A new nitrite ionic liquid (IL-ONO) as a nitrosonium source for the efficient diazotization of aniline derivatives and in-situ synthesis of azo dyes

A new task-specific nitrite containing ionic liquid derived from the O-nitrosation of N-methyl-N-hydroxybutylimidazolinium chloride was synthesized and used as a source of nitrosonium ion to affect the efficient diazotization of arylamines. The diazonium salts thus obtained were coupled, using standard experimental procedures, to a range of tertiary anilines, phenols and naphthols to afford the requisite azo dyes in good yield. The diazotization and subsequent azo-coupling generated the related azo dyes at 0-5 °C in short reaction times with a simple experimental procedure.     

Design,Synthesis, and Fabrication of Chitosan/Hydroxyapatite Composite Scaffold for Use as Bone Replacement Tissue by Sol–Gel Method

Journal of Inorganic and Organometallic Polymers and Materials - Injuries or bone defects are phenomena that are harmful to human health. In the field of bone scaffold tissue engineering,...     

Effect of carbon nanotube network morphology on thin film transistor performance

The properties of electronic devices based on carbon nanotube networks (CNTNs) depend on the carbon nanotube (CNT) deposition method used, which can yield a range of network morphologies. Here, we synthesize single-walled CNTs using an aerosol (floating catalyst) chemical vapor deposition process and deposit CNTs at room temperature onto substrates as random networks with various morphologies. We use four CNT deposition techniques: electrostatic or thermal precipitation, and filtration through a filter followed by press transfer or dissolving the filter. We study the mobility using pulsed measurements to avoid hysteresis, the on/off ratio, and the electrical noise properties of the CNTNs, and correlate them to the network morphology through careful imaging. Among the four deposition methods thermal precipitation is found to be a novel approach to prepare high-performance, partially aligned CNTNs that are dry-deposited directly after their synthesis. Our results provide new insight into the role of the network morphologies and offer paths towards tunable transport properties in CNT thin film transistors.      

On the self-scheduling of a power producer in uncertain trading environments

This work presents a scenario-based approach to the self-scheduling problem of a price taker power producer in a DA market. It concentrates on three categories of uncertainty including price, forced outage and generation reallocation and analyses their effects on the producer revenue. To tackle the uncertainties a set of price scenarios are so generated that their means and covariance matrix are the same as the base-case scenario. Forced outage and generation reallocation of generator for each price scenario are appropriately modeled through a probabilistic methodology. In this work Downside Risk (DR) is employed as the risk measure which quantifies the downside violations from a specified target. A risk-constrained self-scheduling problem is therefore formulated and solved as a mixed integer linear programming problem. Numerical results for a case study are discussed.     

A hardware/software platform for QoS bridging over multi-chip NoC-based systems

Recent embedded systems integrate a growing number of intellectual property cores into increasingly large designs. Implementation, prototyping, and verification of such large systems has become very challenging. One of the reasons is that chips/FPGAs resources are limited and therefore it is not always possible to implement the whole design in the traditional system-on-a-chip solutions. The state-of-the-art is to partition such systems into smaller sub-systems to implement each on a separate chip. Consequently, it requires interconnecting separate chips/FPGAs. Since Networks-on-Chip (NoCs) have become common interconnection solutions in embedded designs, we propose to bridge NoC-based SoCs enabling a generic multi-chip systems interconnection. In this context, the contribution of this paper is threefold, (i) we explore the NoC protocol stack to determine the best layer for implementing the off-chip bridge, (ii) we propose a generic hardware architecture for the bridge, and (iii) we develop a new software architecture enabling seamless configuration and communication of multi-chip NoC-based SoCs. Finally, we demonstrate performance, i.e., bandwidth and latency, of the bridge in a multi-FPGA platform, while the bridge guarantees QoS of traffic. The synthesis results indicate the implementation area cost of the bridge is only 1% of Xilinx Virtex6 FPGA.     

Learning to predict ice accretion on electric power lines

Ice accretion on power transmission and distribution lines is one of the major causes of power grid outages in northern regions. While such icing events are rare, they are very costly. Thus, it would be useful to predict how much ice will accumulate. Many current ice accretion forecasting systems use precipitation-type prediction and physical ice accretion models. These systems are based on expert knowledge and experimentations. An alternative strategy is to learn the patterns of ice accretion based on observations of previous events. This paper presents two different forecasting systems that are obtained by applying the learning algorithm of Support Vector Machines to the outputs of a Numerical Weather Prediction model. The first forecasting system relies on an icing model, just as the previous algorithms do. The second system learns an effective forecasting model directly from meteorological features. We use a rich data set of eight different icing events (from 2002 to 2008) to empirically compare the performance of the various ice accretion forecasting systems. Several experiments are conducted to investigate the effectiveness of the forecasting algorithms. Results indicate that the proposed forecasting system is significantly more accurate than other state-of-the-art algorithms.     

Formulation of apple juice beverages containing whey protein isolate or whey protein hydrolysate based on sensory and physicochemical analysis

Whey protein isolate (WPI) or its bioactive hydrolysate (WPH) was mixed with apple juice along with sweetener, obtaining a series of beverages with various pH values. Sedimentation of WPI‐apple juice and WPH‐apple juice beverages was inhibited at pH values of 3.15 and 3.47, respectively. The higher the whey protein content, the more undesirable was the taste of samples. A clearer appearance with smaller particle size was obtained with WPH‐apple juice formulations compared to WPI‐apple juice formulations at pH values closer to the pI of the whey proteins. Intrinsic viscosity measurements revealed the weaker associations of peptides compared with protein molecules.     

Application of surrogate artificial intelligent models for real‐time flood routing

Developing a robust flood forecasting and warning system (FFWS) is essential in flood‐prone areas. Hydrodynamic models, which are a major part of such systems, usually suffer from computational instabilities and long runtime problems, which are particularly important in real‐time applications. In this study, two artificial intelligence models, namely artificial neural network (ANN) and adaptive neuro‐fuzzy inference system (ANFIS), were used for flood routing in an FFWS in Madarsoo river basin, Iran. For this purpose, different rainfall patterns were transformed to run‐off hydrographs using the Hydrologic Engineering Center (HEC)‐1 hydrological model and routed along the river using HEC river analysis system RAS hydrodynamic model. Then, the simulated hydrographs with different lag times were used as inputs for training of ANN and ANFIS models to simulate flood hydrograph at the basin outlet. Results showed that the simulations obtained from ANN and ANFIS coincided with the results simulated by the HEC‐RAS, and application of such models is strongly suggested as a backup tool for flood routing in FFWSs.     

Application of Codes Performance‐Based Design Procedures for a Tall Building Using Recorded and Spectrally Modified Ground Motions

There is a growing tendency toward the performance‐based design of tall buildings, where any assessment using response history analysis requires a set of ground motion (GM) records. This paper considering a tall building as a case study investigates how judgment on the seismic safety of the structure is affected by the use of recorded or spectrally matched GMs. Three model structures are developed: (a) using conventional design procedure of Chapter 12 of ASCE 7‐16; (b) adopting linear analysis requirements of Chapter 16 of ASCE 7‐16; (c) designing for service‐level design earthquake of Los Angles Tall Building Structural Design Council (LATBSDC) procedure. It is shown that all of the structures give acceptable performance when subjected to simulated GMs, although this is not the case for amplitude‐scaled GMs based on ASCE 7‐16 and LATBSDC. Finally, to have an objective assessment of performance, independent of GM types, incremental dynamic analysis is employed to derive fragility and mean annual rate of exceeding (MAR). Results show that for anticipated drifts at Maximum Considered Earthquake (MCE) level, the structures provide acceptable MAR at the fundamental period. However, for the higher modes including the second and third periods, MAR values become acceptable only at drifts as large as 0.085.     

Palladium(II)‐Catalyzed Decarboxylative Heck Arylations of Acyclic Electron‐Rich Olefins with Internal Selectivity

Despite the recent emergence of decarboxylative C C bond forming reactions, methodologies providing internally arylated electron‐rich olefins are still lacking. We herein report on palladium(II)‐catalyzed decarboxylative Heck arylations of linear electron‐rich olefins with excellent selectivity for the internal position. The method allows a variety of electron‐rich linear olefins to undergo arylation with ortho‐functionalized aromatic carboxylic acids, including heterocycles. The reaction mechanism has been explored with ESI‐MS studies to confirm previous findings, and to reveal the formation of a highly stable palladium complex as a result of the Heck product reacting with the catalyst.