A general framework for describing photofission observables of actinides at an average excitation energy below 30 MeV

A reasonable prediction of photofission observables plays a paramount role in understanding the photofission process and guiding various photofission-induced applications, such as short-lived isotope production, nuclear waste disposal, and nuclear safeguards. However, the available experimental data for photofission observables are limited, and the existing models and programs have mainly been developed for neutron-induced fission processes. In this study, a general framework is proposed for characterizing the photofission observables of actinides, including the mass yield distributions (MYD) and isobaric charge distributions (ICD) of fission fragments and the multiplicity and energy distributions of prompt neutrons (n_p) and prompt γ rays (γ_p). The framework encompasses various systematic neutron models and empirical models considering the Bohr hypothesis and does not rely on the experimental data as input. These models are then validated individually against experimental data at an average excitation energy below 30 MeV, which shows the reliability and robustness of the general framework. Finally, we employ this framework to predict the characteristics of photofission fragments and the emissions of prompt particles for typical actinides including ²³²Th, ^{235, 238}U and ²⁴⁰Pu. It is found that the ²³⁸U(γ, f) reaction is more suitable for producing neutron-rich nuclei compared to the ²³²Th(γ, f) reaction. In addition, the average multiplicity number of both n_p and γ_p increases with the average excitation energy.     

Stabilized Nonconforming Mixed Finite Element Method for Linear Elasticity on Rectangular or Cubic Meshes

Based on the primal mixed variational formulation, a stabilized nonconforming mixed finite element method is proposed for the linear elasticity on rectangular and cubic meshes. Two kinds of penalty terms are introduced in the stabilized mixed formulation, which are the jump penalty term for the displacement and the divergence penalty term for the stress. We use the classical nonconforming rectangular and cubic elements for the displacement and the discontinuous piecewise polynomial space for the stress, where the discrete space for stress are carefully chosen to guarantee the well-posedness of discrete formulation. The stabilized mixed method is locking-free. The optimal convergence order is derived in the $L^2$-norm for stress and in the broken $H^1$-norm and $L^2$-norm for displacement. A numerical test is carried out to verify the optimal convergence of the stabilized method.     

Dendritic polyurethane-based prodrug as unimolecular micelles for precise ultrasound-activated localized drug delivery

Ultrasound has been recognized as an exciting tool to enhance the therapeutic efficacy in tumor chemotherapy owing to the triggered drug release, facilitated intracellular drug delivery, and improved spatial precision. Aiming for a precise localized drug delivery, novel dendritic polyurethane-based prodrug (DOX-DPU-PEG) was fabricated with a drug content of 18.9% here by conjugating DOX onto the end groups of the functionalized dendritic polyurethane via acid-labile imine bonds. It could easily form unimolecular micelles around 38 nm. Compared with the non-covalently drug-loaded unimolecular micelles (DOX@Ph-DPU-PEG), they showed excellent pH/ultrasound dual-triggered drug release performance, with drug leakage of only 4% at pH 7.4, but cumulative release of 14% and 88% at pH 5.0 without and with ultrasound, respectively. The ultrasound responsiveness was attributed to the unique strawberry-shaped topological structure of the DOX-DPU-PEG, in which DOX was embedded in the skin layer of the hydrophobic DPU cores. With ultrasound, the DOX-DPU-PEG unimolecular micelles possessed enhanced tumor growth inhibition than free DOX but showed no obvious cytotoxicity on the tumor cells without ultrasound. Such feature makes them promising potential for precise localized drug delivery.     

A Closed‐Loop Control Strategy for Producing Nitrile Rubber of Uniform Chemical Composition in a Semibatch Reactor: A Simulation Study

To improve the quality of industrial nitrile rubbers, the copolymer chemical composition, p_A(t), should ideally be kept constant along the reaction. This work proposes a closed‐loop control strategy for the semibatch operation of the reactor with the aim of regulating p_A(t) within a reduced range of variability. The proposed strategy is evaluated by simulating a mathematical model of the process. To this effect, a simplified mathematical model of the reaction is first derived and then utilized to obtain a suboptimal control law and a soft‐sensor that estimates the polymerization rates. The suboptimal control law is compensated by adding a term proportional to errors in p_A(t). The simulated example considers the production of the low‐composition AJLT grade, with the copolymerization reaction represented by a detailed mathematical model adjusted to an industrial plant. Due to the high performance of the soft‐sensor, the simulation results suggest that the proposed closed‐loop strategy is efficient to adequately regulate p_A(t) in spite of structural and parametric uncertainties, while other quality variables remained practically unaffected.     

Trilinear Lp estimates with applications to the Cauchy problem for the Hartree-type equation

In this paper, $L^p$ estimates for a trilinear operator associated with the Hartree type nonlinearity are proved. Moreover, as application of these estimates, it is proved that after a linear transformation, the Cauchy problem for the Hartree-type equation becomes locally well posed in the Bessel potential and homogeneous Besov spaces under certain regularity assumptions on the initial data. This notion of well-posedness and the functional framework to solve the equation were firstly proposed by Y. Zhou.     

Synthesis of 1-aryl-3H-[1,2,5]triazepino[5,4-a]benzimidazol-4(5H)-ones and quantum chemical investigation of the rotamers of the Boc-protected hydrazide key intermediate

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PASE synthesis of 1-azolyl-1H-1,2,4-triazoles by the reaction of diazoazoles with ethyl isocyanoacetate

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Modeling of the glycine tripeptide cyclization in the Ser65Gly/Tyr66Gly mutant of green fluorescent protein

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Unconditionally Superclose Analysis of a New Mixed Finite Element Method for Nonlinear Parabolic Equation

This paper develops a framework to deal with the unconditional superclose analysis of nonlinear parabolic equation. Taking the finite element pair $Q_{11}/Q_{01} × Q_{10}$ as an example, a new mixed finite element method (FEM) is established and the $τ$ -independent superclose results of the original variable $u$ in $H^1$-norm and the flux variable $\mathop{q} \limits ^{\rightarrow}= −a(u)∇u$ in $L^2$-norm are deduced ($τ$ is the temporal partition parameter). A key to our analysis is an error splitting technique, with which the time-discrete and the spatial-discrete systems are constructed, respectively. For the first system, the boundedness of the temporal errors is obtained. For the second system, the spatial superclose results are presented unconditionally, while the previous literature always only obtain the convergent estimates or require certain time step conditions. Finally, some numerical results are provided to confirm the theoretical analysis, and show the efficiency of the proposed method.