Excess enthalpy,volume, and gibbs free energy; and viscosity of acetonitrile-methylcellosolve mixtures

Molar excess enthalpies of mixing at 48.2°C, and molar excess volumes at 40°C were measured for acetonitrile-methyl cellosolve system using an isothermal phase change calorimeter and a glass dilatometer respectively. Molar excess Gibbs free energies were calculated from the isothermal vapour-liquid equilibrium data obtained in a circulation still at 70, 60 and 48.2°C. Complete isobaric vapour-liquid equilibrium data at 1 atm pressure are also reported. The kinematic viscosity of binary mixtures were measured at 40°C with an Ostwald viscometer. The VLE data are corrected for vapour phase nonideality, tested for thermodynamic consistency and correlated by Wilson equation. The viscosity data were correlated by McAllister and excess function models.     

Implementation of wide-field integration of optic flow for autonomous quadrotor navigation

Insects are capable of robust visual navigation in complex environments using efficient information extraction and processing approaches. This paper presents an implementation of insect inspired visual navigation that uses spatial decompositions of the instantaneous optic flow to extract local proximity information. The approach is demonstrated in a corridor environment on an autonomous quadrotor micro-air-vehicle (MAV) where all the sensing and processing, including altitude, attitude, and outer loop control is performed on-board. The resulting methodology has the advantages of computation speed and simplicity, hence are consistent with the stringent size, weight, and power requirements of MAVs.     

Neural networks of data inhibiting long memory pattern

We experiment with three neural network models for forecasting to better understand the performance of neural networks for the case when the data exhibits a long memory pattern. To obtain the optimum networks, the effect of network characteristics such as the training parameters, the number of hidden layers, and the testing and training percentages are simulated. The third model, which consists of a combination of individual time series forecasts, provides superior results.     

Stochastic inverse heat conduction using a spectral approach

An adjoint‐based functional optimization technique in conjunction with the spectral stochastic finite element method is proposed for the solution of an inverse heat conduction problem in the presence of uncertainties in material data, process conditions and measurement noise. The ill‐posed stochastic inverse problem is restated as a conditionally well‐posed L₂ optimization problem. The gradient of the objective function is obtained in a distributional sense by defining an appropriate stochastic adjoint field. The L₂ optimization problem is solved using a conjugate‐gradient approach. Accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed approach is appraised with the solution of several stochastic inverse heat conduction problems. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Entropy based region selection for moving object detection

This article addresses a problem of moving object detection by combining two kinds of segmentation schemes: temporal and spatial. It has been found that consideration of a global thresholding approach for temporal segmentation, where the threshold value is obtained by considering the histogram of the difference image corresponding to two frames, does not produce good result for moving object detection. This is due to the fact that the pixels in the lower end of the histogram are not identified as changed pixels (but they actually correspond to the changed regions). Hence there is an effect on object background classification. In this article, we propose a local histogram thresholding scheme to segment the difference image by dividing it into a number of small non-overlapping regions/windows and thresholding each window separately. The window/block size is determined by measuring the entropy content of it. The segmented regions from each window are combined to find the (entire) segmented image. This thresholded difference image is called the change detection mask (CDM) and represent the changed regions corresponding to the moving objects in the given image frame. The difference image is generated by considering the label information of the pixels from the spatially segmented output of two image frames. We have used a Markov Random Field (MRF) model for image modeling and the maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) estimation (for spatial segmentation) is done by a combination of simulated annealing (SA) and iterated conditional mode (ICM) algorithms. It has been observed that the entropy based adaptive window selection scheme yields better results for moving object detection with less effect on object background (mis) classification. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is successfully tested over three video sequences.     

Synthesis,characterization, and rheological studies of methacrylic acid–ethyl acrylate–diallyl phthalate copolymers

Copolymerization of methacrylic acid (MAA) and ethyl acrylate (EA) was performed by the emulsion polymerization technique in the presence of a mixture of ionic and nonionic emulsifiers, at 85°C, using potassium persulfate as initiator (0.16 wt % of monomer). The molar ratio of MAA : EA varied between 44 : 56 and 54 : 46 in the monomer feed. Copolymers of MAA and EA were synthesized by incorporating diallyl phthalate (DAP) with varying concentrations (0–1.7 mol % of total monomer) in the feed. A copolymer latex of MAA, EA, and DAP was also prepared by the variable feed process. The intrinsic viscosity and gel content were determined. Copolymers were characterized by IR and NMR spectroscopic techniques. The composition of copolymers was determined by ¹H‐NMR spectra and sequential distribution from ¹³C{¹H}‐NMR spectra. The pH of the copolymer emulsion varied between 3 and 10 by addition of aqueous ammonia (23% w/w) and its effect on Brookfield viscosity was studied. The effects of copolymer composition, crosslinking agent concentration in the feed, monomer feed process, polymer solid contents, and shear rate on Brookfield viscosity were studied at pH ～ 8. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 89: 1430–1441, 2003     

Correlation between central receiver size and solar field using flat heliostats

In Central Receiver Systems (CRSs), thousands of heliostats track the sunrays and reflect beam radiation on to a receiver surface. The size of the reflected image and the extent of reflection from the heliostats are one of the important criteria that need to be taken into account while designing a receiver, since spillage losses may vary from 2 to 16% of the total losses. The present study aims to determine the size of an external cylindrical receiver, such that the rays reflected from all the heliostats in the field are intercepted. A dimensionless correlation with respect to tower height and receiver size (diameter and height) as a function of heliostat size and its position is discussed in the paper. This correlation could be used as a first-order approximation to estimate the receiver dimensions. When applied to the Ivanpah Solar Electricity Generating Station (ISEGS) plant, the correlation yields satisfactory estimation of receiver dimensions.     

A Long‐Cycle‐Life Lithium–CO2 Battery with Carbon Neutrality

Lithium–CO₂ batteries are attractive energy‐storage systems for fulfilling the demand of future large‐scale applications such as electric vehicles due to their high specific energy density. However, a major challenge with Li–CO₂ batteries is to attain reversible formation and decomposition of the Li₂CO₃ and carbon discharge products. A fully reversible Li–CO₂ battery is developed with overall carbon neutrality using MoS₂ nanoflakes as a cathode catalyst combined with an ionic liquid/dimethyl sulfoxide electrolyte. This combination of materials produces a multicomponent composite (Li₂CO₃/C) product. The battery shows a superior long cycle life of 500 for a fixed 500 mAh g^?1 capacity per cycle, far exceeding the best cycling stability reported in Li–CO₂ batteries. The long cycle life demonstrates that chemical transformations, making and breaking covalent C? O bonds can be used in energy‐storage systems. Theoretical calculations are used to deduce a mechanism for the reversible discharge/charge processes and explain how the carbon interface with Li₂CO₃ provides the electronic conduction needed for the oxidation of Li₂CO₃ and carbon to generate the CO₂ on charge. This achievement paves the way for the use of CO₂ in advanced energy‐storage systems.