A new nonparametric double exponentially weighted moving average control chart

There are many practical situations where the underlying distribution of the quality characteristic either deviates from normality or it is unknown. In such cases, practitioners often make use of the nonparametric control charts. In this paper, a new nonparametric double exponentially weighted moving average control chart on the basis of the signed-rank statistic is proposed for monitoring the process location. Monte Carlo simulations are carried out to obtain the run length characteristics of the proposed chart. The performance comparison of the proposed chart with the existing parametric and nonparametric control charts is made by using various performance metrics of the run length distribution. The comparison showed the superiority of the suggested chart over its existing parametric and nonparametric counterparts. An illustrative example for the practical implementation of the proposed chart is also provided by using the industrial data set.     

Synthesis and characterization of polycaprolactone/acrylic acid (PCL/AA) hydrogel for controlled drug delivery

In the present work biodegradable pH-sensitive polycaprolactone/acrylic acid (PCL/AA) hydrogels have been developed using ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA) as a cross-linker and benzoyl peroxide as initiator. For these prepared hydrogels swelling studies, sol-gel fraction analysis and porosity measurements were performed. Results show that swelling of the hydrogels decreases on increasing the concentration of PCL and EGDMA, however swelling of hydrogels increases on increasing the concentration of AA. Results of sol-gel fraction analysis show that gel fraction increases on increasing concentration of monomer AA, polymer PCL as well as cross-linker EGDMA. As far as porosity is concerned, it increases on increasing the concentration of AA and PCL while porosity decreases on increasing the concentration of EGDMA. Hydrogels were characterized by measuring diffusion coefficient (D) and equilibrium water content (EWC). Network formation, morphology and crystallinity of PCL/AA hydrogels were investigated using FTIR, SEM and XRD, respectively. Tramadol hydrochloride was loaded as model drug and its release pattern was analysed using various kinetic models like zero order, first order, Higuchi and Peppas. Results indicated that most of the samples followed non-Fickian release mechanism.     

Home Automation Using Augmented Reality (HAAR)

Wireless Personal Communications - The development of Smart Home Controllers has seen rapid growth in recent years, especially for smart devices, that can utilize the Internet of Things (IoT)....     

Thermodynamic and multi-objective optimisation of solar-driven Organic Rankine Cycle using zeotropic mixtures

This paper communicates the performance of low-grade solar heat source powered Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC). To investigate the system performance, first law and exergetic efficiencies, power output are evaluated and compared for zeotropic mixtures of (iso)butane/(iso)pentane and cyclohexane/R123. The results indicate that there exists an optimal mass fraction for which energy and exergetic efficiencies, and power output are maximum corresponding to a given value of expander inlet temperature compared with pure fluids. However, the specific volume flow ratio of the expander is higher for zeotropic mixtures; which results in a lower economy of mixtures than pure fluids. The use of an internal heat exchanger in the system improves cycle performance. Moreover, the multi-objective genetic algorithm further improves the performance of ORC and exhibits better exergetic efficiency 51–57% and 0–14.09% reduction in lower expander-specific volume flow ratio (v ₆/v ₅) than thermodynamically optimised ORC.     

Incomplete hypercubes: Algorithms and embeddings

The hypercube, though a popular and versatile architecture, has a major drawback in that its size must be a power of two. In order to alleviate this drawback, Katseff [1988] defined theincomplete hypercube, which allows a hypercube-like architecture to be defined for any number of nodes. In this paper we generalize this definition and introduce the namecomposite hypercube. The main result of our work shows that these incomplete architectures can be used effectively and without the size penalty. In particular, we show how to efficiently implement Fully Normal Algorithms on composite hypercubes. Development of these types of algorithms on composite hypercubes allows us to efficiently execute several algorithms concurrently on a complete hypercube. We also show that many host architectures, such as binary trees, arrays and butterflies, can be optimally embedded into composite hypercubes. These results imply that algorithms originally designed for any such host can be optimally mapped to composite hypercubes. Finally, we show that composite hypercubes exhibit many graph theoretic properties that are common with complete hypercubes. We also present results on efficient representations of composite hypercubes within a complete hypercube. These results are crucial in task allocation and job scheduling problems.This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under grant USE-90-52346. A preliminary version of this work appeared in the5th International Parallel Processing Symnposium, May 1991.     

Dynamic and equilibrium swelling studies: crosslinked pH sensitive methyl methacrylate-co-itaconic acid (MMA-co-IA) hydrogels

In the present work crosslinked methyl methacrylate-co-itaconic acid (MMA-co-IA) hydrogels were prepared by free radical copolymerization of methyl methacrylate (MMA) with itaconic acid (IA) using ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA) and N, N methylene bisacrylamide (MBAAm) as crosslinkers and benzoyl peroxide as initiator. Prepared hydrogels were investigated for dynamic and equilibrium swelling studies. For swelling behaviour, effect of pH, monomeric compositions, degree of crosslinking and type of crosslinking agent were investigated. Swelling studies were performed in the USP phosphate buffer solutions of varying pH 1.2, 4.5, 5.5, 6.5 and 7.0. Results showed that swelling increased by increasing IA content in hydrogels structure. This may be due to the presence of more carboxylic groups available for ionization. Swelling was decreased with increase in crosslinking ratio owing to tighter hydrogel structure. Hydrogels were characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), and scanning electron microscope (SEM). Polymer-solvent interaction parameters (χ) of hydrogels were determined by using Flory–Rehner theory of equilibrium swelling values. The analysis of diffusion mechanism from gels using Peppas model showed that all monomeric compositions and degrees of crosslinking followed Fickian diffusion.     

A double homogeneously weighted moving average control chart for monitoring of the process mean

In the service and manufacturing industry, memory-type control charts are extensively applied for monitoring the production process. These types of charts have the ability to efficiently detect disturbances, especially of smaller amount, in the process mean and/or dispersion. Recently, a new homogeneously weighted moving average (HWMA) chart has been proposed for efficient monitoring of smaller shifts. In this study, we have proposed a new double HWMA (DHWMA) chart to monitor the changes in the process mean. The run length profile of the proposed DHWMA chart is evaluated and compared with some existing control charts. The outcomes reveal that the DHWMA chart shows better performance over its competitor charts. The effect of non-normality (in terms of robustness) and the estimation of the unknown parameters on the performance of the DHWMA chart are also investigated as a part of this study. Finally, a real-life industrial application is offered to demonstrate the proposal for practical considerations.     

Libra: a computational economy‐based job scheduling system for clusters

Clusters of computers have emerged as mainstream parallel and distributed platforms for high‐performance, high‐throughput and high‐availability computing. To enable effective resource management on clusters, numerous cluster management systems and schedulers have been designed. However, their focus has essentially been on maximizing CPU performance, but not on improving the value of utility delivered to the user and quality of services. This paper presents a new computational economy driven scheduling system called Libra, which has been designed to support allocation of resources based on the users' quality of service requirements. It is intended to work as an add‐on to the existing queuing and resource management system. The first version has been implemented as a plugin scheduler to the Portable Batch System. The scheduler offers market‐based economy driven service for managing batch jobs on clusters by scheduling CPU time according to user‐perceived value (utility), determined by their budget and deadline rather than system performance considerations. The Libra scheduler has been simulated using the GridSim toolkit to carry out a detailed performance analysis. Results show that the deadline and budget based proportional resource allocation strategy improves the utility of the system and user satisfaction as compared with system‐centric scheduling strategies. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Synthesis of Fatty Bromoethers

Addition of methylhypobromite to methyl 10-undecenoate (I), methyl cis-9-octadecenoate (II) and methyl trans-2-octadecenoate (III) yielded 10, 11-dibromoundecanoate (IV), 10-bromo-11-methoxyundecanoate (V), 9, 10-dibromooctadecanoate (VI), 9(10)-bromo-10(9)-methoxyoctadecanoate (VII), 2, 3-dibromooctadecanoate (VIII) and 2(3)-bromo-3(2)-methoxyoctadecanoate (IX), respectively. The structure of 10-bromo-11-methoxyundecanoate (V) was confirmed by debromination with zinc amalgam in acetic acid and mass spectrometry. The structures of the products were elucidated on the basis of their combustion and spectral data.     

H ∞ Control Problem of Discrete 2-D Switched Mixed Delayed Systems Using the Improved Lyapunov-Krasovskii Functional

This paper deals with the problem of exponential stability and H∞ control of two-dimensional (2-D) switched discrete systems with mixed time-varying