In this article, we synthesize of a novel starch-based superabsorbent hydrogel via graft copolymerization of mixtures of acrylic acid (AA) and 2-Hydroxy ethyl methacrylate (HEMA) onto starch backbones. The polymerization reaction was carried out in an aqueous medium and in the presence of ammonium persulfate (APS) as an initiator and N,N’-methylene bisacrylamide (MBA) as a crosslinker. The hydr...

Neste artigo descrevemos um projeto de colaboração entre a Linguateca e o RCAAP (Repositório Cient́ıfico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal) no sentido de determinar a possibilidade de melhorar a procura no meta-repositório deste último com ferramentas de processamento da ĺıngua portugesa. Após uma breve apresentação do projeto e da sua motivação nas duas primeiras secções, na secção 3 descrevemos a q...

The interaction of a weak polyacid, sodium polyacrylate (PAA), and cationic mixed micelles of n-hexadecyl trimethyl ammonium chloride/n-dodecyl hexaoxyethylene glycol monoether (CTAC/C12E8) was studied by turbidimetric titrations at varying pH, in order to determine the effect of polymer charge. Electrostatically-driven complex formation is controlled by three variables: the polymer linear char...

Clinoptilolite was investigated for the removal of Cu(II) ions from industrial leachate. Adaptive neural fuzzy interface system (ANFIS) was used for modeling the batch experimental system and predicting the optimal input values, that is, initial pH, adsorbent dosage, and contact time. Experiments were studied under laboratory batch and fixed bed conditions. The outcomes of suggested ANFIS model...

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) can generate chondrocytes in vitro, but typically need to be cultured as aggregates in the presence of transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β), which makes scale-up difficult. Here we investigated if polyacrylate substrates modelled on the functional group composition and distribution of the Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD) integrin-binding site could induce MSCs to undergo chond...

The absorption and circular dichroism (CD) spectra of three types of cyanine dyes with different lengths of methine group (3,3'-diethylthiadicarbocyanine iodide, DTDC; 3,3'-diethylthiacarbocyanine iodide, DTC; and 3,3'-diethylthiacyanine iodide, DTTHC) in an aqueous solution were compared with and without hyaluronic acid (HA), which has a helical structure. DTDC forms chiral H- and J-aggregates...

Although current photorealistic rendering techniques can produce very impressive images, the rendered objects are often too clean and shiny. Thus, the resulting images look unnatural. This paper proposes a physically-based model to simulate the appearance of patinas on ancient Chinese bronzes. Buried in the soil for thousands of years, many patinas are found on the surface of ancient bronzes as...