Synthesis of poly(l-lactic acid) with improved thermal stability by sulfonic acid-catalyzed melt/solid polycondensation

Melt/solid polycondensation (MP/SSP) is deemed as an alternative synthetic route besides ring-opening polymerization (ROP) in synthesizing poly(l-lactic acid) (PLLA). However, it is found that PLLA synthesized by MP/SSP has much poorer thermal stability than that by ROP due to more residual Sn(II) metallic catalyst in the former, but sulfonic acids does not show any detrimental effect on the thermal stability of PLLA. To synthesizing PLLA with good thermal stability by MP/SSP, a variety of commercially available sulfonic acids were screened as catalysts in MP/SSP of PLLA. Among these nonmetallic catalysts, it was found that 1,3-propanedisulfonic acid (PSA) and 1,5-naphthalene disulfonic acid (NSA) exhibited satisfactory catalytic reactivity and PLLAs with excellent thermal stability, high molecular weight, little coloration and good optical purity were successfully synthesized by MP/SSP. The decomposition temperature was increased by 80–100 °C in comparison to SnCl₂-catalyzed PLLA, and the thermal stability is comparable to commercial PLLA produced by ROP.     

Surface and Antimicrobial Properties of N-Palmitoyl Amino Acid–Based Surfactants

Synthesized sodium N-pamitoyl amino acids were evaluated for surface and antimicrobial properties and compared with sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS). Emulsion stability of the amino acid surfactants and calcium tolerance of the sodium N-palmitoyl isoleucine were better as compared to SLS. Wetting ability and foaming properties of the palmitic acid-based surfactants were inferior to SLS. N-Acyl amino acids exhibited better antibacterial activity compared to sodium salts of N-acyl amino acids and standard compounds against Staphylococcus aureus MLS-16 and Bacillus subtilis. These studies revealed that the palmitoyl amino acid surfactants can be exploited in household, skin care formulations, and industrial applications.     

Synthesis and Properties of Isobicyclo‐DNA

We present the synthesis of the isobicyclo‐DNA building blocks with the nucleobases A, C, G and T, as well as biophysical and biological properties of oligonucleotides derived thereof. The synthesis of the sugar part was achieved in 5 steps starting from a known intermediate of the tricyclo‐DNA synthesis. Dodecamers containing single isobicyclo‐thymidine incorporations, fully modified A‐ and T‐containing sequences, and fully modified oligonucleotides containing all four bases were synthesized and characterized. Isobicyclo‐DNA forms stable duplexes with natural nucleic acids with a pronounced preference for DNA over RNA as complements. The most stable duplexes, however, arise by self‐pairing. Isobicyclo‐DNA forms preferentially B‐DNA‐like duplexes with DNA and A‐like duplexes with complementary RNA as determined by circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy. Self‐paired duplexes show a yet unknown structure, as judged from CD spectroscopy. Biochemical tests revealed that isobicyclo‐DNA is stable in fetal bovine serum and does not elicit RNaseH activity.     

Bifurcation analysis of a diffusive predator–prey system with a herd behavior and quadratic mortality

In this paper, a diffusive predator–prey system, in which the prey species exhibits herd behavior and the predator species with quadratic mortality, has been studied. The stability of positive constant equilibrium, Hopf bifurcations, and diffusion‐driven Turing instability are investigated under the Neumann boundary condition. The explicit condition for the occurrence of the diffusion‐driven Turing instability is derived, which is determined by the relationship of the diffusion rates of two species. The formulas determining the direction and the stability of Hopf bifurcations depending on the parameters of the system are derived. Finally, numerical simulations are carried out to verify and extend the theoretical results and show the existence of spatially homogeneous periodic solutions and nonconstant steady states. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Stability and bifurcations analysis of a competition model with piecewise constant arguments

In this paper, we investigate local and global asymptotic stability of a positive equilibrium point of system of differential equations where t ≥ 0, the parameters r₁, k₁, α₁, α₂, r₂, k₂, and d₁ are positive, and [t] denotes the integer part of t ∈ [0, ∞ ). x(t) and y(t) represent population density for related species. Sufficient conditions are obtained for the local and global stability of the positive equilibrium point of the corresponding difference system. We show through numerical simulations that periodic solutions arise through Neimark–Sacker bifurcation. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A nonlinear inequality and application to global asymptotic stability of perturbed systems

The goal of this work is to present a new nonlinear inequality which is used in a study of the Lyapunov uniform stability and uniform asymptotic stability of solutions to time‐varying perturbed differential equations. New sufficient conditions for global uniform asymptotic stability and/or practical stability in terms of Lyapunov‐like functions for nonlinear time‐varying systems is obtained. Our conditions are expressed as relation between the Lyapunov function and the existence of specific function which appear in our analysis through the solution of a scalar differential equation. Moreover, an example in dimensional two is given to illustrate the applicability of the main result. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Spectral analysis and stability of thermoelastic Bresse system with second sound and boundary viscoelastic damping

In this paper, we consider the energy decay rate of a thermoelastic Bresse system with variable coefficients. Assume that the thermo-propagation in the system satisfies the Cattaneo's law, which can eliminate the paradox of infinite speed of thermal propagation in the assumption of the Fourier's law in the classical theory of thermoelasticity. Meanwhile, we also discuss the effect of a boundary viscoelastic damping on the stability of this system. By a detailed spectral analysis, we obtain the expressions of the spectrum and deduce some spectral properties of the system. Then based on the distribution of the spectrum, we prove that the energy of the system with a boundary viscoelastic damping decays exponentially. However, it no longer decays exponentially if there is no boundary damping. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Modeling the role of government efforts in controlling extremism in a society

People having extreme idealogies affect the process in a region using fear of terror acts, money power, and the word of mouth communication network to change individuals to their way of thinking. This forces government to divert its limited financial resources for controlling extremism and thus affecting development. In this paper, therefore, a nonlinear mathematical model is proposed to study the dynamics of extremism governed by four dependent variables, namely, number of people in the general population having no extreme ideology, number of extreme ideologists, number of isolated ideologists (prisoners), and the cumulative density of government efforts and their interactions. The model is analyzed using the stability theory of differential equations and computer simulation. The analysis shows that if appropriate level of government efforts is applied on extremists, the spread of their ideology can be controlled in the general population. A numerical study of the model is also carried out to investigate the effects of certain parameters on the spread of extremism confirming the analytical results.Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Switching adaptive controllers to control fractional‐order complex systems with unknown structure and input nonlinearities

This article investigates the chaos control problem for the fractional‐order chaotic systems containing unknown structure and input nonlinearities. Two types of nonlinearity in the control input are considered. In the first case, a general continuous nonlinearity input is supposed in the controller, and in the second case, the unknown dead‐zone input is included. In each case, a proper switching adaptive controller is introduced to stabilize the fractional‐order chaotic system in the presence of unknown parameters and uncertainties. The control methods are designed based on the boundedness property of the chaotic system's states, where, in the proposed methods the nonlinear/linear dynamic terms of the fractional‐order chaotic systems are assumed to be fully unknown. The analytical results of the mentioned techniques are proved by the stability analysis theorem of fractional‐order systems and the adaptive control method. In addition, as an application of the proposed methods, single input adaptive controllers are adopted for control of a class of three‐dimensional nonlinear fractional‐order chaotic systems. And finally, some numerical examples illustrate the correctness of the analytical results. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Complexity 21: 211–223, 2015     

Uniform stabilization to equilibrium of a nonlinear fluid–structure interaction model

We consider uniform stability to a nontrivial equilibrium of a nonlinear fluid–structure interaction (FSI) defined on a two or three dimensional bounded domain. Stabilization is achieved via boundary and/or interior feedback controls implemented on both the fluid and the structure. The interior damping on the fluid combining with the viscosity effect stabilizes the dynamics of fluid. However, this dissipation propagated from the fluid alone is not sufficient to drive uniformly to equilibrium the entire coupled system. Therefore, additional interior damping on the wave component or boundary porous like damping on the interface is considered. A geometric condition on the interface is needed if only boundary damping on the wave is active. The main technical difficulty is the mismatch of regularity of hyperbolic and parabolic component of the coupled system. This is overcome by considering special multipliers constructed from Stokes solvers. The uniform stabilization result obtained in this article is global for the fully coupled FSI model.