Random poly(ε‐caprolactone‐L‐alanine) by direct melt copolymerization

A series of random polyesteramides (PEAs) with a range of molar composition from 90/10 to 50/50 were synthesized by direct melt polycondensation of ε‐caprolactone and l ‐alanine. Their structure was fully characterized by Fourier transform IR and NMR spectroscopy. The resulting copolymers are completely amorphous with the exception of PEA‐90/10 which possesses a semicrystalline structure. These PEAs present increasing glass transition temperatures at increasing l ‐alanine contents and exhibit fairly good thermal stability with 10% mass loss temperatures reaching 315 °C. © 2020 Society of Industrial Chemistry     

A comparative study of the electrochemical behaviour of Algerian zinc and a zinc from a commercial sacrificial anode

Zinc is used in the oil industry as a sacrificial anode for protecting steel storage tanks from corrosion. The behaviour of a sample of zinc from the Algerian metallurgy industry (zinc A) and a commercially available zinc (zinc B) was compared in an electrolyte from storage tank drainage water. The corrosion potential measurements for zinc A confirmed that this material could be used as a sacrificial anode. The polarization curves of the two materials (zinc A and zinc B) were different, zinc A being the least polarized. Thus, the same corrosion protection could be obtained with a lower surface ratio (S _Zn/S _Fe) for Zinc A. Cyclic voltammetry curves provided evidence of a surface layer formed by dissolution products. To provide protection over extended periods of time, the zinc anode must be oversized. The two types of zinc tested were comparable.The results of the impedance spectroscopy study confirmed the previous results. The corrosion layer formed on zinc A was not prejudicial to dissolution. Hence, the properties of this zinc were found to be satisfactory for its use as a sacrificial anode.     

A Probabilistic Multiperiod Simulation–Optimization Approach for Dynamic Coastal Aquifer Management

Combined simulation–optimization (CSO) schemes are common in the literature to solve different groundwater management problems, and CSO is particularly well-established in the coastal aquifer management literature. However, with a few exceptions, nearly all previous studies have employed the CSO approach to derive static groundwater management plans that remain unchanged during the entire management period, consequently overlooking the possible positive impacts of dynamic strategies. Dynamic strategies involve division of the planning time interval into several subintervals or periods, and adoption of revised decisions during each period based on the most recent knowledge of the groundwater system and its associated uncertainties. Problem structuring and computational challenges seem to be the main factors preventing the widespread implementation of dynamic strategies in groundwater applications. The objective of this study is to address these challenges by introducing a novel probabilistic Multiperiod CSO approach for dynamic groundwater management. This includes reformulation of the groundwater management problem so that it can be adapted to the multiperiod CSO approach, and subsequent employment of polynomial chaos expansion-based stochastic dynamic programming to obtain optimal dynamic strategies. The proposed approach is employed to provide sustainable solutions for a coastal aquifer storage and recovery facility in Oman, considering the effect of natural recharge uncertainty. It is revealed that the proposed dynamic approach results in an improved performance by taking advantage of system variations, allowing for increased groundwater abstraction, injection and hence monetary benefit compared to the commonly used static optimization approach.

     

The vehicle routing problem with restricted mixing of deliveries and pickups

The vehicle routing problem with deliveries and pickups is one of the main problems within reverse logistics. This paper focuses on an important assumption that divides the literature on the topic, namely the restriction that all deliveries must be completed before pickups can be made. A generalised model is presented, together with a mathematical formulation and its resolution. The latter is carried out by adopting a suitable implementation of the reactive tabu search metaheuristic. Results show that significant savings can be achieved by allowing a mixture of delivery and pickup loads on-board and yet not incurring delays and driver inconvenience.     

Lateral Magnetically Modulated Multilayers by Combining Ion Implantation and Lithography

The combination of lithography and ion implantation is demonstrated to be a suitable method to prepare lateral multilayers. A laterally, compositionally, and magnetically modulated microscale pattern consisting of alternating Co (1.6 µm wide) and Co‐CoO (2.4 µm wide) lines has been obtained by oxygen ion implantation into a lithographically masked Au‐sandwiched Co thin film. Magnetoresistance along the lines (i.e., current and applied magnetic field are parallel to the lines) reveals an effective positive giant magnetoresistance (GMR) behavior at room temperature. Conversely, anisotropic magnetoresistance and GMR contributions are distinguished at low temperature (i.e., 10 K) since the O‐implanted areas become exchange coupled. This planar GMR is principally ascribed to the spatial modulation of coercivity in a spring‐magnet‐type configuration, which results in 180° Néel extrinsic domain walls at the Co/Co‐CoO interfaces. The versatility, in terms of pattern size, morphology, and composition adjustment, of this method offers a unique route to fabricate planar systems for, among others, spintronic research and applications.     

An efficient image-mosaicing method based on multifeature matching

Mosaicing is connecting two or more images and making a new wide area image with no visible seam-lines. Several algorithms have been proposed to construct mosaics from image sequence where the camera motion is more or less complex. Most of these methods are based either on the interest points matching or on theoretical corner models. This paper describes a fully automated image-mosaicing method based on the regions and the Harris points primitives. Indeed, in order to limit the search window of potential homologous points, for each point of interest, regions segmentation and matching steps are being performed. This enables us to improve the reliability and the robustness of the Harris points matching process by estimating the camera motion. The main originality of the proposed system resides in the preliminary manipulation of regions matching, thus making it possible to estimate the rotation, the translation and the scale factor between two successive images of the input sequence. This estimation allows an initial alignment of the images along with the framing of the interest points search window, and therefore reducing considerably the complexity of the interest points matching algorithm. Then, the resolution of a minimization problem, altogether considering the couples of matched-points, permits us to perform the homography. In order to improve the mosaic continuity around junctions, radiometric corrections are applied. The validity of the herewith described method is illustrated by being tested on several sequences of complex and challenging images captured from real-world indoor and outdoor scenes. These simulations proved the validity of the proposed method against camera motions, illumination variations, acquirement conditions, moving objects and image noise. To determine the importance of the regions matching stage in motion estimation, as well as for the framing of the search window associated to a point of interest, we compared the matching points results of this described method with those produced using the zero-mean normalized cross correlation score (without regions matching). We made this comparison in the case of a simple motion (without the presence of a rotation around optical axis and/or a scale factor), in the case of a rotation and in the general case of an homothety. For justifying the effectiveness of this method, we proposed an objective assessment by defining a reconstruction error.

Route Maintenance in IEEE 802.11 wireless mesh networks

In this paper, we propose a novel Route Maintenance scheme for IEEE 802.11 wireless mesh networks. Despite lack of mobility and energy constraints, reactive routing protocols such as AODV and DSR suffer from frequent route breakages in 802.11 based infrastructure wireless mesh networks. In these networks, if any intermediate node fails to successfully transmit a packet to the next hop node after a certain number of retransmissions, the link layer reports a transmission problem to the network layer. Reactive routing protocols systematically consider this as a link breakage (and therefore a route breakage). Transmission failures can be caused by a number of factors e.g. interference or noise and can be transient in nature. Frequent route breakages result in significant performance degradation. The proposed mechanism considers multiple factors to differentiate between links with transient transmission problems from those links which have permanent transmission problems and takes a coherent decision on link breakage. The proposed mechanism is implemented in AODV for single-radio single-channel mesh network and an extension is incorporated in multi-radio multi-channel scenarios. Simulation results show substantial performance improvement compared to classical AODV and local route repair schemes.