Thermal degradation pathways in multi-component epoxy composites

In this study, the thermal degradation behavior of epoxy composites formulates with a bisphenol A (BPA) and bisphenol F (BPF) resin blend, a reactive alkyl glycidyl ether diluent, and quartz filler, cured with a cycloaliphatic amine hardener was investigated. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (py-GC-MS) were employed to explore the degradation pathways and identify the key pyrolyzates. The results revealed that BPA and BPF degrade through distinct but interrelated mechanisms, producing major pyrolyzates such as phenol, BPA, and xanthene. The reactive diluent significantly influenced the pyrolysis profile by introducing unique long-chain hydrocarbons, alcohols, and ethers because of its incomplete incorporation into the polymer matrix. Despite its inert nature, the quartz filler reduced the abundance of pyrolyzates and increased the residual mass, improving the thermal stability of the composite without altering the degradation pathways. This study highlights the complex interplay between resin chemistry, reactive diluents, and fillers in determining thermal behavior. These insights are essential for optimising epoxy composite formulations to enhance their thermal stability and durability for high-performance applications

PRISMA: A Privacy-Preserving Schema Matcher using Functional Dependencies

Schema matching aims to find semantic correspondences between the columns of two schemas. Due to its high relevance in the field of data integration, it has been extensively studied in the literature. However, most matching approaches assume similarity of column names or instance data of the schemas to be matched and struggle when these are encoded differently, e.g., if they have been encrypted due to privacy requirements. We present Prisma, a novel encoding-independent schema matcher that utilizes functional dependencies to construct graph embeddings that exploit the encoding-independent structure of the schemas to be compared. We compare Prisma against multiple baseline matchers as well as state-of-the-art competitors. The experiments demonstrate that Prisma outperforms these approaches on databases that have large differences in their encodings, especially if these databases consist of multiple tables

Current perspectives on living donor selection in liver transplantation

The careful selection of donors is crucial to achieving a successful outcome in living donor liver transplantation. The evaluation process involves obtaining a comprehensive medical history and pertinent laboratory testing, evaluating surgical anatomy using cross-sectional radiologic imaging and understanding donor motivation and psycho social considerations. This review outlines the evaluation of a potential living liver donor and discussed frequently encountered special considerations that may need to be addressed by the transplant team

Development of Causal Connectives in Italian L1 and L2 Student Writing: A Comparison of Argumentative Texts from Lower and Upper Secondary School

In this article, we investigate the explicit signalling of causal relations by means of causal connectives in Italian student writing. We compare four groups of students divided by their language background (L1 or L2 writers) and developmental stage (lower vs. upper secondary school) to see whether writers with different backgrounds develop similarly between year 8 and year 12 of schooling. In particular, we analyse number, ratio and diversity of causal connectives together with lexical sophistication and range of these items. We furthermore inspect the causal connectives used within the groups qualitatively and observe over- and underuse of specific connectives using correspondence analysis. Our study represents the first of this kind on Italian and one of the few that observes development over a longer time interval on both L1 and L2 students. It shows similar trends as previous studies on connective use in general, while providing a closer look at a specific type of connectives thought to be integral for argumentative writing

Structure, bonding and ionic mobility in Na–V–P–O glasses for energy storage applications

Na-V-P-O glasses are promising materials for sodium ion batteries, and yet a thorough understanding of their atomic scale behavior has so far been elusive. In this work we leverage structural and electrochemical experiments with first-principles and large-scale machine learning-accelerated molecular dynamics to elucidate quantitatively the interplay among structure, bonding, and ion mobility on space and time scales of unprecedented extensions. We unravel the existence of a broad V coordination distribution together with heterogeneous Na-ion mobility featuring percolation channels. Our results are instrumental in the search for NVP glass optimization for electrochemical applications