Experimental investigation of the properties of electrospun nanofibers for potential medical application

Copyright © 2015 Anhui Wang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Polymer based nanofibers using ethylene-co-vinyl alcohol (EVOH) were fabricated by electrospinning technology. The nanofibers were studied for potential use as dressing materials for skin wounds treatment. Properties closely related to the clinical requirements for wound dressing were investigated, including the fluid uptake ability (FUA), the water vapour transmission rate (WVTR), the bacteria control ability of nanofibers encapsulated with different antibacterial drugs, and Ag of various concentrations. Nanofibre degradation under different environmental conditions was also studied for the prospect of long term usage. The finding confirms the potential of EVOH nanofibers for wound dressing application, including the superior performance compared to cotton gauze and the strong germ killing capacity when Ag particles are present in the nanofibers

FFT-LB modeling of thermal liquid-vapor systems

We further develop a thermal LB model for multiphase flows. In the improved model, we propose to use the FFT scheme to calculate both the convection term and external force term. The usage of FFT scheme is detailed and analyzed. By using the FFT algorithm spatiotemporal discretization errors are decreased dramatically and the conservation of total energy is much better preserved. A direct consequence of the improvement is that the unphysical spurious velocities at the interfacial regions can be damped to neglectable scale. Together with the better conservation of total energy, the more accurate flow velocities lead to the more accurate temperature field which determines the dynamical and final states of the system. With the new model, the phase diagram of the liquid-vapor system obtained from simulation is more consistent with that from theoretical calculation. Very sharp interfaces can be achieved. The accuracy of simulation results are also verified by the Laplace law. The FFT scheme can be easily applied to other models for multiphase flows.Comment: 34 pages, 21 figure

Denitrifying bacterial communities vary with soil N in canola fields

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Hydrogen-oxidizing bacteria from lentil field

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Interlayer couplings and the coexistence of antiferromagnetic and d-wave pairing order in multilayer cuprates

A more extended low density region of coexisting uniform antiferromagnetism and d-wave superconductivity has been reported in multilayer cuprates, when compared to single or bilayer cuprates. This coexistence could be due to the enhanced screening of random potential modulations in inner layers or to the interlayer Heisenberg and Josephson couplings. A theoretical analysis using a renormalized mean field theory, favors the former explanation. The potential for an improved determination of the antiferromagnetic and superconducting order parameters in an ideal single layer from zero field NMR and infrared Josephson plasma resonances in multilayer cuprates is discussed.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure

A nationwide survey of privatized firms in China

This descriptive study is based on a nationwide survey of privatization in China. Between 1995 and 2005, close to 100,000 firms with 11.4 trillion RMB in assets were privatized in China. This privatization process encompassed two-thirds of state-owned enterprises and state assets. Privatization in China has created concentrated private ownership and greatly changed corporate governance. After privatization, the state has withdrawn from firms’ daily decision making. Soft budget constraints have been substantially hardened. Firms have become more efficient and more profitable.postprin

What makes privatization work? The case of China

Using a unique hand-collected nationwide survey, this paper studies China’s privatization, by far the largest one in human history. We find that privatization in China has improved performance, but only for firms bought out by managers (MBOs). Consistent with improved performance, MBO firms are less likely be influenced by the state in their daily operation and are more likely to take various restructuring measures. We also find city governments with stronger fiscal disciplines and with less political burdens of disposing laid-off works tend to use the MBO method to privatize. Our empirical design deals with the selection issues by applying a difference-in-difference approach and an IV approach.postprin

User Selection in Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface Assisted Communication Systems

This paper presents a detailed investigation on the performance of reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted communication system with user scheduling. Depending on the availability of channel state information (CSI) at the RIS, two separate scenarios are considered, namely without CSI and with CSI. Closed-form expressions are derived for the ergodic capacity of the system in both scenarios. It is found that CSI has a significant impact on the performance of the system. Without CSI, the RIS provides an array gain of N, where N is the number of reflecting elements, and user scheduling provides an multi-user gain of log logM, where M is the number of users. With CSI, the RIS provides an array gain of N2, while no multi-user diversity gain can be obtained

Abundance and diversity of AM fungal communities associated with agricultural factors

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Fungicide effects on N2-fixing bacteria and N2-fixation in chickpea

Non-Peer ReviewedFungicide application in field crops have unexpected non-target effects on the agroecosystem. Molecular methods (polymerase chain reaction – denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis and cloning technology) were used to test the effects of four fungicide application programs targeting Ascochyta blight (Ascochyta rabiei) on the N2-fixing bacterial communities associated with two chickpea cultivars, and on chickpea nodulation. Treatments were replicated four times in complete blocks in the field, in 2008 and 2009. Results showed the richness of the N2-fixing bacterial communities did not change significantly (P > 0.05, data didn’t shown) with fungicide application, but different intensities of fungicide application selected different dominant N2-fixing taxa, as revealed by Correspondence Analysis (CA) of DNA sequences. Genotypes of chickpea cultivars significantly affected both the richness and composition of the N2-fixing bacterial communities, as revealed by results of CA. Both fungicide and crop genotype affected nodulation scores of chickpea based on ANOVA results (P < 0.001 for nodulation scores test and P = 0.04 for fixed N test), reflecting impacts on nitrogen fixation. Redundancy analysis (RDA) also revealed significant relationships (P = 0.014) among fixed nitrogen, nodulation scores and identified rhizosphere N2-fixing bacteria. Based on these results, we conclude that both the foliar fungicide applications and chickpea genotype can affect the composition and function of N2-fixing bacterial community in chickpea field