High-Performance Polyvinyl Chloride Gel Artificial Muscle Actuator with Graphene Oxide and Plasticizer

A transparent and electroactive plasticized polyvinyl chloride (PVC) gel was investigated to use as a soft actuator for artificial muscle applications. PVC gels were prepared with varying plasticizer (dibutyl adipate, DBA) content. The prepared PVC gels were characterized using Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, and dynamic mechanical analysis. The DBA content in the PVC gel was shown to have an inverse relationship with both the storage and loss modulus. The electromechanical performance of PVC gels was demonstrated for both single-layer and stacked multi-layer actuators. When voltage was applied to a single-layer actuator and then increased, the maximum displacement of PVC gels (for PVC/DBA ratios of 1:4, 1:6, and 1:8) was increased from 105.19, 123.67, and 135.55 µm (at 0.5 kV) to 140.93, 157.13, and 172.94 µm (at 1.0 kV) to 145.03, 191.34, and 212.84 µm (at 1.5 kV), respectively. The effects of graphene oxide (GO) addition in the PVC gel were also investigated. The inclusion of GO (0.1 wt.%) provided an approximate 20% enhancement of displacement and 41% increase in force production, and a 36% increase in power output for the PVC/GO gel over traditional plasticizer only PVC gel. The proposed PVC/GO gel actuator may have promising applications in artificial muscle, small mechanical devices, optics, and various opto-electro-mechanical devices due to its low-profile, transparency, and electrical response characteristics

New York State 2009 NHTS Comparison Report

The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) initiated an effort in 1969 to collect detailed data on personal travel, with the most recent surveys being the 1995 Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey (NPTS) and the 2001 and 2009 National Household Travel Surveys (NHTS). The primary objective of these surveys is to collect trip-based data on the nature and characteristics of personal travel so that the relationships between the characteristics of personal travel and the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the traveler and his/her household can be established. In addition to the number of sample households that the national NPTS/NHTS survey allotted to New York State, NYDOT procured an additional sample of households in the 1995, 2001, and 2009 surveys. The comparisons drawn in this report compare the results from these NYS sampled households to the results from households drawn for the rest of the nation. Many of the differences between NYC counties and others in the state result from the striking differences in private vehicle ownership levels, with less than one in two NYC drivers and only 64% of NYC households owning a vehicle in 2009: versus 9 out of 10 drivers owning a vehicle, and between 1.5 and 2 vehicles owned per household, on the average, in the state's other metro areas. And this situation has changed very little over the past fourteen years covered by the three latest NPTS/NHTS surveys. While households in metro areas outside NYC do not own a vehicle largely due to income constraints, many households in NYC/Manhattan do not own a vehicle by choice. However, the statistics suggest that the mobility of zero-vehicle households in NYC/Manhattan is by no means deterred by the lack of a vehicle. While the private vehicle tripmaking rate of NYC residents was between one half and one third that in the state's other metro areas, and their daily VMT about half that of other metro areas, most of their daily travel needs were met by walking or by public transit. As a result, their daily trip-making rates remain consistent with those of vehicle-owning households when all modes of travel are considered. This again indicates that owning a vehicle or being a driver in NYC was less important for meeting a household's mobility needs than anywhere else in NYS. The high levels of public transit usage within NYC replace a great deal of automobile use, and this plus greater use of walk trips results in significantly lower travel generated carbon dioxide emissions per household in NYC than elsewhere in the state. In contrast, the comparatively limited level of public transit ridership in the state's smaller and medium sized metro areas places a much greater reliance on the privately owned vehicle, be it an automobile or the increasingly popular SUV

Exploring the missing link among d-separable, d¯-separable and d-disjunct matrices

Abstractd-Disjunct matrices, d¯-separable matrices and d-separable matrices are well studied in various problems including group testing, coding, extremal set theory and, recently, DNA sequencing. The implications from the first two matrices to the last one are well documented. This paper gives an implication of the other direction for the first time

SPITZER observations of dust destruction in the Puppis A supernova remnant

The interaction of the Puppis A supernova remnant (SNR) with a neighboring molecular cloud provides a unique opportunity to measure the amount of grain destruction in an SNR shock. Spitzer Space Telescope MIPS imaging of the entire SNR at 24, 70, and 160 μm shows an extremely good correlation with X-ray emission, indicating that the SNR’s IR radiation is dominated by the thermal emission of swept-up interstellar dust, collisionally heated by the hot shocked gas. Spitzer IRS spectral observations targeted both the Bright Eastern Knot (BEK) of the SNR where a small cloud has been engulfed by the supernova blast wave and outlying portions of the associated molecular cloud that are yet to be hit by the shock front. Modeling the spectra from both regions reveals the composition and the grain size distribution of the interstellar dust, both in front of and behind the SNR shock front. The comparison shows that the ubiquitous polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons of the interstellar medium are destroyed within the BEK, along with nearly 25% of the mass of graphite and silicate dust grains

A comparative study of nonlinear programming routines on the microcomputer versus the large computer

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1984 H92Master of Scienc

Potential anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties of farnesol

© 2018 by the authors. Farnesol, an acyclic sesquiterpene alcohol, is predominantly found in essential oils of various plants in nature. It has been reported to exhibit anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory effects, and also alleviate allergic asthma, gliosis, and edema. In numerous tumor cell lines, farnesol can modulate various tumorigenic proteins and/or modulates diverse signal transduction cascades. It can also induce apoptosis and downregulate cell proliferation, angiogenesis, and cell survival. To exert its anti-inflammatory/anti-oncogenic effects, farnesol can modulate Ras protein and nuclear factor kappa-light-chain-enhancer of activated B cells activation to downregulate the expression of various inflammatory mediators such as cyclooxygenase-2, inducible nitric oxide synthase, tumor necrosis factor alpha, and interleukin-6. In this review, we describe the potential mechanisms of action underlying the therapeutic effects of farnesol against cancers and inflammatory disorders. Furthermore, these findings support the clinical development of farnesol as a potential pharmacological agent in clinical studies