Synthesis and Characterization of Ricinoleamide-Based Polyurethane

Ricinus communis (RC) oil-based materials are currently receiving increasing attention because of economic and environmental concerns. In the present work, RC oil—a natural triol has been utilized for the development of an advanced polymeric material—poly(urethane-ricinoleamide) (PUR) through very simple synthesis and curing strategy, omitting derivatization steps or side reactions, chain extenders and crosslinkers. The synthesis of PUR was carried out in two steps. The first step is the introduction of an amide group in the RC oil (89.5% ricinoleic acid) via base catalyzed amidation, which results in N, N-bis (2-hydroxyethyl) ricinoleamide (HERA). The second step is urethanation of HERA by the reaction of toluene-2,4-diisocyanate (TDI) in minimal possible organic solvent by one-shot technique, which results in the formation of polyurethane along with amide linkages. The physico-chemical and spectral studies (FT-IR, ¹H-NMR and ¹³C-NMR techniques) confirm these two reactions and the structure of PUR. The resin was cured at ambient temperature without any cross linker. Solubility of the resin was investigated in different polar and non-polar solvents. Thermo-gravimetric analysis (TGA)/differential thermal analysis (DTA) and Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) were used to determine the thermal stability and curing behavior of PUR. An ambient cured ricinoleamide modified polyurethane resin exhibited thermal resistance up to 200–220 °C.     

Studies on Ambient Cured Biobased Mn(II), Co(II) and Cu(II) Containing Metallopolyesteramides

In this paper linseed oil based metallopolyesteramides (Mn(II)-/Co(II)-/Cu(II)-LPEA) containing metals [with half filled (d ⁵) and partially filled (d ⁷ and d ⁹) d orbitals] were synthesized via green route for the application of eco-friendly protective green material. This paper also described the role of occupancy of d orbitals on the performance of such polymers. The synthesis reaction was carried out in situ through condensation polymerization among linseed fatty amide diol (HELA), phthalic anhydride and respective metal acetates [M (OCOCH₃)₂; M = Mn(II), Co(II), Cu(II); different mole ratios] in absence of any harmful organic solvent. The structural determination (FTIR, ¹H-NMR and ¹³C-NMR), curing, thermal, physico-chemical, physico-mechanical, anticorrosive/chemical resistance, antibacterial properties of Mn(II)-/Co(II)-/Cu(II)-LPEA were carried out. The curing mechanism of the resin was confirmed by the comparison of FTIR spectra of uncured and cured resin. The curing mechanism of Mn(II)-/Co(II)-/Cu(II)-LPEA is found to be contrary to that of reported oil based polymer that involves the lipid autoxidation (slow process) in which driers are required to speed up the room temperature curing process. The incorporation of metals in Mn(II)-/Co(II)-/Cu(II)-LPEA improved the thermal stability as compared to virgin linseed oil based polyesteramide (LPEA). Mn(II)-/Co(II)-/Cu(II)-LPEA also show excellent antibacterial performance against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli. The observed diversity in material properties suggests that Mn-LPEA may be useful as an eco-friendly protective green material with thermal stability up to 320–330 °C.     

Ambient‐cured polyesteramide‐based anticorrosive coatings from linseed oil—A sustainable resource

Ambient‐cured polyesteramide (APEA) coating resin synthesized from dihydroxy fatty amide obtained from linseed oil, a sustainable resource, and poly(styrene‐co‐maleic anhydride), a bifunctional acid component, was found to exhibit improved physicomechanical and anticorrosive properties. The structural elucidation of APEA resin has been carried out by FTIR, ¹H‐NMR, and ¹³C‐NMR spectroscopies. The physicomechanical and chemical resistance properties were investigated by standard methods. The corrosion resistance performance was evaluated in acid, alkali, and organic solvent. The thermal behavior was studied by TGA technique. A comparative study of these properties of APEA with reported baked polyesteramide (PEA) coatings was carried out. A remarkable improvement in the drying property of APEA was observed. The APEA coatings also showed improved physicomechanical and anticorrosive properties as compared to the baked PEA coatings. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 97: 1818–1824, 2005     

When customers lash out: The effects of customer interactional injustice on emotional labor and the mediating role of discrete emotions.

Using affective events theory to integrate multifoci justice and emotional labor (EL), this lab study examined the effects of customer interactional justice on EL perceived by both the self and others. Participants played the role of customer-service representatives in a workplace simulation and were exposed to either interactionally fair or unfair customers. Results showed that unfairly treated participants engaged in higher levels of EL and found it more difficult to comply with display rules than did participants who were fairly treated. The above link was partially mediated by anger. Our findings suggest that customers are a viable source of justice, and customer behavior impacts the effort required of service workers to adhere to organizationally sanctioned emotional display rules. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Identification of AR parameters at a very low SNR using estimated spectral distribution in DCT domain

A simple and efficient method for system identification even at a very low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is presented. At an SNR as low as -7.5 dB, noise dominates the spectrum and system poles are almost lost in the profound noise. In the proposed method, an enhanced spectrum is estimated in the discrete cosine transform (DCT) domain using the least squares curve-fitting technique. The system modes that were previously indistinguishable become prominent in the enhanced spectrum. The system order is then overestimated using least squares higher order Yule-Walker (LSHOYW) equations to obtain better accuracy. The poles having higher strength in the autocorrelation domain are then identified as system poles.     

Improving the performance of 1D object classification by using the Electoral College

It has been proven that districted matching schemes (e.g., the US presidential election scheme, also called the Electoral College) are more stable than undistricted matching schemes (e.g., the popular voting scheme for selecting a governor in California), and that the theory can be used in pattern classification applications, such as image classification, where by its nature an object to be classified consists of elements distributed in a bounded 2D space. However, the objects of some pattern classification applications consist of features/values of elements lying on a limited 1D line segment. This paper will prove that districted matching scheme can still outperform undistricted matching scheme in these applications, and the improved performance of districted vote scheme is even more substantial for these 1D objects than for 2D objects. The theoretical result suggests the use of districted matching schemes for pattern recognition of 1D objects. We verified the theoretical analysis through artificial neural network-based approaches for the prediction of start codons of nucleotide sequences. Liang Chen received his Doctor' degree in Computer Science from the Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, in 1994. He is currently Associate Professor and Chair of Computer Science Department, University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, BC, Canada. His research interests include general artificial intelligence, image processing, bioinformatics, intelligent language tutoring system, computational intelligence, and fast approximate practical algorithms for solving some NP hard problems. Ruoyu Chen is now an undergraduate student (Class 2, Grade 2002) in Computer Science and Technology College at Jilin University, China, majoring Computer Science and Technology. He started to work with Dr. L. Chen in voting theory from 2003. He holds one Chinese Patent. His main research interests include artificial intelligence, natural language tutoring systems, data mining, and networks. Sharmin Nilufar received an MSc degree in Computer Science from Rajshahi University, Bangladesh. She is now a graduate student at University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, BC, Canada. Her research interests include information retrieval, image retrieval, and bioinformatics.     

PANIC: an integrated approach to the preservation of composite digital objects using Semantic Web services

To date, long-term preservation approaches have comprised of emulation, migration, normalization, and metadata – or some combination of these. Most existing work has focussed on applying these approaches to digital objects of a singular media type: text, HTML, images, video or audio. In this paper, we consider the preservation of composite, mixed-media digital objects, a rapidly growing class of resources. We describe an integrated, flexible system that we have developed, which leverages existing tools and services and assists organizations to dynamically discover the optimum preservation strategy as it is required. The system captures and periodically compares preservation metadata with software and format registries to determine those objects (or sub-objects) at risk. By making preservation software modules available as Web services and describing them semantically using a machine-processable ontology (OWL-S), the most appropriate preservation service(s) for each object (or sub-object) can then be dynamically discovered, composed and invoked by software agents (with optional human input at critical decision-making steps). The PANIC system successfully illustrates how the growing array of available preservation tools and services can be integrated to provide a sustainable, collaborative solution to the long-term preservation of large-scale collections of complex digital objects.