Waste electronics and electrical equipment disassembly and recycling using Petri net analysis: Considering the economic value and environmental impacts

The Industry Council for Electronic Equipment Recycling (ICER) has published estimates of waste generation based on both assumptions and analysis regarding the relationship between the market sales of Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE) in a given year and the expected lifetime of products as well as by employing market saturation factors. Waste EEE (WEEE) has an adverse impact on the environment. Therefore, it is important to reduce the quantity of WEEE through recycling. While attempting to improve the recycling rate of WEEE by enhancing the disassembly processes, two issues must be considered simultaneously—economy and safety. In this paper, a Petri Net (PN) based analysis approach is proposed to deal with the disassembly and recycling problems in End-Of-Life (EOL) WEEE. By using the PN analysis, the optimal tradeoff between the cost and environmental effectiveness of the disassembly processes is determined. A case study is used to illustrate the proposed analysis method.     

Selective Leaching Process for Neodymium Recovery from Scrap Nd-Fe-B Magnet

Neodymium-iron-boron (Nd-Fe-B) magnets were most widely applied to permanent magnetic products in the world due to their high magnetic force. The increasing growth of scrap Nd-Fe-B magnets resulted in disposal problems and the reduction of neodymium (Nd) valuable resources. In this study, we developed a simple hydrometallurgical precipitation process with pH adjustment to separate and recover Nd 100 pct recovery from scrap Nd-Fe-B magnets. Several physical and chemical methods such as demagnetization, grinding, screening, and leaching processes were also adopted to investigate the recovery of Nd and other metals from scrap Nd-Fe-B magnets. The leaching process was carried out with four leaching reagents such as NaOH, HCl, HNO₃, and H₂SO₄. Batch studies were also conducted to optimize the leaching operating conditions with respect to leaching time, concentration of leaching reagent, temperature, and solid/liquid ratio for both HCl and H₂SO₄ leaching reagents. Nd was successfully separated and recovered with 75.41 wt pct from optimized H₂SO₄ leaching solution through precipitation. Further, the purity and weight percentage of the obtained Nd product was analyzed using scanning electron microscopy–energy-dispersive spectroscopy (SEM-EDS) analysis. An X-ray diffraction (XRD) study confirmed the obtained product of Nd was in the form of NdOOH and Nd(OH)₃.     

Integrating order release control with due-date assignment rules

This study integrates order release control methods with due-date assignment rules and assesses its impact on the accuracy of inter-operation time estimation and performance of due-date assignment. The assessment is made by using an experimental design with three due-date assignment rules, three scheduling rules and three order release models. The three order release models are: (1) Basic model, in which three due-date assignment rules consider the order arrival time as the order release time; (2) Control model, in which three due-date assignment rules integrate with the order release control method developed here; and (3) Adjustment model, in which the control model integrates with the order release control adjustment developed here. Simulation results in this study indicate that integrating the order release control method with due-date assignment rules will significantly enhance not only the accuracy of interoperation time estimation, but also the performance of due-date assignment rules.     

A Distribution Management System for Relational Databases in Cloud Environments

For a transaction processing system to operate effectively and efficiently in cloud environments, it is important to distribute huge amount of data while guaranteeing the ACID (atomic, consistent, isolated, and durable) properties. Moreover, database partition and migration tools can help transplanting conventional relational database systems to the cloud environment rather than rebuilding a new system. This paper proposes a database distribution management (DBDM) system, which partitions or replicates the data according to the transaction behaviors of the application system. The principle strategy of DBDM is to keep together the data used in a single transaction, and thus, avoiding massive transmission of records in join operations. The proposed system has been implemented successfully. The preliminary experiments show that the DBDM performs the database partition and migration effectively. Also, the DBDM system is modularly designed to adapt to different database management system (DBMS) or different partition algorithms.     

Survival Skills for The is Professional

IS professionals can only dream of the days when technical brilliance alone was enough to ensure a successful career. Now business acumen and a strong understanding of customer expectations are vital to long-term career survival. Based on their study of 75 experienced IS professionals, the authors present guidelines for fostering the development of customer-oriented IS professionals.     

Lactobacillus casei MYL01 modulates the proinflammatory state induced by ethanol in an in vitro model

Accumulating studies have suggested that probiotics have beneficial effects on liver injury but the underlying mechanism has remained unclear. Toll-like receptors (TLR) expressed on immune cells and hepatocytes recognize bacterial components that are translocated from the gut into the portal vein. To date, it has been demonstrated that ethanol alone, without microbial components, is able to activate TLR, leading to promotion of proinflammatory cytokine production. Because the enhanced signaling of TLR triggers persistent inflammation, we hypothesized that development of hepatocyte TLR tolerance to repetitive stimulation plays an important role in protecting the liver from hypergeneration of proinflammatory cytokines. In this study, we showed that Lactobacillus casei MYL01 modulated the proinflammatory state induced by ethanol and investigated in detail the mechanism underlying the observation that L. casei MYL01 gave rise to TLR tolerance toward ethanol stimulation. The effects of L. casei MYL01 in the attenuation of ethanol-induced liver damage were due to enhancement of IL-10 production, which limited the proinflammatory process. Furthermore, better defense of hepatocytes against ethanol challenge by treatment of L. casei MYL01 was attributed to previous induction of toll interacting protein (TOLLIP) and suppressor of cytokine signaling (SOCS)1 and SOCS3 expression via activation of TLR1, TLR2, TLR6, and TLR9, an action that cross-regulated ethanol–TLR4–nuclear factor κB signal transduction events. This finding might help establish an in vitro platform for selecting hepatoprotective probiotic strains in terms of ethanol-induced liver damage.     

Accurate rotor flux orientation technique for indirect rotor flux oriented control of induction motor drives

Abstract

In this paper, a novel detuning index is first proposed for indicating the proper timing required to correct the rotor time constant of indirect rotor flux oriented controlled single‐cage induction motor drives. This index can faithfully reflect the influence of rotor resistance changes as well as rotor flux changes. It also reduces greatly the number of rotor time constant estimations in practical applications. The theoretical basis of the index and the physical meaning are described in the paper in detail. Based on the proposed index, an on‐line rotor time constant estimator is also proposed to make corrections. Only existing available quantities of the closed loop controller are used for calculating the estimated rotor time constant accurately. Both simulation and experimental results verify the effectiveness of the proposed rotor flux orientation technique. It is seen that the proposed rotor flux orientation technique is suitable for practical applications.     

Improved genetic algorithm for mixed-discrete-continuous design optimization problems

An improved genetic algorithm (IGA) is presented to solve the mixed-discrete-continuous design optimization problems. The IGA approach combines the traditional genetic algorithm with the experimental design method. The experimental design method is incorporated in the crossover operations to systematically select better genes to tailor the crossover operations in order to find the representative chromosomes to be the new potential offspring, so that the IGA approach possesses the merit of global exploration and obtains better solutions. The presented IGA approach is effectively applied to solve one structural and five mechanical engineering problems. The computational results show that the presented IGA approach can obtain better solutions than both the GA-based and the particle-swarm-optimizer-based methods reported recently.     

Inductive modulation on P-glycoprotein and cytochrome 3A by resveratrol,a constituent of grapes

Resveratrol has been reported to show various beneficial pharmacological effects. Nowadays, resveratrol dietary supplement (RDS) is available in the market. Cyclosporin (CsA), a probe drug of P-glycoprotein (P-gp) and cytochrome P450 3A4 (CYP3A4), is an important immunosuppressant. This study investigated the effect of coadministration of RDS on CsA pharmacokinetics.     

Water-jet-assisted diamond disk dressing characteristics of CMP polishing pad

This paper presents an experimental investigation of the dressing characteristics of a porous polishing pad using a combination of water-jet dressing (WJC) and traditional diamond disk dressing (DDC). The WJC and DDC dressing mechanisms were integrated in order to improve the dressing efficiency. The pad recovery test was performed. In this test, the real-time friction force was determined, scanning electron microscope images were obtained, and the dressed surface topography after prolonged operation without conditioning was examined. The pad cut rate and the rate of removal of the copper substrate by the polishing process were investigated by comparing the results of the WJC?+?DDC, only DDC, and only WJC methods. The experimental results showed that although the WJC can remove the slurry residue from the pad surface and consumes less pad material, it cannot remove the glazed layer formed as a result of plastic deformation, which contributes to the low material removal rate. On the other hand, DDC can remove the glazed layer of the pad and restore the pad asperities; however, a few residual chips still remain on the sides of the pores or inside the pores. WJC?+?DDC cannot only remove the embedded slurry particulates and the glazed layer, but also remove the slurry residue accumulated on the pad surface and restore the pad asperities. In addition, the chip residues in the pores, created by the diamond grit, are completely removed by the WJC?+?DDC conditioning process; the removal of the chip residue helps in obtaining the highest material removal rate. In summary, WJC?+?DDC can be used as an effective pad conditioning method.