterion for determination of weighting factors. Implementation of this method enables one to increase the influence of samples which are closer to target on extracted principal eigenvectors and subsequently diminish the effect of those samples which benefit from higher amount of color difference. The performance of the suggested method is evaluated in spectral reflectance reconstruction of three different collections of colored samples by the use of the first three Munsell bases. The resulting spectra show considerable improvements in terms of root mean square error between the actual and reconstructed reflectance curves as well as CIELAB color difference under illuminant A in comparison to those obtained from the standard PCA method. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 33, 360–371, 2008     

Query processing optimization in broadcasting XML data in mobile communications

Todays, XML as a de facto standard is used to broadcast data over mobile wireless networks. In these networks, mobile clients send their XML queries over a wireless broadcast channel and recieve their desired XML data from the channel. However, downloading the whole XML data by a mobile device is a challenge since the mobile devices used by clients are small battery powered devices with limited resources. To meet this challenge, the XML data should be indexed in such a way that the desired XML data can be found easily and only such data can be downloaded instead of the whole XML data by the mobile clients. Several indexing methods are proposed to selectively access the XML data over an XML stream. However, the existing indexing methods cause an increase in the size of XML stream by including some extra information over the XML stream. In this paper, a new XML stream structure is proposed to disseminate the XML data over a broadcast channel by grouping and summarizing the structural information of XML nodes. By summarizing such information, the size of XML stream can be reduced and therefore, the latency of retrieving the desired XML data over a wirless broadcast channel can be reduced. The proposed XML stream structure also contains indexes in order to skip from the irrelevant parts over the XML stream. It therefore can reduce the energy consumption of mobile devices in downloading the results of XML queries. In addition, our proposed XML stream structure can process different types of XML queries and experimental results showed that it improves the performace of XML query processing over the XML data stream compared to the existing research works in terms of access and tuning times.