Synthesis of fluorescent PVA/polypyrrole-ZnO nanofibers

Electro spinning is a simple and efficient technique to produce polymer nanofibers. Here, we describe the preparation of electrospun PVA/PPy–ZnO fluorescent fibers and discuss their characterization by use of UV–Vis and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopies, and fluorescence and scanning electron microscopies. These hybrid organic–inorganic fibers exhibit a visible emission of 526 nm with a well-defined green color, as the ZnO–NPs fluorescence emission at 390 nm is quenched. The scanning electronic microscopy images reveal that the fibers present an average diameter of 324 nm and good surface quality. We have observed that their Ohmic behavior is light sensitive as the charge transport along the fibers is highly affected by UV illumination. Since this is a reversible effect, and a quick recovery of the electrical resistance original value occurs right after the incident UV light is turned off, we suggest that these organic–inorganic materials can find useful applications in the preparation of various polymer-based micro and nano optoelectronic devices, such as low-cost flexible photovoltaic devices and UV sensors.     

A design-oriented method to build correct hypermedia documents

Over the years, different approaches to identify temporal and spatial conflicts in hypermedia applications has been proposed. Most of them are based on formal verification techniques and impose to the designers to follow a formal model or language to ensure application’s functional correctness. Furthermore, the error diagnose is hard to be interpreted by a non-specialist in this domain. In this paper, we present an approach which supports formal verification for documents written in markup languages. We proposed a method and built a verification toolchain that helps designers to verify time and spatial constraints in hypermedia applications. The input language is the designer language. Its translation towards the input of toolchain is automatic and transparent for the application designer. The errors scenarios provided by the verification tool are presented in a timeline way, easily understandable by the designer. The method and toolchain support different markup languages translated in the same intermediary language in order to facilitate the use of different verification tools in the same environment.

     

REUSE: A combined routing and link scheduling mechanism for wireless mesh networks

Increasing the capacity of wireless mesh networks has motivated numerous studies. In this context, the cross-layer optimization techniques involving joint use of routing and link scheduling are able to provide better capacity improvements. Most works in the literature propose linear programming models to combine both mechanisms. However, this approach has high computational complexity and cannot be extended to large-scale networks. Alternatively, algorithmic solutions are less complex and can obtain capacity values close to the optimal. Thus, we propose the REUSE algorithm, which combines routing and link scheduling and aims to increase throughput capacity in wireless mesh networks. Through simulations, the performance of the proposal is compared to a developed linear programming model, which provides optimal results, and to other proposed mechanisms in the literature that also deal with the problem algorithmically. We observed higher values of capacity in favor of our proposal when compared to the benchmark algorithms.     

Multivariate mixture modeling using skew-normal independent distributions

In this paper we consider a flexible class of models, with elements that are finite mixtures of multivariate skew-normal independent distributions. A general EM-type algorithm is employed for iteratively computing parameter estimates and this is discussed with emphasis on finite mixtures of skew-normal, skew-t, skew-slash and skew-contaminated normal distributions. Further, a general information-based method for approximating the asymptotic covariance matrix of the estimates is also presented. The accuracy of the associated estimates and the efficiency of some information criteria are evaluated via simulation studies. Results obtained from the analysis of artificial and real data sets are reported illustrating the usefulness of the proposed methodology. The proposed EM-type algorithm and methods are implemented in the R package mixsmsn.     

Improved representation and genetic operators for linear genetic programming for automated program repair

Genetic improvement for program repair can fix bugs or otherwise improve software via patch evolution. Consider GenProg, a prototypical technique of this type. GenProg’s crossover and mutation operators manipulate individuals represented as patches. A patch is composed of high-granularity edits that indivisibly comprise an edit operation, a faulty location, and a fix statement used in replacement or insertions. We observe that recombination and mutation of such high-level units limits the technique’s ability to effectively traverse and recombine the repair search spaces. We propose a reformulation of program repair representation, crossover, and mutation operators such that they explicitly traverse the three subspaces that underlie the search problem: the Operator, Fault and Fix Spaces. We provide experimental evidence validating our insight, showing that the operators provide considerable improvement over the baseline repair algorithm in terms of search success rate and efficiency. We also conduct a genotypic distance analysis over the various types of search, providing insight as to the influence of the operators on the program repair search problem.     

The traveling tournament problem with predefined venues

Sports scheduling is a very attractive application area not only because of the interesting mathematical structures of the problems, but also due to their importance in practice and to the big business that sports have become. In this paper, we introduce the Traveling Tournament Problem with Predefined Venues, which consists in scheduling a compact single round robin tournament with a predefined venue assignment for each game (i.e., the venue where each game takes place is known beforehand) while the total distance traveled by the teams is minimized. Three integer programming formulations are proposed and compared. We also propose some simple enumeration strategies to generate feasible solutions to real-size instances in a reasonable amount of time. We show that two original enumeration strategies outperform an improvement heuristic embedded within a commercial solver. Comparative numerical results are presented.     

Designing data warehouses with OO conceptual models

The authors propose an approach that provides a theoretical foundation for the use of object-oriented databases and object-relational databases in data warehouse, multidimensional database, and online analytical processing applications. This approach introduces a set of minimal constraints and extensions to the Unified Modeling Language for representing multidimensional modeling properties for these applications. Multidimensional modeling offers two benefits. First, the model closely parallels how data analyzers think and, therefore, helps users understand data. Second, multidimensional modeling helps predict what final users want to do, thereby facilitating performance improvements. The authors are using their approach to create an automatic implementation of a multidimensional model. They plan to integrate commercial online-analytical-processing tool facilities within their GOLD model case tool as well, a task that involves data warehouse prototyping and sample data generation issues     

Worst-Case Robust MIMO Transmission With Imperfect Channel Knowledge

In this paper, we consider robust transmit strategies, against the imperfectness of the channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT), for multi-input multi-output (MIMO) communication systems. Following a worst-case deterministic model, the actual channel is assumed to be inside an ellipsoid centered at a nominal channel. The objective is to maximize the worst-case received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), or to minimize the worst-case Chernoff bound of the error probability, thus leading to a maximin problem. Moreover, we also consider the QoS problem, as a complement of the maximin design, which minimizes the transmit power consumption and meanwhile keeps the received SNR above a given threshold for any channel realization in the ellipsoid. It is shown that, for a general class of power constraints, both the maximin and QoS problems can be equivalently transformed into convex problems, or even further into semidefinite programs (SDPs), thus efficiently solvable by the numerical methods. The most interesting result is that the optimal transmit directions, i.e., the eigenvectors of the transmit covariance, are just the right singular vectors of the nominal channel under some mild conditions. This result leads to a channel-diagonalizing structure, as in the cases of perfect CSIT and statistical CSIT with mean or covariance feedback, and reduces the complicated matrix-valued problem to a scalar power allocation problem. Then we provide the closed-form solution to the resulting power allocation problem.     

Control of chaos and its relevancy to spacecraft steering

In 1990, a seminal work named controlling chaos showed that not only the chaotic evolution could be controlled, but also the complexity inherent in the chaotic dynamics could be exploited to provide a unique level of flexibility and efficiency in technological uses of this phenomenon. Control of chaos is also making substantial contribution in the field of astrodynamics, especially related to the exciting issue of low-energy transfer. The purpose of this work is to bring up the main ideas regarding the control of chaos and targeting, and to show how these techniques can be extended to Hamiltonian situations. We give realistic examples related to astrodynamics problems, in which these techniques are unique in terms of efficiency related to low-energy spacecraft transfer and in-orbit stabilization.