Many cells express a membrane-coupled external mechanical layer, the pericellular matrix (PCM), which often contains long-chain polymers. Its role and properties are not entirely known, but its functions are believed to include physical protection, mechanosensing, chemical signalling or lubrication. The viscoelastic response of the PCM, with polysaccharides as the main structural components, is...

Gypsum has two important states (fresh and hardened states), and the addition of phase change materials (PCM) can vary the properties of the material. Many authors have extensively studied properties in the hardened state; however, the variation of fresh state properties due to the addition of Micronal® DS 5001 X PCM into gypsum has been the object of few investigations. Properties in fresh sta...

The article is devoted to the problem of inconsistency in the pairwise comparisons based prioritization methodology. The issue of "inconsistency" in this context has gained much attention in recent years. The literature provides us with a number of different "inconsistency" indices suggested for measuring the inconsistency of the pairwise comparison matrix (PCM). The latter is understood as a d...

Organic phase change material (PCM) with macro-encapsulation is attractive in energy storage applications as it has relatively low cost. This study focuses on using PET plastic pipes to encapsulate paraffin and using low-cost float stones to increase the thermal conductivity of PCM modules as they have a special structure of high porosity. Float stones were immersed in the liquid PCM and an ult...

Model-based performance predictions and reconfigurations enable optimizing resource efficiency while ensuring that Quality-of-Service demands are met in today’s complex ITsystems. The Descartes Modeling Language (DML) and the Palladio Component Model (PCM) are two architectural performance modeling formalisms applied in this context. This paper compares DML to PCM concerning similarities, diffe...

Constructing atomically dispersed platinum (Pt) electrocatalysts is essential to build high-performance and cost-effective electrochemical water-splitting systems. We present a novel strategy to realize the traction and stabilization of isolated Pt atoms in the nitrogen-containing porous carbon matrix (Pt@PCM). In comparison with the commercial Pt/C catalyst (20 weight %), the as-prepared Pt@PC...

This study develops a novel composite phase change material (PCM) based onparaffin/hydrophobic expanded perlite and exfoliated graphene nanoplatelets as heat transferpromoter. The experimental analysis was systematically carried out on fabrication,characterization and testing the thermal storage properties of composite PCM. The micro-morphology characteristics of composite PCM s...

Objective: To investigate whether 14-3-3 eta protein is detectable in synovial fluid and blood serum of high performance horses and to study whether any significant correlation between this and matrix metalloproteinase 1 and 3 in horse synovial fluid. Design: Clinical study. Animals: Eleven standard breed horses (seven high performances and four controls). Procedures: Blood serum and fetlock...

In this paper we develop the idea introduced by Lipovetski and Conklin in 2002 of considering a pairwise comparison matrix (PCM) as a contingency table. Instead of focusing on outliers detection, we use the χ2 value as an index to evaluate the deviation of a pairwise comparison matrix from consistency. We verify by means of numerical simulations that our new index satisfies a set of five proper...