Volume 89, Number 5 www.aafp.org/afp American Family Physician 381 An 89-year-old man had joint pain, swelling, and the inability to flex his fifth finger for several years. The swelling had appeared gradually after episodes of acute pain in that finger. He had chronic kidney disease (creatinine level of 5.3 mg per dL [468 μmol per L]) and poorly controlled diabetes mellitus (fasting glucose le...

Hydrogels are crosslinked macromolecular networks saturated by water solutions and they are an example of a swelling material. The behaviour of swelling materials can be described by a multi-component mixture model [1], which takes into account four components of the material: solid, liquid, cation and anion, together with their interactions. Hydrogels are very biocompatible because their chara...

Three alkali swelling methods were used to treat two kinds of kraft pulp fibers. The morphological and chemical properties of the treated fibers were elucidated in terms of alkali concentration, with the aim of developing bulky paper and conserving wood resources. The effects of beating before and after alkali swelling were examined. The water retention value of fibers increased when higher con...