A novel anionic surfactant templating route for synthesizing mesoporous silica with unique structure

Anionic surfactants are used in greater volume than any other surfactants because of their highly potent detergency and low cost of manufacture. However, they have not been used as templates for synthesizing mesoporous silica. Here we show a templating route for preparing mesoporous silicas based on self-assembly of anionic surfactants and inorganic precursors. We use aminosilane or quaternized aminosilane as co-structure-directing agent (CSDA), which is different from previous pathways. The alkoxysilane site of CSDA is co-condensed with inorganic precursors; the ammonium site of CSDA, attached to silicon atoms incorporated into the wall, electrostatically interacts with the anionic surfactants to produce well-ordered anionic-surfactant-templated mesoporous silicas (AMS). These have new structures with periodic modulations as well as two-dimensional hexagonal and lamellar phases. The periodic modulations may be caused by the coexistence of micelles that differ in size or curvature, possibly owing to local chirality. These mesoporous silicas provide a new family of mesoporous materials as well as shedding light on the structural behaviour of anionic surfactants.     

Crossover and mutation operators for grammar-guided genetic programming

This paper proposes a new grammar-guided genetic programming (GGGP) system by introducing two original genetic operators: crossover and mutation, which most influence the evolution process. The first, the so-called grammar-based crossover operator, strikes a good balance between search space exploration and exploitation capabilities and, therefore, enhances GGGP system performance. And the second is a grammar-based mutation operator, based on the crossover, which has been designed to generate individuals that match the syntactical constraints of the context-free grammar that defines the programs to be handled. The use of these operators together in the same GGGP system assures a higher convergence speed and less likelihood of getting trapped in local optima than other related approaches. These features are shown throughout the comparison of the results achieved by the proposed system with other important crossover and mutation methods in two experiments: a laboratory problem and the real-world task of breast cancer prognosis.     

Electrical properties of Pb0.98Eu0.02(ZryTi1−y)0.995O3 prepared by sol–gel processing

A Pb_0.98Eu_0.02(Zr_yTi_1−y )_0.995O₃ compound series, with y = 0.60, 0.53 and 0.45 was prepared. PZT samples were synthesized by sol–gel technique. The crystallization and quality of the compounds were analyzed by powder X-ray diffraction and electron microscopy. The shape of the ε′(ω) vs T curves can be considered typical of a ferro-paraelectric transition. The ferro-paraelectric transition temperature for each composition was 348, 328 and 307°C, for the y = 0.45, 0.53 and 0.60, respectively. σ′(ω) is strongly influenced by short range processes. For the logσ′(ω) curves as function of temperature, there is evidence of a non dispersive dc-conductivity component for the high temperature region. The associated dc-activation energies are larger than those calculated for the ac region (at lower temperatures).     

Tight closed-form approximation for the ergodic capacity of orthogonal STBC

In this letter we derive a simple and tight closed-form approximation for the ergodic capacity of orthogonal space-time block coding in arbitrary fading channels. The expression is an analytical function of the power covariance matrix of the channel. In the case of uncorrelated channels the expression only depends on the variances of the channel power gains. These channel statistics can be easily obtained from both analytical and physical fading channel models. Simulations results show the accuracy of the proposed expression     

An energy management system for cluster infrastructures

This paper presents a general energy management system for High Performance Computing (HPC) clusters and cloud infrastructures that powers off cluster nodes when they are not being used, and conversely powers them on when they are needed. This system can be integrated with different HPC cluster middleware, such as Batch-Queuing Systems or Cloud Management Systems, and can also use different mechanisms for powering on and off the computing nodes. The presented system makes it possible to implement different energy-saving policies depending on the priorities and particularities of the cluster. It also provides a hook system to extend the functionality, and a sensor system in order to take into account environmental information.     

A simple empirical method for estimating surface water vapour pressure using MODIS near-infrared channels: applications to northern Spain's Asturias region

In this article, we present a simple methodology for obtaining algorithms to estimate surface water vapour pressure (e ₀) over cloud-free land areas using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data. The algorithm obtained in this case is adapted to the particular climatic characteristics of the Asturias region, but the methodology can easily be extrapolated and used to obtain algorithms for other regions around the world. The proposed method estimates e ₀ from a simple linear combination of the radiances of the MODIS near-infrared (NIR) channels more commonly applied to total precipitable water (W) estimations. Comparison between the e ₀ data measured at the ground-based meteorological stations in Asturias (daily data from 2004) versus the values predicted using the proposed algorithm gives R ² = 0.76 and residual standard error (RSE) = 2.07 hPa (16%). The algorithm was tested using the data from 2008 obtained in Asturias and in two sites outside of Asturias with similar latitudes and radiosonde observations (La Coruña and Santander). The resulting validation demonstrates that the algorithm gives good results in Asturias (root-mean-square deviation (RMSD) = 2.50 hPa (19%) and bias = 1.26 hPa, with R ² = 0.65) and when La Coruña is included (R ² = 0.61), but that its validity is decreased when Santander is also included (R ² = 0.56).

The possibility of obtaining e ₀ from three global MODIS algorithms for W retrieval was also tested and compared to our algorithm. The results show that our algorithm gives better results than the International MODIS/Atmospheric InfraRed Sounder Processing Package (IMAPP) Water Vapour Near-Infrared (WVNIR) product and the Sobrino algorithm. The MODIS Total Precipitable Water (MOD05) product is worse than that obtained with our algorithm in Asturias (R ² = 0.61 vs. R ² = 0.65), but the two values are similar if the stations in La Coruña (R ² = 0.60) and Santander (R ² = 0.56) are included in the comparison. The dominant advantage of the novel algorithm proposed in this study is that it is simpler and can be produced quickly in real time.     

Maximum likelihood estimation for the three-parameter Weibull cdf of strength in presence of concurrent flaw populations

For a correct strength characterization of brittle materials, not only the maximum stress at fracture, but also the geometry of the specimens has to be considered thus taking into account the variable stress state and the size effect. Additionally, fracture may occur due to different fracture modes, as for example surface or edge defects. The authors propose a maximum likelihood estimator to obtain the cumulative distribution functions of strength for surface and edge flaw populations separately, both being three-parameter Weibull cdfs referred to an elemental surface area or elemental edge length, respectively. The method has been applied to simulated 3-point bending test data. The estimated Weibull parameters have been used to compute the cdfs of strength for specimens with different size, providing also the confidence bounds calculated by means of the bootstrap method. Finally, fracture data of 4-point bending tests on silicon carbide have been evaluated with the proposed method.     

A biokinematic approach for the computational simulation of proteins molecular mechanism

Proteins play an essential role in the biological processes that take place in the human body. For this reason, it is very important to understand the molecular mechanisms involved. Recently a new approach, based on the parallelism between proteins and spatial mechanisms, has allowed methods to be developed to obtain atomic trajectories for protein motion using concepts from the kinematics of mechanisms. This paper presents a method for simulating protein motion, based on the evaluation of the potential energy during the motion, thereby avoiding the need to perform a minimization procedure. This approach constitutes a good compromise between computational effort and accuracy of the results. In addition, in order to efficiently simulate the motion, a new algorithm for normalization of the structure of the protein is presented. Finally, we illustrate the results of applying this method to an inorganic pyrophosphatase (family II) from Streptococcus gordonii evaluating geometric accuracy, energetic evolution and biological indicators.     

On the power of elementary features in spiking neural P systems

Since their first publication in 2006, spiking neural (SN) P systems have already attracted the attention of a lot of researchers. This might be owing to the fact that this abstract computing device follows basic principles known from spiking neural nets, but its implementation is discrete, using membrane computing background. Among the elementary properties which confer SN P systems their computational power one can count the unbounded fan-in (indegree) and fan-out (outdegree) of each “neuron”, synchronicity of the whole system, the possibility of delaying and/or removing spikes in neurons, the capability of evaluating arbitrary regular expressions in neurons in constant time and some others. In this paper we focus on the power of these elementary features. Particularly, we study the power of the model when some of these features are disabled. Rather surprisingly, even very restricted SN P systems keep their universal computational power. Certain important questions regarding this topic still remain open.     

An assessment of discretizations for convection-dominated convection–diffusion equations

The performance of several numerical schemes for discretizing convection-dominated convection–diffusion equations will be investigated with respect to accuracy and efficiency. Accuracy is considered in measures which are of interest in applications. The study includes an exponentially fitted finite volume scheme, the Streamline-Upwind Petrov–Galerkin (SUPG) finite element method, a spurious oscillations at layers diminishing (SOLD) finite element method, a finite element method with continuous interior penalty (CIP) stabilization, a discontinuous Galerkin (DG) finite element method, and a total variation diminishing finite element method (FEMTVD). A detailed assessment of the schemes based on the Hemker example will be presented.