Chloroform Hydrodechlorination on Palladium Surfaces: A Comparative DFT Study on Pd(111), Pd(100), and Pd(211)

Topics in Catalysis - Palladium has been shown to be an effective catalyst for chloroform hydrodechlorination, which serves as a promising treatment method for industrial chloroform waste. To...     

CARD: A Contact-based Architecture for Resource Discovery in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

Traditional protocols for routing in ad hoc networks attempt to obtain optimal or shortest paths, and in doing so may incur significant route discovery overhead. Such approaches may be appropriate for routing long-lived transfers where the initial cost of route discovery may be amortized over the life of the connection. For short-lived connections, however, such as resource discovery and small transfers, traditional shortest path approaches may be quite inefficient. In this paper we propose a novel architecture, CARD, for resource discovery in large-scale wireless ad hoc networks. Our mechanism is suitable for resource discovery as well as routing very small data transfers or transactions in which the cost of data transfer is much smaller than the cost of route discovery. Our architecture avoids expensive mechanisms such as global flooding and complex hierarchy formation and does not require any location information. In CARD resources within the vicinity of a node, up to a limited number of hops, are discovered using a proactive scheme. For resources beyond the vicinity, each node maintains a few distant nodes called contacts. Contacts help in creating a small world in the network and provide an efficient way to query for distant resources. Using contacts, the network view (or reachability) of the nodes increases, reducing the discovery overhead and increasing the success rate. On the other hand, increasing the number of contacts also increases control overhead. We study such trade-off in depth and present mechanisms for contact selection and maintenance that attempt to increase reachability with reduced overhead. Our schemes adapt gracefully to network dynamics and mobility using soft-state periodic mechanisms to validate and recover paths to contacts. Our simulation results show that CARD is scalable and can be configured to provide desirable performance for various network sizes. Comparisons with other schemes show overhead savings reaching over 93% (vs. flooding) and 80% (vs. bordercasting or zone routing) for high query rates in large-scale networks.     

The generalized Kuhn model of linear viscoelasticity

We propose a generalization of the Kuhn model of linear viscoelasticity. This generalization, which has four material parameters, is able to provide a near frequency independent response over a wide range of frequencies. It is useful for highly dissipative materials such as asphalt concrete. It is derived by generalizing Lubliner and Panoskaltsis’s modified Kuhn model, but we also show that it is closely related to fractional derivative models. We show that the model admits a rheological approximation, that is, an approximation by classical springs and dashpots. The model and rheological representation are compared to experimental data.     

A bi-criteria model for the inventory aggregation problem under risk pooling

Inventory aggregation, also called Risk Pooling, is one of the most efficient ways to reduce the level of safety stocks thereby reducing inventory across the supply chain. Determining the best level of aggregation is a difficult problem and needs extensive study of all the possible scenarios that can affect this decision. Minimizing costs in a supply chain is no longer the sole priority of businesses. Maintaining a high level of responsiveness is also considered equally important. The conflicting nature of these two criteria makes the solution of the problem difficult. In this paper, we develop a bi-criteria nonlinear stochastic integer programming model to determine the best supply chain distribution network to meet customer demands, where minimizing costs while maintaining high levels of responsiveness is important. We develop a two-stage optimization algorithm to solve this problem.     

Structural drivers controlling sulfur solubility in alkali aluminoborosilicate glasses

If the direct feed approach to vitrify the Hanford's tank waste is implemented, the low activity waste (LAW) will comprise higher concentrations of alkali/alkaline-earth sulfates than expected under the previously proposed vitrification scheme. To ensure a minimal impact of higher sulfate concentrations on the downstream operations and overall cost of vitrification, advanced glass formulations with enhanced sulfate loadings (solubility) are needed. While, the current sulfate solubility predictive models have been successful in designing LAW glasses with sulfate loadings <2 wt.%, it will be difficult for them to design glass compositions with enhanced loadings due to our limited understanding of the fundamental science governing these processes. In this pursuit, this article unearths the underlying compositional and structural drivers controlling the sulfate solubility in model LAW glasses. It has been shown that the preferentially removes non-framework cations from the modifier sites in the silicate network, thus, leading to the polymerization in the glass network via the formation of ring-structured borosilicate units. Furthermore, though the sulfate solubility slightly decreases with increasing Li⁺/Na⁺ in the glasses, the prefers to be charge compensated by Na⁺, as it is easier for to break Na–O bonds instead of Li–O bonds.     

Template-based program verification and program synthesis

Program verification is the task of automatically generating proofs for a program’s compliance with a given specification. Program synthesis is the task of automatically generating a program that meets a given specification. Both program verification and program synthesis can be viewed as search problems, for proofs and programs, respectively. For these search problems, we present approaches based on user-provided insights in the form of templates. Templates are hints about the syntactic forms of the invariants and programs, and help guide the search for solutions. We show how to reduce the template-based search problem to satisfiability solving, which permits the use of off-the-shelf solvers to efficiently explore the search space. Template-based approaches have allowed us to verify and synthesize programs outside the abilities of previous verifiers and synthesizers. Our approach can verify and synthesize difficult algorithmic textbook programs (e.g., sorting and dynamic programming-based algorithms) and difficult arithmetic programs.     

Pedestrian Detection and Tracking Using Deformable Part Models and Kalman Filtering

Abstract： Pedestrian detection techniques are important and challenging especially for complex real world scenes. They can be used for ensuring pedestrian safety, ADASs （advance driver assistance systems） and safety surveillance systems. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for multi-person tracking-by-detection using deformable part models in Kalman filtering framework. The Kalman filter is used to keep track of each person and a unique label is assigned to each tracked individual. Based on this approach, people can enter and leave the scene randomly. We test and demonstrate our results on Caltech Pedestrian benchmark, which is two orders of magnitude larger than any other existing datasets and consists of pedestrians varying widely in appearance, pose and scale. Complex situations such as people occluded by each other are handled gracefully and individual persons can be tracked correctly after a group of people split. Experiments confirm the real-time performance and robustness of our system, working in complex scenes. Our tracking model gives a tracking accuracy of 72.8% and a tracking precision of 82.3%. We can further reduce false positives by 2.8%, using Kalman filtering.     

Automated analysis of images in documents for intelligent document search

Authors use images to present a wide variety of important information in documents. For example, two-dimensional (2-D) plots display important data in scientific publications. Often, end-users seek to extract this data and convert it into a machine-processible form so that the data can be analyzed automatically or compared with other existing data. Existing document data extraction tools are semi-automatic and require users to provide metadata and interactively extract the data. In this paper, we describe a system that extracts data from documents fully automatically, completely eliminating the need for human intervention. The system uses a supervised learning-based algorithm to classify figures in digital documents into five classes: photographs, 2-D plots, 3-D plots, diagrams, and others. Then, an integrated algorithm is used to extract numerical data from data points and lines in the 2-D plot images along with the axes and their labels, the data symbols in the figure’s legend and their associated labels. We demonstrate that the proposed system and its component algorithms are effective via an empirical evaluation. Our data extraction system has the potential to be a vital component in high volume digital libraries.     

Supply chain risk mitigation competency: an individual-level knowledge-based perspective

Supply chain managers are responsible for making decisions regarding supply chain risk in order to mitigate the impact of supply chain disruptions. This study develops and tests a theoretical model that leverages the individual-level knowledge-based view perspective to understand the process through which risk mitigation orientation of the supply chain manager contributes to his/her absorptive capacity. A supply chain manager’s absorptive capacity, in turn, enhances his/her ability to effectively mitigate supply chain risk. Study findings demonstrate that supply chain managers with high-risk mitigation orientation have greater level of absorptive capacity which enhances their risk mitigation competency. This study represents the first development and testing of a model that examines individual-level knowledge management factors that affect supply chain risk mitigation competency. This research emphasises the importance of the individual supply chain manager in managing risk and illustrates how theoretical perspectives from the knowledge management, supply chain risk and organisational behaviour literature can be fruitfully adopted to explain behaviour in the field of supply chain risk management.