Sawsan Dacrory^1*, Hussein Abou-Yousef¹, Ragab E. Abou-Zeid¹, Samir Kamel¹, Mohamed S. Abdel-Aziz², Mohamed Elbadry³

Journal of Renewable Materials, Vol.6, No.5, pp. 536-547, 2018, DOI:10.7569/JRM.2017.634190

Abstract Carboxymethyl cellulose hydrogels were developed through crosslinking process using eco-friendly crosslinkers such as maleic, succinic, and citric acids. Carboxymethyl cellulose was prepared from the cellulosic fraction of olive industry residues. A series of hydrogels with varying crosslinker acid concentrations, reaction times, and reaction temperatures was produced to study the swelling capacities and gel fraction of the obtained hydrogels. Additional study pertains to the preparation of antimicrobial nanocomposite hydrogels through in-situ incorporation of the silver nanoparticles during the crosslinking reaction. Silver nanoparticles were prepared by reduction of AgNO3with leaves of Ricinus communis. The particle size of prepared silver nanoparticles was detected… More >

Kunal Wazarkar, Anagha Sabnis*

Journal of Renewable Materials, Vol.6, No.5, pp. 517-528, 2018, DOI:10.7569/JRM.2017.634181

Abstract This research work discloses the preparation of polyurethane coatings from cardanol modified using thiolene chemistry, wherein unsaturated long alkyl chain of cardanol was successfully utilized via thiol-ene click reaction to synthesize polyol. For this purpose, cardanol and thioglycerol was reacted in the presence of Irgacure 184 (photoinitiator) and 1,8-Diazabicyclo[5.4.0]undec-7-ene (catalyst) and exposed to UV light for 12 h at 80 °C. One mole of thioglycerol was successfully added across the double bond of fatty chain of cardanol and confirmed by chemical and spectroscopic analysis. Further, the polyol thus prepared was cured with various polyisocyanates, viz., N-75 (HDI based), L-67/BA (TDI… More >

Ibtissem Moussa¹, Noureddine Baaka¹, Ramzi Khiari^1,2,3*, Ali Moussa⁴, Gérard Mortha³, Mohamed Farouk Mhenni¹

Journal of Renewable Materials, Vol.6, No.1, pp. 55-67, 2018, DOI:10.7569/JRM.2017.634141

Abstract Natural dyes have become an interesting subject of study because of their better ecological properties in comparison to their synthetic counterparts. This article concerns the dyeing of wool, silk, and polyamide fabrics with natural dyes extracted from almond shells and stems. The developed method of dyeing by these extracts is interesting and very attractive for several reasons: firstly, the extracts used are the black liquor discharged from the industries of delignification, which is a chemical process for removing lignin from agricultural wastes to produce a cellulosic fiber; (ii) these natural dyes are renewable and available in large quantities; (iii) this… More >

Fati Zoma^1*, David Y.K. Toguyeni¹, Ousmane Coulibaly¹, Ivon Hassel², Abdoulaye Ouedraogo³

Journal of Renewable Materials, Vol.6, No.1, pp. 47-54, 2018, DOI:10.7569/JRM.2017.634147

Abstract This study aims to show the aptitude of a locally made composite for providing thermal comfort and mechanical resistance in buildings in hot-dry climates. The thermal characterization reveals that the thermal diffusivity of the studied material is lower than that of commonly used materials such as agglomerated and full cinderblocks and laterite blocks and therefore is a better insulating material. In addition, its thermal inertia is the highest compared to commonly used materials of agglomerated and full cinderblocks, laterite blocks and compressed earth blocks, which implies a longer time lag. On the basis of mechanical resistance, with a compression resistance… More >

Bo Ling^1,#, Daoxi Lei^1,#, Juhui Qiu¹, Kang Zhang¹, Hao Chen^2,*, Yeqi Wang¹, Zhiyi Ye¹, Guixue Wang^*

Molecular & Cellular Biomechanics, Vol.14, No.4, pp. 197-211, 2017, DOI:10.3970/mcb.2017.014.197

Abstract Shear stress and oxidized low-density lipoprotein (oxLDL) caused by abnormal blood is critical to angiogenesis for atherosclerosis. However, the mechanism in shear stress or ox-LDL regulated angiogenesis is still not well understood. There is the hypothesis that shear stress or oxLDL regulates angiogenesis through the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) signaling pathway. It is discovered that both high shear stress and low concentration of oxLDL contribute to angiogenesis, which is inhibited once the VEGF or VEGFR expression is knocked down. The expression of p-FAK and p-paxillin is regulated by the VEGF/VEGFR signal axis. VEGFR2, p-FAK, p-paxillin and VEGFR1 are VEGF-responsive… More >

Ning Wang^*

Molecular & Cellular Biomechanics, Vol.7, No.1, pp. 33-44, 2010, DOI:10.3970/mcb.2010.007.033

Abstract Professor Y.C. Fung has shown that living tissues remodel extensively in response to mechanical forces such as blood pressure variations. At the cellular level, those mechanical perturbations must be perceived by individual cells. However, mechanisms of mechanochemical transduction in living cells remain a central challenge to cell biologists. Contrary to predictions by existing models of living cells, we reported previously that a local stress, applied via integrin receptors, is propagated to remote sites in the cytoplasm and is concentrated at discrete foci. Here we report that these foci of strains and stresses in the cytoplasm correspond to local peak deformation… More >

S. Deguchi^1,2, T. Ohashi², M. Sato²

Molecular & Cellular Biomechanics, Vol.2, No.3, pp. 125-134, 2005, DOI:10.3970/mcb.2005.002.125

Abstract Actin bundles in vascular endothelial cells (ECs) play a critical role in transmitting intracellular forces between separate focal adhesion sites. However, quantitative descriptions of tension level in single actin bundles in a physiological condition are still poorly studied. Here, we evaluated magnitude of preexisting tension in a single actin bundle of ECs on the basis of measurements of its preexisting stretching strain and tensile properties. Cultured ECs expressing fluorescently-labeled actin were treated with detergents to extract acin bundles. One end of an actin bundle was then dislodged from the substrate by using a microneedle, resulting in a shortening of the… More >

Youyu Gu¹, Xiongwei Xie², Chunsheng Gu^3,*

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.60, No.1, pp. 305-316, 2019, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2019.04121

Abstract As the development of cloud computing and the convenience of wireless sensor netowrks, smart devices are widely used in daily life, but the security issues of the smart devices have not been well resolved. In this paper, we present a new NTRU-type public-key cryptosystem over the binary field. Specifically, the security of our scheme relies on the computational intractability of an unbalanced sparse polynomial ratio problem (DUSPR). Through theoretical analysis, we prove the correctness of our proposed cryptosystem. Furthermore, we implement our scheme using the NTL library, and conduct a group of experiments to evaluate the capabilities and consuming time… More >

Mohammed Omari^1,*, Souleymane Ouled Jaafri¹

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.59, No.3, pp. 753-775, 2019, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2019.06576

Abstract Image compression is a process based on reducing the redundancy of the image to be stored or transmitted in an efficient form. In this work, a new idea is proposed, where we take advantage of the redundancy that appears in a group of images to be all compressed together, instead of compressing each image by itself. In our proposed technique, a classification process is applied, where the set of the input images are classified into groups based on existing technique like L₁ and L₂ norms, color histograms. All images that belong to the same group are compressed based on dividing… More >

V.K. Tewary¹, M. D. Vaudin²

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.25, No.3, pp. 265-290, 2011, DOI:10.3970/cmc.2011.025.265

Abstract A semicontiuum Green's-function-based model is proposed for analysis of averaged mechanical characteristics of Si_xGe_{1 - x}. The atomistic forces in the model are distributed at discrete lattice sites, but the Green's function is approximated by the continuum GF in the far field and by the averaged lattice GF in the near field. Averaging is achieved by replacing Si and Ge atoms by identical hypothetical atoms that are x fraction Si and (1-x) fraction Ge. The parameters of the model are derived using the atomistic model from the interatomic potential between the hypothetical atoms. The interatomic potential is obtained from the… More >