“Metakaolin‐Slag‐Clinker Blends.” The Role of Na+ or K+ as Alkaline Activators of Theses Ternary Blends

This article reports on research into the use of solid alkalis (Na₂CO₃ and K₂CO₃) as activators to obtain hybrid cement (cement whose hydration generates a mix of C–A–S–H and (N,C)–A–S–H gels) from a blend of 20% clínker + 40% blast furnace slag + 40% metakaolin. More specifically, the study aimed to determine the effect of activator dosage (5 and 8 wt%) and type of alkaline cation (Na⁺ or K⁺) on the 2‐ and 28‐d mechanical strength of the end materials. The findings showed that the highest mechanical strength values were obtained with 5% Na₂CO₃. According to the XRD, NMR, and SEM/EDX analyses conducted on the reaction products, the alkalinity and solubilized chemical species generated by adding 5% Na₂CO₃ to the system yielded a mix of (N,C)–A–S–H and C–A–S–H cementitious gels as the main reaction products. The secondary reaction products included metastable (3CaO·Al₂O₃·CaCO₃·11H₂O‐type) carboaluminates that evolved into the calcite or vaterite forms of calcium carbonate. When K₂CO₃ was used (instead of Na₂CO₃), a (3CaO·Al₂O₃·0.5Ca(OH)₂·0.5CaCO₃·11H₂O‐type) hemicarboaluminate also formed. The study also revealed that Na⁺ favors coagulation/precipitation more effectively than K⁺, generating gels with a wider range of Qⁿ species.     

Targets Classification Based on Multi-sensor Data Fusion and Supervised Learning for Surveillance Application

Wireless Personal Communications - In surveillance application scenarios, like border security and area monitoring, potential targets to be detected may be either an unarmed person, a soldier...     

Preparation,characterization and performance of Pd/SiO2 catalyst for benzene catalytic hydrogenation

Palladium nanoparticles supported on silica were prepared by hydrazine reduction in aqueous medium at room temperature. They were characterized by XRD, TEM, EDX, H₂-adsorption, and H₂-TPD. The catalytic properties were evaluated in the gas-phase hydrogenation of benzene in the temperature range of 75–250 °C. Metal particles with a size range of 4.0–25.8 nm were obtained. The metal surface area and hydrogen storage increase with decreasing metal particle size. The H₂-TPD profiles exhibited a main peak appeared at 540 °C with two shoulders at lower (445 °C) and higher (605 °C) temperatures. These peaks were ascribed to strongly adsorbed hydrogen on the surface catalyst. The catalytic activity of the catalysts strongly depends on the metal loading. It increases with decreasing Pd loading. This is ascribed to metal surface area, which increases with decreasing Pd content.     

Semantic role labeling for Arabic language using case-based reasoning approach

Many natural language processing areas use semantic roles in order to improve the applications of the extracted information, the question answering and the machine translation, etc. In Arabic, the work of constructing the semantic role labeling system or the annotated corpus is extremely limited compared to their speaker’s number and to English language as well. In this paper, we present a supervised method for the semantic role labeling of Arabic sentences. Hence, we use the feedback capacity of the case-based reasoning to annotate new sentences from already annotated ones besides the use of the Arabic PropBank as a reference to the semantic labels. We test our method under a wide range corpus that contains 2332 attributes and 5291 arguments. Accordingly, an Arabic semantic role labeling system is tested, for the first time, in that corpus. As a result, our method shows the ability to annotate new sentences from the labeled sentences or the construction of the annotated corpus.     

Synchronous Front-Face Fluorescence Spectroscopy Coupled with Parallel Factors (PARAFAC) Analysis to Study the Effects of Cooking Time on Meat

ABSTRACT:  In this study, the potential of synchronous front-face fluorescence coupled with chemometrics has been investigated for the analysis of cooked meat. Bovine meat samples (thin slices of 5 cm diameter) taken from  Longissimus dorsi  muscle were cooked at 237 °C for 0, 1, 2, 5, 7, and 10 min under control conditions. Synchronous front-face fluorescence spectra were collected on meat samples in the excitation wavelength range of 250 to 550 nm using offsets (Δλ) of 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 110, 120, 130, 140, 150, and 160 nm between excitation and emission wavelengths. The synchronous fluorescence landscape containing 360 spectra was analyzed using PARAFAC. The best PARAFAC model presented 2 components since core consistency values for the first 2 components were 100% and the explained variance was 67.98%. The loading profiles of 1st and 2nd components had an optimal Δλ of 70 and 40 nm, respectively, allowing to determine the excitation (exc.) and emission (em.) maxima wavelengths of 1st (fluorescence band at about exc.: 340 to 400/em.: 410 to 470 nm, and peak at exc.: 468/em.: 538 nm) and 2nd (exc.: 294 nm/em.: 334 nm) components. As the loading profile of the 1st component of PARAFAC was assigned to Maillard-reaction products formed during cooking, the profile of the 2nd component corresponded with the fluorescence characteristics of tryptophan residues in proteins. Loadings and scores of the PARAFAC model developed from the synchronous fluorescence spectra enabled to get information regarding the changes occurring in meat fluorophores during cooking of meat at 237 °C from 0 to 10 min.     

Convenient General Asymmetric Synthesis of Roche Ester Derivatives through Catalytic Asymmetric Hydrogenation: Steric and Electronic Effects of Ligands

An efficient and concise asymmetric hydrogenation of acrylate esters promoted by the cationic ruthenium monohydride complex [Ru(H)(η⁶‐cot)SYNPHOS]⁺BF₄⁻ is reported. A full investigation of the effects of catalyst precursors, solvents, temperature, hydrogen pressure, substrates as well as steric and electronic properties of ligands was carried out. The corresponding valuable Roche ester derivatives were obtained in good to excellent isolated yields and high enantioselectivities under mild conditions. The robustness and practicability of this highly enantioselective hydrogenation was demonstrated by the synthesis of the 3‐hydroxy‐2‐methylpropanoic acid tert‐butyl ester on a multigram scale, resulting in excellent yield and ee up to 94%.     

An inverse heat conduction problem with heat flux measurements

Using heat flux measurements as additional information to solve inverse heat conduction problems was and is still rarely employed. Lot of disadvantages linked to heat flux measurement specificities (local disturbance, intrusive measurement, lack of knowledge and proficiency, etc.) make people prefer temperature measurements which are well documented and very widespread. Solving inverse heat conduction problems with heat flux measurements is quite different than the one which uses temperatures and need to be investigated deeply. In this work, this problem is approached through the solution of a bioengineering problem consisting in the development of a non‐invasive blood perfusion probe. The effort here is focused on the development of a methodology for the estimation of time‐dependent blood perfusion from heat flux measurements. The physical probe incorporates a thin heat flux sensor, which is placed in contact with the tissue region where the perfusion is to be measured. The sensor records the heat flux due to an imposed thermal event, which is achieved by air flow. A one‐dimensional mathematical model is used to simulate the thermal event occurring at the contact region holding between the probe and the tissue. A combined parameter and function estimation procedure is developed to estimate simultaneously time‐dependent blood perfusion and thermal contact conductance between the probe and the tissue. The robustness of the method was demonstrated through several test cases using simulated data. The presented examples include various functional changes in the time evolution of blood perfusion. Results from this study have shown the feasibility of solving inverse problems with heat flux measurements and the two unknowns are estimated with no a priori information about their functional forms. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Specific Heat of 4He Confined in Cylindrical Micro-Channels and Near the Superfluid Transition

We present new measurements of the specific heat C _P of ⁴He confined in cylindrical micro-channels of diameter L=1.89 μm at saturated vapor pressure and near the bulk superfluid-transition temperature T _λ . The results, when combined with the specific-heat exponent α=−0.01264, and with the correlation-length exponent ν=0.6709 obtained from α by hyper-scaling, support the departure from a universal, size independent, scaling function reported before by Lipa et al. [J. Low Temp. Phys. 124(3–4): 443, 2001] for L=8.17 μm and 0.26 μm. In agreement with Lipa et al., we found that a size independent effective scaling function can be recovered within experimental resolution when an empirical effective correlation-length exponent is used. As expected from theory, well away from T _λ the temperature dependence of the suppression of C _P by the confining medium is consistent with a power law with an exponent equal to α+ν=0.658. The universal ratio of the suppression at equal distances below and above the transition was measured to be R _f2=2.3±0.2. This result is consistent with the theoretical value R _f2=2.06 obtained by Bhattacharyya and Bhattacharjee and is close also to the ratio R _ξ ≃2.7 of the correlation-length amplitudes.     

Isolation and characterization of a mesophilic heavy-metals-tolerant sulfate-reducing bacterium Desulfomicrobium sp. from an enrichment culture using phosphogypsum as a sulfate source

A sulfate-reducing bacterium, was isolated from a 6 month trained enrichment culture in an anaerobic media containing phosphogypsum as a sulfate source, and, designated strain SA2. Cells of strain SA2 were rod-shaped, did not form spores and stained Gram-negative. Phylogenetic analysis of the 16S rRNA gene sequence of the isolate revealed that it was related to members of the genus Desulfomicrobium (average sequence similarity of 98%) with Desulfomicrobium baculatum being the most closely related (sequence similarity of 99%). Strain SA2 used thiosulfate, sulfate, sulfite and elemental sulfur as electron acceptors and produced sulfide. Strain SA2 reduced sulfate contained in 1-20g/L phosphogypsum to sulfide with reduction of sulfate contained in 2g/L phosphogypsum being the optimum concentration. Strain SA2 grew with metalloid, halogenated and non-metal ions present in phosphogypsum and with added high concentrations of heavy metals (125ppm Zn and 100ppm Ni, W, Li and Al). The relative order for the inhibitory metal concentrations, based on the IC(50) values, was Cu, Te>Cd>Fe, Co, Mn>F, Se>Ni, Al, Li>Zn.     

Autonomous and adaptive beaconing strategy for multi‐interfaced wireless mobile nodes

Ad hoc wireless communications rely on beaconing to manage and maintain several network operations and to share relevant network parameters among network nodes. Beacon frames are sent at the start of each beacon interval. The frequency of beaconing depends on whether beacon intervals are fixed size or may be adapted and regulated according to the perceived network and workload conditions. On the other hand, current mobile nodes usually embed several heterogeneous wireless interfaces that urge the design of an adaptive beaconing strategy. In this paper, we propose an autonomous and adaptive beaconing strategy for multi‐interfaced mobile wireless nodes that is capable of regulating the beacon interval size dynamically according to the perceived network conditions. The proposed strategy is based on a joint dynamic estimation of both the announcement traffic indication message (ATIM) window and the beyond‐ATIM window sizes for each beacon interval. Extensive simulations were conducted using OMNeT++ to ascertain the improvements achieved by autonomously regulating the entire beacon interval to take into account the network and workload conditions. Obtained results showed that the two proposed approaches improve significantly the efficiency of the network in terms of throughput, end‐to‐end delay, and power consumption. The proposed fixed beacon interval (fixed‐BI) approach stands as an enhanced version of the power‐saving multi‐channel MAC protocol (PSM‐MMAC). The proposed variable beacon interval (variable‐BI) approach, which regulates dynamically both of the ATIM and the beyond‐ATIM windows, outperforms both the fixed‐BI and the PSM‐MMAC. In particular, under nominal traffic loads, the end‐to‐end delay of the variable‐BI is much lower than those provided by the fixed‐BI and PSM‐MMAC. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.