Research Progress on Nano-Delivered Plant Polyphenols in the Prevention and Treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is one of the most common neurodegenerative diseases with a complex pathological mechanism, and as the incidence of AD has increased recently, there is an urgent need to develop more effective prevention and treatment methods. Many studies have shown that plant polyphenols have great potential in the prevention and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, but their bioavailability is poor, limiting their practical applications. The application of nanotechnology can be helpful for the delivery of plant polyphenols. This article aims to elaborate recent progress and challenges in the development of nano-delivery systems for plant polyphenols, and review the common plant polyphenols used for AD treatment and their action mechanisms

Multiple Chemical Sources Localization Using Virtual Physics-Based Robots with Release Strategy

This paper presents a novel method of simultaneously locating chemical sources by a virtual physics-based multirobot system with a release strategy. The proposed release strategy includes setting forbidden area, releasing the robots from declared sources and escaping from it by a rotary force and goal force. This strategy can avoid the robots relocating the same source which has been located by other robots and leading them to move toward other sources. Various turbulent plume environments are simulated by Fluent and Gambit software, and a set of simulations are performed on different scenarios using a group of six robots or parallel search by multiple groups’ robots to validate the proposed methodology. The experimental results show that release strategy can be successfully used to find multiple chemical sources, even when multiple plumes overlap. It can also extend the operation of many chemical source localization algorithms developed for single source localization

A Virtual Physics-based Approach to Multiple Odor Sources Localization

The detection of an odor source location has been enhanced by using multiple plume-tracing mobile robots. So far, many researchers focus on locating a single source in varied environments. The present study is concerned with the problem of multiple chemical sources localization using multi-robot system. In this study, multiple groups of robots were used and coordinated by a multi-robot cooperation strategy with virtual physics force, which includes structure formation force, goal force, repulsion force and rotary force. In order to test the effectiveness of the proposed strategy, plume model with two sources was constructed by computation fluid dynamics simulations. Simulation experiment discussed the influence of the varied frequencies of wind direction/ speed and methane release with different initial positions of multiple groups to the search performance. Simulation comparison experiments using three kinds of plume tracing algorithms: chemotaxis, anemotaxis and fluxotaxis were carried out respectively and the comparative result about three plume tracing algorithms was illustrated

Impact of the cannibalization effect between new and remanufactured products on supply chain design and operations

<p>The cannibalization effect between new and remanufactured products impacts market demand and further influences supply chain design, which makes supply chain operations complex. This article studies the impact of cannibalization between new and remanufactured products on supply chain network design and operations by considering a joint pricing-location-inventory problem. A three-level supply chain network that consists of multi-distribution centers and retailers is considered. New and remanufactured products are supplied simultaneously. The problem is formulated as a nonlinear mixed-integer program and is then transformed into a conic quadratic mixed-integer program. An outer approximation-based solution approach is developed to solve the program. Extensive numerical experiments are conducted to explore the performance of the algorithm and the effects of market cannibalization on the supply chain network design and operations.</p

The case of a subsidized reverse supply chain in the Chinese electronics industry

We study a special environmental producer responsibility policy for the Chinese electronics industry that is based on awarding a per unit subsidy to qualified returned electronic products and ensuring a minimum producer collection volume while allowing larger collection volumes. Based on a real application from a Chinese electronics company that produces LCD TVs, our paper studies the optimal design of the product’s reverse supply chain when there is flexibility in settling the inspection locations of the returned products and flexibility in the volume of returned products collected. The problem is modeled as a nonlinear mixed-integer program and an efficient outer approximation-based solution approach is proposed. Analytical results and extensive numerical experiments based on this real application are conducted. Observations novel to the reverse logistics literature are related to the testing location decisions (upstream or downstream) and the optimal collection volumes of returned products. Particularly, we show how the government can stimulate the collection amount of returned products by increasing the unit subsidy and we also find that the company’s marginal benefit from improving the subsidy increases in a superlinear fashion. Furthermore, the highest collection volumes may not occur at the highest quality level of returned products for capacitated remanufacturers. The company can also be incentivized to increase the collection of returned products by permitting flexible testing locations. We also observe how the optimal testing locations vary for different levels of unit subsidy and different ratios of qualified and non-qualified returned products. Finally, conclusions and future research directions are provided.This research is partly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 72101133, 72171129, 71991462, 72188101), Beijing Natural Science Foundation, China (Grant no. 9192011), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation, China [Grants 2021M701856]. Gemma Berenguer acknowledges financial support from Comunidad de Madrid, Spain (Excelencia Profesorado EPUC3M12), the Ramón y Cajal Fellowship Program, Spain (RYC2020-029303-I), and the Knowledge Generation Project, Spain (PID2021-127657NAI00), the latest two from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, Spain

Side-Chain Liquid Crystal Co-Polymers for Angular Photochromic Anti-Counterfeiting Powder and Fiber

Anti-counterfeiting technologies with the features of easy distinguishability, high cost performance, and good processability are needed to meet the demands of a market during the consumption upgrading moment. A series of side-chain liquid crystal co-polymers (SCLCPs) are designed, synthesized, and blended, and the preparation of a series of angular photochromic materials that have different center reflection wavelengths in the visible and near infra-red region is reported in this article. Differential scanning calorimetry and polarized optical microscopy were utilized to characterize the phase transition behaviors and self-assembling structures of the SCLCPs. The selective reflection properties were characterized with a UV/VIS/IR spectrum study and further verified by scanning electron microscopy. The results showed that the SCLCPs had the desired reflection wavelengths and thermal stability. The SCLCPs could easily form a planar texture of cholesteric liquid crystal and, depending on the good processability, anti-counterfeiting powders and fibers with angular photochromic features were prepared and characterized to prove the potential applications of the SCLCPs in anti-counterfeiting labels

Training Demand Prediction Models by Decision Error for Two-Stage Lot-Sizing Problems

Demand prediction to support appropriate production decisions is being actively studied. Many prediction models are designed to minimize the prediction error, which is measured by determining the difference between the predicted and ground-truth demand. However, these models ignore the effect of the prediction error on downstream production decisions. This prompts our study, which focuses on demand prediction models for two-stage uncapacitated lot-sizing problems. In this paper, we present a linear prediction model that minimizes the decision error, which is measured by the optimization objective of lotsizing problems. Our model mitigates the impact of prediction errors by leveraging the structure of the lot-sizing problems. We subsequently extend the prediction model to a distributionally robust version. A cutting-plane method is proposed to solve the resulting model under the L_{1} and  L_{infinity} norms. The decision errors are used as loss functions to construct decision treeand neural network-based prediction models, respectively. The corresponding training methods are proposed as well. Numerical experiments demonstrate that the proposed prediction models are significantly superior to traditional prediction methods for small samples and high-dimensional data. In addition, the performance of the robust model is highly tolerant to model misspecification and imperfect data.</p

Polysiloxane-Based Side Chain Liquid Crystal Polymers: From Synthesis to Structure–Phase Transition Behavior Relationships

Organosilicon polymer materials play an important role in certain applications due to characteristics of much lower glass transition temperatures (Tg), viscosities, surface energy, as well as good mechanical, thermal stabilities, and insulation performance stemming from the higher bond energy and the larger bond angles of the adjacent silicon-oxygen bond. This critical review highlights developments in the synthesis, structure, and phase transition behaviors of polysiloxane-based side chain liquid crystal polymers (PSCLCPs) of linear and cyclic polysiloxanes containing homopolymers and copolymers. Detailed synthetic strategies are elaborated, and the relationship between molecular structures and liquid crystalline phase transition behaviors is systematically discussed, providing theoretical guidance on the molecular design of the materials

Angular Photochromic LC Composite Film for an Anti-Counterfeiting Label

In the harsh application environment, improving the mechanical properties of liquid crystal materials is a fundamental and important problem in the design of anti-counterfeit materials. In this paper, by a stepwise polymerization of first, photo-polymerization and subsequently thermal-polymerization, a coexistent polymer dispersed network was first constructed in cholesteric liquid crystal materials containing a photo-polymerizable system of urethane acrylate and a thermo-polymerizable system of isocyanate. Results revealed that the coexistent polymer dispersed network exhibited largely enhanced mechanical performance, and the networks obtained by different methods had different contributions to the enhancement of the peel strength and toughness of the composite films. Then an angular photochromic anti-fake label based on a coexistent polymer dispersed network with enhanced mechanical and apparent angular discoloration characteristics, suitable for practical applications, was successfully achieved