Functional finishing of polyamide fabrics using ZnO–PMMA nanocomposites

Polymer nanocomposites offer possibility of developing a new class of nanofinishing materials for textiles with their own manifold of structure property relationship. Approaches to modify the polymer nanocomposites by various inorganic substances can lead to a huge number of additional functionalities which are increasingly demanded by the textile industries. In the present work, zinc oxide nanoparticles were prepared by wet chemical method and ZnO–PMMA nanocomposites were prepared by dispersing the ZnO nanoparticles in solution of poly(methylmethacrylate) (PMMA) and applied on polyamide fabrics by padding. The aims are to impart superhydrophobicity and UV protection function to the polyamide textile surface and the functional properties of coated fabrics were studied. The nanofinished polyamide fabrics showed superhydrophobicity of about 163°. The results also showed that the impregnation of fabrics with ZnO–PMMA nanofinishings also enhanced the protection of polyamide fabrics against UV radiation.     

Copper oxide nanowires: a review of growth

Cuprous oxide (Cu(2)O) and cupric oxide (CuO) nanowires have started playing important roles in energy conversion devices and optoelectronic devices. Although the desired advanced properties have been demonstrated, these materials cannot yet be produced in large-bulk quantities in order to bridge the technological transfer gap for wider use. In this respect, the quest for the most efficient synthesis process which yields not only large quantities but also high quality and advanced material properties continues. This paper gives an extensive review of copper oxide nanowire (NW) synthesis by all methods and routes by which various researchers have obtained their nanomaterial. These methods are critically overviewed, evaluated and compared. Methods of copper oxide NW growth include wet-chemical methods based on pure solution growth, electrochemical and hydrothermal routes as well as thermal and plasma oxidation methods. In terms of advanced nanowire synthesis, the fast thermal method or direct plasma oxidation as well as the combined hybrid wet-chemical method in which copper hydroxide NWs are produced and sequentially transformed by plasma oxidation which produces Cu(2)O NWs are seen as the most promising methods to explore in the near future. These methods not only yield large quantities of NWs, but produce high quality material with advanced properties.     

Amaranth flour,cassava starch and cassava bagasse in the production of gluten‐free pasta: technological and sensory aspects

The objective of the present research was to analyse the combined effect of pregelatinised cassava starch and bagasse (70:30) flour, cassava starch and amaranth flour on the cooking properties of pasta, verify the acceptance and buying intention of the product with the best technological characteristics, and finally compare them with commercial products made with regular and whole wheat flour. The vermicelli‐type pasta obtained in this study in the proportion of 10:60:30 (pre‐gelatinised flour:cassava starch:amaranth flour) showed the best results in the quality tests, with a cooking time of 3 min, mass increase of 101.5% and 0.6% solids loss to the cooking water, superior to the commercial pasta. Acceptance testing showed that this was a very good pasta (score of 7.2 on a 9‐point scale) and obtained 42% buying intention amongst the consumers. The elaboration of pasta containing pregelatinised cassava starch and bagasse (70:30) flour, cassava starch and amaranth flour was shown to be a feasible alternative with respect to the technological and sensory aspects, and could be consumed by those suffering from gluten intolerance.     

RIP – A robust IP access architecture

This research is of the view that only tightly coordinated work among security components as we know them today including firewalls, traffic analysis modules, intrusion detection systems, antivirus remediation systems, etc., is likely to take us closer to a more effective solution against some security threats. A structured Robust IP (RIP) access architecture is described and its components are analyzed through the use of a proof of concept testbed. Examples of the use of RIP and the heuristics it implements are evaluated. We also compare RIP performance to existing work. We show that there are currently some tradeoffs that need to be made between accuracy and responsiveness. We believe that this collaborative communication style between the components represents a significant step in the direction of self-defending networks and innovation in the area.     

Method for Restoring Consistency in Probabilistic Knowledge Bases

ABSTRACT

Ensuring consistency of knowledge systems is always one of the essential requirements because, without it, most of these systems become useless. Because of the importance, many studies have involved the restoration of consistency in knowledge systems. However, these approaches are only implemented on knowledge systems that are represented by logic or probabilistic logic, thus when we apply them to probabilistic knowledge systems, there are many inadequacies. To overcome these drawbacks, in this paper, we put forward a new model for restoring the consistency of a probabilistic knowledge base by focusing on changing the probabilities in this knowledge base via several inconsistency measures. To this end, a set of inconsistency measures is presented and a family of consistency restoring operators for probabilistic knowledge bases is introduced. Next, an axiomatic model consists of a set of axioms is built to characterize the desirable properties of the consistency restoring operators. Finally, the properties of each consistency restoring operator in the introduced family are investigated and discussed.     

Mires: a publish/subscribe middleware for sensor networks

A wireless sensor network (WSN) consists of a large number of small devices with computational power, wireless communication and sensing capability. These networks have been developed for a wide range of applications, such as habitat monitoring, object tracking, precision agriculture, building monitoring and military systems. Meanwhile, middleware systems have also been proposed in to facilitate both the development of these applications and provide common application services. The development of middleware for sensor networks, however, places new challenges on middleware developers due to the low availability of resources and processing capacity of the sensor nodes. In this context, this paper presents the design and implementation of a middleware for WSN named Mires. Mires incorporates characteristics of message-oriented middleware by allowing applications communicate in a publish/subscribe way. In order to illustrate the proposed middleware, we have also developed an environment-monitoring application and a data aggregation service.

A review of path following control strategies for autonomous robotic vehicles: Theory,simulations, and experiments

This article presents an in-depth review of path following control strategies that are applicable to a wide range class of marine, ground, and aerial autonomous robotic vehicles. From a control system standpoint, path following can be formulated as the problem of stabilizing a path following error system that describes the dynamics of position and possibly orientation errors of a vehicle with respect to a path, with the errors defined in an appropriate reference frame. In spite of the large variety of path following methods described in the literature we show that, in principle, most of them can be categorized in two groups: stabilization of the path following error system expressed either in the vehicle's body frame or in a frame attached to a “reference point” moving along the path, such as a Frenet-Serret (F-S) frame or a Parallel Transport (P-T) frame. With this observation, we provide a unified formulation that is simple but general enough to cover many methods available in the literature. We then discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each method, comparing them from the design and implementation standpoint. We further show experimental results of the path following methods obtained from field trials testing with under-actuated and over-actuated autonomous marine vehicles. In addition, we introduce open-source Matlab and Gazebo/ROS simulation toolboxes that are helpful in testing path following methods before their integration in the combined guidance, navigation, and control systems of autonomous vehicles.     

FISH ASSEMBLAGE RELATIONSHIPS WITH PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS AND PRESENCE OF DAMS IN THREE EASTERN IOWA RIVERS

Fish assemblages in rivers of the Midwestern United States are an important component of the region's natural resources and biodiversity. We characterized the physical environment and presence of dams in a series of reaches in three eastern Iowa rivers tributary to the Mississippi River and related these characteristics to the fish assemblages present. Some physical characteristics were similar among the 12 study reaches, whereas others differed substantially. We found a total of 68 species across the 12 study reaches; 56 in the Turkey River, 51 in the Maquoketa River and 50 in the Wapsipinicon River. Seventeen species could be described as ‘downstream‐distributed’; 15 being found only in the lowest reach of one or more rivers and the other two being found only in the lowest reaches or two or more contiguous reaches including the lowest reach. Two species could be described as ‘upstream‐distributed’, being found only in an uppermost reach. Non‐metric multidimensional scaling ordination illustrated similarities among reaches, and five physical variables were significantly correlated with assemblage similarities. Catchment area and number of dams between reaches and the Mississippi River were strongly correlated with assemblage similarities, but the directions of their effects were opposite. Catchment area and number of dams were confounded. The collective evidence to date suggests that the pervasiveness of dams on rivers significantly alters fish assemblages, making underlying patterns of species change and relationships with naturally varying and human‐influenced physical characteristics along a river's course difficult to discern. Published 2013. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.