Viscosity in particles consisting of secondary organic material (SOM) has recently become an area of research focus, since information on viscosity is needed to predict the environmental impacts of SOM particles. Recently Renbaum-Wolff et al. (2013a) developed a poke-flow technique that was combined with simulations of fluid flow to constrain the viscosities of SOM samples of 1–5 mg mass, rough...

PID control schemes based on classical control theory, have been widely applied to real control systems. There have been lots of works on tuning PID parameters, since the control performance strongly depends on these parameters. Several self-tuning and auto-tuning PID techniques have been reported for systems with unknown or slowly time-varing parameters. None, however, is applicable to discret...

We evaluated a polybutylene/polypropylene blend in a blown microfiber configuration in vitro for potential use as the peripheral area of a keratoprosthetic device. Material properties such as ultimate tensile strength and ultimate elongation were measured. Stromal fibroblasts were seeded onto the material in vitro, and cell proliferation between uncoated and Type I collagen coated discs did not...

Propene-hexene copolymers crystallize in a new polymorphic form of isotactic polypropylene when the concentration of hexene is higher than nearly 10-15 mol %. The hexene units are included in the crystals, inducing an increase of density that allows crystallization of 3-fold helical chains in a trigonal unit cell according to the space group R3c or Rc, where the helical symmetry of the chains i...

The use of thermoplastic elastomer gels as advanced substrates for construction of complex microfluidic systems is shown. These gels are synthesized by combining inexpensive polystyrene – (polyethylene / polybutylene) – polystyrene triblock copolymers with a hydrocarbon oil for which the ethylene/butylene midblocks are selectively miscible. The insoluble styrene endblocks phase separate into lo...