Xerox (Canada)

Ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) of 1,5-cyclooctadiene (COD) in miniemulsion was conducted utilizing a water-soluble TEGylated ruthenium alkylidene catalyst that was designed to underg...

Solvent-free extrusion emulsification (SFEE) is a new continuous approach for producing nanoparticles from high viscosity molten polymers using a twin-screw extruder. In a previous study, the influence of melt viscosity on lamellae development in the phase-inversion mechanism was investigated for an otherwise fixed system of variables including temperature, mixing intensity, and surfactant content. Varying system temperature in the current study to produce the same melt viscosities as those previously examined did not produce the same linear effect on particle size. The investigation to understand the influence of system temperature on the SFEE mechanism was done by using an inline rheometer and different screw/barrel configurations to simulate different zones of SFEE. Characterizations of the emulsified polyester included colorimetric titrations, particle size analysis, parallel plate rheometry, and gel permeation chromatography (GPC). Raising system temperature has a negative effect on the mechanism for...

Solvent‐free extrusion emulsification (SFEE) is new technique for a twin‐screw extruder to prepare submicron‐sized particles (100–500 nm) without using hazardous solvents. The particle size is reliant upon the thickness of striated lamellae, which can be monitored rheologically based on the viscosity change occurring at the SFEE process. The lamellae coarsening rate is predominantly affected by the interfacial energy of the system when a surfactant is added but shows stronger dependency on viscosity change when interfacial growth between the polymer and water phases is solely determined by the end‐groups conversion into carboxylate species. For this latter case, the dissolution of the sodium hydroxide species and the kinetics of end‐groups conversion prove to be rate‐limiting phenomena to generating thinner striated lamellae. Additionally, the ionic strength of the system is notably important to the viscosity response and particle size produced, particularly when surfactant is not added. © 2018 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 64: 2113–2123, 2018

Renewable dehydroabietic acid was functionalized to predominantly a rosin-diol and bis-rosin alcohol mixture by reaction with glycerin carbonate and tetraethylammonium iodide. The corresponding adducts were subsequently polymerized with a variety of organic diacids to provide thermoplastic resins with a variety of thermal properties. Optimization of the copolyester composition with selected diacid(s) and diol(s) provided a suitable resin with the required thermal and rheological properties for use as xerographic toners.

In this paper, we present SoQr, a sensor that can be attached to an external surface of a household item to estimate the amount of content inside it. The sensor consists of a speaker and a microphone. It outputs a short duration sine wave probing sound to excite a container and its content, and then records the container's impulse response. SoQr then extracts Mean Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients from impulse response recordings of a container with different content levels and learns a support vector machine classifier. Results from a 10-fold cross validation of the prediction models on 19 common household items demonstrate that SoQr can correctly estimate the content level for these products with an average overall F-Measure above 0.96. We then further evaluated SoQr's robustness in different usage scenarios to gain an understanding of how the system performs and specific challenges that might arise when users interact with these products and the sensor.

Rheological analysis of a complex fluid system like an aqueous polymer dispersion can be challenging but can reveal mechanistic information as the viscous melt is emulsified. A pressurized vessel was used as a rheometer, based on the Metzner–Otto approach, to evaluate formulation variables where the developed morphology of a polyester/water mixture was shear-dependent. The parameters of the study were resin-to-water ratio (R/W), surfactant (type and concentration), and process variables of impeller speed and temperature. Transient in situ information on the system during the mixing of water into the molten polymer showed that a rapid, near-instantaneous decrease in the torque on the impeller occurred consistently around 2% water addition, related to the onset of the developed morphological state. It was observed to only demonstrate a drop in the torque for high shear rates and only with the appropriate content of surface-active species, revealing the chemical and physical parameters necessary to emulsify the polyester melt.

BACKGROUND: Non-motor symptoms (NMS) have been described in several neurodegenerative diseases, impacting on quality of life. There is no systematic evaluation of these clinical features in spinocerebellar ataxia type 10 (SCA10). OBJECTIVE: To compare the frequency of NMS among patients with genetically confirmed SCA10, and an age and sex-matched SCA3/Machado-Joseph disease control group. METHODS: Twenty eight Brazilian patients with SCA10, and a control group with 28 SCA3 patients underwent assessment with a standardized protocol that evaluated chronic pain, autonomic symptoms, fatigue, sleep disturbances, depressive and anxiety symptoms and cognitive assessment using the Mini-Mental Status Examination, Frontal Assessment Battery, verbal fluency and Clock Drawing Test. RESULTS: Mean age was 46.8 ± 11.6 years in SCA10 patients versus 49.7 ± 9.7 years in control group. Symptoms started earlier in SCA10 group (31.7 vs 36.4 years; p=0.02). Chronic pain and fatigue were more frequent in SCA3 patients, although the difference was not statistically significant. In SCA3 group, 22[percnt] of patients related 3 or more autonomic symptoms (vs 8[percnt] in SCA10 patients; p<0.01). REM behavior disorder and restless legs syndrome were significantly more prevalent in the control group (12[percnt] vs 0, p<0.01; 10[percnt] vs 1[percnt], p=0.005, respectively). Mean daytime sleepiness scores were higher in SCA10 patients [8 (4-11.5) vs 6.5 (3-10); p=0.49]. The control group presented higher scores in Beck Depression Inventory (14.5 vs 12.5; p=0.60) and in Hamilton Anxiety Scale (15 vs 8.5; p=0.04). Except verbal fluency, that showed below average in the control group (11.5 vs 13.3; p=0.02), all other tests of cognition showed similar results between the two groups (p>0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Except for daytime sleepiness, all other NMS were more prevalent among SCA3 cases, confirming SCA10 as a more pure form of SCA.