Bilayer Cylindrical Conduit Consisting of Electrospun Polycaprolactone Nanofibers and DSC Cross‐Linked Sodium Alginate Hydrogel to Bridge Peripheral Nerve Gaps

Herein, a bilayer cylindrical conduit (P‐CA) is presented consisting of electrospun polycaprolactone (PCL) nanofibers and sodium alginate hydrogel covalently cross‐linked with N,N′‐disuccinimidyl carbonate (DSC). The bilayer P‐CA conduit is developed by combining the electrospinning and outer–inner layer methods. Using DSC, as a covalent crosslinker, increases the degradation time of the sodium alginate hydrogel up to 2 months. The swelling ratio of the hydrogel is also 503% during the first 8 h. The DSC cross‐linked sodium alginate in the inner layer of the conduit promotes the adhesion and proliferation of nerve cells, while the electrospun PCL nanofibers in the outer layer provide maximum tensile strength of the conduit during surgery. P‐CA conduit promotes the migration of Schwann cells along the axon in a rat model based on functional and histological evidences. In conclusion, P‐CA conduit will be a promising construct for repairing sciatic nerves in a rat model.     

Preparation and characterization of Cu (II) Schiff base complex functionalized boehmite nanoparticles and its application as an effective catalyst for oxidation of sulfides and thiols

The synthesis, characterization, and evaluation of a Schiff base Cu (II) complex functionalized boehmite nanoparticles (Cu-complex-boehmite) as a new catalyst for oxidation of sulfides and thiols in the presence of hydrogen peroxide with complete selectivity and high conversion under solvent-free and mild reaction conditions were reported. Characterization of the catalyst was performed with various physicochemical methods. This effective catalyst was evaluated in terms of activity and reusability. It indicated high catalytic activity, good recoverability and reusability, and supplied the corresponding products in high yields and short reaction times. In addition, it shows notable advantages such as simplicity of operation, heterogeneous nature, easy work up, and it could be used at least eight times with no significant loss of its activity.     

Composition-dependent melting behaviour of NaxK55–x core–shell nanoalloys

Molecular dynamics simulations at constant temperature are performed to investigate melting-like transition in Na₁₃K₄₂, Na₁₉K₃₆ and Na₂₆K₂₉ nanoalloys using a second-moment-approximation tight-binding analytic potential to calculate the forces on the constituent atoms. A weighted histogram analysis method is employed to remove non-ergodicity issues due to the complex potential energy surface of these nanoalloys. The heat capacity shows three distinctive steps in melting for Na₁₃K₄₂, while Na₂₆K₂₉ and Na₁₉K₃₆ have two-step and one-step melting transition, respectively. The steepest descent method is used to quench the configurations in a given interval during the simulation and also study the isomerisation processes occurring at different temperatures. Analysing the configuration energies of quenched structures for the entire nanoalloy and the core atoms separately gives more details about the melting mechanism. The Lindemann parameter is also calculated at several temperatures during the simulation which shows a gradual increase for Na₁₃K₄₂ and Na₂₆K₂₉ while a sharp change is observed for Na₁₉K₃₆. These findings are in agreement with the multi-step nature of the phase transition in Na₁₃K₄₂ and Na₂₆K₂₉ and one-step melting of the Na₁₉K₃₆ magic composition.     

A green organocatalyzed one-pot protocol for efficient synthesis of new substituted pyrimido[4,5-d]pyrimidinones using a Biginelli-like reaction

Research on Chemical Intermediates - In this article, we have demonstrated a green and facile one-pot approach for the regio- and chemoselective synthesis of...     

Mixed two‐grid finite difference methods for solving one‐dimensional and two‐dimensional Fitzhugh–Nagumo equations

The aim of this paper is to propose mixed two‐grid finite difference methods to obtain the numerical solution of the one‐dimensional and two‐dimensional Fitzhugh–Nagumo equations. The finite difference equations at all interior grid points form a large‐sparse linear system, which needs to be solved efficiently. The solution cost of this sparse linear system usually dominates the total cost of solving the discretized partial differential equation. The proposed method is based on applying a family of finite difference methods for discretizing the spatial and time derivatives. The obtained system has been solved by two‐grid method, where the two‐grid method is used for solving the large‐sparse linear systems. Also, in the proposed method, the spectral radius with local Fourier analysis is calculated for different values of h and Δt. The numerical examples show the efficiency of this algorithm for solving the one‐dimensional and two‐dimensional Fitzhugh–Nagumo equations. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Preparation of conductive,flexible and transparent films by in situ deposition of polypyrrole nanoparticles on polyethylene terephthalate

In this study polypyrrole (PPy) nanoparticles were deposited as a thin film on the modified surface of polyethyleneterephthalate (PET) by in situ chemical polymerization in the presence of sodium dodecylsulfate (SDS), sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate (DBSNa) and mixture of them as the surfactant. The surface of PET was modified by KOH before deposition and was investigated for conductivity and adhesion of PPy nanoparticles to PET. Resulting conductive flexible films were characterized by UV–Vis spectroscopy, fieldemission scanning electron microscopy, contact angle measurements and four-point-probe technique for conductivity. Direct morphological observation (FESEM) and electrical measurements indicated that the morphology, conductivity and the nature of deposited PPy films depend on surfactant, surface modification of PET and monomer concentration. In optimized process condition, uniform conductive films of PPy were obtained with good adhesion to PET.     

Nickel hydroxide obtained by high-temperature two-step synthesis as an effective material for supercapacitor applications

Hybrid supercapacitors with nickel hydroxide electrode are widely used as modern power sources for electrovehicles, ignition of different electric engines, etc. Nickel hydroxide for supercapacitor use must satisfy special features which are quite different from those requested for battery application. The aim of this work is to improve the promising two-stage high-temperature method by altering hydrolysis condition (hot and cold) in order to obtain Ni(OH)₂ with improved electrochemical activity. Ni(OH)₂ samples have been investigated by PXRD, TG, DSC, SEM, TEM, cyclic voltammogramm, and galvanostatic charge-discharge cycling. It has been established from PXRD, TG, and DSC analyses that material obtained by hydrolysis at high temperature is a highly crystalline β-Ni(OH)₂ characterized by high thermal stability. Materials prepared by cold hydrolysis are a highly defective β_bc-Ni(OH)₂, with 6.3 % water content and a lower thermal stability. It has been shown that samples prepared by hot hydrolysis have a high redox reversibility and electrochemical cycling stability, but a lower electrochemical capacity. This suggests that the electrochemical processes are localized in the thin layer at the particle surface. Cyclic voltammograms of samples prepared by cold hydrolysis exhibit gradual activation of the active material, anyhow resulting in higher capacity. By means of the galvanostatic charge-discharge curves at different current densities, the specific capacities of the samples have been calculated. The sample prepared by cold hydrolysis has higher specific capacities than the sample prepared by hot hydrolysis.     

An adaptive wavelet space‐time SUPG method for hyperbolic conservation laws

This article concerns with incorporating wavelet bases into existing streamline upwind Petrov‐Galerkin (SUPG) methods for the numerical solution of nonlinear hyperbolic conservation laws which are known to develop shock solutions. Here, we utilize an SUPG formulation using continuous Galerkin in space and discontinuous Galerkin in time. The main motivation for such a combination is that these methods have good stability properties thanks to adding diffusion in the direction of streamlines. But they are more expensive than explicit semidiscrete methods as they have to use space‐time formulations. Using wavelet bases we maintain the stability properties of SUPG methods while we reduce the cost of these methods significantly through natural adaptivity of wavelet expansions. In addition, wavelet bases have a hierarchical structure. We use this property to numerically investigate the hierarchical addition of an artificial diffusion for further stabilization in spirit of spectral diffusion. Furthermore, we add the hierarchical diffusion only in the vicinity of discontinuities using the feature of wavelet bases in detection of location of discontinuities. Also, we again use the last feature of the wavelet bases to perform a postprocessing using a denosing technique based on a minimization formulation to reduce Gibbs oscillations near discontinuities while keeping other regions intact. Finally, we show the performance of the proposed combination through some numerical examples including Burgers’, transport, and wave equations as well as systems of shallow water equations.© 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 33: 2062–2089, 2017     

Generalized Bessel functions: Theory and their applications

This paper presents 2 new classes of the Bessel functions on a compact domain [0,T] as generalized‐tempered Bessel functions of the first‐ and second‐kind which are denoted by GTBFs‐1 and GTBFs‐2. Two special cases corresponding to the GTBFs‐1 and GTBFs‐2 are considered. We first prove that these functions are as the solutions of 2 linear differential operators and then show that these operators are self‐adjoint on suitable domains. Some interesting properties of these sets of functions such as orthogonality, completeness, fractional derivatives and integrals, recursive relations, asymptotic formulas, and so on are proved in detail. Finally, these functions are performed to approximate some functions and also to solve 3 practical differential equations of fractionalorders.