Poly(vinylidene fluoride)‐Based Membranes for Microalgae Filtration

Two poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) membrane modification approaches, i.e., poly(vinylpyrrolidone) (PVP) modification and sulfonation, were applied and investigated to produce a fouling‐resistant membrane for microalgae filtration. Both methods were able to alter the membrane surface to become more hydrophilic. However, clean water permeance increased only for the PVP‐modified membranes, while the sulfonated membranes underwent a significant morphology transformation to a denser membrane and thus lower permeance. Microalgae filtration with PVP‐modified membranes showed less fouling compared to the pristine one, particularly in the beginning of the filtration, indicating that fouling reduction on these membranes mainly occurs in the initial fouling stage. Fouling is also found to be influenced by the microalgae species, possibly due to the different properties of the formed cake layer.     

A polyamidoamine dendrimer as a selective colorimetric and ratiometric fluorescent sensor for Li+ cations in alkali media

In a DMF + NaOH medium, a polyamidoamine dendrimer having sixteen 1,8-naphthalimide fragments in its periphery, formed a complex only with Li⁺ ions, detected by a colour change from red to yellow and by a significant increase in fluorescence intensity. The dendrimer can be used as a selective sensor for Li⁺ ions in the presence of other alkali ions such as Na⁺ or K⁺.     

The optical viscometer based on the vibrating fiber partially submerged in fluid

The vibrating fiber partially submerged in fluid has been shown to be an effective device for the viscosity sensing. In this study, small vibrational amplitude of the fiber (<1.0 μm) is detected by the optical method utilizing a forward light scattering pattern. An analytical solution of the partially submerged fiber vibration with damping has been found and results agree well with experimental data in the wide ranges of the different liquids and depths. It has been shown that variations of the maximum vibrational amplitude (MVA) and the bandwidth depend linearly on (ρ_lμ_l)^1/2 and split over the liquid depth. Based on the results a simple way for the viscosity extraction from both the MVA and the bandwidth has been suggested and an explicit formula for the achievable accuracy of the viscosity sensing has been derived. Experiments have confirmed the method of the viscosity extraction.     

Adaptive grid optical tomography

Image-based modeling of semi-transparent, dynamic phenomena is a challenging task. We present an optical tomography method that uses an adaptive grid for the reconstruction of a three-dimensional density function from its projections. The proposed method is applied to reconstruct thin smoke and flames volumetrically from synchronized multi-video recordings. Our adaptive reconstruction algorithm computes a time-varying volumetric model, that enables the photorealistical rendering of the recorded phenomena from arbitrary viewpoints. In contrast to previous approaches we sample the underlying unknown, three-dimensional density function adaptively which enables us to achieve a higher effective resolution of the reconstructed models.     

Automatic Parallelization: Executing Sequential Programs on a Task-Based Parallel Runtime

There are billions of lines of sequential code inside nowadays’ software which do not benefit from the parallelism available in modern multicore architectures. Automatically parallelizing sequential code, to promote an efficient use of the available parallelism, has been a research goal for some time now. This work proposes a new approach for achieving such goal. We created a new parallelizing compiler that analyses the read and write instructions, and control-flow modifications in programs to identify a set of dependencies between the instructions in the program. Afterwards, the compiler, based on the generated dependencies graph, rewrites and organizes the program in a task-oriented structure. Parallel tasks are composed by instructions that cannot be executed in parallel. A work-stealing-based parallel runtime is responsible for scheduling and managing the granularity of the generated tasks. Furthermore, a compile-time granularity control mechanism also avoids creating unnecessary data-structures. This work focuses on the Java language, but the techniques are general enough to be applied to other programming languages. We have evaluated our approach on 8 benchmark programs against OoOJava, achieving higher speedups. In some cases, values were close to those of a manual parallelization. The resulting parallel code also has the advantage of being readable and easily configured to improve further its performance manually.     

Physicochemical,thermal, and pasting properties of flours and starches of eight Brazilian maize landraces (Zea mays L.)

Both genetic and environmental factors create significant variation in the amount and quality of maize landrace constituents. Details on the flours and starch characteristics have not been fully investigated. The physicochemical, pasting and thermal properties of 8 promising cultivars were assessed in this study and those properties were correlated. Higher values of swelling and solubility (RJ – 13.14%; 14.39%), lipid content (MG – 5.53%), WBC (PR – 18.89%), and amylose content (PR – 27.43%) were found for those genotypes. Lower onset temperatures of gelatinization (To) were observed for RX-F1 (66.1 °C) as RX-F1 (68.7 °C) genotype showed the lower pasting temperatures. A wide range of viscosity values was found among the maize landraces (MG-F0, 343 mPa s and RJ-F1, 175 mPa s) as well as for the retrogradation (R8C-F1, 796 mPa s and RX-F1, 22 mPa s). ATR-FTIR spectroscopy revealed amylose, amylopectin, lipids, and proteins as major flours constituents and their differences were discriminated by PCA analysis.     

Disclosing the Biocide Activity of α-Ag2−2xCuxWO4 (0 ≤ x ≤ 0.16) Solid Solutions

In this work, α-Ag_2−2xCu_xWO₄ (0 ≤ x ≤ 0.16) solid solutions with enhanced antibacterial (against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and antifungal (against Candida albicans) activities are reported. A plethora of techniques (X-ray diffraction with Rietveld refinements, inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry, micro-Raman spectroscopy, attenuated total reflectance–Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, field emission scanning electron microscopy, ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy, photoluminescence emissions, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy) were employed to characterize the as-synthetized samples and determine the local coordination geometry of Cu²⁺ cations at the orthorhombic lattice. To find a correlation between morphology and biocide activity, the experimental results were sustained by first-principles calculations at the density functional theory level to decipher the cluster coordinations and electronic properties of the exposed surfaces. Based on the analysis of the under-coordinated Ag and Cu clusters at the (010) and (101) exposed surfaces, we propose a mechanism to explain the biocide activity of these solid solutions.     

A new analytical model for the CQ switch throughput calculation under the bursty traffic

In this paper we propose a new analytical iterative method for the throughput calculation of the Crosspoint Queued (CQ) switch with a random scheduling algorithm under the bursty traffic model. This method is verified by comparing it with the simulation results, which shows a very good match. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first analytical method for the throughput calculation of such a switch for the bursty traffic model.