Effect of the cerium (III) chloride heptahydrate on the corrosion inhibition of aluminum alloy

In the present work, the corrosion protection of aluminum alloy AA2024-T3 has been studied in NaCl solution, with and without the addition of cerium (III) chloride heptahydrate. The corrosion inhibitor efficiency after immersion into 10 mM NaCl, with or without 3 mM of CeCl₃·7H₂O at 20°C, 40°C, and 60°C was investigated. The performed quantitative tests include electrochemical techniques, such as the method of quasipotentiostatic polarization (Tafel extrapolation), cyclic polarization, and electrochemical impedance s pectroscopy to determine corrosion rate (v_corr), inhibition efficiency (η %), protective ability (γ), degree of coverage (ϑ), and pitting nucleation resistance. The samples were analyzed with scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray analysis to evaluate and characterize the precipitates formed on the surface of aluminum samples and to determine dominant type of corrosion. The formation of Ce³⁺ precipitates occurred on cathodic intermetallic sites and the surface, in general, resulting in improved corrosion resistance. Tested cerium (III) chloride heptahydrate proved to be an effective inorganic corrosion inhibitor for AA2024-T3 in chloride solution, which, by the action of cerium ions, reduced corrosion on the surface of the studied aluminum alloy.     

Plastic Extrusion Process Optimization by Inversion of Stacked Autoencoder Classification Machines

In the face of climate change and rising energy prices, lowering energy usage of industrial machines is gaining widespread attention. Αpropriate machine settings could lead to reduced production costs and lower environmental impact, while simultaneously maintaining products' quality. However, defining the complex, nonlinear dependencies between these settings and energy usage or quality in manufacturing is often a challenging task. In the presented work, a method for optimized machine settings recommendation is proposed using inverse classification via autoencoders. The algorithm can suggest operation parameters, based on predefined intervals of energy consumption and product properties. The performance is evaluated on data generated by a digital twin of an extrusion process.     

Small-scale assessment method for the fire resistance of historic plaster system and timber structures

The primary protection against the charring of timber is ensured by protection materials. Today, there are only a limited number of materials given in design codes as fire protection materials for timber. Historic surface finish materials such as plasters have rarely been studied with respect to fire; no design values exist in the current fire part of Eurocode 5. Full-scale fire testing is costly to assess the fire performance of material combinations, thus this study presents a useful tool that is specifically tailored to evaluate the fire protection ability of materials in small-scale. A review of conducted tests demonstrate that the cone heater of a cone calorimeter is a dependable device to estimate the charring performance of protected timber specimens as the test results approximate the ones obtained from furnace tests. This work contributes to the assessment of fire resistance performance of various combinations and types of plaster systems found in existing timber buildings that often require an individual approach for an adequate fire risk analysis and design decisions to meet current fire safety regulations with respect to the load-bearing capacity and compartmentation of building structures. Increased knowledge on the fire protection performance of traditional plasters is believed to facilitate their wider use in timber buildings, primarily to preserve their significance as part of the cultural built heritage.     

Emission measurements with gravimetric impactors and electrical devices: An aerosol instrument comparison

Particulate matter in the atmosphere is known to affect Earth’s climate and to be harmful to human health. Accurately measuring particles from emission sources is important, as the results are used to inform policies and climate models. This study compares the results of two ELPI?+?devices, two PM10 cascade impactors and an eFilter, in combustion emission measurements. The comparison of the instruments in a realistic setting shows what types of challenges arise from measuring an emission aerosol with unknown particle morphologies and densities, different particle concentrations and high temperature. Our results show that the PM10 cascade impactors have very good intercorrelation when the collected mass is greater than 150?µg, but below that, the uncertainty of the results increases with decreasing mass. The raw signals of two ELPI?+?devices were nearly identical in most samples, as well as the particle number concentrations and size distributions calculated from raw signals; however, transforming the current distributions into mass distributions showed variation in the mass concentration of particles larger than 1?µm. The real-time time signal measured by eFilter was similar to the total current measured by ELPI+. The eFilter and PM10 cascade impactors showed similar particle mass concentrations, whereas ELPI?+?showed clearly higher ones in most cases. We concluded that the difference is at least partially due to volatile components being measured by ELPI+, but not by the mass collection measurements.

Copyright © 2019 American Association for Aerosol Research     

Peptidomic analysis of rat urine using capillary electrophoresis coupled to mass spectrometry

We have established and validated a protocol for the peptidomic analysis of rat urine using CE coupled to MS (CE-MS). In the first experiments, the reproducibility of the CE-MS set-up and of the established preparation procedure were assessed. To establish a first rat urinary peptidome map, samples were also analyzed using CE-FT-ICR. The subsequent analysis of independent samples from two different strains (WISTAR and CD) indicated strain-specific differences, which were validated in a blinded assessment. MS/MS revealed the presence of specific fragments from well-known urinary rat peptides, such as collagens, alpha-1-antitrypsin, and serum albumin. The CE-MS-based peptidomics platform may provide novel insights into body fluids of animal models, such as rat or mice. Together with peptide identification, the technology appears to be an excellent, complimentary, and non-invasive tool to analyze toxicological or other (patho)physiological effects of pharmaceutical compounds in animal models.     

Automating unit and integration testing with partial oracles

The oracle problem is an essential part in current research on automating software tests. Partial oracles seem to be a viable solution, but their suitability for different testing steps and general applicability for various systems remains still to be shown. This paper presents a study in which partial oracles are applied in order to automatically test a jpeg2000 encoder as an example for a modular software system with several integrated units and components. The effectiveness of the partial oracles is measured by means of mutation analysis to determine their adequacy for both unit and integration testing. Additionally, the paper presents possibilities of improving the effectiveness as well as the efficiency of the employed partial oracles. It shows how the knowledge of certain characteristics of the system to be tested, such as linearity or time-invariance, may lead to a better choice of partial oracles and thus to an improved effectiveness and efficiency.     

Contextual cropping and scaling of TV productions

In this paper, an application is presented which automatically adapts SDTV (Standard Definition Television) sports productions to smaller displays through intelligent cropping and scaling. It crops regions of interest of sports productions based on a smart combination of production metadata and systematic video analysis methods. This approach allows a context-based composition of cropped images. It provides a differentiation between the original SD version of the production and the processed one adapted to the requirements for mobile TV. The system has been comprehensively evaluated by comparing the outcome of the proposed method with manually and statically cropped versions, as well as with non-cropped versions. Envisaged is the integration of the tool in post-production and live workflows.     

Changes in activation levels with negation.

Three experiments investigated the effects of negation during on-line language processing. It was hypothesized that negation of a noun (e.g., no bread) would affect the activation level of the mental representation of that noun. Experiment 1 manipulated the location of the negation in sentences that were followed by a probe recognition task. Subjects were slower to indicate that a probe had been in the sentence when the probe corresponded to a negated noun. Experiment 2 replicated these results with a probe naming task. Experiment 3 replicated the result that reading the phrase no bread inhibits responses to bread in the probe task but found no evidence of inhibition of the response to an associate probe, such as butter. The results of these three studies suggest that negation affects the discourse focus of a noun phrase, and hence the activation level of its representation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)