Using organoclay to promote morphology refinement and co-continuity in high-density polyethylene/polyamide 6 blends - Effect of filler content and polymer matrix composition

We investigate the gradual changes of the microstructure of two blends of high-density polyethylene (HOPE) and polyamide 6 (PA6) at opposite composition filled with increasing amounts of an organo-modified clay. The filler locates preferentially inside the polyamide phase, bringing about radical alterations in the micron-scale arrangement of the polymer phases. When the host polyamide represents the major constituent, a sudden reduction of the average sizes of the polyethylene droplets was observed upon addition of even low amounts of organoclay. A morphology refinement was also noticed at low filler contents when the particles distributes inside the minor phase. In this case, however, keep increasing the organoclay content eventually results in a high degree of PA6 phase continuity. Rheological analyses reveal that the filler loading at which the polyamide assembles in a continuous network corresponds to the critical threshold for its rheological transition from a liquid- to a gel-like behaviour, which is indicative of the structuring of the filler inside the host PA6. On the basis of this finding, a schematic mechanism is proposed in which the role of the filler in driving the space arrangement of the polymer phases is discussed. Finally, we show that the synergism between the reinforcing action of the filler and its ability to affect the blend microstructure can be exploited in order to enhance relevant technological properties of the materials, such as their high temperature structural integrit

Dispersing hydrophilic nanoparticles in hydrophobic polymers: HDPE/ZnO nanocomposites by a novel template-based approach

The efficiency of a novel template-based approach for the dispersion of hydrophilic nanoparticles within hydrophobic polymer matrices is investigated. The procedure envisages the permeation of a well dispersed nanoparticle suspension inside a micro-porous matrix, obtained through selective extraction of a sacrificial phase from a finely interpenetrated co-continuous polymer blend. Specifically, a blend of high density polyethylene (HDPE) and polyethylene oxide (PEO) at 50/50 wt% is prepared by melt mixing. The addition of small amounts of organo-clay promotes the necessary refinement of the blend morphology. Once removed the PEO, the micro-porous HDPE matrix is dipped in a colloidal suspension of zinc oxide nanoparticles which exhibits low interfacial tension with HDPE. A system prepared by traditional melt mixing is used as reference. Melt- and solid-state viscoelastic measurements reveal a good quality of the filler dispersion despite the uneven distribution on micro-scale. The latter can be capitalized to minimize the filler content to attain a certain improvement of the material properties or to design nano-structured polymer composites. © BME-PT

Educating novice practitioners to detect elder financial abuse: A randomised controlled trial

© 2014 Harries et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Background - Health and social care professionals are well positioned to identify and intervene in cases of elder financial abuse. An evidence-based educational intervention was developed to advance practitioners’ decision-making in this domain. The objective was to test the effectiveness of a decision-training educational intervention on novices’ ability to detect elder financial abuse. The research was funded by an E.S.R.C. grant reference RES-189-25-0334. Methods - A parallel-group, randomised controlled trial was conducted using a judgement analysis approach. Each participant used the World Wide Web to judge case sets at pre-test and post-test. The intervention group was provided with training after pre-test testing, whereas the control group were purely given instructions to continue with the task. 154 pre-registration health and social care practitioners were randomly allocated to intervention (n78) or control (n76). The intervention comprised of written and graphical descriptions of an expert consensus standard explaining how case information should be used to identify elder financial abuse. Participants’ ratings of certainty of abuse occurring (detection) were correlated with the experts’ ratings of the same cases at both stages of testing. Results - At pre-test, no differences were found between control and intervention on rating capacity. Comparison of mean scores for the control and intervention group at pre-test compared to immediate post-test, showed a statistically significant result. The intervention was shown to have had a positive moderate effect; at immediate post-test, the intervention group’s ratings had become more similar to those of the experts, whereas the control’s capacity did not improve. The results of this study indicate that the decision-training intervention had a positive effect on detection ability. Conclusions - This freely available, web-based decision-training aid is an effective evidence-based educational resource. Health and social care professionals can use the resource to enhance their ability to detect elder financial abuse. It has been embedded in a web resource at http://www.elderfinancialabuse.co.uk.ESR

Microwaves in Soil Remediation from VOC’s. 1. Heat and Mass Transfer Aspects.

A novel technique presented performs in situ remediation of soils contaminated by volatile organic compounds (VOCs) based on the use of electromagnetic fields for heating operations. Attention is focused on heat and mass transfer occurring in porousmoisturized media like a soil matrix. The microwave induced steam distillation process is investigated. Measurements are reported of temperature, humidity, residual contaminant concentration, and permittivity during the process. The crucial role is elucidated that the changes of the dielectrical properties of the soil matrix play on the electromagnetic field propagation. A mathematical model of the remediation process relating all the parameters above is proposed and validated. doi: 10.1002/aic.69049072

adhesion of functional layer on polymeric substrates for optoelectronic applications

The use of plastic film substrates for organic electronic devices promises to enable new applications, such as flexible displays. Plastic substrates have several distinct advantages, such as ruggedness, robustness, ultra lightness, conformability and impact resistance over glass substrates, which are primarily used in flat panel displays (FPDs) today. However, high transparency, proper surface roughness, low gas permeability and high transparent electrode conductivity of the plastic substrate are required for commercial applications. Polyesters, both amorphous and semicrystalline, are a promising class of commercial polymer for optoelectronic applications. Surface modification of polyester films was performed via chemical solution determining hydrolysis or oxidation. Hydrolysis was carried out by means of sodium hydroxide solution and oxidation by using standard clean 1 (SC-1) of RCA procedure [1]. For this work we have used commercial polymer films of 100µm in thickness: AryLite™ [2], supplied by Ferrania Imaging Technologies S.p.A. and characterised by very high glass transition temperature, Mylar™ (Polyethylene Terephthalate PET) and Teonex™ (Polyethylene Naphthalate PEN) both supplied by Dupont. More over, a bioriented and semicrystalline PET have been used. The aim of this study is modifying the polymer surface to improve the adhesion between organic-inorganic layer. It was found that the NaOH and SC-1 treatment cause a decrease of contact angles. In the present study we have deposited a thin films of amorphous hydrogenated silicon (a-Si:H) and its oxide (SiO2) on a new high temperature polymer substrate, AryLite™, by plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) [3], with a radio frequency plasma system

INNOVATIVE TOOLS FOR MANAGING HISTORICAL BUILDINGS: THE USE OF GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEM AND ONTOLOGIES FOR HISTORICAL CENTERS

A recent study and the digitalization of historical centres have developed a completely new strategy for the conservation management of urban buildings through the ‘Risk Map’ of MiBAC. Issues, aims and structure of the Territory Information System (TIS) have been wholly outlined in a dedicated book that describes the structure of the system, also following a historical framing of the debate and the previous experiences. The elaboration of a dedicated ontology adds the opportunity to make the same data available to other kind of software, beginning from HBIM Systems. This aim is pursued developing a special extension of CIDOC-CRM, an already consolidated ontology initially dedicated to the conservation issue of museums. The work has firstly considered the field of architectural conservation and recently further developed addressing historical centres. In this way, a synthetic description of the buildings, including the main features together with vulnerability and transformation index, will allow, through the 3D representation of the town, a stable monitoring of the urban tissue, constantly up to date with the new data deriving from the interventions gradually realized

CONSERVATION PROCESS MODEL (CPM): A TWOFOLD SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH SCOPE IN THE INFORMATION MODELLING FOR CULTURAL HERITAGE

The aim of the present research is to develop an instrument able to adequately support the conservation process by means of a twofold approach, based on both BIM environment and ontology formalisation. Although BIM has been successfully experimented within AEC (Architecture Engineering Construction) field, it has showed many drawbacks for architectural heritage. To cope with unicity and more generally complexity of ancient buildings, applications so far developed have shown to poorly adapt BIM to conservation design with unsatisfactory results (Dore, Murphy 2013; Carrara 2014). In order to combine achievements reached within AEC through BIM environment (design control and management) with an appropriate, semantically enriched and flexible The presented model has at its core a knowledge base developed through information ontologies and oriented around the formalization and computability of all the knowledge necessary for the full comprehension of the object of architectural heritage an its conservation. Such a knowledge representation is worked out upon conceptual categories defined above all within architectural criticism and conservation scope. The present paper aims at further extending the scope of conceptual modelling within cultural heritage conservation already formalized by the model. A special focus is directed on decay analysis and surfaces conservation project