Small-Format Aerial Photography for Highway-Bridge Monitoring

Small-format aerial photography (SFAP) is a low-cost solution for bridge-surface imaging and is proposed as a remote bridge-inspection technique to supplement current bridge visual inspection. Providing top-down views, photos taken from airplanes flying at 305?m (1,000?ft) allow for the visualization of subinch (i.e., large) cracks and joint openings on bridge decks or highway pavements. An onboard global positioning system can help geo-reference images collected and allow automated damage detection. However, the site lighting, surrounding tree shades, and highway surface reflectivity may affect the quality of the images. Several examples of bridge evaluation using SFAP are presented to demonstrate the capability of remote sensing as an effective tool for bridge-construction monitoring and condition assessment. A deck condition rating technique for large crack detection is proposed to quantify the condition of the existing bridge decks.     

Molecular structure characteristics,functional parameters and in vitro protein digestion of pressure‐cooked soya bean flours with different amounts of water

When a food product is cooked at high temperature with different proportions of water, the differential degradation that occurs in the molecular structure promotes changes in their functional characteristics. In this study, water and soya bean flour (dry base) were mixed in different ratios (3:1, 2:1, 1:1, 0.25:1 and 0:1) and pressure cooked at 130 °C, 1.5 kg cm^?2 for 30 min, cooled down to 40 °C and air dried for 24 h. Protein changes due to thermal process were determined with the ATR‐FTIR, as well as some functional parameters and in vitro protein digestibility. At higher water:soya bean flour ratios (3:1 and 2:1), the protein digestibility increased due to denaturation of tertiary structures, while urease activity (UA) and the functional characteristics of water absorption index (WAI) and water solubility index (WSI) decreased. Pearson's correlation analysis revealed that molecular changes on amide I, II and in α‐helix: β‐sheet ratios were directly related with the amount of added water.     

Formation of Technetium Salts in Hanford Low‐Activity Waste Glass

The distribution and physical form of technetium in a Hanford low‐activity waste (LAW) glass was examined with scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X‐ray diffraction (XRD). A simulated Hanford LAW glass was spiked with varying amounts of potassium pertechnetate and melted at 1000°C. The glass was melted in a sealed quartz ampoule with the air pumped out, so that volatile material could leave the glass but would not be lost from the system. Previous studies have shown that technetium remains in the glass up to about 2000 ppm, but rises to the top of the melt as a separate salt phase above this concentration. Examination by SEM shows that crystals of technetium compounds appear to grow out of the hot glass, which implies that the hot glass was supersaturated in technetium salts. Some of the technetium compound crystals had apparently melted, but other crystals had obviously not melted and must have formed after the glass had partially cooled. The technetium compounds in the salt layer are KTcO₄ and NaTcO₄, according to SEM and XRD. No TcO₂ was found in the salt phase, even though Tc(IV) has been previously reported in the glass.     

Implementing virtual platform for global‐scale cyber physical system networks

The need for global‐scale cyber physical system (CPS) is increasing with the evolution of CPS research. A global‐scale CPS requires additional considerations beyond the well‐known CPS requirements, such as security, reliability, and timely delivery, which cannot be easily satisfied when a CPS becomes global scale. Building an entire dedicated network for a global‐scale CPS cannot be a solution, because it requires a large capital outlay in order to be actualized. To overcome these obstacles, we implement a virtual platform named Xebra that includes effective CPS middleware for realizing a global‐scale CPS and isolation techniques based on virtualization. In this paper, we discuss the requirements for realizing global‐scale CPS network, and also, we introduce our implementation as a virtual platform with its performance evaluation. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Supercritical fluid deposition of vanadium oxide on multi-walled carbon nanotube buckypaper for supercapacitor electrode application

Composite electrodes were fabricated for supercapacitor applications by depositing vanadium oxide onto multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) buckypaper using supercritical fluid deposition (SFD). The deposited thin vanadium oxide layer showed amorphous structure with excellent uniformity. In aqueous KCl electrolyte, the vanadium oxide exhibited a constant pseudo-capacitance of ～ 1024 F g(-1), which was independent of the oxide material loading (up to 6.92 wt%) and voltage scan rate (up to 100 mV s(-1)). The highest specific electrode capacitance achieved was ～ 85 F g(-1), which was almost four times that of the pristine buckypaper electrode.     

Interrogating the effect of 90° bends on air–silicone oil flows using advanced instrumentation

When gas/liquid mixtures flow around a bend they are subjected to forces additional to those encountered in a straight pipe. The behaviour of the flows at the inlet and outlet of the bend depends on the orientation of the pipes. Air/silicone oil flows around a 90° bend have been investigated using advanced instrumentation: Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT), Wire Mesh Sensor Tomography (WMS) and high-speed video. The first two provide time and cross-sectionally resolved data on void fraction. ECT probes were mounted 10 diameters upstream of the bend whilst WMS was positioned either immediately upstream or immediately downstream of the bend. The downstream pipe was maintained horizontal whilst the upstream pipe was mounted either vertically or horizontally. The bend (R/D=2.3) was made of transparent acrylic resin. From an analysis of the output from the tomography equipment, flow patterns were identified using both the reconstructed images as well as the characteristic signatures of Probability Density Function (PDF) plots of the time series of cross-sectionally averaged void fraction as suggested by Costigan and Whalley (1996). The superficial velocities of the air ranged from 0.05 to 4.73 m/s and for the silicone oil from 0.05 to 0.38 m/s. Bubble/spherical cap, slug, unstable slug and churn flows were observed before the bend for the vertical pipe and plug, slug, stratified wavy and annular flows when the pipe was horizontal. Bubble, stratified wavy, slug, semi-annular and annular flows are seen after the bend for the vertical 90° bend whilst for the horizontal 90° bend, the flow patterns remained the same as before the bend. Flow patterns for the vertical and horizontal 90° bends are shown on the diagram of the gas superficial velocity versus liquid superficial velocity. These results are confirmed by the high-speed videos taken around the bend. A previously proposed criterion, to determine stratification after the bend, based on a modified Froude number have been shown to be valid for a liquid different from that tested in the original paper.     

Locating repair servers in hierarchical reliable multicast networks to reduce the makespan

In a hierarchical reliable multicast (HRM) environment, makespan is the time that is required to fully and successfully transmit a packet from the sender to all receivers. Low makespan is vital for achieving high throughput with a TCP‐like window‐based sending scheme. In HRM methods, the number of repair servers and their locations influence the makespan. In this paper we propose a new method to decide the locations of repair servers that can reduce the makespan in HRM networks. Our method has a formulation based on mixed integer programming to analyze the makespan minimization problem. A notable aspect of the formulation is that heterogeneous links and packet losses are taken into account in the formulation. Three different heuristics are presented to find the locations of repair servers in reasonable time in the formulation. Through simulations, three heuristics are carefully analyzed and compared on networks with different sizes. The results show that the our best heuristic is close to the lower bound by a factor of 2.3 in terms of makespan and by a factor of 5.5 in terms of the number of repair servers. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

THE SPLIT OF THE LIQUID PHASE IN DROPS AND FILM IN AN EJECTOR-VENTURI SCRUBBER

Liquid distribution along an ejector-Venturi scrubber was determined experimentally in an industrial-scale pilot plant. The effects of geometry as well as flow rates were studied. The results showed that a significant fraction of the liquid travels as a film. Therefore, it should be taken into consideration in mass transfer studies, where usually it is neglected. The data were used to test a model, that allows for interchange of liquid between drops and film flowing on the Venturi walls. There was good agreement between experiment and predictions.