Experimental methods in chemical engineering: Barrier properties

Up to half of food spoils or goes to waste; packaging is one element that can extend shelf life and reduce the landfill burden. However, plastic packaging contributes to landfills and microparticles in the environment and, as a consequence, society has mandated industry and academics to identify sustainable materials to replace petroleum derived plastics. Oxygen, water, and CO2 permeability are among the physico-chemical properties we measure to identify the suitability of new polymer formulations. Other application of gas permeability include petroleum engineering, carbon capture, water purification, and biological systems. Here we concentrate on the basic concepts of gas transport through polymeric film as well as the effect of structural and environmental parameters. We then describe common instrumentation and data they produce with a specific focus on reference standards. To identify the major research areas, we compiled 4271 articles indexed by Web of Science since 2017 with film and polymer as keywords. The VOSViewer software tool classified the 100 most frequent keywords from these articles into six clusters: nanofilteration, thin film composites, and reverse osmosis; nanocomposites, morphology, and polyvinyl alcohol; mechanical, barrier, and physicochemical properties; permeability, membranes, and transport properties; chitosan and antimicrobial and antioxidant properties; and, films, nanoparticles, and drug delivery. Barrier property research will continue to focus on developing biobased polymers and analyzers capable of measuring multiple compounds simultaneously with dozens of samples while minimizing time

Les caisses d'assurance mutuelle contre la grêle : étude théorique et monographique / par Georges Malherbe ; avec la collaboration de C. Schreiber

Precede al tít.: Cercle d'études sociales de Binch

Francophone African Literary Prizes and the ‘Empire of the French Language’

International audienceDiscussions surrounding the Caine Prize for African Writing and the Nobel committee’s apparent neglect of Africa both defend and challenge the role of prizes in a global literary marketplace. While encouraging new writing in the continent and among its diaspora, the steep growth in literary prizes in the latter half of the twentieth century is bound up with the increased commercialisation and mediatisation of art. Prize culture can reinforce normative ideas of literary value, innovation and creative expression in response to pressure from politics and commerce. This chapter will consider the colonial heritage of the main literary prize specific to African writing in French: the Grand prix littéraire de l’Afrique noire, awarded by the Association des écrivains de langue française (ADELF). The history of this association, active from 1924 to the present day under several different names, is that of contact and exchange between writers who might be assumed to occupy very different areas of colonial and postcolonial literary space. As we will argue, in the French-language context, the longer-term history of prize culture for African literature illustrates significant structures of recognition and reception in the literary field. These structures reveal the ambivalent role of this prize — and of metropolitan literary judgement more broadly — in the construction of France’s postcolonial cultural narratives

Learning from giants: Early exposure to advance markets in the growth and internationalisation of Spanish health care corporations in the twentieth century

This article examines the influence of early exposure to advanced markets of the United States and Germany in the growth and internationalization of health care firms from Spain, a late industrialised country. Based on the case studies of the Spanish corporations Grifols and Ferrer, the study shows that early exposure to advanced markets helped them grow in their national markets, and in the world health care industry. It shows further that the specific capabilities developed by both firms were determined by path-dependent networks with scientists and institutions, on the one hand; and strategic alliances, acquisitions and mergers with German and US corporations on the other. © 2017, © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group