Cerium oxide nanoparticles protect primary mouse bone marrow stromal cells from apoptosis induced by oxidative stress

The sintering of a silver (Ag) nanoparticle film by laser beam irradiation was studied using a CW DPSS laser. The laser sintering of the Ag nanoparticle thin film gave a transparent conductive film with a thickness of ca. 10 nm, whereas a thin film sintered by conventional heat treatment using an electronic furnace was an insulator because of the formation of isolated silver grains during the slow heating process. The laser sintering of the Ag nanoparticle thin film gave a unique conductive network structure due to the rapid heating and quenching process caused by laser beam scanning. The influences of the laser sintering conditions such as laser scan speed on the conductivity and the transparency were studied. With the increase of scan speed from 0.50 to 5.00 mm/s, the surface resistivity remarkably decreased from 4.45 × 10⁸ to 6.30 Ω/sq. The addition of copper (Cu) nanoparticles to silver thin film was also studied to improve the homogeneity of the film and the conductivity due to the interaction between the oxidized surface of Cu nanoparticle and a glass substrate. By adding 5 wt% Cu nanoparticles to the Ag thin film, the surface resistivity improved to 2.40 Ω/sq.     

Finite element method for viscoelastic medium with damage and the application to structural analysis of solid rocket motor grain

This paper studies the damage-viscoelastic behavior of composite solid propellants of solid rocket motors(SRM).Based on viscoelastic theories and strain equivalent hypothesis in damage mechanics,a three-dimensional(3-D)nonlinear viscoelastic constitutive model incorporating with damage is developed.The resulting viscoelastic constitutive equations are numerically discretized by integration algorithm,and a stress-updating method is presented by solving nonlinear equations according to the Newton-Raphson method.A material subroutine of stress-updating is made up and embedded into commercial code of Abaqus.The material subroutine is validated through typical examples.Our results indicate that the finite element results are in good agreement with the analytical ones and have high accuracy,and the suggested method and designed subroutine are efficient and can be further applied to damage-coupling structural analysis of practical SRM grain.     

ChemInform Abstract: Electronic Structure,Elastic Anisotropy,Thermal Conductivity and Optical Properties of Calcium Apatite Ca5(PO4)3X (X: F,Cl or Br).

The structural properties, phase stability, electronic structure, elastic properties, and optical properties of Ca₅(PO₃)₄F (FA), Ca₅(PO₃)₄Cl (ClA) and Ca₅(PO₃)₄Br (BrA) are studied by DFT calculations with the generalized gradient approximation.     

Thermo-Associative and Salt-Associative Graft Copolymers of Surfactant Macromonomers and Acrylamide: Synthesis and Solution Properties in Dilute Aqueous Solutions

Three new surfactant macromonomers (SMM) with different ethylene oxide (EO)/propylene oxide (PO) ratios (for SMM1, SMM2, and SMM3, the EO/PO ratios were 1:0.5, 1:0.9, and 1:1.25, respectively) were synthesized by the reaction between PEO-PPO di-block polymers having terminal tertiary amine groups and chloropropene. Graft copolymers of acrylamide and SMM (PAM-g-SMM) were prepared with different SMMs and grafting densities in water, and the products were confirmed by FTIR and elemental analysis. Owing to the strong hydrophobicity of the graft, the PAM-g-SMM3 was not water soluble. However, PAM-g-SMM1 and PAM-g-SMM2 aqueous solutions had good surface activity and their surface tensions were 44.26 and 37.63 mN/m at a concentration of 1000 mg/L, respectively. In general, in diluted graft PAM solutions, the copolymer predominantly formed intrapolymeric associates. The PAM-g-SMM2 was both thermo-associative and salt-associative in dilute solution. For PAM-g-SMM2, when the temperature and salt concentration increased, interpolymeric aggregations were formed.     

Pose estimation for UAV aerial refueling with serious turbulences based on extended Kalman filter

In recent years, many pose estimation algorithms were developed, and have been successfully applied to solve unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) aerial refueling pose estimation problems. This paper mainly focuses on solving this problem under serious turbulences circumstance. The extended Kalman filter is a set of mathematical equations to estimate the state of a process, which is able to support estimations of past, present, and even future states. In reference to previous papers and some simulations, we build up the noise models of refueling boom and atmospheric turbulence. Then, an extend Kalman filter is adopted to solve the pose estimation problem in UAV aerial refueling with serious turbulences. The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of our proposed approach.     

A hybrid Particle Chemical Reaction Optimization for biological image matching based on lateral inhibition

In this paper, a hybrid Particle Chemical Reaction Optimization (PCRO) algorithm and lateral inhibition is proposed to solve the image matching problem. Lateral inhibition has the ability to enhance the characters of image, which can help to improve the accuracy of image matching. In order to overcome the shortcomings of basic Chemical Reaction Optimization (CRO) algorithm, we improve CRO by proposing PCRO which inspired from the thought of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). Comparative experimental results in image matching show that our proposed hybrid method performs much better than other bio-inspired algorithms.     

Chaotic biogeography-based optimization approach to target detection in UAV surveillance

This paper describes a novel chaotic biogeography-based optimization (CBBO) algorithm for target detection by means of template matching to meet the request of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) surveillance. Template matching has been widely applied in movement tracking and other fields and makes excellent performances in visual navigation. Biogeography-based optimization (BBO) algorithm emerges as a new kind of optimization method on the basis of biogeography concept. The idea of migration and mutation strategy of species in BBO contributes to solving optimization problems. Our work adds chaotic searching strategy into BBO and applies CBBO in template matching. By utilizing chaotic strategy, the population ergodicity and global searching ability are improved, thus avoiding local optimal solutions during evolution. Applying the algorithm to resolving template matching problem overcomes the defects of common image matching. Series of experimental results demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of our modified approach over other algorithms in solving template matching problems. Our modified BBO algorithm performs better in terms of convergence property and robustness when compared with basic BBO.     

Colouration mechanism of underglaze copper‐red decoration porcelain (AD 13th–14th century), China

Underglaze copper‐red decoration, i.e. the copper colourant used to paint diversified patterns on the surface of a body and then covered by transparent glaze and fired at high temperature in a reductive firing environment, is famous all over the world. However, the red colouration mechanism generated by underglaze copper remains unclear. In particular, the fact that the edges of the red patterns are orange has been ignored in previous research. Here, non‐destructive analysis has been carried out on a precious fragment of early underglaze red porcelain using synchrotron radiation X‐ray fluorescence, X‐ray absorption near‐edge spectroscopy (XANES) and reflection spectrometry techniques. The results suggest that the copper content in the red region is higher than that in the orange region, and other colour generation elements do not have obvious content difference, indicating that the colour generation effect of the underglaze red product is related to the copper content. XANES analysis shows that the valence states of copper in the red and orange regions are similar and metal copper contributes to their hues. The results of reflection spectrometry demonstrate that tiny orange hues could be attributed to the Mie scatting effect. Therefore, light‐scattering effects should be considered when researching the colouration mechanism of underglaze red.     

Mid-infrared supercontinuum generation in a four-hole As2S5 chalcogenide microstructured optical fiber

We demonstrate the supercontinuum (SC) generation in a four-hole As₂S₅ chalcogenide microstructured optical fiber (MOF) experimentally. The As₂S₅ glass has better property of transmission than As₂S₃ glass in the visible range. The four-hole As₂S₅ MOF is fabricated by a rod-in-tube method. The SCs generated by different pump wavelengths at 2,000, 2,300 and 2,500 nm in the MOF whose length is from 2.3 to 20 cm are demonstrated. Those pump wavelengths correspond to the chromatic dispersion wavelength in the normal chromatic dispersion region, the anomalous chromatic dispersion region close to zero-dispersion wavelength (ZDW) and the anomalous chromatic dispersion region far from ZDW, respectively. Wider SCs can be obtained when pumped at a wavelength in the anomalous dispersion region close to ZDW. The widest SC range of 4,280 nm (from 1,370 to 5,650 nm) covering two octaves was obtained in a 4.8-cm-long fiber pumped at 2,300 nm.     

Photovoltaic effect of TiO2 thick films with an ultrathin BiFeO3 as buffer layer

The photovoltaic (PV) effect of a bilayer anatase TiO₂/BiFeO₃ (BFO) film has been studied. The 20-nm ultrathin BFO layers were deposited on the fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) glass substrates by the chemical solution deposition method. An anatase TiO₂ layer is deposited subsequently on the BFO surface via a screen-printing technique. It is found that the FTO/TiO₂/Au cell exhibits negligible PV effect under solar exposure, while the one after introducing an ultrathin BFO film between TiO₂ and FTO leads to a considerable PV effect with an open-circuit voltage of ?0.58 V and a photocurrent density of 18.27 µA/cm². The FTO/BiVO₄ (BVO)/TiO₂/Au cell was constructed to investigate the underlying mechanism for the observed effect. A negligible PV effect of the FTO/BVO/TiO₂/Au cell indicates that the PV effect of the FTO/BFO/TiO₂/Au cell arises mainly from a built-in electric field in the BFO film induced by the self-polarization. Our work opens up a new path to utilize TiO₂ and may influence the future design of solar cells.