University of Mons

About: University of Mons is a education organization based out in Mons, Belgium. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Large Hadron Collider & Standard Model. The organization has 3073 authors who have published 9465 publications receiving 294776 citations.

Update and Challenges in Carbon Dioxide-Based Polycarbonate Synthesis.

Abstract: The utilization of carbon dioxide as a comonomer to produce polycarbonates has attracted a great deal of attention from both industrial and academic communities because it promises to replace petroleum-derived plastics and supports a sustainable environment. Significant progress in the copolymerization of cyclic ethers (e.g., epoxide, oxetane) and carbon dioxide has been made in recent decades, owing to the rapid development of catalysts. In this Review, the focus is to summarize and discuss recent advances in the development of homogeneous catalysts, including metal- and organo-based complexes, as well as the preparation of carbon dioxide-based block copolymer and functional polycarbonates.

Successive Nonnegative Projection Algorithm for Robust Nonnegative Blind Source Separation

Abstract: In this paper, we propose a new fast and robust recursive algorithm for near-separable nonnegative matrix factorization, a particular nonnegative blind source separation problem. This algorithm, which we refer to as the successive nonnegative projection algorithm (SNPA), is closely related to the popular successive projection algorithm (SPA) but takes advantage of the nonnegativity constraint in the decomposition. We prove that SNPA is more robust than SPA and can be applied to a broader class of nonnegative matrices. This is illustrated on some synthetic data sets and on a real-world hyperspectral image.

Relaxometry, luminescence measurements, electrophoresis, and animal biodistribution of lanthanide(III) complexes of some polyaza macrocyclic acetates containing pyridine

Abstract: Four Gd{sup 3+} complexes [Gd(BP2A){sup +}, Gd(PC2A){sup +}, Gd(PCTA){sup 0}, and Gd(BPO4A){sup {minus}}] with polyazamacrocyclic ligands that contain a pyridine moiety were prepared and examined for possible use as MRI contrast enhancement agents. The authors estimated the number of inner sphere water molecules (q{sub Gd}) for the Gd{sup 3+} complexes from the values of q found for the Tb{sup 3+} and/or Eu{sup 3+} complexes by luminescence lifetime measurements. It was estimated that q{sub Gd} = 3.5, 3.3, 2.4, and 0.2 for Gd(BP2A){sup +}, Gd(PC2A){sup +}, Gd(PCTA){sup 0}, and Gd(BPO4A){sup {minus}}, respectively. The inner sphere relaxivities (r{sub 1,inner}) of these tetraaza macrocyclic complexes were higher than that of Gd(DOTA){sup {minus}} [i.e. 6.79 for Gd(BP2A){sup +}, 6.21 for Gd(PC2A){sup +}, and 4.60 for Gd(PCTA){sup 0} mM{sup {minus}1}s{sup {minus}1} at 40 MHz and 25{degrees}C], but the normalized relaxivities per q{sub Gd} (1.94, 1.88, and 1.92 mM{sup {minus}1}s{sup {minus}1}, respectively) were comparable to that of Gd(DOTA){sup {minus}}. A quantitative treatment of the NMRD profiles based on Solomon-Bloembergen-Morgan theory, using the NMRD profile of Gd(BPO4A){sup {minus}} to correct for an outer sphere contribution, showed that the complexes exhibit characteristics similar to that of Gd(DOTA){sup {minus}} but with shorter electronic relaxation times. Tissue biodistribution results usingmore » radioactive {sup 153}Sm and {sup 159}Gd complexes in rats indicate that the cationic [{sup 153}Sm-(BP2A){sup +} and {sup 153}Sm(PC2A){sup +}] complexes accumulate preferably in the bone tissue while the neutral [{sup 153}Sm-(PCTA){sup 0}] and anionic [{sup 153}Sm(BPO4A){sup {minus}}] complexes appear to have renal clearances similar to those of other low molecular weight contrast agents [i.e. Gd(DTPA){sup 2{minus}} and Gd(DOTA){sup {minus}}].« less