Puncture of elastomer membranes by medical needles. Part I: Mechanisms

Resistance to puncture is a critical property for several applications, in particular for elastomer materials used in protective clothing. To evaluate the puncture resistance of membranes, some methods have been proposed as standard tests. However, the rounded puncture probes used in these tests are very different from real pointed objects like medical needles, and may not measure the level of material resistance that corresponds to them. In fact, puncture by medical needles is shown to proceed gradually as the needle cuts into the membrane. This behavior is highly different from puncture by rounded probes which occurs suddenly when the strain at the probe tip reaches the failure value. In addition, maximum force values are observed to be much smaller with medical needles. A method has been developed based on the change in strain energy with the puncture depth to evaluate the fracture energy associated to puncture. The results show that the phenomenon of puncture by medical needles involves contributions both from friction and fracture energy, in a similar way as for cutting. A lubricant was tentatively used to reduce the friction contribution for the computation of the material fracture energy.     

An MILP Continuous-Time Framework for Short-Term Scheduling of Multipurpose Batch Processes Under Different Operation Strategies

This work introduces a novel MILP continuous-time framework to the optimal short-term scheduling of non-sequential multipurpose batch processes with intermediate storage vessels. It is based on a problem representation that describes the batch sequence at any processing/storage unit by providing the full set of predecessors for every batch. Different operation modes can be considered by making minor changes in the problem model. The proposed framework can also handle sequence-dependent changeovers as well as multiple storage tanks available to receive material from one or several processing units. Three example problems involving up to fifteen batches and six processing tasks were successfully solved. Compared with previous work, a drastic reduction in both problem size and CPU time has been achieved.     

Analysis and simulation of a wind‐electric battery charging system

A small commercial wind‐electric battery‐charging system based on a three‐bladed rotor has been analysed in a detailed fashion. The system consists of a synchronous generator with permanent magnets, a six‐pulse rectifier and a battery bank with charge controller. A steady‐state power curve is predicted based on the electric characteristics found experimentally and the aerodynamic performance of the rotor simulated with a version of blade element momentum (BEM) theory developed in our group. The BEM code has been designed to account for variable Reynolds numbers at different blade sections and stall conditions. The findings are compared with the manufacturer's specifications, and a detailed discussion is provided. A very good agreement with the steady‐state power curve given by the manufacturer has been obtained after accounting for different sources of power losses, such as voltage drops in the rectifier, Joule heating in the power cables and losses in the generator's core. The system is found to operate near the aerodynamic optimum for all wind speeds studied, whereas electrical losses are significant near rated power. Some recommendations for improving the system performance are provided. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The MMPI-2 Restructured Clinical Scales in the assessment of posttraumatic stress disorder and comorbid disorders.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 21(1) of Psychological Assessment (see record 2009-03401-005). The URL for the supplemental material was incomplete. The complete URL is http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0012948.supp] This study examined the psychometric properties of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) Restructured Clinical Scales (RCSs) in individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) receiving clinical services at Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers. Study 1 included 1,098 men who completed the MMPI-2 and were assessed for a range of psychological disorders via structured clinical interview. Study 2 included 136 women who completed the MMPI-2 and were interviewed with the Clinician Administered Scale for PTSD. The utility of the RCSs was compared with that of the Clinical Scales (CSs) and the Keane PTSD (PK) scale. The RCSs demonstrated good psychometric properties and patterns of associations with other measures of psychopathology that corresponded to current theory regarding the structure of comorbidity. A notable advantage of the RCSs compared with the MMPI-2 CSs was their enhanced construct validity and clinical utility in the assessment of comorbid internalizing and externalizing psychopathology. The PK scale demonstrated incremental validity in the prediction of PTSD beyond that of the RCSs or CSs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A fully parallel CMOS analog median filter

A fully integrated CMOS implementation of a continuous-time analog median filter is presented. The median filter uses two compact analog circuits as building blocks to implement the variable delay and median detection. Median detectors are based on current saturating transconductance comparators, while the time delay is implemented using first-order all-pass filters. Both circuits allow modular expansion for the implementation of large median filter array processors. Based on these blocks, a new fast technique for parallel image processing is presented. It is shown that an image of 91/spl times/80 pixels can be processed in less than 8 /spl mu/s using an array of median filter cells. Experimental results of a test chip prototype in 2-/spl mu/m CMOS MOSIS technology are presented.     

The zeta potential and surface properties of asphaltenes obtained with different crude oil/n-heptane proportions

We have investigated some surface properties of asphaltenes precipitated from crude oil with different volumes of n-heptane. According to the crude oil/n-heptane proportions used, asphaltenes are identified as 1:5, 1:15 and 1:40. Zeta potential results indicate that the amount of n-heptane determines the electrokintetic behaviour of asphaltenes in aqueous suspensions. Asphaltene 1:5 exhibits an isoelectric point (IEP) at pH 4.5 whereas asphaltenes 1:15 and 1:40 show an IEP at about pH 3. Surface charge on asphaltenes arises from the dissociation of acid functionalities and the protonation of basic functional groups. The presence of resins remaining on the asphaltene molecules may be responsible for the different IEP of asphaltene 1:5. Both sodium dodecyl sulfate (an anionic surfactant) and cetylpyridinium chloride (a cationic surfactant) were found to adsorb specifically onto asphaltenes. They reverse the sign of the zeta potential under certain conditions. These surfactants may be potential candidates to aid in controlling the stability of crude oil dispersions. Critical micelle concentration, interfacial tension measurements, and Langmuir isotherms at the air-water interface confirm the different nature of asphaltene 1:5, which also showed more solubility and a larger molecular size.     

A reactive MILP approach to the multidepot heterogeneous fleet vehicle routing problem with time windows

The time‐window‐constrained vehicle routing problem (VRPTW) is a well‐known combinatorial problem. Its goal is to discover the best set of routes for a vehicle fleet in order to service a given number of customers at minimum cost. Vehicle capacity, maximum service time and time‐window constraints must be satisfied. Most proposed VRPTW optimizing approaches intend to discover the best or a near‐optimal solution at once. Improvement methods are old strategies that apply heuristics to insert customers into tours and/or rearrange nodes to obtain better routes. They are performed until no further improvement is achieved. Little research has been focused on model‐based reactive approaches seeking a better solution by exploring a small solution space around the current solution. This work presents a new model‐based improvement methodology for the multi‐depot heterogeneous‐fleet VRPTW problem to enhance an initial solution through solving a series of MILP mathematical problems that allow exchanges of nodes among tours and node reordering on every route. By restricting the range of improvement options, the problem size can be bounded and a limited number of binary variables is required for real‐world problems. The improvement formulation is based on a continuous time‐domain representation that handles assignment and sequencing decisions through different sets of binary variables and uses the notion of a generalized predecessor instead of a direct predecessor. Several types of VRPTW problems have been efficiently solved.     

Iterative two-step genetic-algorithm-based method for efficient polynomial B-spline surface reconstruction

Surface reconstruction is a very challenging problem arising in a wide variety of applications such as CAD design, data visualization, virtual reality, medical imaging, computer animation, reverse engineering and so on. Given partial information about an unknown surface, its goal is to construct, to the extent possible, a compact representation of the surface model. In most cases, available information about the surface consists of a dense set of (either organized or scattered) 3D data points obtained by using scanner devices, a today’s prevalent technology in many reverse engineering applications. In such a case, surface reconstruction consists of two main stages: (1) surface parameterization and (2) surface fitting. Both tasks are critical in order to recover surface geometry and topology and to obtain a proper fitting to data points. They are also pretty troublesome, leading to a high-dimensional nonlinear optimization problem. In this context, present paper introduces a new method for surface reconstruction from clouds of noisy 3D data points. Our method applies the genetic algorithm paradigm iteratively to fit a given cloud of data points by using strictly polynomial B-spline surfaces. Genetic algorithms are applied in two steps: the first one determines the parametric values of data points; the later computes surface knot vectors. Then, the fitting surface is calculated by least-squares through either SVD (singular value decomposition) or LU methods. The method yields very accurate results even for surfaces with singularities, concavities, complicated shapes or nonzero genus. Six examples including open, semi-closed and closed surfaces with singular points illustrate the good performance of our approach. Our experiments show that our proposal outperforms all previous approaches in terms of accuracy and flexibility.     

Computational Study on the Endohedral Isomers of C60H2

A computational study (MM3 and PM3) on the endohedral isomers of C₆₀H₂ has been carried out. The exohedral isomers were computed by MM3. A comparison between the computed properties for both isomers is also presented.     

Microintumescent mechanism of flame‐retardant water‐based chitosan–ammonium polyphosphate multilayer nanocoating on cotton fabric

Layer‐by‐layer (LbL) assembly of nanocoatings on fabric substrates has been very successful in terms of reduction of flammability. In particular, an LbL system comprised ammonium polyphosphate as the polyanion and chitosan as the polycation, applied to cotton fabric, dramatically reduced cotton flammability. At this point, the fire‐retardant (FR) mechanism of action of this system has never been fully elucidated. Sonicated and nonsonicated coated cotton fabrics were evaluated using a vertical flame test and mass loss calorimeter. Coating morphology was investigated before and after burning. Thermal analyses and chemical analyses in the condensed phase (and in the gas phase) were conducted to reveal the FR mechanism of action. At the cotton surface, a combination of both condensed (formation of aromatic char) and gas phase (release of water and highly flammable gases) mechanisms impart the FR behavior, promoting a kind of “microintumescence” phenomenon. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2016 , 133, 43783.