Direct Ink Writing of Polymer Composite Electrolytes with Enhanced Thermal Conductivities

Proper distribution of thermally conductive nanomaterials in polymer batteries offers new opportunities to mitigate performance degradations associated with local hot spots and safety concerns in batteries. Herein, a direct ink writing (DIW) method is utilized to fabricate polyethylene oxide (PEO) composite polymers electrolytes (CPE) embedded with silane-treated hexagonal boron nitride (S-hBN) platelets and free of any volatile organic solvents. It is observed that the S-hBN platelets are well aligned in the printed CPE during the DIW process. The in-plane thermal conductivity of the printed CPE with the aligned S-hBN platelets is 1.031 W ⁻¹ K⁻¹, which is about 1.7 times that of the pristine CPE with the randomly dispersed S-hBN platelets (0.612 W ⁻¹ K⁻¹). Thermal imaging shows that the peak temperature (°C) of the printed electrolytes is 24.2% lower than that of the CPE without S-hBN, and 10.6% lower than that of the CPE with the randomly dispersed S-hBN, indicating a superior thermal transport property. Lithium-ion half-cells made with the printed CPE and LiFePO₄ cathode displayed high specific discharge capacity of 146.0 mAh g⁻¹ and stable Coulombic efficiency of 91% for 100 cycles at room temperature. This work facilitates the development of printable thermally-conductive polymers for safer battery operations.     

Analysis of the urine proteome in patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) accounts for over 213?000 deaths worldwide each year, largely due to late diagnosis. One of the risk factors for the development of PDAC is chronic pancreatitis (CP); the intense desmoplastic reaction makes differentiation between the two conditions extremely difficult. In order to identify biomarkers for noninvasive diagnosis, we performed 2-D DIGE analysis of urine samples from healthy individuals and patients with PDAC and CP. Despite considerable intersample heterogeneity, a total of 127 statistically valid (p<0.05), differentially expressed protein spots were detected, 101 of which were identified using MALDI-TOF MS. A number of these, including annexin A2, gelsolin and CD59 have already been associated with PDAC, however, their validation using immunoblotting proved challenging. This is probably due to extensive PTMs and processing thus indicating the need for raising specific antibodies for urinary proteins. Despite this, our study clearly demonstrates that urine is a valid source of noninvasive biomarkers in patients with pancreatic diseases.     

A new hybrid intelligent system for accurate detection of Parkinson's disease

Elderly people are commonly affected by Parkinson's disease (PD) which is one of the most common neurodegenerative disorders due to the loss of dopamine-producing brain cells. People with PD's (PWP) may have difficulty in walking, talking or completing other simple tasks. Variety of medications is available to treat PD. Recently, researchers have found that voice signals recorded from the PWP is becoming a useful tool to differentiate them from healthy controls. Several dysphonia features, feature reduction/selection techniques and classification algorithms were proposed by researchers in the literature to detect PD. In this paper, hybrid intelligent system is proposed which includes feature pre-processing using Model-based clustering (Gaussian mixture model), feature reduction/selection using principal component analysis (PCA), linear discriminant analysis (LDA), sequential forward selection (SFS) and sequential backward selection (SBS), and classification using three supervised classifiers such as least-square support vector machine (LS-SVM), probabilistic neural network (PNN) and general regression neural network (GRNN). PD dataset was used from University of California-Irvine (UCI) machine learning database. The strength of the proposed method has been evaluated through several performance measures. The experimental results show that the combination of feature pre-processing, feature reduction/selection methods and classification gives a maximum classification accuracy of 100% for the Parkinson's dataset.     

Adhesion interactions between poly(vinyl alcohol) and iron‐oxide surfaces: The effect of acetylation

Atomic force microscopy with chemically functionalized colloidal probes was used to study “acid–base” interactions between poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) and a metal surface. By using well‐defined model surfaces, we have studied the adhesion forces between a hydroxylated surface and cantilever tips with varying hydroxyl content. Decreasing the amount of available hydroxyl groups dramatically reduced the observed adhesion force. The calculated bond energy for each cantilever tip was found to be in the range of typical hydrogen bond energies, i.e., 10–40 kJ/mol, suggesting that the acid–base interactions are predominately hydrogen bonding. Similarly, the force versus distance curves using PVA functionalized colloidal probes showed a strong dependence on the chemical functionality of the tip and the degree of acetylation of the intervening PVA. It was observed that, with an increase in the acetyl content of the PVA, the adhesion force decreased. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 99: 3528–3534, 2006     

Development of a Robust and Cost-Effective Friction Stir Welding Process for Use in Advanced Military Vehicles

To respond to the advent of more lethal threats, recently designed aluminum-armor-based military-vehicle systems have resorted to an increasing use of higher strength aluminum alloys (with superior ballistic resistance against armor piercing (AP) threats and with high vehicle-light weighing potential). Unfortunately, these alloys are not very amenable to conventional fusion-based welding technologies and in-order to obtain high-quality welds, solid-state joining technologies such as Friction stir welding (FSW) have to be employed. However, since FSW is a relatively new and fairly complex joining technology, its introduction into advanced military vehicle structures is not straight forward and entails a comprehensive multi-step approach. One such (three-step) approach is developed in the present work. Within the first step, experimental and computational techniques are utilized to determine the optimal tool design and the optimal FSW process parameters which result in maximal productivity of the joining process and the highest quality of the weld. Within the second step, techniques are developed for the identification and qualification of the optimal weld joint designs in different sections of a prototypical military vehicle structure. In the third step, problems associated with the fabrication of a sub-scale military vehicle test structure and the blast survivability of the structure are assessed. The results obtained and the lessons learned are used to judge the potential of the current approach in shortening the development time and in enhancing reliability and blast survivability of military vehicle structures.     

A Geometric-phase Interferometer

Abstract

An interferometer operating purely on the geometric phase is described. The optical paths traversed by the two beams in this interferometer are always equal, and the phase difference between the beams is varied by operating on the geometric phase     

Shape-from-focus by tensor voting

In this correspondence, we address the task of recovering shape-from-focus (SFF) as a perceptual organization problem in 3-D. Using tensor voting, depth hypotheses from different focus operators are validated based on their likelihood to be part of a coherent 3-D surface, thereby exploiting scene geometry and focus information to generate reliable depth estimates. The proposed method is fast and yields significantly better results compared with existing SFF methods.     

Synthesis, characterization and electrical conductivity studies on A3Bi2P3O12 (A = Na, K) materials

Crystalline Na₃Bi₂P₃O₁₂, K₃Bi₂P₃O₁₂ and glassy K₃Bi₂P₃O₁₂ compounds were prepared by solid-state reaction method. The prepared samples are characterized by X-ray powder diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and differential scanning calorimetry. The crystalline materials are found to be orthorhombic. The electrical conductivity measurements on the crystalline and glassy samples show that at ∼373 K, the σ_DC for crystalline K₃Bi₂P₃O₁₂ (0.81 × 10⁻⁸ S/cm) is about two orders of magnitude higher than the corresponding glassy phase (1.25 × 10⁻¹⁰ S/cm). The scaling results show that the conductivity relaxation mechanism is independent of temperature.     

Intraocular Pressure Monitoring Sensors

Continuous measurement of intraocular pressure is important in the detection and treatment of glaucoma. While a point check of intraocular pressure in a doctor's office using indirect measurements such as the tonometer is helpful, it is inadequate to track circadian variation. Circadian variation is an independent risk factor in addition to elevated pressure levels. This paper is aimed at providing an up-to-date review of various intraocular pressure sensing techniques and in vivo sensor design approaches. The basic operating principles of various implantable sensors are reviewed and categorized into groups to delineate their differences. A discussion is presented identifying the drawbacks of existing designs and key design questions are proposed for future progress.     

Effect of elliptic burner geometry and air equivalence ratio on the nitric oxide emissions from turbulent hydrogen flames

An experimental study on turbulent hydrogen flames from circular and elliptic burners with varying degrees of premixedness (diffusion, fuel-rich, stoichiometric, and fuel-lean) is presented. Flame stability, visible flame height, flame radiation, global nitric oxide (NO) concentration, and inflame temperature and NO concentration profiles were measured. We found that the elliptic burner flames had lower liftoff velocity, were shorter, and radiated less heat to the surrounding as compared to circular burner flames. Global NO concentration decreased with an increase in air equivalence ratio for both circular and elliptic burner flames. Peak in-flame NO concentration along the flame centerline increased with a decrease in air equivalence ratio. Elliptic burner flames produced higher peak in-flame temperatures. Overall, the elliptic burner flames produced less peak NO as compared to circular burner flames at all air equivalence ratios except zero (diffusion flames) in accordance with the global emission measurements.