Relaxation dynamics and fragility during liquid–glass transitions of poly(propylene glycol)s

The acoustic and thermal properties of the liquid–glass transitions of propylene glycol and its oligomers, poly (propylene glycol)s, were studied by temperature modulated DSC and Brillouin scattering. The fragility indices were determined from Angell plots using the observed modulation frequency dependence of the complex heat capacity. The variation in the glass transition temperatures is discussed on the basis of the free volume theory. The relaxation time of the structural relaxation obeys the Vogel–Fulcher law, and its high frequency end is in good agreement with the result of the dielectric measurement in the literature. The correlation between the observed thermal expansion coefficients and the glass transition temperature is discussed based on the free volume theory. The sound velocity and attenuation were accurately determined as a function of the temperature by Brillouin scattering by combination with the refractive index measurement. The relaxation dynamics were discussed by considering the relaxation from segmental motions. All of these physical properties were discussed based on the third-order anharmonicity and the Grüneisen parameter.     

A Method of Domain Dictionary Construction for Electric Vehicles Disassembly

Currently, there is no domain dictionary in the field of electric vehicles disassembly and other domain dictionary construction algorithms do not accurately extract terminology from disassembly text, because the terminology is complex and variable. Herein, the construction of a domain dictionary for the disassembly of electric vehicles is a research work that has important research significance. Extracting high-quality keywords from text and categorizing them widely uses information mining, which is the basis of named entity recognition, relation extraction, knowledge questions and answers and other disassembly domain information recognition and extraction. In this paper, we propose a supervised learning dictionary construction algorithm based on multi-dimensional features that combines different features of extraction candidate keywords from the text of each scientific study. Keywords recognition is regarded as a binary classification problem using the LightGBM model to filter each keyword, and then expand the domain dictionary based on the pointwise mutual information value between keywords and its category. Here, we make use of Chinese disassembly manuals, patents and papers in order to establish a general corpus about the disassembly information and then use our model to mine the disassembly parts, disassembly tools, disassembly methods, disassembly process, and other categories of disassembly keywords. The experiment evidenced that our algorithms can significantly improve extraction and category performance better than traditional algorithms in the disassembly domain. We also investigated the performance algorithms and attempts to describe them. Our work sets a benchmark for domain dictionary construction in the field of disassembly of electric vehicles that is based on the newly developed dataset using a multi-class terminology classification.     

Interrelationship between total volatile organic compounds emissions,structure and properties of natural rubber/polycaprolactone bio-blends cross-linked with peroxides

Natural rubber/polycaprolactone (NR/PCL) bio-based blends with different organic peroxides were prepared using an internal batch mixer and subsequently cross-linked at 170 °C. Two types of commonly used organic peroxides, dicumyl peroxide and di(tert-butylperoxyisopropyl)benzene peroxide, were applied as free-radical initiator. Cross-linking efficiency of NR/PCL blends were investigated using oscillating disc rheometer measurements, followed by infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, differential scanning calorimetry, dynamic mechanical analysis and tensile testing. Total volatile organic compounds (TVOCs) emissions were determined using headspace analysis integrated with gas chromatography with flame ionization detector. Determined TVOCs emissions varying in range 21.6–52.1 μg/g and generally value of this parameter decreased with increasing content of PCL phase in studied blends or with application of more efficient di(tert-butylperoxyisopropyl)benzene peroxide as cross-linking agent. It was found that increasing of TVOCs parameter indicated deterioration of mechanical properties of NR/PCL blends, which corresponded with the changes in chemical structure and thermal properties of cross-linked NR/PCL. This confirms that evaluation of TVOCs parameter is interesting alternative for “conventional methods” to characterization of the studied bio-based blends.     

First isolation of a flavonoid from Juniperus procera using ethyl acetate extract

Phytochemical investigation of the ethyl acetate extract of the leaves of Juniperus procera growing in south Saudi Arabia Enemas region led to the isolation of a new flavonoid using different chromatographic methods (i.e. paper, thin layer and column chromatography). The isolated flavonoid was identified and established by m.p., ¹H-NMR, ¹³C-NMR, UV and MS spectral analysis. The isolated compound was identified as 3′,4′,3,7-tetrahydroxyflavone.     

Numerical proof of stability of roll waves in the small-amplitude limit for inclined thin film flow

We present a rigorous numerical proof based on interval arithmetic computations categorizing the linearized and nonlinear stability of periodic viscous roll waves of the KdV–KS equation modeling weakly unstable flow of a thin fluid film on an incline in the small-amplitude KdV limit. The argument proceeds by verification of a stability condition derived by Bar–Nepomnyashchy and Johnson–Noble–Rodrigues–Zumbrun involving inner products of various elliptic functions arising through the KdV equation. One key point in the analysis is a bootstrap argument balancing the extremely poor sup norm bounds for these functions against the extremely good convergence properties for analytic interpolation in order to obtain a feasible computation time. Another is the way of handling analytic interpolation in several variables by a two-step process carving up the parameter space into manageable pieces for rigorous evaluation. These and other general aspects of the analysis should serve as blueprints for more general analyses of spectral stability.     

Natural and artificial light-harvesting systems utilizing the functions of carotenoids

Carotenoids are essential pigments in natural photosynthesis. They absorb in the blue–green region of the solar spectrum and transfer the absorbed energy to (bacterio-)chlorophylls, and so expand the wavelength range of light that is able to drive photosynthesis. This process is an example of singlet–singlet energy transfer and so carotenoids serve to enhance the overall efficiency of photosynthetic light reactions. Carotenoids also act to protect photosynthetic organisms from the harmful effects of excess exposure to light. In this case, triplet–triplet energy transfer from (bacterio-)chlorophyll to carotenoid plays a key role in this photoprotective reaction. In the light-harvesting pigment–protein complexes from purple photosynthetic bacteria and chlorophytes, carotenoids have an additional role, namely the structural stabilization of those complexes. In this article we review what is currently known about how carotenoids discharge these functions. The molecular architecture of photosynthetic systems will be outlined to provide a basis from which to describe the photochemistry of carotenoids, which underlies most of their important functions in photosynthesis. Then, the possibility to utilize the functions of carotenoids in artificial photosynthetic light-harvesting systems will be discussed. Some examples of the model systems are introduced.     

统计模型在中文文本挖掘中的应用

本文讨论了中文文本挖掘的三个问题:分词、关键词提取和文本分类。对分词问题,介绍了基于层叠隐马尔可夫模型的ICTCLAS分词法,以及将词与词之间的分隔视为缺失数据并用EM算法求解的WDM方法;对关键词提取问题,提出了贝叶斯因子法,并介绍了使用稀疏回归的CCS方法;对文本分类问题,介绍了根据关键词频率建立分类器的方法,以及先建立主题模型再根据主题概率建立分类器的方法。本文通过两组文本数据对上述方法进行比较,并给出使用建议。     

Computational analysis for the determination of deleterious nsSNPs in human MTHFD1 gene

Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are the most common genetic polymorphisms and play a major role in many inherited diseases. Methylenetetrahydrofolate dehydrogenase 1 (MTHFD1) is one of the enzymes involved in folate metabolism. In the present study, the functional and structural consequences of nsSNPs of human MTHFD1 gene was analyzed using various computational tools like SIFT, PolyPhen2, PANTHER, PROVEAN, SNAP2, nsSNPAnalyzer, PhD-SNP, SNPs&GO, I-Mutant, MuPro, ConSurf, InterPro, NCBI Conserved Domain Search tool, ModPred, SPARKS-X, RAMPAGE, FT Site and PyMol. Out of 327 nsSNPs form human MTHFD1 gene, total 45 SNPs were predicted as functionally most significant SNPs, among which 17 were highly conserved and functional, 17 were highly conserved and structural residues. Among 45 most significant SNPs, 15 were predicted to be involved in post translational modifications. The p.Gly165Arg may interfere in homodimer interface formation. The p.Asn439Lys and p.Asp445Asn may interfere in binding interactions of MTHFD1 protein with cesium cation and potassium. The two SNPs (p.Asp562Gly and p.Gly637Cys) might interfere in interactions of MTHFD1 with ligand.     

Tuning the properties of a black TiO2-Ag visible light photocatalyst produced by a rapid one-pot chemical reduction

A highly efficient black TiO₂-Ag photocatalytic nanocomposite, active under both UV and visible light illumination, was synthesized by decorating the surface of 25 nm TiO₂ particles with Ag nanoparticles. The material was obtained via a rapid, one-pot, simple (surfactant and complexing agent free) chemical reduction method using silver nitrate and formaldehyde as a metal salt and reducing agent, respectively. The nanocomposite shows an increase of over 800% in the rate of photocatalytic methylene blue dye degradation, compared to commercial unmodified TiO_2, under UV-VIS illumination. Unlike pure TiO₂, the nanocomposite exhibits visible light activation, with a corresponding drop in optical reflectance from 100% to less than 10%. The photocatalytic properties were shown to be strongly enhanced by post-reduction annealing heat treatments in air, which were observed to decrease, rather than coarsen, silver particle size, and increase particle distribution. This, accompanied by a variation in the silver surface oxidation states, appear to dramatically affect the photocatalytic efficiency under both UV and visible light. This highly active photocatalyst could have wide ranging applications in water and air pollution remediation and solar fuel production.     

Integral geometry of translation invariant functionals,II: The case of general convex bodies

In continuation of Part I, we study translative integral formulas for certain translation invariant functionals, which are defined on general convex bodies. Again, we consider local extensions and use these to show that the translative formulas extend to arbitrary continuous and translation invariant valuations. Then, we discuss applications to Poisson particle processes and Boolean models which contain, as a special case, some new results for flag measures.