Fatigue life enhancement by irradiation of 12Cr1MoV steel with a Zr<Superscript>+</Superscript> ion beam. Mesoscale deformation and fracture

The structure and properties of 12Cr1MoV steel irradiated with a zirconium ion beam were studied by optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and micro- and nanoindentation. It is shown that the modification covers the entire cross-section of the irradiated specimens to a depth of 1 mm. The data on irradiation-induced structural changes are used to interpret the changes in mechanical properties of the irradiated specimens under static and cyclic loading. Particular attention is given to analysis of strain estimation by the digital image correlation method.     

Microtextures Induced by Nanosecond Laser on Ni–Co Alloy Coatings

Ni–Co alloys have a wide range of applications in various fields owning to their excellent physical, chemical, and mechanical properties. In this paper, we prepare Ni–Co alloy coatings on 316L stain steel surfaces by electroplating. We present a novel approach utilizing a nanosecond laser to induce microtextures on Ni–Co alloy coatings. We study experimentally the effects of laser power and scanning rate on the surface morphologies of Ni–Co alloy coatings. The results indicate that the shape and size of induced microtextures can be controlled by the laser power and scanning rate. The size of grains increases with increase in the work current of the laser (WCL) at a certain scanning rate. With the WCL constant, the size of grains decreases with increase in scanning rate while their average height increases. It is a simple and easily-controlled method for the fabrication of microstructures on Ni–Co alloy coatings, which has promising applications in investigations of the properties of microtextured surfaces, such as friction, adhesion, and wetting.     

Bioanalysis of acetylcarnitine in cerebrospinal fluid by HILIC–mass spectrometry

Acetyl‐l ‐carnitine (ALCAR) is a potential biomarker for the modulation of brain neurotransmitter activity, but is also present in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Recent studies have utilized hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (HILIC‐MS/MS) based assays to detect and quantify ALCAR within biofluids such as urine, plasma and serum, using various sample pretreatment procedures. In order to address the need to quantify ALCAR in CSF on a high‐throughput scale, a new and simple HILIC‐MS/MS assay has been successfully developed and validated. For rapid analysis, CSF sample pretreatment was performed via ‘dilute and shoot’ directly onto an advanced HILIC column prior to MS/MS detection. This newly developed HILIC‐MS/MS assay shows good recoveries of ALCAR without the need for chemical derivatization and multistep sample extraction procedures. The employment of this assay is suitable for the high‐throughput bioanalysis and quantification of ALCAR within the CSF of various animal models and human clinical studies. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Crosslinked poly(ethylene oxide) containing siloxanes fabricated through thiol‐ene photochemistry

Homogenous amphiphilic crosslinked polymer films comprising of poly(ethylene oxide) and polysiloxane were synthesized utilizing thiol‐ene “ click ” photochemistry. A systematic variation in polymer composition was Carried out to obtain high quality films with varied amount of siloxane and poly(ethylene oxide). These films showed improved gas separation performance with high gas permeabilities with good CO₂/N₂ selectivity. Furthermore, the resulting films were also tested for its biocompatibility, as a carrier media which allow human adult mesenchymal stem cells to retain their capacity for osteoblastic differentiation after transplantation. The obtained crosslinked films were characterized using differential scanning calorimetry, dynamic mechanical analysis, thermogravimetric analysis, FTIR, Raman‐IR , and small angle X‐ray scattering. The synthesis ease and commercial availability of the starting materials suggests that these new crosslinked polymer networks could find applications in wide range of applications. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2015 , 53, 1548–1557     

Cross-Layer Optimization of Dynamic Packet Assignment for Video Transmission Over IEEE 802.11e Networks

Video transmission over IEEE 802.11e wireless networks still shows poor performance for large bandwidth demand and frequently changed environments. Thus, several enhancements of IEEE 802.11e were proposed. On the other hand, big frames and simultaneous sending of adjacent frames always cause packet dropping for buffer overflow. In the past, we proposed an IEEE 802.11e enhancement named DFAA and a content aware mechanism to solve the above problems. The motivation of this paper is to find a proper way to integrate these two mechanisms. A DFAA enhancement (DFAA-E) is proposed to make up the insufficiency of content aware mechanism. Experiments results show that the combination of DFAA-E and content aware mechanism improves the video decoded quality greatly. And its performance can be further enhanced by selecting the suitable settings of certain parameters.