Hierarchically designed structures with architectural features that span across multiple length scales are found in numerous hard biomaterials, like bone, wood, and glass sponge skeletons, as well as manmade structures, like the Eiffel Tower. It has been hypothesized that their mechanical robustness and damage tolerance stem from sophisticated ordering within the constituents, but the specific ...

Fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) matrix composites are widely used in airframe structural components. Although composites offer good and useful structural properties, they are brittle. Indeed, the commonly employed thermosetting epoxy matrices typically have a poor resistance to crack initiation and growth. Therefore, efforts have been made to improve the mechanical properties of the epoxy polyme...

A 14-month study was undertaken to assess the long-term efficiencies of four dust suppressants (i.e., biocatalyst stabilizer, polymer emulsion, petroleum emulsion with polymer, and nonhazardous crude-oil-containing materials) to reduce the emission of PM10 from public unpaved roads. PM10 emission rates were calculated for each test section and for an untreated section for comparison purposes. E...

_______________________________________________________________________________________ A fracture mechanics approach has been used to investigate how the addition of high-temperature resistant thermoplastic modifiers can increase the fracture energy, Gc, of brittle cyanate-ester polymers. Tests were performed using adhesive joint specimens at -55, 21 and 150°C. The fracture energies of poly(et...

Here we demonstrate the combination of electrospinning and hollow cathode plasma-assisted atomic layer deposition (HCPA-ALD) processes by fabricating flexible polymer–GaN organic–inorganic core–shell nanofibers at a processing temperature much lower than that needed for the preparation of conventional GaN ceramic nanofibers. Polymer–GaN organic–inorganic core–shell nanofibers fabricated by the ...

[1] In a series of numerical experiments, arrays of parallel-dipping normal faults formed only if the model contained a thin viscous layer sandwiched between the brittle, faulted layer on top and a lower boundary that resisted vertical displacement. With this particular vertical stratification, parallel-dipping faults developed even if the viscous layer had a shear-stress-free lower boundary co...

Photo-initiated polymer networks were formed by copolymerization of tert-butyl acrylate with di(ethylene glycol) dimethacrylate (DEGDMA) or poly(ethylene glycol) dimethacrylate (PEGDMA). The degree of crosslinking was systematically varied by modifying the weight fraction and molecular weight of the dimethacrylate crosslinking agent. An increase in effective crosslink density with increasing cr...

Tibetan semi-wild wheat (Triticum aestivum ssp. tibetanum Shao) is a semi-wild hexaploid wheat resource that is only naturally distributed in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Brittle rachis and hard threshing are two important characters of Tibetan semi-wild wheat. A whole-genome linkage map of T. aestivum ssp. tibetanum was constructed using a recombinant inbred line population (Q1028×ZM9023) with 1...

BACKGROUND Marine organisms provide appreciable source of novel bioactive compounds with pharmacological potential. There is little information in correlation with anti-cancer activities of brittle star. In the present study, anti-neoplastic efficacy of Ophiocoma erinaceus methanol extract against human cervical cancer cells was investigated. METHODS The HeLa cells were cultured and exposed t...

A major challenge in robotic design is enabling robots to immediately adapt to unexpected physical damage. However, conventional robots require considerable time (more than several tens of seconds) for adaptation because the process entails high computational costs. To overcome this problem, we focus on a brittle star-a primitive creature with expendable body parts. Brittle stars, most of which...