Hollow fiber membranes for long-term hemodialysis based on polyethersulfone-SlipSkin™ polymer blends

Hemodialysis (HD) therapy is of vital importance for patients with end stage renal disease (ESRD), when there is no donor organ available for transplantation to replace their malfunctioning kidneys. In contrast to healthy kidneys which work continuously and remove a broad range of toxins, during HD, patients’ blood is cleansed three times a week for 4 h and not all uremic toxins are removed. For achieving long-term and/or continuous therapies, including wearable artificial kidneys, one requires membranes with long-term blood compatibility and high fouling resistance. Most membranes currently used in the clinic are made by blending of hydrophobic polymers, such as polysulfone (PSu) or polyethersulfone (PES), with hydrophilic additives, such as polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP). Studies however, have shown that PVP could leach out from the membranes, especially during prolonged therapy leading to membrane fouling and/or complications to patients. Here, we develop hollow fibers with no additive leaching, by blending PES with small amounts of SlipSkin™ (SS). The latter, a random copolymer consisting of N-vinylpyrrolidone (NVP) and N-butylmethacrylate (BMA), has very good blood compatibility. The developed fibers can achieve high removal of a range of uremic toxins (creatinine and protein-bound uremic toxins) combined with excellent fouling resistance

Social and philosophic foundations of youth nonconformity in contemporary Russia

The purpose of this article is to consider and analyse various approaches to understand nonconformity in general and in the youth environment in particular in order to synthesize and learn from the data and knowledge obtained, and develop a more general and integrated perspective on its essence, determinacy and manifestation specifics. The results discussed in the paper deal with the social-and-philosophical point of view on the various approaches to understanding nonconformity both in a historical retrospect and in modern science. The study revealed that in recent decades the concept of nonconformity has lost its negative connotation. Different conceptual approaches used in studying the phenomenon indicate its significance in the society and personality development, its innovative potential to create and develop new social values, patterns of behaviour and moral standards in the dynamically changing world. Various forms of nonconformity manifestation specify the particularities of contemporary youth subcultures and their socializing potential. The materials of the paper may be of theoretical and practical value to develop programs and teaching materials on social philosophy, sociology and social psychology, as well as the programs connected with prevention of destructive forms of nonconformity in order to bring the processes of young people‘s social adaptation and socialization into compliance. © 2018, Ecozone, OAIMDD. All rights reserved

Study of the process of obtaining cellulose from the sea grass Zostera marina by the method of catalytic delignification

Cellulose is the most common biopolymer used worldwide on an industrial scale with applications in sectors such as paper, fabric, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, explosives, etc. [1]. About 1012 tons of pulp are produced annually from various natural sources, mainly from plants and trees. In fact, for decades the most important source of raw pulp production has been wood, accounting for 2% (approximately 3.2 million tons/year) of annual production. Environmental concerns related to the increased use of wood sources have led researchers to explore new options, including non-wood and residual material sources, such as agricultural and forest residues or clippings from woody species or grasses. The insufficient amount of raw materials is the main problem of all enterprises of the pulp industry in Ukraine. Countries that do not have a good raw material base from wood find a more promising direction of obtaining cellulose from non-wood plant raw materials

The LHCb Upgrade I

The LHCb upgrade represents a major change of the experiment. The detectors have been almost completely renewed to allow running at an instantaneous luminosity five times larger than that of the previous running periods. Readout of all detectors into an all-software trigger is central to the new design, facilitating the reconstruction of events at the maximum LHC interaction rate, and their selection in real time. The experiment's tracking system has been completely upgraded with a new pixel vertex detector, a silicon tracker upstream of the dipole magnet and three scintillating fibre tracking stations downstream of the magnet. The whole photon detection system of the RICH detectors has been renewed and the readout electronics of the calorimeter and muon systems have been fully overhauled. The first stage of the all-software trigger is implemented on a GPU farm. The output of the trigger provides a combination of totally reconstructed physics objects, such as tracks and vertices, ready for final analysis, and of entire events which need further offline reprocessing. This scheme required a complete revision of the computing model and rewriting of the experiment's software