Kraton (United States)

Dentists are well-suited to provide smoking cessation interventions, as they can educate patients about the adverse effects of smoking on oral health. Acknowledging the significance of this, the study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the newly developed UMAR (Usaha Memerangi Asap Rokok) module in improving dentists' knowledge and attitudes towards delivering smoking cessation interventions to patients. Materials and methods: Between November 2022 and May 2023, a pre-post study was conducted among 80 government dentists working at primary dental clinics in Kelantan. The UMAR module was developed based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) and was then disclosed to the participants through workshops that included lectures and practicals. A validated questionnaire was administered before and after the workshop through Google Forms to assess the improvement of knowledge and attitudes. Results: Participants' overall knowledge increased significantly from 7.29 (2.194) to 10.39 (1.026), t=10.990, p<0.001. Participants' overall attitudes also increased significantly from 18.64 (1.669) to 19.49 (1.060), t=5.074, p<0.001. There was no significant association between demographic factors, working characteristics, smoking cessation training, and the availability of a quit smoking clinic with the post-intervention knowledge and attitude. Conclusion: The UMAR module was effective in improving dentists' knowledge and attitudes towards delivering smoking cessation interventions to patients.

Recent advancements in speech-driven 3D talking head generation have made significant progress in lip synchronization. However, existing models still struggle to capture the perceptual alignment between varying speech characteristics and corresponding lip movements. In this work, we claim that three criteria—Temporal Synchronization, Lip Readability, and Expressiveness—are crucial for achieving perceptually accurate lip movements. Motivated by our hypothesis that a desirable representation space exists to meet these three criteria, we introduce a speech-mesh synchronized representation that captures intricate correspondences between speech signals and 3D face meshes. We found that our learned representation exhibits desirable characteristics, and we plug it into existing models as a perceptual loss to better align lip movements to the given speech. In addition, we utilize this representation as a perceptual metric and introduce two other physically grounded lip synchronization metrics to assess how well the generated 3D talking heads align with these three criteria. Experiments show that training 3D talking head generation models with our perceptual loss significantly improve all three aspects of perceptually accurate lip synchronization. Codes and datasets are available at https://perceptual-3d-talking-head.github.io/.

In this study, poly(ionic liquid) (PIL) ABC triblock and ABCBA pentablock terpolymers (PILTTP and PILPTP, respectively) were synthesized to investigate the impact of chain architecture (ABC versus ABCBA) on properties and battery performance.

Forward osmosis (FO) has attracted wide attention in recent years. However, the FO performance may be restricted due to internal concentration polarization (ICP) and fast fouling propensity that occurs in the membrane sublayer. Particularly, these problems significantly affect the membrane performance when treating highly contaminated oily wastewater. Recently, double-skinned flat sheet cellulose acetate (CA) membranes consisting of two selective skins via the phase inversion method have demonstrated less ICP and fouling propensity over typical single-skinned membranes. However, these membranes exhibit low water fluxes of <12 LMH under 2 M NaCl draw solution. Therefore, a novel double-skinned FO membrane with a high water flux has been aimed for in this study for emulsified oil-water treatment. The double-skinned FO membrane comprises a fully porous sublayer sandwiched between (i) a truly dense skin for salt rejection and (ii) a fairly loose dense skin for emulsified oil particle rejection. The former dense skin is a polyamide synthesized via interfacial polymerization, while the latter one is a self-assembled sulfonated pentablock copolymer (Nexar copolymer) layer. The resultant double-skinned membrane exhibits a high water flux of 17.2 LMH and a low reverse salt transport of 4.85 gMH using 0.5 M NaCl as the draw solution and DI water as the feed. The double-skinned membrane outperforms the single-skinned membrane with much lower fouling propensity for emulsified oil-water separation.

Suspension-phase neutralization of an acid-form sulfonated styrenic pentablock copolymer was used to prepare aluminum cross-linked polymer films. Aluminum neutralization was confirmed by 27Al solid state NMR, and the aluminum-neutralized polymer resisted ion exchange to the sodium counterion form when the polymer was soaked in 1 mol/L sodium chloride for 30 days. The effects of aluminum neutralization on polymer morphology, mechanical properties, water and salt transport properties, and free volume were explored. The primary spacing of the morphology, as measured by small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), decreased upon neutralization of the sulfonated polymer. The hydrated aluminum-neutralized polymer was mechanically stronger than the non-neutralized polymer, but the dry aluminum-neutralized polymer was more brittle than the non-neutralized polymer. Neutralization of the polymer’s sulfonic acid functionality resulted in a 5.5-fold decrease in water uptake. This water uptake decrease upon aluminum neutralization resulted in a decrease, relative to the non-neutralized polymer, in water and sodium chloride permeability and water vapor transport rate. These decreases in transport rates and water uptake were consistent with one another, based on an analysis of changes in free volume of the material upon aluminum neutralization. Sodium chloride permeability of the aluminum-neutralized polymer was less dependent on salt concentration than that of the non-neutralized polymer, which is consistent with neutralization of the polymer’s charged sulfonate groups. Aluminum neutralization increased the polymer’s water/sodium chloride permeability selectivity because of a 1.8-fold increase in the material’s diffusion selectivity. Free volume element size, characterized by ortho-positronium lifetime, decreased upon aluminum neutralization in both dry and hydrated film samples.

A high-performance thin asphalt overlay (HPThinOL) is specified as having a thickness of 1 in. or less and is used in applications requiring high levels of rutting and fatigue resistance. HPThinOLs are used as a pavement preservation strategy and are placed on pavements that have remaining structural capacity that is expected to outlive that strategy. Current specifications for HPThinOLs generally call for a polymer-modified asphalt (PMA). However, PMA binders are more expensive than unmodified asphalt binders. This expense, coupled with the higher binder content requirement generally associated with HPThinOL, could lead to an initial higher cost in relation to other pavement preservation strategies. Although the higher initial cost can be offset by incorporating high amounts of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP), the use of high amounts of RAP in PMA mixtures might adversely affect the mixture performance (stiffness, cracking, or workability). Warm-mix asphalt (WMA) technology may improve the workability of HPThinOL that incorporates high RAP content and PMA binders. This study evaluated the effect of PMA binders, high RAP content, and WMA technology on the stiffness, resistance to reflective cracking, moisture susceptibility, and workability of HPThinOL mixtures. PMA binders and high RAP content increased the stiffness of HPThinOL significantly; however, the use of WMA technology lowered mixture stiffness and improved workability. PMA may improve the cracking resistance, moisture susceptibility, and rutting resistance of high-RAP HPThinOL mixtures, depending on whether a WMA technology is used.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Footwear Bitumen Modification Adhesives and Sealants Compounding Applications Polymer Modification Viscosity Modification and Gels Emerging Technology in Block Copolymers List of Abbreviations References