Evolution of the electrical resistivity at rest and during oscillatory shearing of co-continuous morphology (PP/PMMA)/MWCNT systems

In this work, a modified parallel-disks configuration on a strain-controlled ARES rheometer (TA Instrument) was used to study the evolution of the electrical resistivity at rest and during oscillatory shearing of a co-continuous immiscible polymer blend morphology based on polypropylene and /polymethyl(methacrylate) (PP/PMMA) in which various amounts (0–3 wt%) of multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) were added. The co-continuity of both PP and PMMA phases allowed the buildup of a conductive network due to the preferential localization of the conductive MWCNT at the interface between PP and PMMA. Under a stepwise increase of the oscillatory strain amplitude below a critical value (γ_c = 6.3%), a significant decrease in the electrical resistivity was observed for MWCNT concentrations above the percolation threshold (0.3 wt%) due to the conductive paths induced by both thermal (Brownian) motion and oscillatory shearing. However, for deformation amplitudes higher than γ_c, the resistivity increased due to the destruction of the MWCNT paths induced by the large deformation imposed on the PP/PMMA interface. These observations were also confirmed by the evolution of the storage modulus (G′) which remained constant for γ_c < 6.3% (linear viscoelastic regime), while the values decreased above γ_c due to the destruction of the system's morphology.     

Live video streaming service with pay-as-you-use model on Ethereum Blockchain and InterPlanetary file system

Wireless Networks - In centralized video streaming platforms, the platform owner, rather than the content producer, controls most of the content uploaded on the centralized video...     

Best practices in measuring algorithm performance for dynamic optimization problems

Dynamic optimization problems (DOPs) have attracted considerable attention due to the wide range of problems they can be applied to. Lots of efforts have been expended in modeling dynamic situations, proposing algorithms, and analyzing the results (too often in a visual way). Numeric performance measurements and their statistical validation have been however barely used in the literature. Most of works in DOPs report only the best-of-generation fitness, due to its simplicity of computation. Although this measure indicates the best algorithm in terms of fitness, it does not provide any details about the actual strength and weakness of each algorithm. In this article, we conduct a comparative study among algorithms of different search modes via several performance measures to demonstrate their relative advantages. We discuss the role of using different performance measures in drawing balanced conclusions about algorithms for DOPs.     

Surface damage of poly(methylmethacrylate) under fretting loading

The initial fretting damage in a glass/PMMA contact was investigated by means of experiments and numerical (F.E.M.) simulations. Both micro-crack nucleation at the contact edges and particle detachment were identified on the PMMA's surface. Micro-crack initiation was related to the combination of high tensile stresses and positive hydrostatic pressures which are known to enhance crazing. During the early stages of the fretting tests, the distribution of the detached particles within the contact was correlated to the spatial distribution of the cumulative interfacial energy dissipated by friction. As the number of cycles was increased, it was observed that detached particles moved toward the middle of the contact. On the basis of FEM simulations, this particle displacement within the contact was attributed to the existence of differential micro-displacements during the fretting cycle.     

A multiobjective hybrid ant colony optimization approach applied to the assignment and scheduling problem

The assignment and scheduling problem is inherently multiobjective. It generally involves multiple conflicting objectives and large and highly complex search spaces. The problem allows the determination of an efficient allocation of a set of limited and shared resources to perform tasks, and an efficient arrangement scheme of a set of tasks over time, while fulfilling spatiotemporal constraints. The main objective is to minimize the project makespan as well as the total cost. Finding a good approximation set is the result of trade‐offs between diversity of solutions and convergence toward the Pareto‐optimal front. It is difficult to achieve such a balance with NP‐hard problems. In this respect, and in order to efficiently explore the search space, a hybrid bidirectional ant‐based approach is proposed in this paper, which is an improvement of a bi‐colony ant‐based approach. Its main characteristic is that it combines a solution construction developed for a more complicated problem with a Pareto‐guided local search engine.     

A robust video watermarking based on feature regions and crowdsourcing

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Video watermarking technique aims at resolving insecurity problems. Recently, many approaches have been proposed in order to satisfy the new constraints of video...