scholarly journals Recent Advances on Cellulose Nanocrystals and Their Derivatives

Polymers ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (19) ◽  
pp. 3247
Author(s):  
Shuting Peng ◽  
Qiguan Luo ◽  
Guofu Zhou ◽  
Xuezhu Xu

Nanocellulose, typically cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs), has excellent properties and is widely used. In particular, CNC has a small dimension, high chemical reactivity, and high sustainability, which makes it an excellent candidate as a starting material to be converted into nanocellulose derivatives. Chemical modification is essential for obtaining the desired products; the modifications create different functional attachment levels and generate novel microstructures. Recent advances on nanocellulose derivatives have not yet been reviewed and evaluated for the last five years. Nanocellulose derivative materials are being used in a wide variety of high-quality functional applications. To meet these requirements, it is essential for researchers to fully understand CNCs and derivative materials, precisely their characteristics, synthesis methods, and chemical modification approaches. This paper discusses CNC and its derivatives concerning the structural characteristics, performance, and synthesis methods, comparing the pros and cons of these chemical modification approaches reported in recent years. This review also discusses the critical physicochemical properties of CNC derivative products, including solubility, wetting performance, and associated impacts on properties. Lastly, this paper also comments on the bottlenecks of nanocellulose derivatives in various applications and briefly discusses their future research direction.

Biosensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chaoming Fang ◽  
Bowei He ◽  
Yixuan Wang ◽  
Jin Cao ◽  
Shuo Gao

In the field of rehabilitation, the electromyography (EMG) signal plays an important role in interpreting patients’ intentions and physical conditions. Nevertheless, utilizing merely the EMG signal suffers from difficulty in recognizing slight body movements, and the detection accuracy is strongly influenced by environmental factors. To address the above issues, multisensory integration-based EMG pattern recognition (PR) techniques have been developed in recent years, and fruitful results have been demonstrated in diverse rehabilitation scenarios, such as achieving high locomotion detection and prosthesis control accuracy. Owing to the importance and rapid development of the EMG centered multisensory fusion technologies in rehabilitation, this paper reviews both theories and applications in this emerging field. The principle of EMG signal generation and the current pattern recognition process are explained in detail, including signal preprocessing, feature extraction, classification algorithms, etc. Mechanisms of collaborations between two important multisensory fusion strategies (kinetic and kinematics) and EMG information are thoroughly explained; corresponding applications are studied, and the pros and cons are discussed. Finally, the main challenges in EMG centered multisensory pattern recognition are discussed, and a future research direction of this area is prospected.


Robotica ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Wei Jiang ◽  
Gao Cheng Ye ◽  
De Hua Zou ◽  
Yu Yan

SUMMARY High-voltage power cables are important channels for power transmission systems. Their special geographical environment and harsh natural environment can lead to many different faults. At present, such special operations in dangerous and harsh environments are performed manually, which not only has high labor intensity and low work efficiency but also has great personal safety risks. In order to solve such difficult problems, this paper studies the power maintenance robot for insulator string replacement, spacer replacement, damper and drainage plate maintenance; the basic configuration and the operation motion planning have been proposed; and the virtual prototype of the inspection maintenance robots has been developed, and then the mechanical structure of the robots has been optimized by the robot kinematics modeling and analyzed the working space based on the Monte Carlo method. The system platform, operation function, structural characteristics and related key technologies involved in the robot system development were systematically summarized; the deep integration point for the robot technology with big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and ubiquitous power Internet-of-Things technologies was also discussed. Finally, the physical prototype of the insulator replacement, drainage plate tightening, and damper replacement operation robot has been developed; several experimental tests on a 220 V live line have been conducted so as to verify the robot engineering practicality; and the main development and future research direction have also been pointed out at last.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Suhaily Maizan Abdul Manaf ◽  
Shuhada Mohamed Hamidi ◽  
Nur Shafini Mohd Said ◽  
Siti Rapidah Omar Ali ◽  
Nur Dalila Adenan

Economic performance of a country is mostly determined by the growth and any other internal and external factors. In this study, researchers purposely focused on Malaysian market by examining the relationship between export, inflation rate, government expenditure and foreign direct investment towards economic growth in Malaysia by applying the yearly data of 47 years from 1970 to 2016 using descriptive statistics, regression model and correlation method analysis. By applying Ordinary Least Square (OLS) method, the result suggests that export, government expenditure and foreign direct investment are positively and significantly correlated with the economic growth. However, inflation rate has negative and insignificant relationship with the economic growth. The outcome of the study is suggested to be useful in providing the future research direction towards the economic growth in Malaysia. Keywords: economic growth; export; inflation rate; government expenditure


Author(s):  
Mukhil Azhagan M. S ◽  
Dhwani Mehta ◽  
Hangwei Lu ◽  
Sudarshan Agrawal ◽  
Mark Tehranipoor ◽  
...  

Abstract Globalization and complexity of the PCB supply chain has made hardware assurance a challenging task. An automated system to extract the Bill of Materials (BoM) can save time and resources during the authentication process, however, there are numerous imaging modalities and image analysis techniques that can be used to create such a system. In this paper we review different imaging modalities and their pros and cons for automatic PCB inspection. In addition, image analysis techniques commonly used for such images are reviewed in a systematic way to provide a direction for future research in this area. Index Terms—Component Detection, PCB, Authentication, Image Analysis, Machine Learning


2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 641-664 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamed Salama ◽  
Ti-Fei Yuan ◽  
Sergio Machado ◽  
Eric Murillo-Rodriguez ◽  
Jose Vega ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (8) ◽  
pp. 4167
Author(s):  
Xiaonan Sun ◽  
Jalen Alford ◽  
Hongyu Qiu

Mitochondria undergo structural and functional remodeling to meet the cell demand in response to the intracellular and extracellular stimulations, playing an essential role in maintaining normal cellular function. Merging evidence demonstrated that dysregulation of mitochondrial remodeling is a fundamental driving force of complex human diseases, highlighting its crucial pathophysiological roles and therapeutic potential. In this review, we outlined the progress of the molecular basis of mitochondrial structural and functional remodeling and their regulatory network. In particular, we summarized the latest evidence of the fundamental association of impaired mitochondrial remodeling in developing diverse cardiac diseases and the underlying mechanisms. We also explored the therapeutic potential related to mitochondrial remodeling and future research direction. This updated information would improve our knowledge of mitochondrial biology and cardiac diseases’ pathogenesis, which would inspire new potential strategies for treating these diseases by targeting mitochondria remodeling.


Entropy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 460
Author(s):  
Samuel Yen-Chi Chen ◽  
Shinjae Yoo

Distributed training across several quantum computers could significantly improve the training time and if we could share the learned model, not the data, it could potentially improve the data privacy as the training would happen where the data is located. One of the potential schemes to achieve this property is the federated learning (FL), which consists of several clients or local nodes learning on their own data and a central node to aggregate the models collected from those local nodes. However, to the best of our knowledge, no work has been done in quantum machine learning (QML) in federation setting yet. In this work, we present the federated training on hybrid quantum-classical machine learning models although our framework could be generalized to pure quantum machine learning model. Specifically, we consider the quantum neural network (QNN) coupled with classical pre-trained convolutional model. Our distributed federated learning scheme demonstrated almost the same level of trained model accuracies and yet significantly faster distributed training. It demonstrates a promising future research direction for scaling and privacy aspects.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 1500
Author(s):  
Songrui Wei ◽  
Xiaoqi Liao ◽  
Han Zhang ◽  
Jianhua Pang ◽  
Yan Zhou

Fluxgate magnetic sensors are especially important in detecting weak magnetic fields. The mechanism of a fluxgate magnetic sensor is based on Faraday’s law of electromagnetic induction. The structure of a fluxgate magnetic sensor mainly consists of excitation windings, core and sensing windings, similar to the structure of a transformer. To date, they have been applied to many fields such as geophysics and astro-observations, wearable electronic devices and non-destructive testing. In this review, we report the recent progress in both the basic research and applications of fluxgate magnetic sensors, especially in the past two years. Regarding the basic research, we focus on the progress in lowering the noise, better calibration methods and increasing the sensitivity. Concerning applications, we introduce recent work about fluxgate magnetometers on spacecraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, wearable electronic devices and defect detection in coiled tubing. Based on the above work, we hope that we can have a clearer prospect about the future research direction of fluxgate magnetic sensor.


Nanophotonics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. 2315-2340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Junli Wang ◽  
Xiaoli Wang ◽  
Jingjing Lei ◽  
Mengyuan Ma ◽  
Cong Wang ◽  
...  

AbstractDue to the unique properties of two-dimensional (2D) materials, much attention has been paid to the exploration and application of 2D materials. In this review, we focus on the application of 2D materials in mode-locked fiber lasers. We summarize the synthesis methods for 2D materials, fiber integration with 2D materials and 2D materials based saturable absorbers. We discuss the performance of the diverse mode-locked fiber lasers in the typical operating wavelength such as 1, 1.5, 2 and 3 μm. Finally, a summary and outlook of the further applications of the new materials in mode-locked fiber lasers are presented.


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