Continuity-based interfacing of models for wastewater systems described by Petersen matrices.

In this paper the Petersen and composition matrices that modellers are now familiar with are used as a basis to construct interfacing models between subsystems considered in wastewater treatment. Starting from continuity considerations and a set of transformation reactions between components used in the two models of the subsystems to be interfaced, a set of linear algebraic equations needs to be solved. The theoretical development is illustrated using a simplified integrated model of an activated sludge system coupled to an anaerobic digester. Continuity-guaranteed interfacing of subsystems will facilitate optimization studies of the within-the-fence process units of a wastewater treatment plant or of the integrated urban wastewater system.     

A mathematical optimization approach for cellular radio network planning with co-siting

Wireless network operators are continuously enhancing their networks by deploying newly developed wireless technologies. In order to reduce the deployment costs, the operators try to reuse as many components of the existing networks as possible. This includes the possibility of reusing base station sites in order to reduce costs such as site rental, site acquisition, and backhaul connectivity. In this paper, we model the problem of base station co-siting as a nested mixed integer optimization problem in order to optimize target objectives that are a function of performance and cost. The formulated problem takes as input an area of interest with existing fixed sites and obtains as output the optimal number and locations of required sites including newly deployed and co-sited with the fixed sites. The goal is to minimize the deployment cost of the new network by reusing as many existing sites of the existing network as possible while guaranteeing that the outage probability is below a target threshold. We propose and implement an algorithm to solve the formulated optimization problem as a function of the mobile station distribution and the existing fixed site locations. A UMTS/GSM co-siting scenario is used as a case study in order to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. Results show that the optimal solution depends on the mobile station distribution and the existing sites in addition to a threshold parameter that provides a tradeoff between the deployment cost and the outage probability.     

Forecasting Daily Flood Water Level Using Hybrid Advanced Machine Learning Based Time-Varying Filtered Empirical Mode Decomposition Approach

Water Resources Management - Accurate water level forecasting is important to understand and provide an early warning of flood risk and discharge. It is also crucial for many plants and animal...     

Synthesis,characterization, and ligating behavior of poly[N,N‐p‐phenylene bisacryl (methacryl)amide]

Monomers of diacylated amine were synthesized by the reaction of acryloyl chloride or methacryloyl chloride with p‐phenylenediamine. Heating DMF solution of these monomers at 75°C in the presence of AIBN as an initiator gave the corresponding polymer. The solid metallopolymer complexes with different metal salts were isolated either by the in situ addition of the monomer, metal salt, and initiator at 75°C or by the reaction of the isolated polymer with the metal salt at 150°C. The monomers, polymers, and their metallopolymer compounds were characterized using elemental analysis, IR, NMR (¹H and ¹³C), and MS spectral measurements in addition to thermal analysis. The IR data showed that the coordinating atoms of the polymer are dependent on the reaction temperature. The ion selectivity of the isolated polymers toward different metal ions either for a single metal ion or in a mixture as aqueous solutions are studied by the batch techniques. Energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) measurements showed that both polymers are more selective to Hg²⁺ and Pb²⁺. The morphology of the polymers and their metallopolymer complexes at different temperature was also studied. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 101: 2412–2422, 2006     

Efficient Copper-bisisoquinoline-based Catalysts for Selective Aerobic Oxidation of Alcohols to Aldehydes and Ketones

The selective oxidation of alcohols with molecular oxygen was efficiently completed in high conversion and selectivity using copper-bisisoquinoline-based catalysts under mild reaction condition. The effects of various parameters such as reaction temperature, reaction time, oxidant, ligands, etc, were studied. Solvent effect has been as well studied in ionic liquids [bmim]PF₆, [omim]BF₄ and [hmim]BF₄, comparing to traditional volatile organic solvent. The use of ionic liquids was found to enhance the catalytic properties of the catalysts used.     

New Perspectives for Cuprate Research: (Ca x La1?x )(Ba1.75?x La0.25+x )Cu3O y Single Crystals

We report the successful growth of a large (Ca _x La_1?x )(Ba_1.75?x La_0.25+x )Cu₃O _y (CLBLCO) single crystal. In this material, x controls the maximum of T _c ( $T_{c}^{\max }$ ), with minimal structural changes. Therefore, it allows a search for correlations between material properties and $T_{c}^{\max }$ . We demonstrate that the crystals are good enough for neutron scattering and cleave well enough for Raman scattering. These results open new possibilities for cuprate research.     

Thermal, Spectroscopic, Cyclic Voltammetric, and Biological Activity Studies of Cobalt(II), Nickel(II), and Copper(II) Complexes of Dicarboxylic Amino Acids and 8-Hydroxyquinoline

Mixed ligand complexes of Co^II, Ni^II and Cu^II with dicarboxylic amino acids (aspartic, glutamic or H₂ADA) as primary ligands and 8-hydroxyquinoline as a secondary ligand were prepared and characterized by elemental analysis, conductivity measurements, thermal analysis, cyclic voltammetry, and electronic and infrared (IR) spectroscopy. Cyclic voltammetry reveals a reversibility of the Cu^II/Cu^I couple, while the reactions of the Co^II and Ni^II complexes are irreversible. All complexes have a metal-to-ligand ratios of 1:1:1 and octahedral structures are suggested to be attained by interactions among both of the amino acids and 8-hydroxyquinoline anions with the metal ions. The reaction orders and activation energies have been computed by means of the Coats–Redfern and Horowitz–Metzger equations. The biological activity of selected complexes as anti-fungal agents has been tested.     

A two-stage classification model integrating feature fusion for coronary artery disease detection and classification

Multimedia Tools and Applications - According to the World Health Organization, Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) is a leading cause of death globally. CAD is categorized into three types, namely...     

An adaptive memetic algorithm for feature selection using proximity graphs

We propose a multivariate feature selection method that uses proximity graphs for assessing the quality of feature subsets. Initially, a complete graph is built, where nodes are the samples, and edge weights are calculated considering only the selected features. Next, a proximity graph is constructed on the basis of these weights and different fitness functions, calculated over the proximity graph, to evaluate the quality of the selected feature set. We propose an iterative methodology on the basis of a memetic algorithm for exploring the space of possible feature subsets aimed at maximizing a quality score. We designed multiple local search strategies, and we used an adaptive strategy for automatic balancing between the global and local search components of the memetic algorithm. The computational experiments were carried out using four well‐known data sets. We investigate the suitability of three different proximity graphs (minimum spanning tree, k‐nearest neighbors, and relative neighborhood graph) for the proposed approach. The selected features have been evaluated using a total of 49 classification methods from an open‐source data mining and machine learning package (WEKA). The computational results show that the proposed adaptive memetic algorithm can perform better than traditional genetic algorithms in finding more useful feature sets. Finally, we establish the competitiveness of our approach by comparing it with other well‐known feature selection methods.