Simultaneously achievement of high recoverable energy density and efficiency in sodium niobate-based ceramics

Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Electronics - Single lead-free Na0.73Bi0.09(Nb1???xTax)O3 (x?=?0, 0.10, 0.20, 0.30, and 0.40) ceramic phases were processed...     

Synergistic effect of high-intensity ultrasound and β-cyclodextrin treatments on browning control in apple juice

This work evaluated the synergistic effects of combined high-intensity ultrasound (HIU) with β-cyclodextrin (β-CD) treatments on inhibiting browning of apple juice and explored the mechanism through simulation system. The combined treatment of 300 W HIU with 0.006 g mL⁻¹ β-CD had a synergistic impact on maintaining juice colour, resulting in a 39.06% reduction in browning degree, only a 36.64% decrease in total phenolic content, and a 17.82% reduction in PPO activity. The inhibition of enzymatic browning in simulated system revealed that HIU suppressed the enzyme (Polyphenol oxidase, PPO) and β-CD inhibited enzyme (PPO) and embedded substrate (polyphenol). The results of spectroscopic analysis showed that the particle-size distribution of PPO narrowed, the content of α-helix in the secondary structure increased, the fluorescence intensity increased, and the maximum wavelength was red-shifted after HIU and β-CD treatment. Changes in structure could further result in PPO activity loss. Hence, the combined treatment could synthetically alleviate the browning of apple juice.     

Linguistic frequent pattern mining using a compressed structure

Traditional association-rule mining (ARM) considers only the frequency of items in a binary database, which provides insufficient knowledge for making efficient decisions and strategies. The mining of useful information from quantitative databases is not a trivial task compared to conventional algorithms in ARM. Fuzzy-set theory was invented to represent a more valuable form of knowledge for human reasoning, which can also be applied and utilized for quantitative databases. Many approaches have adopted fuzzy-set theory to transform the quantitative value into linguistic terms with its corresponding degree based on defined membership functions for the discovery of FFIs, also known as fuzzy frequent itemsets. Only linguistic terms with maximal scalar cardinality are considered in traditional fuzzy frequent itemset mining, but the uncertainty factor is not involved in past approaches. In this paper, an efficient fuzzy mining (EFM) algorithm is presented to quickly discover multiple FFIs from quantitative databases under type-2 fuzzy-set theory. A compressed fuzzy-list (CFL)-structure is developed to maintain complete information for rule generation. Two pruning techniques are developed for reducing the search space and speeding up the mining process. Several experiments are carried out to verify the efficiency and effectiveness of the designed approach in terms of runtime, the number of examined nodes, memory usage, and scalability under different minimum support thresholds and different linguistic terms used in the membership functions.

     

Egg white proteins and β-cyclodextrin: effective cryoprotectant mixture against oxidative changes in the myofibrillar proteins of Culter alburnus

The effect of egg white protein (EWP) and β-cyclodextrin (β-CD) mixture was analysed on the myofibrillar proteins (MP) of Culter alburnus during a frozen storage at −18 °C for 60 days. Different proportions of EWP:β-CD mixture (0%, 2%, 4% and 6%) were added into MP to analyse their effect against oxidative changes. During the study, sulphydryl contents and Ca-ATPase activity (0.297 to 0.136 mmol g⁻¹) decreased. Moreover, protein denaturation also prompted the surface hydrophobicity (11.47 to 32.06 μg) and carbonyls (26.36 to 49 mg.28 nmol mg⁻¹) of control MP. A significant decline was observed in emulsifying properties. Besides, EWP:β-CD showed remarkable stability against oxidative changes, by significantly reducing the carbonyls (26.26 to 37.69 nmol mg⁻¹) and surface hydrophobicity (11.51 to 20.31 μg) and also the decline of Ca-ATPase activity (0.29 to 0.19 mmol g⁻¹). It can be concluded that EWP:β-CD (6%) is an efficient approach against oxidative changes in MP from Culter alburnus.     

Natural fibers and zinc hydroxystannate 3D microspheres based composite paper sheets for modern bendable energy storage application

For modern high-tech flexible energy storage devices, it becomes important to synthesize micro-/nanostructures as per the required shape and morphology with superior physical and electro-active characteristics. This work shares the fabrication and characterization of ZnSn(OH)₆ (Zinc hydroxystannate [ZHS]) prepared by facile microwave-assisted technique and furthermore converted into flexible sheets by employing lignocelluloses (LC) known as natural fibers, collected from Carica papaya leaf petiole as a substrate to provide the flexible matrix. X-ray diffraction measurements confirm the successful crystalline structure of ZHS. Scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy showed the solid spherical structure of ZHS microspheres. Fourier transform infrared spectrometry and Raman spectroscopy confirmed the composite formation of ZHS and LC-based composite sheets (ZHS/LC sheets). Electrochemical measurements that is, cyclic voltammetry (CV), Galvanostatic charge/discharge, and electrochemical impedance (EIS) spectroscopy revealed the electroactive behavior of ZHS/LC paper sheets as working electrode for energy storage applications. CV measurements revealed the specific capacitance of 100 F/g and EIS measurements confirmed the decrease in the resistance of LC fiber after the growth of ZHS microspheres. Presented flexible ZHS based paper sheets will be highly feasible for the modern bendable/flexible/disposable energy storage applications.     

Queue length‐based load balancing in data center networks

Traffic load balancing in data centers is an important requirement. Traffic dynamics and possibilities of changes in the topology (e.g., failures and asymmetries) make load balancing a challenging task. Existing end‐host–based schemes either employ the predominantly used ECN or combine it with RTT to get congestion information of paths. Both congestion signals, ECN and RTT, have limitations; ECN only tells whether the queue length is above or below a threshold value but does not inform about the extent of congestion; similarly, RTT in data center networks is on the scale of up to few hundreds of microseconds, and current data center operating systems lack fine‐grained microsecond‐level timers. Therefore, there is a need of a new congestion signal which should give accurate information of congestion along the path. Furthermore, in end‐host–based schemes, detecting asymmetries in the topology is challenging due to the inability to accurately measure RTT on the scale of microseconds. This paper presents QLLB, an end‐host–based, queue length–based load balancing scheme. QLLB employs a new queue length–based congestion signal that gives an exact measure of congestion along the paths. Furthermore, QLLB uses relative‐RTT to detect asymmetries in the topology. QLLB is implemented in ns‐3 and compared with ECMP, CONGA, and Hermes. The results show that QLLB significantly improves performance of short flows over the other schemes and performs within acceptable level, of CONGA and Hermes, for long flows. In addition, QLLB effectively detects asymmetric paths and performs better than Hermes under high loads.     

The Prevention of Oil and Chemical Pollution: Proactive Approaches in the UK and Canada

In the UK, various initiatives have been launched in an attempt to provide guidance on the occurrence and avoidance of oil and chemical pollution. Despite these efforts, oil and chemicals remain a major cause of pollution. In Canada, similar initiatives have been more successful due to a participative approach to campaign development and implementation. This paper compares UK and Canadian initiatives and identifies factors which led to the success of the Canadian campaigns.     

Will New Antenna Materials Enable Single Path Multiple Access (SPMA)?

The aim of this paper is to introduce a novel frequency reuse concept especially for macro cellular networks to substantially increase the mobile network capacity, and simultaneously to avoid the implementation of low efficient small cells. Single path multiple access (SPMA) utilizes the characteristics of independent propagation paths for particular geographical location in the coverage area of mobile network. The proposed concept is based on the assumption that new approach will be adopted by the antenna manufacturers for producing advanced antennas by utilizing materials like metamaterials including carbon based nanotechnology, and graphene. In SPMA concept, communication between base station and mobile station happens through only single independent propagation path, and frequency resources can be reused in 5 m  \(\times \)  5 m areas or even more often in 1 m  \(\times \)  1 m areas, but limited by a base station/mobile station antenna requirement. Thus, the capacity of the network will be increased dramatically, and it can be managed in centralized manner at certain macro site locations. In already deployed cellular networks, these macro sites are mostly easily available, and that would help to implement SPMA to enhance the network capacity. Simulation results provided in this paper show the applicability of SPMA technique, by limiting the radiation of signal as single path propagation between base station and mobile station.     

Nanostructure and mechanical properties of aromatic polyamide and reactive organoclay nanocomposites

Aromatic polyamide/organoclay nanocomposites were synthesized using the solution blending technique. Treatment of montmorillonite clay with p-phenylenediamine produced reactive organophilic clay for good compatibility with the matrix. Polyamide chains were prepared by condensing a mixture of 1,4-phenylenediamine and 4-4′-oxydianiline with isophthaloyl chloride under anhydrous conditions. These chains were end capped with carbonyl chloride using 1% extra acid chloride near the end of reaction to develop the interactions with organoclay. The dispersion and structure–property relationship were monitored using FTIR, XRD, FE-SEM, TEM, DSC and tensile testing of the thin films. The structural investigations confirmed the formation of delaminated and disordered intercalated morphology with nanoclay loadings. This morphology of the nanocomposites resulted in their enhanced mechanical properties. The tensile behavior and glass transition temperature significantly augmented with increasing organoclay content showing a greater interaction between the two disparate phases.