Main-Chain Nematic Side-Chain Smectic Composite Liquid Crystalline Elastomers

A composite liquid crystalline elastomer is designed, combining main-chain and side-chain mesogenic polymers in the network, and resulting in micro-phase separated regions of nematic and smectic ordering in the macroscopically homogeneous elastomer. A range of different fractions of the components is explored, from fully nematic main-chain system, across to fully smectic side-chain elastomer. Thermal phase transitions of both phases coexisting in the material are detected by calorimetry, and the nematic/smectic structure investigated by X-ray scattering. The tensile stress–strain data reveal the key effect of such a multi-phase composite, where the nematic fraction adds ductility while the smectic fraction increases the modulus and mechanical stiffness. Varying the composition, the authors are able to optimize the mechanical properties of this material type.     

Experimental analysis of fuel from fish processing industry waste in a diesel engine

In the present work, biofuel derived from industrial fish processing industry waste is used in diesel engines to study its suitability . Biofuel from industry fish waste is produced through catalytic cracking, and its quality has been improved through distillation. A single cylinder 4.5 kW at 1500 rpm was used to find the suitability of biofuel and undistilled biofuel in diesel engine. Experimental results show that the brake thermal efficiency of biofuel and undistilled biofuel is similar. Brake thermal efficiency for diesel, undistilled biofuel and biofuel is 29.98, 32.12 and 32.4%, respectively, at 80% load. Carbon monoxide, unburnt hydrocarbons, particulate matter and oxides of nitrogen emissions increase with undistilled biofuel compared to biofuel. There is a small reduction in carbon dioxide emission with undistilled biofuel compared to biofuel. Even though the cylinder pressure is high with undistilled biofuel, the intensity of premixed combustion is lower than distilled biofuel. The ignition delay and combustion duration increase with undistilled biofuel. Finally, it is concluded that the fuel derived from fish processing industry waste can be used as a fuel for diesel engine after distillation.     

Relevance feedback revisited: dealing with content and structure in XML documents

Relevance feedback (RF) is a technique that allows to enrich an initial query according to the user feedback. The goal is to express more precisely the user’s needs. Some open issues arise when considering semi-structured documents like XML documents. They are mainly related to the form of XML documents which mix content and structure information and to the new granularity of information. Indeed, the main objective of XML retrieval is to select relevant elements in XML documents instead of whole documents. Most of the RF approaches proposed in XML retrieval are simple adaptation of traditional RF to the new granularity of information. They usually enrich queries by adding terms extracted from relevant elements instead of terms extracted from whole documents. In this article, we describe a new approach of RF that takes advantage of two sources of evidence: the content and the structure. We propose to use the query term proximity to select terms to be added to the initial query and to use generic structures to express structural constraints. Both sources of evidence are used in different combined forms. Experiments were carried out within the INEX evaluation campaign and results show the effectiveness of our approaches.     

A comparative evaluation of filter-based feature selection methods for hyper-spectral band selection

Band selection (dimensionality reduction) plays an essential role in hyper-spectral image processing and applications. This article presents a unified comparison framework for systematic performance comparison of filter-based feature selection models and conducts a comparative evaluation of four methods: maximal minimal associated index (MMAIQ), mutual information-based max-dependency criterion (mRMR), relief feature selection (Relief-F), and correlation-based feature selection (CFS) for hyper-spectral band selection. The evaluation is based on the performance of effectiveness, robustness, and classification accuracy, which involves five measuring indices: class separability, feature entropy, feature stability, feature redundancy, and classification accuracy. Three images acquired by different sensors were used to investigate the performance of the metrics. Experimental results show the best results for MMAIQ for all data sets in terms of used measurements, except for feature stability where mRMR and Relief-F exhibit their superiority.     

Study of microstructure, phases and microhardness of metallic coatings deposited by flame thermal spray

The recharging technique by thermal spraying offers the opportunity of renovating the worn surface parts of a machine element to give it again a new technical life despite its previous degradation in service. This process has consequently interesting economic impacts. In order to improve the adherence between 100Cr6 steel deposits and the substrate material (left worn crankshafts), company SNC ATRA of Béjaïa uses at present a composite formed by (100Cr6 steel/molybdenum bond coat of 0.2 mm thick/crankshaft substrate). As a matter of fact, it is shown in the present work that the molybdenum bond coat is not appropriate since, for the 0.2 mm thickness, lateral cracks are observed in the middle of the bond coat. On the other hand, our experiment is that a deposit of 100Cr6 steel projected directly on the substrate seems more promising since no gaps or cracks were detected at the “deposit/substrate” interface of this two-material composite. Lastly, phase analysis using X-ray diffraction confirmed that during spraying process, a stable -phase (bcc) of 100Cr6 wire was transformed to a new phase of γ-phase (fcc). The coatings exhibited the higher microhardness which would contribute to increase wear resistance.     

Work stealing with private integer–vector–matrix data structure for multi‐core branch‐and‐bound algorithms

In this paper, the focus is put on multi‐core branch‐and‐bound algorithms for solving large‐scale permutation‐based optimization problems. We investigate five work stealing (WS) strategies with a new data structure called integer–vector–matrix (IVM). In these strategies, each thread has a private IVM allowing the local management of a set of subproblems enumerated using a factorial system. The WS strategies differ in the way the victim thread is selected and the granularity of stolen work units (intervals of factoradics). To assess the efficiency of the private IVM‐based WS approach, the five WS strategies have been extensively experimented on the flowshop scheduling permutation problem and compared with their conventional linked‐list‐based counterparts. The obtained results demonstrate that the IVM‐based WS outperforms the linked‐list‐based one in terms of CPU time, memory usage and number of performed WS operations. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Brief Survey of our Contribution to Stable Carbene Chemistry

This personal account summarizes our work, beginning with the discovery of the first stable carbene in 1988 up until the recent isolation of mesoionic carbenes. It explains why we have moved our focus from acyclic to cyclic carbenes, and shows that these stable species are not limited to the role of ligand for transition metals, but that they are also powerful agents for the activation of small molecules, and for the stabilization of highly reactive diamagnetic and paramagnetic species.     

Analytical analysis of applying packet fragmentation mechanism on IEEE 802.11b DCF network in non ideal channel with infinite load conditions

The analytical modeling and performance analysis of the 802.11 network in all its various extensions (802.11b, 802.11a, 802.11g, 802.11e, 802.11n, etc.) have already been widely explored over the past years. However, the packet fragmentation mechanism (PFM), which is proposed by the IEEE work group to reduce the impact of bit error rate (BER) on the packet error rate (PER), has not been considered in the analytical models proposed in the literature. Yet, the PFM constitutes a key parameter to achieve the best performances of 802.11 networks. In this paper, we extend the Bianchi’s Markov chain model with the PFM and the PER. Then, we analyze the performance improvement level achieved with the PFM in an IEEE 802.11 network under the impact of BER and packet length. The proposed analysis has been applied on the basic access method of 802.11b network in saturated traffic conditions. So, we have analyzed the throughput and the mean response time of the 802.11 network. The obtained theoretical results are validated by simulation.