Influence of physical parameters and lubricants on the compaction properties of granulated and non-granulated cross-linked high amylose starch

Cross-linked high amylose starch (CLA) is a pharmaceutical excipient used in direct compression for the preparation of controlled release tablets and implants. In this work the compression properties of CLA in bulk and granulated forms (without binder) were evaluated for the first time. Tablets were prepared on an instrumented single punch machine. The flow properties and the compression characteristics (compressibility, densification behavior, work of compression) of the materials as well as the mechanical strength of the finished compacts (compactibility) were systematically examined. Wet granulation was found to improve the flowability and the compressibility of CLA but concomitantly reduced its compactibility. It was demonstrated that CLA was a plastically deforming material with a plasticity index and a yield pressure value comparable to those of pregelatinized starch. The compactibility of granulated CLA was independent of particle size in the range of 75 to 500 microm, but slightly decreased when the percentage of the fine particles (<75 microm) in the bulk powder was increased. Water and colloidal silicone dioxide facilitated the consolidation of CLA, while magnesium stearate had an opposite effect on the tablet crushing force.     

Sums of unitarily equivalent positive operators

Some simple conditions on positive operators A and K ensure that A can be written as a series in the unitary orbit of K.     

Kantorovich distance in the martingale CLT and quantitative homogenization of parabolic equations with random coefficients

The article begins with a quantitative version of the martingale central limit theorem, in terms of the Kantorovich distance. This result is then used in the study of the homogenization of discrete parabolic equations with random i.i.d. coefficients. For smooth initial condition, the rescaled solution of such an equation, once averaged over the randomness, is shown to converge polynomially fast to the solution of the homogenized equation, with an explicit exponent depending only on the dimension. Polynomial rate of homogenization for the averaged heat kernel, with an explicit exponent, is then derived. Similar results for elliptic equations are also presented.     

Exploring the uranyl organometallic chemistry: from single to double uranium-carbon bonds

Uranyl organometallic complexes featuring uranium(VI)-carbon single and double bonds have been obtained from uranyl UO(2)X(2) precursors by avoiding reduction of the metal center. X-ray diffraction and density functional theory analyses of these complexes showed that the U-C and U=C bonds are polarized toward the nucleophilic carbon.     

Effect of laser energy, substrate film thickness and bioink viscosity on viability of endothelial cells printed by Laser-Assisted Bioprinting

Biofabrication of three dimensional tissues by Laser-Assisted Bioprinting (LAB) implies to develop specific strategies for assembling the extracellular matrix (ECM) and cells. Possible strategies consist in (i) printing cells onto or in the depth of ECM layer and/or (ii) printing bioinks containing both cells and ECM-like printable biomaterial. The aim of this article was to evaluate combinatorial effects of laser pulse energy, ECM thickness and viscosity of the bioink on cell viability. A LAB workstation was used to print Ea.hy926 endothelial cells onto a quartz substrate covered with a film of ECM mimicking Matrigel™. Hence, effect of laser energy, Matrigel™ film thickness and bioink viscosity was addressed for different experimental conditions (8-24 μJ, 20-100 μm and 40-110 mPa s, respectively). Cell viability was assessed by live/dead assay performed 24 h post-printing. Results show that increasing the laser energy tends to augment the cell mortality while increasing the thickness of the Matrigel™ film and the viscosity of the bioink support cell viability. Hence, critical printing parameters influencing high cell viability have been related to the cell landing conditions and more specifically to the intensity of the cell impacts occurring at the air-ECM interface and at the ECM-glass interface.     

Regularity of the Laws of Shot Noise Series and of Related Processes

We investigate the regularity of shot noise series and of Poisson integrals. We give conditions for the absolute continuity of their law with respect to the Lebesgue measure and for their continuity in total-variation norm. In particular, the case of truncated series in addressed. Our method relies on a disintegration of the probability space based on a mere conditioning by the first jumps of the underlying Poisson process.     

An Experimental Study on the Influence of Sub-Core Scale Heterogeneities on CO<Subscript>2</Subscript> Distribution in Reservoir Rocks

This article presents the results of CO₂/brine two-phase flow experiments in rocks at reservoir conditions. X-ray CT scanning is used to determine CO₂ saturation at a fine scale with a resolution of a few pore volumes and provide 3D porosity and saturation maps that can be use to correlate CO₂ saturations and rock properties. The study highlights the strong influence of sub-core scale heterogeneities on the spatial distribution of CO₂ at steady state and provides useful relative permeability data on a sample originated from an actual storage site (CO2CRC-Otway project, Victoria, South-West Australia). Two different samples tested, although different in nature, present strong heterogeneities, but differ in the detail of the connectivity of high porosity layers. In both samples, the results of the investigations show that sub-core scale heterogeneities control the sweep efficiency and may cause channeling through the porous medium. In one of the samples, CO₂ saturation appears uncorrelated to porosity close to the outlet end of the core. This observation is understood as a result of the position and the orientation of high porosity layers with respect to the inlet face of the core. Finally, in the operating conditions of the two experiments, the saturation maps demonstrate that gravity does not play a major role since no detectable buoyancy driven flow is observed.     

Mesoscopic Higher Regularity and Subadditivity in Elliptic Homogenization

We introduce a new method for obtaining quantitative results in stochastic homogenization for linear elliptic equations in divergence form. Unlike previous works on the topic, our method does not use concentration inequalities (such as Poincaré or logarithmic Sobolev inequalities in the probability space) and relies instead on a higher (C^k, k ≥ 1) regularity theory for solutions of the heterogeneous equation, which is valid on length scales larger than a certain specified mesoscopic scale. This regularity theory, which is of independent interest, allows us to, in effect, localize the dependence of the solutions on the coefficients and thereby accelerate the rate of convergence of the expected energy of the cell problem by a bootstrap argument. The fluctuations of the energy are then tightly controlled using subadditivity. The convergence of the energy gives control of the scaling of the spatial averages of gradients and fluxes (that is, it quantifies the weak convergence of these quantities), which yields, by a new “multiscale” Poincaré inequality, quantitative estimates on the sublinearity of the corrector.