Die Relevanz der unterschiedlichen landseitigen Mikroplastikeinträge für die Verschmutzung der Meere ist bisher noch weitgehend unklar. Trotzdem hat die Kontamination der terrestrischen Umwelt erhebliches öffentliches Interesse erlangt. Besonders die deutliche Medienpräsenz dieses...

Die Relevanz der unterschiedlichen landseitigen Mikroplastikeinträge für die Verschmutzung der Meere ist bisher noch weitgehend unklar. Trotzdem hat die Kontamination der terrestrischen Umwelt erhebliches öffentliches Interesse erlangt. Besonders die deutliche Medienpräsenz dieses...

Plastics are ubiquitous across the region and play an important role in multiple industries. Most plastic products are based on a value chain that is grounded in petroleum refining, posing an environmental challenge. Plastic manufacturing in South Africa suffers from the high cost of polymers as...

Plastics are ubiquitous across the region and play an important role in multiple industries. Most plastic products are based on a value chain that is grounded in petroleum refining, posing an environmental challenge. Plastic manufacturing in South Africa suffers from the high cost of polymers as...

This research report investigated the effectiveness of cross-hedging polymers with brent futures contracts for manufacturers of plastic commodity products. The purpose was to find out whether volatile polymer raw material prices could, through this method, be stabilised to create predictable...

Drought is a major cause of economic loss to the world’s wheat growers; estimated at up to US$20 billion (£12.5 bn) in 2000. Film antitranspirants are polymers applied to foliage to reduce water loss and have recently been shown to increase droughted wheat yield. This increase is...

Patent citations have been widely used in order to study inter-technology and science-technology relations. The present work aims at: i) exploring time relations and distance between technical/innovative activities and scientific knowledge, using journal articles citations in patents as a proxy;...

We study the adsorption problem of linear polymers, immersed in a good solvent, when the container of the polymer–solvent system is taken to be a member of the Sierpinski gasket (SG) family of fractals, embedded in the three-dimensional Euclidean space. Members of the SG family are enumerated...

Fossil fuel substitution with biomass is one of the measures to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. This paper estimates the cost-effectiveness of raising industrial steam and producing materials (i.e. chemicals, polymers) from biomass. We quantify their long-term global potentials in terms...

High pressure technologies involving sub and supercritical fluids offer the possibility to obtain new products with special characteristics or to design new processes, which are environmentally friendly and sustainable. By using high pressure as a processing tool one can also avoid the legal...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review the challenges present in the development of hand exoskeletons powered by pneumatic artificial muscles. This paper also presents the development of a novel strain sensor and its application in a five‐fingered hand exoskeleton....

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe a range of artificial muscle and soft gripping technologies for robotic applications. Design/methodology/approach – Following a short introduction, this paper first discusses the role of air muscles and other pneumatic actuation...

In this paper, a molecular theory of self-diffusion coefficient is developed for polymeric liquids (melts) on the basis of the integral equation theory for site–site pair correlation functions, the generic van der Waals equation of state, and the modified free volume theory of diffusion. The...

We have investigated the polarization and momentum dependence of singlet excitons in pentacene molecular crystals using inelastic electron scattering. Our results demonstrate that both the direction as well as the absolute value of the momentum are decisive for the spectral intensity of these...

In this paper, the contribution of polarization diffusion on the dispersion of the electric susceptibility in polymeric materials, that exhibits normal (N-) relaxation at low frequencies and segmental or alpha (α-) relaxation at high frequencies, is studied. Polarization diffusion is locally...

Purpose – Aims to project how electroactive polymer will replace conventional electromagnetic motor driven solutions for service and industrial robots. Design/methodology/approach – Presents the ability of electro active polymer to provide higher power density for robot actuation over...

This paper focuses on some of the presentations given at a technical workshop on “Laser processing of polymer‐based materials”, organised by Association of Industrial Laser Users. Applications in cutting and welding are discussed and specifically how different combinations of polymer...

We study phenomenological scaling theories of the polymer dynamics in random media, employing the existing scaling theories of polymer chains and the percolation statistics. We investigate both the Rouse and the Zimm model for Brownian dynamics and estimate the diffusion constant of the...

A theory of nonlinear convective depletion is set up as a nanosphere translates fast through a semidilute polymer solution. For nanospheres a self-consistent field theory in the Rouse approximation is often legitimate. A self-similar solution of the convective depletion equation is argued to be...

The Brownian motion of a bound particle in shear flow is a basic problem in colloid and polymer science. Since the flow has a rotational component, the description cannot be cast in the usual equilibrium statistical mechanics framework of particle motion in a potential well. Instead, the...

I review the results of an experimental and theoretical study of the effects of polymers having a number of hydrophobic anchors grafted along a hydrophilic backbone on phospholipid vesicles of different geometries. Pearling of tubular vesicles, tubulation at the rim of highly oblate vesicles,...

With the aim of studying the confinement influence on the molecular mobility of H-bonded systems, high-resolution quasi-elastic neutron scattering data were obtained for ethylene glycol [EG: H(O–CH2–CH2)OH] in the bulk state at T=40°C and confined into 25Å pores of a sol–gel porous...

Drag reduction is investigated in one- and two-dimensional turbulent flows that are stationary and homogeneous. In the two-dimensional case, the polymer chains are deformed though advected passively through the Kraichnan cascades within a scaling analysis. The typical rate of shear must then be...

The depletion interaction between nanoparticles and flexible polymers is discussed when the suspensions are nondilute. It is argued that a mean-field approximation is often useful. It is shown that the capacitance is a variable of interest for a nanoparticle immersed in a semidilute polymer...

Using the concept of finite-size scaling, Monte Carlo calculations of various models have become a very useful tool for the study of critical phenomena, with the system linear dimension as a variable. As an example, several recent studies of Ising models are discussed, as well as the extension...

This paper examines the rapid growth of the polymer-based and biomedical clusters in Ohio and Sweden - two regions of similar size and with similar traditions undergoing similar industrial restructuring. <p>Two issues are addressed: First, why has growth been so strong in these particular clusters,...</p>

We numerically investigate the influence of self-attraction on the critical behaviour of a polymer in two dimensions, by means of an analysis of finite-size results of transfer-matrix calculations. The transfer matrix is constructed on the basis of the O(n) loop model in the limit n→0. It...