Cyclotriphosphazene-based derivatives for antibacterial Applications: an update on recent advances

As a phosphorus scaffold, hexachlorocyclotriphosphazene (HCCP) is widely used for the synthesis of varieties of derivatives, including metal-binding complexes and several unique organometallic compounds, which exhibit potential catalytic, flame retardant and bio logical activities. Some metal-binding HCCP derivatives have shown antibacterial activities as free ligands and metal complexes. These derivatives can also serve as building blocks for the formation of antibacterial metal-containing polymers. This mini-review is focused on the de sign and development of HCCP derivatives as potential antibacterial agents with representa tive examples as well as antibacterial mechanisms from recent yearsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A Submodular Optimization Framework for Outage-Aware Cell Association in Heterogeneous Cellular Networks

In cellular heterogeneous networks (HetNets), offloading users to small cell base stations (SBSs) leads to a degradation in signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) and results in high outage probabilities for offloaded users. In this paper, we propose a novel framework to solve the cell association problem with the intention of improving user outage performance while achieving load balancing across different tiers of BSs. We formulate a combinatorial utility maximization problem with weighted BS loads that achieves proportional fairness among users and also takes into account user outage performance. A formulation of the weighting parameters is proposed to discourage assigning users to BSs with high outage probabilities. In addition, we show that the combinatorial optimization problem can be reformulated as a monotone submodular maximization problem and it can be readily solved via a greedy algorithm with lazy evaluations. The obtained solution offers a constant performance guarantee to the cell association problem. Simulation results show that our proposed approach leads to over 30% reduction in outage probabilities for offloaded users and achieves load balancing across macrocell and small cell BSs

Natural wood derived robust carbon sheets with perpendicular channels as gas diffusion layers in air-breathing proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs)

Abstract Herein, a novel natural wood derived macroporous carbon sheet with three-dimension inter-connected perpendicular-channels was engineered as gas diffusion layers (w-GDLs) for air-breathing proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). Beneficial to the unique accessible perpendicular channels and the presence of a microporous layer, the current density reached 0.139 A/cm2 (at 0.6 V) and the maximum power density elevated up to 0.102 W/cm2 (at 0.43 V), which are comparable to the best results reported for the air-breathing PEMFCs with high Pt loadings. Furthermore, it exhibited excellent durability during preliminary constant discharge operation, demonstrating the feasibility of this w-GDL for practical applications

Pricing Decision of Closed-Loop Supply Chain to Improve Service Level under Patent Protection

This paper constructs a two-level closed-loop supply chain system consisting of original parts manufacturers and parts distributors. Based on the different preferences of consumers for remanufactured parts and new parts, four combination models of patent protection and service improvement are constructed. Through comparative analysis, the impact of implementing patent protection policies by original parts manufacturers and improving service levels by parts distributors on the pricing decisions of the closed-loop supply chain is explored.Through the comparison between related models and the verification of calculation examples, it is found that (1) a manufacturer prevents the price of new products from being affected by the price of remanufactured products and upgrading of service level by introducing royalties, which reduces its loss of profit; (2) in the absence of patent protection, the manufacturerꞌs profit decreases as the level of service increases; in the presence of patent protection, the manufacturerꞌs profit increases as the level of service increases; (3) retailersꞌ profits decrease after the manufacturer introduces royalties, which discourages them to improve service levels for remanufactured products; (4) as retailers raise the service level of the remanufactured products, the profits of the manufacturer and third-party manufacturers keep increasing, while the profits of the retailers first increase and then decrease