Disentangling age and cohorts effects on home-ownership and housing wealth in Turkey

This paper analyses the contribution of age and cohort effects on home-ownership and housing wealth in Turkey. I construct a pseudo-panel data set based on birth-year cohorts by using sixteen waves of the Turkish Statistical Institute Household Budget Surveys from 2003 to 2018. The empirical analysis reveals that young cohorts are less likely to own their homes, but they are more likely to have outstanding housing debt. Moreover, they are as willing to invest in second homes as older cohorts. I estimate a Heckman two-step selection model to distinguish the contribution of the improvement in the quality of new buildings to home values. As a result, I find that cohort effects on home values are significantly larger for young households even after controlling for age effects and the improvement in the quality of new buildings. Thus, the empirical findings show that young cohorts have a stronger housing demand than old cohorts.

     

Arduino-based slider setup for gas–liquid mass transfer investigations: Experiments and CFD simulations

The implementation of traditional sensors is a drawback when investigating mass transfer phenomena within microstructured devices, since they disturb the flow and reactor characteristics. An Arduino based slider setup is developed, which is equipped with a computer-vision system to track gas–liquid slug flow. This setup is combined with an optical analytical method allowing to compare experimental results against CFD simulations and investigate the entire lifetime of a single liquid slug with high spatial and temporal resolution. Volumetric mass transfer coefficients are measured and compared with data from literature and the mass transfer contribution of the liquid film is discussed.     

Pervaporation of organic compounds from aqueous mixtures using polydimethylsiloxane‐containing block copolymer membranes

Pervaporation of aqueous mixtures of ethanol, acetone, butanol, isobutanol, and furfural through polystyrene‐b‐polydimethylsiloxane‐b‐polystyrene (SDS) triblock copolymer membranes is reported. These mixtures are important for biofuel production from lignocellulosic feedstocks. Feedstock depolymerization results in the formation of furfural which must be removed before fermentation. Ethanol, butanol, isobutanol, and acetone are important fermentation biofuels. The membrane selectivity of SDS is about unity over a wide range of concentrations of aqueous ethanol mixtures, similar to the membrane selectivity of crosslinked polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). The permeabilities of butanol, isobutanol, and furfural are larger than those of ethanol and acetone. The volatile organic compound permeability through SDS is similar to or higher than that through PDMS across a broad range of temperatures and feed concentrations is found. More selective and permeable membranes are needed to lower the cost of biofuel purification. The SDS membranes developed are but one step toward improved membranes. © 2015 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 61: 2789–2794, 2015     

Object manipulation with a variable-stiffness robotic mechanism using deep neural networks for visual semantics and load estimation

Neural Computing and Applications - In recent years, the computer vision applications in the robotics have been improved to approach human-like visual perception and scene/context understanding....     

Performance evaluation of a submerged membrane bioreactor for the treatment of brackish oil and natural gas field produced water

Produced water, which is co-produced during oil and gas manufacturing, represents one of the largest sources of oily wastewaters. Therefore, treatment of this produced water may improve the economic viability and lead to a new source of water for beneficial use. In this study a submerged hollow fiber membrane bioreactor (MBR) has been studied experimentally for the treatment of brackish oil and natural gas field produced water. This type of wastewater is also characterized with relatively moderate to high amount of salt, oil and total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH). However, the bacteria which are growing in conventional activated sludge and MBR cannot survive at these strict conditions, therefore acclimation of the bacteria is of vital importance. The performance of the biological system, membrane permeability, the rate and extent of TPH biodegradability have been investigated under different sludge age and F/M ratios. The results obtained by gas chromatography analyses showed that the MBR system could be very effective in the removal of TPH from produced water and a significant improvement in the effluent quality was achieved.     

Particle-based simulation of the interaction between fluid and knitwear

We present a particle-based method to simulate and visualize the interaction of knitwear with fluids. The knitwear is modeled using spring-mass systems and the fluid is modeled using the smoothed particle hydrodynamics method. Two-way coupling is achieved by considering surface tension, capillary, and interparticle forces between the fluid and knitwear. The simulation of fluid and knitwear particles is performed on the graphics processing unit. Photorealistic rendering of knitwear and fluid is achieved by using a hardware-accelerated rasterization-based rendering technique. Our method is able to simulate and visualize the macro- and microstructure of free-form knitwear and reflective and refractive characteristics of the fluid surface.