Search results for: Positive cell

Authors: Shan-Jen Cheng, Te-Jen Chang, Kuang-Hsiung Tan, Shou-Ling Kuo

Abstract:

Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) is such a time-vary nonlinear dynamic system. The traditional linear modeling approach is hard to estimate structure correctly of PEMFC system. From this reason, this paper presents a nonlinear modeling of the PEMFC using Neural Network Auto-regressive model with eXogenous inputs (NNARX) approach. The multilayer perception (MLP) network is applied to evaluate the structure of the NNARX model of PEMFC. The validity and accuracy of NNARX model are tested by one step ahead relating output voltage to input current from measured experimental of PEMFC. The results show that the obtained nonlinear NNARX model can efficiently approximate the dynamic mode of the PEMFC and model output and system measured output consistently.

Keywords: PEMFC, neural network, nonlinear identification, NNARX.

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Authors: Reinhard Haas, Amela Ajanovic

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In recent years various types of electric vehicles has gained again increasing attention as an environmentally benign technology in transport. Especially for urban areas with high local pollution this Zero-emission technology (at the point of use) is considered to provide proper solutions. Yet, the bad economics and the limited driving ranges are still major barriers for a broader market penetration of battery electric vehicles (BEV) and of fuel cell vehicles (FCV). The major result of our analyses is that the most important precondition for a further dissemination of BEV in urban areas are emission-free zones. This is an instrument which allows the promotion of BEV without providing excessive subsidies. In addition, it is important to note that the full benefits of EV can only be harvested if the electricity used is produced from renewable energy sources. That is to say, it has to be ensured that the use of BEV in urban areas is clearly linked to a green electricity purchase model. And moreover, the introduction of a CO2- emission-based tax system would support this requirement.

Keywords: Electric vehicles, economics, policies, history.

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Authors: S. Dehghan, B. Kiani, A. Kazemi, A. Parizad

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The utilization of renewable energy sources in electric power systems is increasing quickly because of public apprehensions for unpleasant environmental impacts and increase in the energy costs involved with the use of conventional energy sources. Despite the application of these energy sources can considerably diminish the system fuel costs, they can also have significant influence on the system reliability. Therefore an appropriate combination of the system reliability indices level and capital investment costs of system is vital. This paper presents a hybrid wind/photovoltaic plant, with the aim of supplying IEEE reliability test system load pattern while the plant capital investment costs is minimized by applying a hybrid particle swarm optimization (PSO) / harmony search (HS) approach, and the system fulfills the appropriate level of reliability.

Keywords: Distributed Generation, Fuel Cell, HS, Hybrid Power Plant, PSO, Photovoltaic, Reliability.

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Authors: Eduardo da Silva, Tânia Caetano, Jessica B. Lopes

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Emotion dysregulation has been linked to psychopathology in general and, in particular, to substance abuse and other addiction-related disorders, such as eating disorders, impulsive disorder, and gambling. It has been proposed that a lessening of the difficulties in emotion regulation can have a significant positive impact on the treatment of these disorders. The present study explores the association between the progress in the Change & Grow^® therapeutic model (5 stages of treatment), and the decrease in the difficulties related to emotion regulation. The Change & Grow^® model has five stages of treatment according to the model’s five principles (Truth, Acceptance, Gratitude, Love and Responsibility) and incorporates different therapeutic approaches such as positive psychology, cognitive and behavioral therapy and third generation therapies. The main objective is to understand the impact of the presented therapeutic model on difficulties in emotion regulation in patients with addiction-related disorders. The exploratory study has a cross-sectional design. Participants were 44 (15 women and 29 men) Portuguese patients in the residential Villa Ramadas International Treatment Centre. The instrument used was the Portuguese version of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), which measures six dimensions of emotion regulation (Strategies, Non-acceptance, Awareness, Impulse, Goals, and Clarity). The mean rank scores for both the DERS total score and the Impulse subscale showed statistically significant differences according to Stage of Treatment/Principles. Furthermore, Stage of Treatment/Principles held a negative correlation with the scores of the Non-acceptance and Impulse subscales, as well as the DERS total score. The results indicate that the Change & Grow^® model seems to have an impact in lessening the patient’s difficulties in emotion regulation. The Impulse dimension suffered the greater impact, which supports the well-known relevance of impulse control, or related difficulties, in addiction-related disorders.

Keywords: Addiction, Change & Grow®, emotion regulation, psychopathology.

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Authors: Nicole Pearcy, Jonathan J. Crofts, Nadia Chuzhanova

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In this paper, we employ a directed hypergraph model to investigate the extent to which environmental variability influences the set of available biochemical reactions within a living cell. Such an approach avoids the limitations of the usual complex network formalism by allowing for the multilateral relationships (i.e. connections involving more than two nodes) that naturally occur within many biological processes. More specifically, we extend the concept of network reciprocity to complex hyper-networks, thus enabling us to characterise a network in terms of the existence of mutual hyper-connections, which may be considered a proxy for metabolic network complexity. To demonstrate these ideas, we study 115 metabolic hyper-networks of bacteria, each of which can be classified into one of 6 increasingly varied habitats. In particular, we found that reciprocity increases significantly with increased environmental variability, supporting the view that organism adaptability leads to increased complexities in the resultant biochemical networks.

Keywords: Complexity, hypergraphs, reciprocity, metabolism.

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Authors: Ding Guo-hao, Li Hua, Wang Wen-long

Abstract:

A parallel computational fluid dynamics code has been developed for the study of aerodynamic heating problem in hypersonic flows. The code employs the 3D Navier-Stokes equations as the basic governing equations to simulate the laminar hypersonic flow. The cell centered finite volume method based on structured grid is applied for spatial discretization. The AUSMPW+ scheme is used for the inviscid fluxes, and the MUSCL approach is used for higher order spatial accuracy. The implicit LU-SGS scheme is applied for time integration to accelerate the convergence of computations in steady flows. A parallel programming method based on MPI is employed to shorten the computing time. The validity of the code is demonstrated by comparing the numerical calculation result with the experimental data of a hypersonic flow field around a blunt body.

Keywords: Aerodynamic Heating, AUSMPW+, MPI, ParallelComputation

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Authors: M. M. Isa, R. Abd-Rahman, H. H. Goh

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A compound parabolic concentrator (CPC) is a wellknown non-imaging concentrator that will concentrate the solar radiation onto receiver (PV cell). One of disadvantage of CPC is has tall and narrow height compared to its diameter entry aperture area. Therefore, for economic reason, a truncation had been done by removed from the top of the full height CPC. This also will lead to the decreases of concentration ratio but it will be negligible. In this paper, the flux distribution of untruncated and truncated 2-D hollow compound parabolic trough concentrator (hCPTC) design is presented. The untruncated design has initial height H=193.4mm with concentration ratio C_(2-D)=4. This paper presents the optical simulation of compound parabolic trough concentrator using raytracing software TracePro. Results showed that, after the truncation, the height of CPC reduced 45% from initial height with the geometrical concentration ratio only decrease 10%. Thus, the cost of reflector and material dielectric usage can be saved especially at manufacturing site.

Keywords: Compound parabolic trough concentrator, optical modelling, ray-tracing analysis.

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Authors: Ayesha Sohail, Khadija Maqbool, Anila Asif, Haroon Ahmad

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These days, the field of tissue engineering is getting serious attention due to its usefulness. Bone tissue engineering helps to address and sort-out the critical sized and non-healing orthopedic problems by the creation of manmade bone tissue. We will design and validate an efficient numerical model, which will simulate the effective diffusivity in bone tissue engineering. Our numerical model will be based on the finite element analysis of the diffusion-reaction equations. It will have the ability to optimize the diffusivity, even at multi-scale, with the variation of time. It will also have a special feature “parametric sweep”, with which we will be able to predict the oxygen, glucose and cell density dynamics, more accurately. We will fix these problems by modifying the governing equations, by selecting appropriate spatio-temporal finite element schemes and by transient analysis.

Keywords: Bone tissue engineering, Transient Analysis, Scaffolds, fabrication techniques.

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Authors: A. Won-Yong Chae, B. Hyung-Nam Kim, C. Kyoung-Jun Lee, D. Hee-Je Kim

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The renewable energy has been attracting attention as a new alternative energy due to the problem of environmental pollution and resource depletion. In particular, daylighting and PV system are regarded as the solutions. In this paper, the hybrid dimming control system supplied by solar cell and daylighting system was designed. Daylighting system is main source and PV system is spare source. PV system operates the LED lamp which supports daylighting system because daylighting system is unstable due to the variation of irradiance. In addition, PV system has a role charging batteries. Battery charging has a benefit that PV system operate LED lamp in the bad weather. However, LED lamp always can`t turn on that-s why dimming control system was designed. In particular, the solar charging robot was designed to check the interior irradiance intensity. These systems and the application of the solar charging robot are expected to contribute developing alternative energy in the near future.

Keywords: Daylighting system, PV system, LED lamp, Suntracking robot.

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Authors: T. Hirata, G. H. Yokoyama, L. H. M. Duque

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The posteroanterior manipulation technique is usually include in the procedure of the lumbar spine to evaluate the intervertebral motion according to mechanical resistance. The mechanical device with visual feedback was proposed that allows one to analysis the lumbar segments mobility “in vivo" facilitating for the therapist to take its treatment evolution. The measuring system uses load cell and displacement sensor to estimate spine stiffness. In this work, the device was tested by 2 therapists, female, applying posteroanterior force techniques to 5 volunteers, female, with frequency of approximately 1.2-1.8 Hz. A test-retest procedure was used for 2 periods of day. The visual feedback results small variation of forces and cycle time during 6 cycles rhythmic application. The stiffness values showed good agreement between test-retest procedures when used same order of maximum forces.

Keywords: Biomechanics, lumber spine stiffness, intervertebral manipulation device, visual feedback

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Authors: Min-Ah Woo, Min-Cheol Lim, Hyun-Joo Chang, Sung-Wook Choi

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We developed a paper-based colorimetric sensor utilizing magnetic nanoparticles conjugated with aptamers (MNP-Apts) against E. coli O157:H7. The MNP-Apts were applied to a test sample solution containing the target cells, and the solution was simply dropped onto PVDF (polyvinylidene difluoride) membrane. The membrane moves the sample radially to form the sample spots of different compounds as concentric rings, thus the MNP-Apts on the membrane enabled specific recognition of the target cells through a color ring generation by MNP-promoted colorimetric reaction of TMB (3,3',5,5'-tetramethylbenzidine) and H₂O₂. This method could be applied to rapidly and visually detect various bacterial pathogens in less than 1 h without cell culturing.

Keywords: Aptamer, colorimetric sensor, E. coli O157:H7, magnetic nanoparticle, polyvinylidene difluoride.

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Authors: Alessandro Bevilacqua, Alessandro Gherardi, Filippo Piccinini

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Image mosaicing techniques are usually employed to offer researchers a wider field of view of microscopic image of biological samples. a mosaic is commonly achieved using automated microscopes and often with one “color" channel, whether it refers to natural or fluorescent analysis. In this work we present a method to achieve three subsequent mosaics of the same part of a stem cell culture analyzed in phase contrast and in fluorescence, with a common non-automated inverted microscope. The mosaics obtained are then merged together to mark, in the original contrast phase images, nuclei and cytoplasm of the cells referring to a mosaic of the culture, rather than to single images. The experiments carried out prove the effectiveness of our approach with cultures of cells stained with calcein (green/cytoplasm and nuclei) and hoechst (blue/nuclei) probes.

Keywords: Microscopy, image mosaicing, fluorescence, stem cells.

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Authors: Radovan Holubek, Matus Vlasek, Peter Kostal

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Development of intelligent assembly cell conception includes new solution kind of how to create structures of automated and flexible assembly system. The current trend of the final product quality increasing is affected by time analysis of the entire manufacturing process. The primary requirement of manufacturing is to produce as many products as soon as possible, at the lowest possible cost, but of course with the highest quality. Such requirements may be satisfied only if all the elements entering and affecting the production cycle are in a fully functional condition. These elements consist of sensory equipment and intelligent control elements that are essential for building intelligent manufacturing systems. Intelligent behavior of the system as the control system will repose on monitoring of important parameters of the system in the real time. Intelligent manufacturing system itself should be a system that can flexibly respond to changes in entering and exiting the process in interaction with the surroundings.

Keywords: Control system, intelligent manufacturing / assemble systems, manufacturing, monitoring process.

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Authors: Masaki Tajima, Kenji Imou, Shinya Yokoyama

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It was determined that woody biomass and livestock excreta can be utilized as hydrogen resources and hydrogen produced from such sources can be used to fill fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) at hydrogen stations. It was shown that the biomass transport costs for hydrogen production may be reduced the costs for co-generation. In the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, there are only a few sites capable of producing hydrogen from woody biomass in amounts greater than 200 m3/h-the scale required for a hydrogen station to be operationally practical. However, in the case of livestock excreta, it was shown that 15% of the municipalities in this area are capable of securing sufficient biomass to be operationally practical for hydrogen production. The differences in feasibility of practical operation depend on the type of biomass.

Keywords: Biomass Resources, Hydrogen Production, Hydrogen Station, Transport Cost.

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Authors: Zia Amjad, Salem S. Alghamdi

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The study was conducted at the student educational farm at the College of Food and Agriculture in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The aim of study was to characterize 154 Vicia faba L. accessions using agro-morphological traits based on The International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) and The International Board for Plant Genetic Resources (IBPGR) descriptors. This research is significant as it contributes to the understanding of the genetic diversity and potential yield of V. faba in Saudi Arabia. In the study, 24 agro-morphological characters including 11 quantitative and 13 qualitative were observed for genetic variation. All the results were analyzed using multivariate analysis i.e., principal component analysis (PCA). First, six principal components (PC) had eigenvalues greater than one; accounted for 72% of available V. faba genetic diversity. However, first three components revealed more than 10% of genetic diversity each i.e., 22.36%, 15.86% and 10.89% respectively. PCA distributed the V. faba accessions into different groups based on their performance for the characters under observation. PC-1, which represented 22.36% of the genetic diversity, was positively associated with stipule spot pigmentation, intensity of streaks, pod degree of curvature and to some extent with 100 seed weight. PC-2 covered 15.86 of the genetic diversity and showed positive association for average seed weight per plant, pod length, number of seeds per plant, 100 seed weight, stipule spot pigmentation, intensity of streaks (same as in PC-1) and to some extent for pod degree of curvature and number of pods per plant. PC-3 revealed 10.89% of genetic diversity and expressed positive association for number of pods per plant and number of leaflets per plant. This study contributes to the understanding of the genetic diversity and potential yield of V. faba in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. By establishing a core collection of V. faba, the research provides a valuable resource for future conservation and utilization of this crop worldwide.

Keywords: Agro-morphological characterization, genetic diversity, core collection, PCA, Vicia faba L.

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Authors: J.E. Park, G.R. Kim, D.J. Yoon, C.H. Sin, I.S. Park, T.S. Bea, M.H. Lee

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Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are attractive because of their excellent chemical durability mechanical strength and electrical properties. Therefore there is interest in CNTs for not only electrical and mechanical application, but also biological and medical application. In this study, the dispersion power of surfactant-treated multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and their effect on the antibacterial activity were examined. Surfactant was used sodium dodecyl-benzenesulfonate (SDBS). UV-vis absorbance and transmission electron microscopy(TEM) were used to characterize the dispersion of MWCNTs in the aqueous phase, showing that the surfactant molecules had been adsorbed onto the MWCNTs surface. The surfactant-treated MWCNTs exhibited antimicrobial activities to streptococcus mutans. The optical density growth curves and viable cell number determined by the plating method suggested that the antimicrobial activity of surfactant-treated MWCNTs was both concentration and treatment time-dependent.

Keywords: MWCNT, SDBS, surfactant, antibacterial.

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Authors: Li Xiguang

Abstract:

In this paper, by constructing a special set and utilizing fixed point index theory, we study the existence of solution for singular differential equation in Banach space, which improved and generalize the result of related paper.

Keywords: Banach space, cone, fixed point index, singular differential equation.

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Authors: P.K. Sharma, B. Bhargava, S. Akashe

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Power dissipation due to leakage current in the digital circuits is a biggest factor which is considered specially while designing nanoscale circuits. This paper is exploring the ideas of reducing leakage current in static CMOS circuits by stacking the transistors in increasing numbers. Clearly it means that the stacking of OFF transistors in large numbers result a significant reduction in power dissipation. Increase in source voltage of NMOS transistor minimizes the leakage current. Thus stacking technique makes circuit with minimum power dissipation losses due to leakage current. Also some of digital circuits such as full adder, D flip flop and 6T SRAM have been simulated in this paper, with the application of reduction technique on ‘cadence virtuoso tool’ using specter at 45nm technology with supply voltage 0.7V.

Keywords: Stack, 6T SRAM cell, low power, threshold voltage

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Authors: A. Faro, D. Giordano, M. Pennisi, G. Scarciofalo, C. Spampinato, F. Tramontana

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The paper proposes a methodology to process the signals coming from the Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) in order to identify the pathology and evaluate the therapy to treat the patients affected by demency diseases. In particular, a fuzzy model is developed to identify the demency of the patients affected by Subcortical Ischemic Vascular Dementia and to measure the positive effect, if any, of a repetitive TMS on their motor performances. A tool is also presented to support the mentioned analysis.

Keywords: TMS, SIVD, Electromiography , Fuzzy Logic.

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Authors: Hamid Reza Pakzad

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Ion-acoustic solitary waves in a plasma with nonthermal electrons, thermal positrons and warm ions are investigated using Sagdeev-s pseudopotential technique. We study the effects of non-thermal electrons and ion temperature on solitons and show both negative and positive potential waves are possible.

Keywords: Ion acoustic waves, Solitons, Nonlinear phenomena, Sagdeev potential

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Authors: Manuel A. Alonso-Tarajano, Roberto Mosca, Patrick Aloy

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Protein kinases participate in a myriad of cellular processes of major biomedical interest. The in vivo substrate specificity of these enzymes is a process determined by several factors, and despite several years of research on the topic, is still far from being totally understood. In the present work, we have quantified the contributions to the kinase substrate specificity of i) the phosphorylation sites and their surrounding residues in the sequence and of ii) the association of kinases to adaptor or scaffold proteins. We have used position-specific scoring matrices (PSSMs), to represent the stretches of sequences phosphorylated by 93 families of kinases. We have found negative correlations between the number of sequences from which a PSSM is generated and the statistical significance and the performance of that PSSM. Using a subset of 22 statistically significant PSSMs, we have identified specificity determinant residues (SDRs) for 86% of the corresponding kinase families. Our results suggest that different SDRs can function as positive or negative elements of substrate recognition by the different families of kinases. Additionally, we have found that human proteins with known function as adaptors or scaffolds (kAS) tend to interact with a significantly large fraction of the substrates of the kinases to which they associate. Based on this characteristic we have identified a set of 279 potential adaptors/scaffolds (pAS) for human kinases, which is enriched in Pfam domains and functional terms tightly related to the proposed function. Moreover, our results show that for 74.6% of the kinase–pAS association found, the pAS colocalize with the substrates of the kinases they are associated to. Finally, we have found evidence suggesting that the association of kinases to adaptors and scaffolds, may contribute significantly to diminish the in vivo substrate crossed-specificity of protein kinases. In general, our results indicate the relevance of several SDRs for both the positive and negative selection of phosphorylation sites by kinase families and also suggest that the association of kinases to pAS proteins may be an important factor for the localization of the enzymes with their set of substrates.

Keywords: Kinase, phosphorylation, substrate specificity, adaptors, scaffolds, cellular colocalization.

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Authors: I. Herraiz-Cardona, C. González-Buch, E. Ortega, V. Pérez-Herranz, J. García-Antón

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Hydrogen is considered to be the most promising candidate as a future energy carrier. One of the most used technologies for the electrolytic hydrogen production is alkaline water electrolysis. However, due to the high energy requirements, the cost of hydrogen produced in such a way is high. In continuous search to improve this process using advanced electrocatalytic materials for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), Ni type Raney and macro-porous Ni-Co electrodes were prepared on AISI 304 stainless steel substrates by electrodeposition. The developed electrodes were characterized by SEM and confocal laser scanning microscopy. HER on these electrodes was evaluated in 30 wt.% KOH solution by means of hydrogen discharge curves and galvanostatic tests. Results show that the developed electrodes present a most efficient behaviour for HER when comparing with the smooth Ni cathode. It has been reported a reduction in the energy consumption of the electrolysis cell of about 25% by using the developed coatings as cathodes.

Keywords: Alkaline water electrolysis, energy efficiency, porous nickel electrodes

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Authors: Juan Li, Jiawen Qiu, Yuchuan Chu, Tianping Zhang, Wei Meng, Yanhui Jia, Xiaohui Liu

Abstract:

This article developed an ion thruster optic system sputter erosion depth numerical 3D model by IFE-PIC (Immersed Finite Element-Particle-in-Cell) and Mont Carlo method, and calculated the downstream surface sputter erosion rate of accelerator grid; compared with LIPS-200 life test data. The results of the numerical model are in reasonable agreement with the measured data. Finally, we predicted the lifetime of the 20cm diameter ion thruster via the erosion data obtained with the model. The ultimate result demonstrated that under normal operating condition, the erosion rate of the grooves wears on the downstream surface of the accelerator grid is 34.6μm⁄1000h, which means the conservative lifetime until structural failure occurring on the accelerator grid is 11500 hours.

Keywords: Ion thruster, accelerator gird, sputter erosion, lifetime assessment.

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Authors: Hossein Ali Akbarpour, Fatemeh Dadkhah

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This paper considers a multi criteria cell formation problem in Cellular Manufacturing System (CMS). Minimizing the number of voids and exceptional elements in cells simultaneously are two proposed objective functions. This problem is an Np-hard problem according to the literature, and therefore, we can-t find the optimal solution by an exact method. In this paper we developed two ant algorithms, Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) and Max-Min Ant System (MMAS), based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Both of them try to find the efficient solutions based on efficiency concept in DEA. Each artificial ant is considered as a Decision Making Unit (DMU). For each DMU we considered two inputs, the values of objective functions, and one output, the value of one for all of them. In order to evaluate performance of proposed methods we provided an experimental design with some empirical problem in three different sizes, small, medium and large. We defined three different criteria that show which algorithm has the best performance.

Keywords: Ant algorithm, Cellular manufacturing system, Data envelopment analysis, Efficiency

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Authors: Koudjo M. Koumadi, Kester Quist-Aphetsi, Robert A. Sowah, Amevi Acakpovi

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Downlink/Uplink (DL/UL) time slot allocation (TSA) in time division duplex (TDD) systems is generally uniform for all the cells. This TSA however is not efficient in case of different traffic asymmetry ratios in different cells. We first propose a new 3-coordinate architecture to identify cells in an orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) system where each cell is divided into three sectors. Then, this coordinate system is used to derive a TSA for symmetric traffic. Mathematical analysis and simulations are used to show that the proposed TSA outperforms the traditional all uniform type of TSA in terms of total intercellular interference, even under uniform symmetrical traffic. Two adaptation strategies are further proposed to adjust the proposed TSA to asymmetrical traffic with different DL/UL traffic ratios in different cells. Further simulation results show that the adaptation strategies also yield higher signal-to-interference ratio (SIR).

Keywords: Crossed TSA, different-entity interference, same-entity interference, uniform TSA

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Authors: Tim Giesen, Christian Fischmann, Fabian Böttinger, Alexander Ehm, Alexander Verl

Abstract:

In a state-of-the-art industrial production line of photovoltaic products the handling and automation processes are of particular importance and implication. While processing a fully functional crystalline solar cell an as-cut photovoltaic wafer is subject to numerous repeated handling steps. With respect to stronger requirements in productivity and decreasing rejections due to defects the mechanical stress on the thin wafers has to be reduced to a minimum as the fragility increases by decreasing wafer thicknesses. In relation to the increasing wafer fragility, researches at the Fraunhofer Institutes IPA and CSP showed a negative correlation between multiple handling processes and the wafer integrity. Recent work therefore focused on the analysis and optimization of the dry wafer stack separation process with compressed air. The achievement of a wafer sensitive process capability and a high production throughput rate is the basic motivation in this research.

Keywords: Automation, Photovoltaic Manufacturing, Thin Wafer, Material Handling

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Authors: D. Díaz Fernández, I. Csízi, K. Pető, G. Nagy

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An outstanding part of the animal products are based on the grasslands, due to the fact that the grassland ecosystems can be found all over the globe. In places where economical and successful crop production cannot be managed, the grassland based animal husbandry can be an efficient way of food production. In addition, these ecosystems have an important role in carbon sequestration, and with their rich flora – and fauna connected to it – in conservation of biodiversity. The protection of nature, and the sustainable agriculture is getting more and more attention in the European Union, but, looking at the consumers’ needs, the production of healthy food cannot be neglected either. Because of these facts, the effects of two specific composts - which are officially authorized in organic farming, in Agri-environment Schemes and Natura 2000 programs – on grass yields and sward compositions were investigated in a field trial. The investigation took place in Hungary, on a natural grassland based on solonetz soil. Three rates of compost (10 t/ha, 20 t/ha, 30 t/ha) were tested on 3 m X 10 m experimental plots. Every treatment had four replications and both type of compost had four-four control plots too, this way 32 experimental plots were included in the investigations. The yield of the pasture was harvested two-times (in May and in September) and before cutting the plots, measurements on botanical compositions were made. Samples for laboratory analysis were also taken. Dry matter yield of pasture showed positive responses to the rates of composts. The increase in dry matter yield was partly due to some positive changes in sward composition. It means that the proportions of grass species with higher yield potential increased in ground cover of the sward without depressing out valuable native species of diverse natural grasslands. The research results indicate that the use of organic compost can be an efficient way to increase grass yields in a sustainable way.

Keywords: Compost application, crude protein content, dry matter yield, native grassland, sward composition.

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Authors: Santanu Santra, Utpal Roy

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The most important mathematical operation for any computing system is addition. An efficient adder can be of greater assistance in designing of any arithmetic circuits. Quantum-dot Cellular Automata (QCA) is a promising nanotechnology to create electronic circuits for computing devices and suitable candidate for next generation of computing systems. The article presents a modest approach to implement a novel XOR gate. The gate is simple in structure and powerful in terms of implementing digital circuits. By applying the XOR gate, the hardware requirement for a QCA circuit can be decrease and circuits can be simpler in level, clock phase and cell count. In order to verify the functionality of the proposed device some implementation of Half Adder (HA) and Full Adder (FA) is checked by means of computer simulations using QCA-Designer tool. Simulation results and physical relations confirm its usefulness in implementing every digital circuit.

Keywords: Clock, Computing system, Majority gate, QCA, QCA Designer.

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Authors: Kejun Zhuang

Abstract:

In this paper, a delayed physiological control system is investigated. The sufficient conditions for stability of positive equilibrium and existence of local Hopf bifurcation are derived. Furthermore, global existence of periodic solutions is established by using the global Hopf bifurcation theory. Finally, numerical examples are given to support the theoretical analysis.

Keywords: Physiological control system, global Hopf bifurcation, periodic solutions.

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Authors: A. V. Trukhanov, S. V. Trukhanov, L. V. Panina, V. G. Kostishin, V. A. Turchenko

Abstract:

It has been shown that BaFe₁₂O₁₉ is a perspective room-temperature multiferroic material. A large spontaneous polarization was observed for the BaFe₁₂O₁₉ ceramics revealing a clear ferroelectric hysteresis loop. The maximum polarization was estimated to be approximately 11.8 μC/cm². The FeO₆ octahedron in its perovskite-like hexagonal unit cell and the shift of Fe³⁺ off the center of octahedron are suggested to be the origin of the polarization in BaFe₁₂O₁₉. The magnetic field induced electric polarization has been also observed in the doped BaFe_12-x-δSc_xM_δO₁₉ (δ=0.05) at 10 K and in the BaSc_xFe_12−xO₁₉ and SrSc_xFe_12−xO₁₉ (x = 1.3–1.7) M-type hexaferrites. The investigated BaFe_12-xD_xO₁₉ (x=0.1, D-Al³⁺, In³⁺) samples have been obtained by two-step “topotactic” reactions. The powder neutron investigations of the samples were performed by neutron time of flight method at High Resolution Fourier Diffractometer.

Keywords: Substituted hexaferrites, ferrimagnetics, ferroelectrics, neutron powder diffraction, crystal and magnetic structures.

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