A comprehensive design and performance evaluation study of counter flow wet cooling towers

Fouling of cooling tower fills is one of the most important factors affecting its thermal performance, which reduces cooling tower effectiveness and capability with time. In this paper, the fouling model presented in an earlier paper using the experimental data on fill fouling, is used to investigate the risk based thermal performance of the cooling tower. It is demonstrated that effectiveness of the cooling tower degrades significantly with time indicating that for a low risk level (p=0.01), there is about 6.0% decrease in effectiveness for the given fouling model. The sensitivity analysis of the cooling tower is investigated for both rating and design calculation for different values of mass flow rate ratios. The effect of atmospheric pressure on the thermal performance of the cooling tower is also demonstrated.     

Header Detection to Improve Multimedia Quality Over Wireless Networks

Wireless multimedia studies have revealed that forward error correction (FEC) on corrupted packets yields better bandwidth utilization and lower delay than retransmissions. To facilitate FEC-based recovery, corrupted packets should not be dropped so that maximum number of packets is relayed to a wireless receiver's FEC decoder. Previous studies proposed to mitigate wireless packet drops by a partial checksum that ignored payload errors. Such schemes require modifications to both transmitters and receivers, and incur packet-losses due to header errors. In this paper, we introduce a receiver-based scheme which uses the history of active multimedia sessions to detect transmitted values of corrupted packet headers, thereby improving wireless multimedia throughput. Header detection is posed as the decision-theoretic problem of multihypothesis detection of known parameters in noise. Performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated using trace-driven video simulations on an 802.11b local area network. We show that header detection with application layer FEC provides significant throughput and video quality improvements over the conventional UDP/IP/802.11 protocol stack     

A physics‐based model of DC and microwave characteristics of GaN/AlGaN HEMTs

A physics‐based model of AlGaN/GaN High Electron Mobility Transistor (HEMT) is developed for the analysis of DC and microwave characteristics. Large‐ and small‐signal parameters are calculated for a given device dimensions and operating conditions. Spontaneous and piezoelectric polarizations at the heterointerface and finite effective width of the 2DEG gas have been incorporated in the analysis. The model predicts a maximum drain current of 523 mA/mm and transconductance of 138 mS/mm for a 1 μm × 75 μm device, which are in agreement with the experimental data. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2007.     

An Empirical Study of Factors Affecting e-Commerce Adoption among Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises in a Developing Country: Evidence from Malaysia

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine determinants of e-commerce adoption among Malaysian small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This study tested eight hypotheses on determinants affecting e-commerce adoption with empirical data from several survey instruments: an online questionnaire-based survey, mailed survey and questionnaire collected in-person from a sample of 307 SMEs in Malaysia. The findings show that e-commerce adoption within Malaysian SMEs is affected by perceived relative advantage, perceived compatibility, managers/owner's knowledge and expertise, management characteristics and external change agents. This study contributes to enhancing the understanding of the determinants of adopting e-commerce in SMEs and provides some interesting perspective from Malaysia. Those parties interested in promoting their business online may find these results helpful in guiding their efforts.     

Non-fragile synchronisation of mixed delayed neural networks with randomly occurring controller gain fluctuations

This study is concerned with the problem of non fragile synchronisation of mixed delayed neural networks with randomly occurring controller gain fluctuations. By using a novel mathematical approach and considering the neuron activation functions, improved delay-dependent stability results are formulated in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). An augmented new Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional (LKF) that contains double and triple integral terms is constructed to ensure the asymptotic stability of the error system which guarantees the master system synchronise with the slave system. Finally, numerical examples are provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed theoretical results.     

Dispersal and sink pathways of suspended particulate matter from the orographically enhanced SWM regime of the SE Arabian Sea

The magnitude of precipitation plays an important role in the yield and supply of terrigenous matter into the sea through fluvial supply. The influence of climate on the influx of total suspended matter (TSM) into the continental margin of the SE Arabian Sea has been evaluated from subweekly synoptic variations in TSM and its advection rates, currents and winds during the southwest monsoon (SWM) and postmonsoon season. Our study endorses the high influx of TSM during the SWM (>82 mg l^?1; advection 26–110 mg m^?2 s^?1), albeit that most of it is sequestered into the shallow coastal region. Over the mid-outer shelf, there is uniformly low TSM (12–24 mg l^?1) and a weak TSM advection (9–4 mg m^?2 s^?1) throughout the year. This trend is persistent also in areas having upwelling-induced high marine productivity. We therefore surmise that higher fluvial influx and primary production during the SWM do not necessarily enhance the supply of particulate matter into the deeper offshore regions of the SE Arabian Sea. We ascribe a vital role to the prevailing morphodynamic processes.     

Toward the modeling of data provenance in scientific publications

In this paper, we implement a provenance-aware system for documenting publications, called PADS. It employs a three-layered provenance hierarchy, which can output diverse types of provenance data related to the research life cycle. From this, we generate different profiles for research ventures, reviewers, and authors. PADS employs the standard Open Provenance Model (OPM) specification for capturing provenance data, and stores this data as ontological instances. We show that data is retrieved without any apparent delay in the execution time of the queries. We also demonstrate how this data can be used to make useful recommendations to the organizers, in order to manage upcoming research ventures.     

NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF AN OSCILLATING FLOW PAST A CIRCULAR CYLINDER IN THE VICINITY OF A PLANE WALL

Oscillating flow around a circular cylinder in the vicinity of a plane wall was investigated by solving the two-dimensional incompressible Navier-Stokes equations with a finite element Galarkin residual method. The effect of the gap G/D between the cylinder surface and the wall on the flow behavior was studied. For the case of G/D 〈 0.25, the periodicity in the flow is attributed to both the outer shear layer instability and the oscillating frequency. As G/D 〉 0.25, vortex shedding occurs and the periodicity in the flow is mainly due to the competition of the oscillating frcqucncy and the vortex shedding frequency from an isolated stationary cylinder.