Design of bandpass–bandpass diplexers using rectangular-, T-, and L-shaped resonators for hybrid power amplifier and 5G applications

Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing - In this paper, two bandpass–bandpass diplexers, based on L-, T- and rectangular-shaped resonators are designed and analyzed, which are used...     

Microstructural,hydraulic conductivity and geochemical changes of drying mature fine oil sand tailings in column experiments

This study offers new insights into two-lift deposition of mature fine tailings under atmospheric drying. The interaction of newly added lift and former lift(s) was evaluated using column experiments in terms of volumetric water content, electrical conductivity (EC), hydraulic conductivity, geochemistry and microstructure. Water content and EC followed the same trend and decreasing of water content appears to be responsible for significant reduction in EC. Evaporation on top of the column reduced the water content to almost zero. The obtained results support the coupling between the hydraulic and chemical processes that should be considered by active operators.     

A mathematical model and ant colony algorithm for multi-manned assembly line balancing problem

In real-world assembly lines, that the size of the product is large (e.g., automotive industry), usually there are multi-manned workstations where a group of workers simultaneously perform different operations on the same individual product. This paper presents a mixed integer programming model to solve the balancing problem of the multi-manned assembly lines optimally. This model minimizes the total number of workers on the line as the first objective and the number of opened multi-manned workstations as the second one. Since this problem is well known as NP (nondeterministic polynomial-time)-hard, a heuristic approach based on the ant colony optimization approach is developed to solve the medium- and large-size scales of this problem. In the proposed algorithm, each ant tries to allocate given tasks to multi-manned workstations in order to build a balancing solution for the assembly line balancing problems by considering the precedence relations, multi-manned assembly line configuration, task times, and cycle time constraints. Through computational experiments, the performance of the proposed ACO is compared with some existing heuristic on various problem instances. The experimental results validate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed algorithm.     

Effect of persulfate on the oxidation of benzotriazole and humic acid by e-beam irradiation

These days, the use of persulfate in advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) has gained more attention as an emerging clean and efficient technology to degrade the organic pollutants. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of the addition of persulfate on the oxidation of benzotriazole (BT) and humic acids (HAs) by irradiation. The degradation of BT (3.7 μM) was followed under the influence of persulfate addition (200-500 μM) in combination with a fixed radiation dose (15 Gy) in the absence and presence of HA (5 and 20mg/L) in deionized water. The main results obtained in this study on the degradation of BT in the presence of HA showed a different effect of S(2)O(8)(2-) addition during irradiation, depending on whether HA are oxidized or not-oxidized. (1) An inhibitory effect of S(2)O(8)(2-) was observed in the presence of non-oxidized HA. (2) The removal of BT was generally more important during irradiation in the presence of S(2)O(8)(2-) when HA is pre-oxidized. This could be explained by the different structures of humic acids. These differences of structures of HA were identified by physico-chemical parameters such as the absorbance in the UV (254 nm), the fluorescence and the SUVA measurement.     

On selection of forwarding nodes for long opportunistic routes

Opportunistic routing is a promising routing paradigm which increases the network throughput. It forces the sender’s neighbors, who successfully overheard the transmitted packet, to participate in the packet forwarding process as intermediate forwarding nodes. As a seminal opportunistic routing protocol, MORE combines network coding idea with opportunistic routing to eliminate the need for strict coordination among active forwarding nodes. In this paper, we show that MORE performance does not scale well with the route length, especially when the route length goes beyond two hops. Also, we found that MORE fails to establish a working opportunistic route in sparse networks. Clearly, the network throughput is directly influenced by both the quantity and quality of forwarding nodes, and their cooperation order. In this paper, we propose a new forwarder selection mechanism which considers the route length, link qualities, the distance from the source, and nodes density. It eliminates the occasional route disconnectivity happening in MORE and improves the quality of the established opportunistic routes. The simulation result indicates that our proposal always outperforms MORE when dealing with long opportunistic routes.

     

The Fuzzy Logic Application in Volume Fractions Prediction of the Annular Three-Phase Flows

In this paper, the volume fractions in the annular three-phase flow are measured based on a dual energy metering system consisting of \(^{152}\)Eu and \(^{137}\)Cs and one NaI detector, and then modeled by fuzzy logic. Since the summation of volume fractions are constant (equal to 100%), therefore the fuzzy network must predict only two volume fractions. In this study, three fuzzy networks are applied. The first network is utilized to predict the gas and water volume fractions. The next one is applied to predict the gas and oil volume fractions, and the last one to predict the water and oil volume fractions. In the next step, the numerically obtained data from MCNP-X code, must be imported to the fuzzy models. Then, the average errors of these three networks are computed and compared. The network which has the least error is selected as the best predictor model. According to the modeling results, the best fuzzy network, predicts the gas and water volume fractions with the mean relative error of less than 0.3%, which shows that the fuzzy logic can predict the results precisely.     

Volume fraction measurement and flow regime recognition in dynamic gas–liquid two phase flow using gamma ray radiation technique

Gas–liquid two phase f low is probably the most important form of multiphase f lows and is found widely in industrial applications, particularly in the oil and petrochemical industry. In this study, in the first instance a gas–liquid two phase f low test loop with both vertical and horizontal test tube was designed and constructed. Different volume fractions and f low regimes were generated using this test loop. The measuring system consists of a ¹³⁷Cs single energy source which emits photons with 662 keV energy and two 1-inch NaI (Tl) scintillation detectors for recording the scattered and transmitted counts. The registered counts in the scattering detector were applied to the Multi-Layer Perceptron neural network as inputs. The output of the network was gas volume fraction which was predicted with the Mean Relative Error percentage of less than 0.9660%. Finally, the predicted volume fraction via neural network and the total count in transmission detector were chosen as inputs for another neural network with f low regime type as output. The f low regimes were identified with mean relative error percentage of less than 7.5%.     

Prediction of Particle Deposition Using a Simplified Particle Model in Fully Developed Channel Flow

In this study the Eulerian particle model was modified to predict the particle deposition rate in fully developed channel flow. The modified model is less complicated and has much lower computation time. The performance of the simplified model was examined by comparing the particle deposition rate in a vertical channel with the experimental data for fully developed channel flow available in the literature. The effects of turbophoretic force, thermophoretic force, electrostatic force, gravitational force, Brownian/turbulent diffusion, and the wall roughness on the particle deposition rate were examined. The predictions of the modified particle model were in agreement with the experimental data.     

Application of adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system in prediction of fluid density for a gamma ray densitometer in petroleum products monitoring

This paper presents the application of adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) for prediction of fluid density in a previously designed and constructed gamma ray densitometer for pipes of various diameters and different fluids densities. The input parameters of the proposed ANFIS model are the pipe diameter and the number of the counted photons and the output is the density of the considered material. The required data for training and testing the ANFIS model has been obtained based on simulations using MCNP4C Monte Carlo code. A hybrid learning algorithm consists of back-propagation and least-squares estimation is used for training the proposed ANFIS model. Simulations for 4-in. polyethylene pipe had been validated with the experimental data previously. The proposed ANFIS model has achieved good agreement with the experimental results and has a small error between the estimated and experimental values. The obtained results show that the mean relative error percentage (MRE%) for training and testing data are less than 2.14% and 2.64%, respectively.     

Enhancement of in vitro antitumour activity of epirubicin in HER2+ breast cancer cells using immunoliposome formulation

Epirubicin (EPI) is one of the potent breast cancer (BC) chemotherapeutic agents, but its adverse effects limit its efficacy. Herein, EPI was selected to be loaded in liposomal carrier, which has been targeted by a monoclonal antibody, Herceptin. The preparation process of liposomes was a modified ethanol injection method followed by Herceptin conjugation. The in vitro cell toxicity and cellular uptake of optimum formulation against HER2+ and HER2− cancer cell lines were evaluated. The results showed that the drug loading (DL%) and encapsulation efficiency (EE%) of liposome preparation method yielded 30.62% ± 0.49% and 62.39% ± 8.75%, respectively. The average size of naked liposomes (EPI‐Lipo) and immunoliposomes (EPI‐Lipo‐mAb) was 234 ± 9.86 and 257.26 ± 6.25 nm, with a relatively monodisperse distribution, which was confirmed by SEM micrographs. The release kinetic followed Higuchi model for both naked and immunoliposomes. In vitro cytotoxicity study on three different BC cell lines including BT‐20, MDA‐MB‐453 and MCF‐7 demonstrated higher toxicity of EPI in the Herceptin conjugated form (EPI‐Lipo‐mAb) in comparison with the free EPI and EPI‐Lipo in HER2 overexpressing cell line. In addition, the cellular uptake study showed a higher uptake of immunoliposomes by MCF‐7 cells in comparison with naked liposomes. In conclusion, these data show that the targeted delivery of EPI to breast cancer cells can be achieved by EPI‐Lipo‐mAb in vitro, and this strategy could be used for breast cancer therapy with further studies.