Structurally Enhanced Hydrogel Nanocomposites with Improved Swelling and Mechanical Properties

In this work, structurally enhanced hydrogel nanocomposites based on 2-acrylamido-2 methyl propane sulfonic acid (AMPS)-acrylamide (AAM) copolymer with high hydrophilic group content were prepared by in-situ copolymerization by using different types of clay (montmorillonite, mica and halloysite). Nanocomposite hydrogels were characterized by Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analyses and determination of swelling degrees of the samples. Mechanical properties of the samples were also investigated by determination of the compressive elastic modulus. It was also found that exfoliated or highly expanded intercalated nanocomposite structure was obtained and clay incorporation into the AMPS-AAM hydrogel structure improved its swelling capacity. The highest swelling capacity (1030 g H₂O/g) was observed for the nanocomposite sample prepared with the montmorillonite amount of 5% (w). Furthermore, mechanical strength of the hydrogels against compression forces was significantly improved by the clay addition. It was found that the type of clay, in other word filler geometry, affected the compressive elastic modulus (E) of the samples. It was concluded that halloysite, which is considered to be a one dimensional (1D) nanotubular filler was less effective to enhance the compressive elastic modulus (E) of such materials compared with the montmorillonite and mica having two dimensional (2D) platelet or disk-like shapes at a particular amount of clay.     

Second order nonlinear differential equations with linear impulse and periodic boundary conditions

In this study, we establish existence and uniqueness theorems for solutions of second order nonlinear differential equations on a finite interval subject to linear impulse conditions and periodic boundary conditions. The results obtained yield periodic solutions of the corresponding periodic impulsive nonlinear differential equation on the whole real axis.     

Experimental analysis of true left-handed behaviour and transmission properties of composite metamaterials

We report the true left-handed transmission of a composite metamaterial (CMM) consisting of periodically stacked split-ring resonator (SRR) and wire elements. The negative permeability (μ < 0) gap is demonstrated explicitly by comparing SRR and closed-ring resonator structures. We confirm experimentally that the plasma cut-off frequency of the CMM is determined by the combined dielectric response of SRR and wire elements, and it is much lower than that of the wire-only medium. This is crucial to identify the left-handed transmission bands of the CMM. We further investigate the effect of intralayer and interlayer disorder on the transmission spectrum of CMM arising from misaligned fabrication and stacking of the SRR layers. We found that the intralayer disorder affects the μ < 0 gap of SRRs and the left-handed transmission band of CMM significantly, whereas the SRR transmission is rather immune to interlayer disorder.     

A Distributed Evolutionary Simulated Annealing Algorithm for Combinatorial Optimisation Problems

In this paper, the Evolutionary Simulated Annealing (ESA) algorithm, its distributed implementation (dESA) and its application to two combinatorial problems are presented. ESA consists of a population, a simulated annealing operator, instead of the more usual reproduction operators used in evolutionary algorithms, and a selection operator. The implementation is based on a multi island (agent) system running on the Distributed Resource Machine (DRM), which is a novel, scalable, distributed virtual machine based on Java technology. As WAN/LAN systems are the most common multi-machine systems, dESA implementation is based on them rather than any other parallel machine. The problems tackled are well-known combinatorial optimisation problems, namely, the classical job-shop scheduling problem and the uncapacitated facility location problem. They are difficult benchmarks, widely used to measure the efficiency of metaheuristics with respect to both the quality of the solutions and the central processing unit (CPU) time spent. Both applications show that dESA solves problems finding either the optimum or a very near optimum solution within a reasonable time outperforming the recent reported approaches for each one allowing the faster solution of existing problems and the solution of larger problems.     

Parallel variable neighbourhood search algorithms for job shop scheduling problems

^** Email: msevkli{at}fatih.edu.tr^*** Corresponding author. Email: mehmetaydin{at}acm.org, mehmet.aydin{at}beds.ac.uk Variable neighbourhood search (VNS) is one of the most recentmetaheuristics used for solving combinatorial optimization problemsin which a systematic change of neighbourhood with a local searchis carried out. However, as happens with other metaheuristics,it takes a long time to reach some useful solutions while solvingsome sort of hard combinatorial problems such as job shop scheduling(JSS). Parallelization is one of the most considerable policiesto overcome this matter. In this paper, firstly, a number ofVNS algorithms are examined for JSS problems and then four differentparallelization policies are taken into account to determineefficient parallelization for VNS algorithms. The experimentationreveals the performance of various VNS algorithms and the efficiencyof policies to follow in parallelization. In the end, the unilateral-ringtopology, a noncentral parallelization method, is found as themost efficient policy.     

NONOSCILLATION RESULTS FOR A CLASS OF THIRD ORDER NONLINEAR DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS

ＩｎｔｒｏｄｕｃｔｉｏｎＦｉｎｄｉｎｇｓｕｆｆｉｃｉｅｎｔｃｏｎｄｉｔｉｏｎｓｆｏｒｎｏｎｏｓｃｉｌｌａｔｏｒｙｏｆｓｏｌｕｔｉｏｎｓｉｓａｐｒｏｂｌｅｍｏｆｇｅｎｅｒａｌｉｎｔｅｒｅｓｔｉｎｔｈｅｔｈｅｏｒｙｏｆｏｒｄｉｎａｒｙａｎｄｄｅｌａｙｄｉｆｆｅｒｅｎｔｉａｌｅｑｕａｔｉｏｎｓ.Ｉｎｔｈｉｓｗｏｒｋｗｅｃｏｎｓｉｄｅｒｄｄｓ σ(ｓ) ｄｄｓ ｒ(ｓ) ｄｘｄｓ +ｑ(ｓ) ｄｘｄｓβ +ｐ(ｓ)ｘα =ｆ(ｓ) ,(1)ｗｈｅｒｅσ ,ｒ,ｑ,ｐａｎｄｆａｒｅｒｅａｌ＿ｖａｌｕｅｄｃｏｎｔｉｎｕｏｕｓｆｕｎｃｔｉ…     

Synthesis,Spectral Characterization and Antimicrobial Activity of Some Transition Metal Complexes of 1,3‐Bis(1H‐benzimidazol‐2‐yl)‐2‐oxapropane

1,3‐Bis(1H‐benzimidazol‐2‐yl)‐2‐oxapropane ( L ) complexes with Fe(NO₃)₃, CoCl₂, Co(NO₃)₂, Ni(NO₃)₂, CuCl₂, Cu(ClO₄)₂, PdCl₂, CdI₂, Hg(NO₃)₂ were synthesized and characterized by elemental analysis, molar conductivity, magnetic moment, TGA, FT‐IR, NMR, ESI‐MS, fluorescence spectroscopy. Also, the crystal structure of 1,3‐bis(1H‐benzimidazol‐2‐yl)‐2‐oxapropane]dichlorocobalt(II), [Co( L )Cl₂], complex is reported that it has distorted trigonal bipyramidal geometry. Antibacterial activities of the compounds were evaluated using the disk diffusion method against six bacteria and Candida albicans. The Hg(II) complex shows superior activity toward S. epidermidis and E. coli whereas the other complexes are ineffective except the Co(NO₃)₂ complex: it showed weak activity toward all of the microorganisms.     

On the Riemann-Hilbert factorization problem for positive definite functions

We give several general theorems concerning positive definite solutions of Riemann-Hilbert problems on the real line. Furthermore, as an example, we apply our theory to the characteristic function of a class of Lévy processes and we find the distribution of their extrema at a given stopping time.     

Morphology and thermal characterization of montmorillonite/polybenzimidazole nanocomposite

In this study, thermal and morphological properties of organically modified montmorillonite (mMMT)/poly(2,5-benzimidazole) (ABPBI) composite were investigated. The morphology and structure of mMMT/ABPBI composites were characterized by infrared, X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and thermogravimetric analysis techniques. At low mMMT loading levels, exfoliation was the predominant mechanism of mMMT dispersion. At high mMMT loading levels, nonintercalated microcomposite morphology is partially favored in expense of the intercalated nanocomposite. Thermal degradation of nanocomposite occured in three stages. In the second stage of thermal degradation, the onset temperature of degradation for the mMMT/ABPBI nanocomposites was lower than that of ABPBI polymer. In the last stage, the improvement in thermal stability by the introduction of mMMT into the ABPBI was different from the second stage. The activation energy for degradation of ABPBI increased from 62.6 to 77.7 kJ mol^?1 after loading of 5 mass% of mMMT into ABPBI matrix under air atmosphere.