Comparative Assessment of Ambient Air Quality of Major Cities of Pakistan

The deterioration of ambient air quality is one of the emerging environmental problems in developing countries of South Asia. Unplanned urbanization, population growth, degradation of vegetation cover and industrial and vehicular emissions, particularly in urban areas, have resulted in substantial rise in the level of air pollutants and emission sources. This study focused on monitoring of different cities as per traffic volume and flow. Air quality monitoring was conducted on hourly basis to determine the major parameters; i.e. PM₁₀, NO_x, SO₂, CO by using fixed station for 8 h from 1:30 pm to 9:30 pm. All the measuring values were then compared with the National Environment Quality Standards (NEQS) and Air Quality Index (AQI). Results revealed that the concentration of PM₁₀ at the selected areas of these cities ranged from 156 to 390 μg/m³, CO ranged from 1.18 to 6.01 mg/m³, and NO_x ranged from 32.65 to 129.47 μg/m³. It was evident that all these concentration had been higher than the permissible limits of NEQS, whereas only SO₂ was found within the permissible limits (15.60–110.52 μg/m³⁾. Air Quality Index (AQI) of all the designated points of cities was also assessed, and most of the vehicular and commercial areas had shown unhealthy and severe conditions ranging from 191 to 320, respectively.

     

BlockU: Extended usage control in and for Blockchain

An electronic business transaction among untrusted bodies without consulting a mutually trusted party has remained widely accepted problem. Blockchain resolves this problem by introducing peer-to-peer network with a consensus algorithm and trusted ledger. Blockchain originally introduced for cryptocurrency that came with proof-of-work consensus algorithm. Due to some performance issues, scientists brought concept of permissioned Blockchain. Hyperledger Fabric is a permissioned Blockchain targeting business-oriented problems for industry. It is designed for efficient transaction execution over Blockchain with pluggable consensus model; however, there is limitation of rapid application development. Hyperledger introduced a new layer called Hyperledger Composer on top of the Fabric layer, which provides an abstract layer to model the business application readily and quickly. Composer provides a smart contract to extend the functionality and flexibility of Fabric layer and provides a way of communication with other systems to meet business requirements. Hyperledger Composer uses role-based access control (RBAC) model to secure access to its valuable assets. However, RBAC is not enough because many business deals require continuous assets monitoring. Our proposed model, BlockU, covers all possible access control models required by a business. BlockU can monitor assets continuously during transactions and updates attributes accordingly. Moreover, we incorporate hooks in Hyperledger Composer to implement extended permission model that provides extensive permission management capability on an asset. Subsequently, our proposed enhanced access control model is implemented with a minimal change to existing Composer code base and is backward compatible with the current security mechanism.     

Some characteristics of thermally induced martensite in Fe–30%Ni–3.6%Mo alloy

Kinetical, morphological and magnetic characteristics of thermally induced martensite in an Fe–30%Ni–3.6%Mo alloy has been studied by scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy and Mössbauer spectroscopy. Scanning electron microscope and transmission electron microscope observations revealed the occurrence of both athermal and isothermal martensitic transformation in the alloy. In addition, the magnetic properties of both the austenite and martensite phases were determined by the Mössbauer spectroscopy. The Mössbauer spectra showed a paramagnetic character for the austenite phase and an antiferromagnetic character for the martensite phase.     

Interactions between milk proteins and polyphenols: Binding mechanisms,related changes,and the future trends in the dairy industry

The biological activity and techno-functional properties of phenolic compounds have gained great importance due to the epidemiologically-proved health benefits. Use of polyphenols as fortification agents for functional food production and nanotechnological approaches using natural vehicles for polyphenol delivery have been recently discussed. In this respect, milk proteins and dairy products represent unique characteristics for polyphenol studies. The conflicting results on the functionality of polyphenols interacting with milk proteins either in model systems or in complex dairy matrices reveal the need for future studies.     

Investigation of the Molecular Structure of Turkish Asphaltenes

Abstract

Molecular structure of asphaltenes prepared from four Turkish crude oils with different origin were characterized by elemental analysis, proton nuclear magnetic resonance (¹H NMR), gel permeation chromatography (GPC) by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The X-ray diffraction method was used to investigate the crystallite and aromaticity parameters of the asphaltenes. Average distance between the aromatic sheets, average distance between the aliphatic chains, average diameter of the cluster, and average number of aromatic sheets per stack parameters were calculated for the asphaltenes. The combined NMR, FTIR, molecular weight, elemental content, and XRD results have been used to calculate hypothetical structure of the Turkish asphaltenes.     

Evaluation of heat transfer correlations for HCCI engine modeling

Combustion in HCCI engines is a controlled auto-ignition of well-mixed fuel, air and residual gas. The thermal conditions of the combustion chamber are governed by chemical kinetics strongly coupled with heat transfer from the hot gas to the walls. The heat losses have a critical effect on HCCI ignition timing and burning rate, so it is essential to understand heat transfer process in the combustion chamber in the modeling of HCCI engines. In the present paper, a comparative analysis is performed to investigate the performance of well-known heat transfer correlations in an HCCI engine. The results from the existing correlations are compared with the experimental results obtained in a single-cylinder engine. Significant differences are observed between the heat transfer results obtained by using Woschni, Assanis and Hohenberg correlations.     

Double-Wiebe function: An approach for single-zone HCCI engine modeling

Single-zone Wiebe-function HCCI combustion models tend to over-predict the peak cylinder pressure. The over-prediction arises because it is not possible for the standard Wiebe function to fully match both the slower combustion (i.e. the large spread of autoignition times) that occurs in the cooler boundary regions adjacent to the walls and the faster combustion (small spread of autoignition times) in the hot core. The slower combustion by the wall is commonly modeled with a multi-zone approach. The aim of this work was to improve the ability of a single-zone model to predict cylinder pressure without introducing a separate wall zone. This was accomplished by using, within a single zone, a double-Wiebe function combustion model in which most of the fuel burns as usual but a minor fraction (typically 10–20%) burns at a reduced rate. In the present article, cylinder pressure traces predicted by using both standard and double-Wiebe functions are compared to experimental pressure traces obtained from a Ricardo Hydra HCCI engine. The best agreement with the experiments was obtained by using double-Wiebe function approach.     

CMS Hadronic EndCap Calorimeter Upgrade Studies for SLHC “Čerenkov Light Collection From Quartz Plates”

Due to an expected increase in radiation damage under super-LHC conditions, we propose to substitute the scintillator tiles in the original design of the hadronic endcap (HE) calorimeter with quartz plates. Quartz is shown to be radiation hard. Using wavelength shifting fibers, it is possible to collect efficiently the Cerenkov light generated in quartz plates. This paper summarizes the results from various test beams, bench tests, and Geant4 simulations done on methods of collecting light from quartz plates, as well as radiation hardness tests on quartz material.     

Modeling of Thermal Performance of a Cooling Tower Using an Artificial Neural Network

Abstract

In the present study, the ability of an artificial neural network model to evaluate the thermal performance of a cooling tower, which used in the heating, ventilating, and air conditioning industries to reject heat to the atmosphere, is examined. The network is trained with the following experimental values: the ratio of the water mass flow rate to air mass flow rate, the inlet water temperature, and the outlet water temperature, and the inlet air wet-bulb temperature are selected as input variables, while the output is the coefficient of performance. It is concluded that a well-trained neural network provides fast, accurate, and consistent results, making it an easy-to use tool for preliminary engineering studies.     

Design improvements on rotary valve particle feeders used for obtaining suspended airflows

The back repulsion of low density particles, sticking of particles in feeder valve and interlocking and cohesive archs of particles in feeder hopper have been widely observed problems of a conventional rotary valve feeder used for feeding of granular particles into an airflow line. In this study, these problems of the rotary valve feeders were isolated by means of novel modifications to its conventional design. Results of the modifications showed that the modified feeder can be sensitively used to feed granular particles with mass feeding rates ranging between 5±0.15 and 85±0.85 g/s without encountering problems experienced with conventional rotary valves.