A novel active auxiliary circuit for efficiency enhancement integrated with synchronous buck converter

In this paper, a novel auxiliary circuit is introduced for the synchronous buck converter. This auxiliary circuit provides zero‐current, zero‐voltage switching conditions for the main and synchronous switches while providing zero‐current condition for the auxiliary switch and diodes. The proposed active auxiliary circuit integrated with synchronous buck converter that emanates to zero‐voltage transition (ZVT)–zero‐current transition (ZCT) pulse width‐modulated (PWM) synchronous buck converter is analyzed, and its operating modes are presented. The additional voltage and current stresses on main, synchronous and auxiliary switches get decimated because of the resonance of the auxiliary circuit that acts for a small segment of time in the proposed converter. The important design feature of soft‐switching converters is the placement of resonant components that mollifies the switching and conduction losses. With the advent of ZVT–ZCT switching, there is an increase in the switching frequency that declines the resonant component values in the converters and also constricts the switching losses. The characteristics of the proposed converter are verified with the simulation in the Power Sim (PSIM) software co‐simulated with MATLAB/SIMULINK environment and implemented experimentally. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Magnetic and dielectric studies of barium hexaferrite (BaFe 12 O 19 ) ceramic synthesized by chemical route

Barium hexaferrite BaFe12O19 (BHF) ceramic was synthesized by chemical route on sintering at 1050 °C for 12 h. The synthesized material was characterized by XRD, SEM, AFM and TEM analysis. Metal oxide stretching frequencies corresponding to Fe-O, Ba-O, and Fe-O-Fe bands are confirmed by FTIR studies. The hexagonal nature of the BHF ceramic was confirmed by TEM analysis and Rietveld refinement with space group P63/mmc. The particle size observed by TEM is 175 nm. The root means square and average roughness were found to be 61.048 nm and 44.025 nm respectively. The M-T and M-H hysteresis loop indicates temperature dependent ferromagnetic behavior of BHF ceramic. The temperature and frequency dependent dielectric properties were explained by Maxwell-Wagner theory. The value of dielectric constant (ε′) for BHF ceramic was found to be 22× 103 at 100 Hz and 483 K.     

Economic efficiency of coordinated multilateral trades in electricity markets

This paper presents economic efficiency evaluation of electricity markets operating on the basis of a coordinated multilateral trading concept. The evaluation accounts for the overall costs of power generation, network losses, and system and unit constraints. We assume a non-collusive oligopolistic competition. An iterative Cournot model is used to characterize the competitive behavior of suppliers. A supplier maximizes the profit of each of his generating units while taking rivals' generation as given. Time span is over multiple hours. This leads to a mixed integer non-linear programming problem. We use the augmented Lagrangian approach to solve iteratively for globally optimal schedules. An IEEE 24-bus, 8-supplier, and 17-customer test system is used for illustration. The results show that such a market at times of light demands exhibits little market power, and at times of large demands exhibits a great deal of market power. This contrasts with the PCMI and HHI concentration measures, which give fixed measurement values of market power. The results of two-year (730 round) market simulations show a range of deadweight efficiency loss between 0.9 and 6% compared to that of PoolCo which results in a range between 0.5 and 10% for the same test case.     

Thin natural gelatin/chitosan nanofibrous scaffolds for retinal pigment epithelium cells

Damage of the retinal pigmented epithelial cells causes various diseases such as age-related macular degeneration in retinal tissue. Nowadays, scientists are attempting to replace lost retinal cells with healthy and efficient cells that provide better conditions for recovering and preventing blindness. In this study, gelatin/chitosan nanofibrous scaffolds with mean diameters of 180?nm were fabricated for subretinal space through electrospinning. Thickness and morphology of the gelatin–chitosan scaffolds were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The results showed that the high rate of degradation, i.e., 90% damage was obtained after 1 month. The cell viability of gelatin/chitosan nanofibers were measured by 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide assay. The SEM results of cultured RPE on gelatin/chitosan scaffolds showed the appropriate adhesion of cells on the substrate. The results of the identity of RPE cells cultured on the scaffolds indicated that a large number of cells strongly expressed RPE65 and cytokeratin 8/18.     

Low temperature synthesis of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Manganese tungstate</Emphasis> nanoflowers with antibacterial potential: Future material for water purification

Pure water is the fundamental requisite for human life. The water has been recycled naturally but not in an adequate amount for consumption. Nanotechnology with extraordinary applications provides competent ways for the decontamination of contaminated water. In the present study MnWO₄ nanoflowers endorsed with inherent antibacterial activity were successfully synthesized by facile hydrothermal approach. XRD, SEM, EDX spectroscopy and UVDRS were used to characterize the as-synthesized nanoflowers. Gram negative Escherichia coli ATCC 52922 bacterium was used as model organism to test antibacterial activity of as-synthesized MnWO₄ nanoflowers. This study was conducted to optimize minimum concentration of MnWO₄ nanoflowers and maximum contact time required to achieve complete inactivation of bacteria present in contaminated water. Minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of MnWO₄ nanoflowers was found to be 10 μg/ml. The assessment and interpretation of bacterial viability was done using dual fluorescent staining. The synthesized 3D-nanoflowers were found as potent bactericides. Thus, MnWO₄ nanoflowers emerged to be very good future material for disinfection of biological pollutants present in the contaminated water reservoirs and as an anti-biofouling agent.     

Interpretation of way-finding healthcare symbols by a multicultural population: Navigation signage design for global health

The interpretation of way-finding symbols for healthcare facilities in a multicultural community was assessed in a cross-sectional study. One hundred participants recruited from Al Ain city in the United Arab Emirates were asked to interpret 28 healthcare symbols developed at Hablamos Juntos (such as vaccinations and laboratory) as well as 18 general-purpose symbols (such as elevators and restrooms). The mean age was 27.6 years (16–55 years) of whom 84 (84%) were females. Healthcare symbols were more difficult to comprehend than general-purpose signs. Symbols referring to abstract concepts were the most misinterpreted including oncology, diabetes education, outpatient clinic, interpretive services, pharmacy, internal medicine, registration, social services, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics and infectious diseases. Interpretation rates varied across cultural backgrounds and increased with higher education and younger age. Signage within healthcare facilities should be tested among older persons, those with limited literacy and across a wide range of cultures.     

Blind information-theoretic multiuser detection algorithms for DS-CDMA and WCDMA downlink systems

Code division multiple access (CDMA) is based on the spread-spectrum technology and is a dominant air interface for 2.5G, 3G, and future wireless networks. For the CDMA downlink, the transmitted CDMA signals from the base station (BS) propagate through a noisy multipath fading communication channel before arriving at the receiver of the user equipment/mobile station (UE/MS). Classical CDMA single-user detection (SUD) algorithms implemented in the UE/MS receiver do not provide the required performance for modern high data-rate applications. In contrast, multi-user detection (MUD) approaches require a lot of a priori information not available to the UE/MS. In this paper, three promising adaptive Riemannian contra-variant (or natural) gradient based user detection approaches, capable of handling the highly dynamic wireless environments, are proposed. The first approach, blind multiuser detection (BMUD), is the process of simultaneously estimating multiple symbol sequences associated with all the users in the downlink of a CDMA communication system using only the received wireless data and without any knowledge of the user spreading codes. This approach is applicable to CDMA systems with relatively short spreading codes but becomes impractical for systems using long spreading codes. We also propose two other adaptive approaches, namely, RAKE-blind source recovery (RAKE-BSR) and RAKE-principal component analysis (RAKE-PCA) that fuse an adaptive stage into a standard RAKE receiver. This adaptation results in robust user detection algorithms with performance exceeding the linear minimum mean squared error (LMMSE) detectors for both Direct Sequence CDMA (DS-CDMA) and wide-band CDMA (WCDMA) systems under conditions of congestion, imprecise channel estimation and unmodeled multiple access interference (MAI).     

TVD-MRDL: traffic violation detection system using MapReduce-based deep learning for large-scale data

Maintaining a fluid and safe traffic is a major challenge for human societies because of its social and economic impacts. Various technologies have considerably paved the way for the elimination of traffic problems and have been able to effectively detect drivers’ violations. However, the high volume of the real-time data collected from surveillance cameras and traffic sensors along with the data obtained from individuals have made the use of traditional methods ineffective. Therefore, using Hadoop for processing large-scale structured and unstructured data as well as multimedia data can be of great help. In this paper, the TVD-MRDL system based on the MapReduce techniques and deep learning was employed to discover effective solutions. The Distributed Deep Learning System was implemented to analyze traffic big data and to detect driver violations in Hadoop. The results indicated that more accurate monitoring automatically creates the power of deterrence and behavior change in drivers and it prevents drivers from committing unusual behaviors in society. So, if the offending driver is identified quickly after committing the violation and is punished with the appropriate punishment and dealt with decisively and without negligence, we will surely see a decrease in violations at the community level. Also, the efficiency of the TVD-MRDL performance increased by more than 75% as the number of data nodes increased.

     

Social collaborative filtering using local dynamic overlapping community detection

The Journal of Supercomputing - Recommender systems play an important role in dealing with the problems caused by the great and growing amount of information, and the collaborative filtering method...     

Jeffrey’s rule of conditioning in a possibilistic framework

Conditioning, belief update and revision are important tasks for designing intelligent systems. Possibility theory is among the powerful uncertainty theories particularly suitable for representing and reasoning with uncertain and incomplete information. This paper addresses an important issue related to the possibilistic counterparts of Jeffrey’s rule of conditioning. More precisely, it addresses the existence and uniqueness of the solutions computed using the possibilistic counterparts of the so-called kinematics properties underlying Jeffrey’s rule of conditioning. We first point out that like the probabilistic framework, in the quantitative possibilistic setting, there exists a unique solution for revising a possibility distribution given the uncertainty bearing on a set of exhaustive and mutually exclusive events. However, in the qualitative possibilistic framework, the situation is different. In particular, the application of Jeffrey’s rule of conditioning does not guarantee the existence of a solution. We provide precise conditions where the uniqueness of the revised possibility distribution exists.