Revealing the Limitations of the Thermocapacitive Cycle.

While thermoelectric conversion by a thermocapacitive cycle has been considered a promising green technology for low-grade heat recovery, our study finds that its practical feasibility is overestimated. During thermal charging, the coexistence and dynamic competition between thermal-induced voltage rise and self-discharge lead to the limitations of the thermocapacitive cycle. Therefore, the operational conditions in the charge-heat-discharge steps seriously restrict the thermal charging performance.

Incorporating catechol into electroactive polypyrrole nanowires on titanium to promote hydroxyapatite formation.

To improve the osteointegration property of biomedical titanium, nano-architectured electroactive coating was synthesized through the electrochemical polymerization of dopamine and pyrrole. The highly binding affinity of Ca to the catechol moiety of doped dopamine enabled efficient interaction between polypyrrole/polydopamine nanowires and mineral ions. The results indicate that the PPy/PDA nanowires preserved its efficient electro-activity and accelerated the hydroxyapatite deposition in a simulated body fluid.

An artificial immune network based algorithm for diabetes diagnosis.

A novel artificial immune network based algorithm for the diagnosis of diabetes is presented. The algorithm's implementation includes: (1) creating the initial immune antibody network; (2) the network is evolved with the learning from foreign antigens; (3) diagnosis process is accomplished by majority vote of the k nearest neighbor antibodies.