As a part of enhancing the performance of wood-plastic composites (WPC), polypropylene (PP)/ nanoclay (NC)/ wood flour (WF) nanocomposites were prepared using melt blending and injection molding process to evaluate their thermal stability. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) was employed to investigate thermal degradation kinetics of the nanocomposites both dynamic and isothermal conditions. Dynamic scans of the TGA showed an increased thermal stability of the nanocomposites at moderate wood flour concentrations (up to 20 phr, percentage based on hundred percent resin) while it decreased with the addition of 30 phr wood flour. The activation energy (Ea) of thermal degradation of nanocomposites increased when nanoclay was added and the concentration of wood flour increased. Different equations were used to evaluate isothermal degradation kinetics using the rate of thermal degradation of the composites, expressed as weight loss (%) from their isothermal TGA curves. Degradation occurred at faster rate in the initial stages of about 60 min., and then proceeded in a gradual manner. However, nanocomposites with wood flour of 30 phr heated at 300℃ showed a drastic difference in their degradation behavior, and reached almost a complete decomposition after 40 min. of the isothermal heating. The degree of decomposition was greater at higher temperatures, and the residual weight of isothermal degradation of nanocomposites greatly varied from about 10 to 90%, depending on isothermal temperatures. The isothermal degradation of nanocomposites also increased their thermal stability with the addition of 1 phr nanoclay and of wood flour up to 20 phr. But, the degradation of PP100/NC1/MAPP3/WF30 nanocomposites with 30 phr wood flour occurs at a faster rate compared to those of the others, indicating a decrease in their thermal stability.

The properties and electrochemical characteristics of anode material using pitch-coated graphite residue compounds by heat-treatment at 600℃ for 1 hour were investigated. The distance of layers of pitch-coated graphite residual compounds was 3.3539 a, which was as same as that of graphite. Its electrochemical and charge discharge characteristics were tested according to different four types of carbon material, natural graphite, pitch-coated graphite, amorphous graphite and pitch-coated graphite residual compounds, respectively. So it was shown the best charge-discharge characteristics in all of the samples. For the electrochemical and charge-discharge characteristics, although pitch-coated graphite residual compounds had different carbon contents 70% and 80%, these two samples were shown good electrochemical and charge-discharge characteristics.

[ TiO2 ]ACF composites were prepared by the electrochemical method with Titanium (IV) n-butoxide (TNB) electrolyte under different electrochemical operation time. The BET surface area for TiO2/ACF composites decrease with the increase of electrochemical operation time. There is a single crystal structure which is anatase in all of the samples from the data of XRD. The SEM micrphotographs of TiO2/ACF composites show that the TiO2 particles were well mixed with the ACF. There are O and P with strong C and Ti peaks in all samples from EDX results, and it also shows that a decrease of the C content with a increasing of Ti content with increasing of the electrochemical operation time in the over all composites. DSC cures show that the exothermic peak of all composites at 560℃ represents the transformation heat of amorphous parts to anatase phase and the discontinuous grain growth of the transformed anatase particles. Finally, the excellent photoactivity of TiO2/ACF composites (especially, ACFT10) could be attributed that the decrease of concentration of MB can be concluded to be much faster for the adsorption by ACF than for photocatalytic decomposition by TiO2.

Somatic cells nuclear transfer (SCNT) is a useful tool in studies of developmental biology and animal cloning. However, SCNT experiments only are allowed to skilled technical experts. In this experiment, laser-assisted zona pellucida piercing tool (LASER) was applied in murine SCNT. LASER minimized the use of piezo-driven micromanipulator (PIEZO), reducing chances of problems caused by PIEZO pulses. LASER reduced time that took to pierce zona pellucida in removal of nucleus from oocyte and somatic cell injection, which might have taken longer time with PIEZO. Time and difficulties that took researcher of equivalent skilled for their experiments were decreased with LASER, and this might affect the improvement of embryonic development. (LASER, 6.2% versus PIEZO, 2.9%; P<0.05). Thus, these data support that the use of LASER can be used for zona pellucida piercing in murine SCNT program as an alternative to PIEZO.