“
“Several carbon-black filled

styrene-butadiene rubbers are subjected to monotonic uniaxial tension tests in order to investigate the effects of the amount of fillers and of the crosslink density on their mechanical properties. The Young modulus, the volume changes associated with material damage and the stretch to failure are extracted and discussed. Results compare well to the literature results when exist and quantitative analysis are proposed when possible. Results show that filled rubbers are not incompressible when submitted to uniaxial tension tests and their volume changes AZD8931 price are strongly dependent of the amount of fillers but are unaffected by the crosslink density. The latter shows strong impact on the filled rubbers stretch to failure but more interestingly this impact is comparable to what is encountered in unfilled rubbers. The stretch to failure is improved by the addition of fillers with an optimum for material filled around 30 phr. (c) 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci., 2013″
“Animals frequently switch from one behavior to another, often to meet the demands of their changing environment or internal state. What factors Ricolinostat control these behavioral switches

and the selection of what to do or what not to do? To address these issues, we will focus on the locomotor behaviors of two distantly related “worms,” selleck kinase inhibitor the medicinal leech Hirudo verbana (clade Lophotrochozoa) and the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans (clade Ecdysozoa). Although the neural architecture and body morphology of these organisms are quite distinct, they appear to switch between different forms of locomotion by using similar strategies of decision-making. For example, information that distinguishes between liquid and more solid environments dictates whether an animal swims or crawls. In the leech, dopamine

biases locomotor neural networks so that crawling is turned on and swimming is turned off. In C. elegans, dopamine may also promote crawling, a form of locomotion that has gained new attention.”
“A new fluorescent nanoparticle was synthesized by chemical crosslinking of polyacrylic acid using 4-aminoethanol-N-hydroxyethanyl-1,8-naphthalimide as the crosslinker. The particle possesses excellent characteristics, including low cytotoxicity, water solubility and good fluorescence properties. The interaction of the particle with bovine serum albumin was investigated by absorbance, fluorescence and circular dichroism spectroscopic methods. The interaction mechanisms, binding model and reciprocal effects on structure and fluorescence between nanoparticle and protein are discussed. The spectral data indicated that the nanoparticle could spontaneously form a reversible complex with bovine serum albumin in solution used mainly by hydrogen bonds and van der Waals forces.