Effect of Initial Annealing Temperature on Microstructural Development and Microhardness in High‐Purity Copper Processed by High‐Pressure Torsion

The effect of the initial annealing temperature on the evolution of microstructure and microhardness in high purity OFHC Cu is investigated after processing by HPT. Disks of Cu are annealed for 1 h at two different annealing temperatures, 400 and 800 °C, and then processed by HPT at room temperature under a pressure of 6.0 GPa for 1/4, 1/2, 1, 5, and 10 turns. Samples are stored for 6 months after HPT processing to examine the self‐annealing effects. Electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD) measurements are recorded for each disk at three positions: center, mid‐radius, and near edge. Microhardness measurements are also recorded along the diameters of each disk. Both alloys show rapid hardening and then strain softening in the very early stages of straining due to self‐annealing with a clear delay in the onset of softening in the alloy initially annealed at 800 °C. This delay is due to the relatively larger initial grain size compared to the alloy initially annealed at 400 °C. The final microstructures consist of homogeneous fine grains having average sizes of ≈0.28 and ≈0.34 µm for the alloys initially annealed at 400 and 800 °C, respectively. A new model is proposed to describe the behavior of the hardness evolution by HPT in high purity OFHC Cu.     

Distribution of phosphorylated GAP-43 (neuromodulin) in growth cones directly reflects growth cone behavior

Phosphorylation of GAP-43 (neuromodulin) by protein kinase C (PKC) occurs at a single site, serine41. In vivo, phosphorylation is induced after initiation of axonogenesis and is confined to distal axons and growth cones. Within individual growth cones, phosphorylation is nonuniformly distributed. Here, we have used high-resolution video-enhanced microscopy of cultured dorsal root ganglia neurons together with immunocytochemistry with a monoclonal antibody that recognizes PKC-phosphorylated GAP-43 to correlate the distribution of phosphorylated GAP-43 with growth cone behavior. In "quiescent," nontranslocating growth cones, phosphorylated GAP-43 was confined to the proximal neurite and the central organelle-rich region, and was low in organelle-poor lamellae. However, levels in lamellae were elevated when they became motile. Conversely, levels of phosphorylated GAP-43 were low in either lamellae that were actively retracting or in the central organelle-rich region and proximal neurite of growth cones that had totally collapsed. The results suggest a mechanism whereby phosphorylation of GAP-43 by PKC, potentially in response to extracellular signals, could direct the functional behavior of the growth cone.     

Adaptive predistortion using threshold decomposition‐based piecewise linear modeling

A new adaptive predistortion approach for nonlinear power amplifiers based on the piecewise linear (PWL) approximation of nonlinear functions is presented. The PWL model is obtained using threshold decomposition (TD) of the input‐output characteristics. The TD based PWL model is used to develop a baseband predistorter using both the direct and the indirect learning architectures. The proposed predistorter is proved to provide a better performance in suppressing nonlinear distortion than conventional polynomial predistorters and a reduced hardware complexity as compared to lookup table (LUT) approach. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2011.     

Hybrid metaheuristics for scheduling of machines and transport robots in job shop environment

In real manufacturing environments, the control of some elements in systems based on robotic cells, such as transport robots has some difficulties when planning operations dynamically. The Job Shop scheduling Problem with Transportation times and Many Robots (JSPT-MR) is a generalization of the classical Job Shop scheduling Problem (JSP) where a set of jobs additionally have to be transported between machines by several transport robots. Hence, the JSPT-MR is more computationally difficult than the JSP presenting two NP-hard problems simultaneously: the job shop scheduling problem and the robot routing problem. This paper proposes a hybrid metaheuristic approach based on clustered holonic multiagent model for the JSPT-MR. Firstly, a scheduler agent applies a Neighborhood-based Genetic Algorithm (NGA) for a global exploration of the search space. Secondly, a set of cluster agents uses a tabu search technique to guide the research in promising regions. Computational results are presented using two sets of benchmark literature instances. New upper bounds are found, showing the effectiveness of the presented approach.     

Existence of optimal controls for systems driven by FBSDEs

We prove the existence of optimal relaxed controls as well as strict optimal controls for systems governed by non linear forward-backward stochastic differential equations (FBSDEs). Our approach is based on weak convergence techniques for the associated FBSDEs in the Jakubowski S-topology and a suitable Skorokhod representation theorem.     

Improved Approximations for Guarding 1.5-Dimensional Terrains

We present a 4-approximation algorithm for the problem of placing the fewest guards on a 1.5D terrain so that every point of the terrain is seen by at least one guard. This improves on the previous best approximation factor of 5 (see King in Proceedings of the 13th Latin American Symposium on Theoretical Informatics, pp. 629–640, 2006). Unlike most of the previous techniques, our method is based on rounding the linear programming relaxation of the corresponding covering problem. Besides the simplicity of the analysis, which mainly relies on decomposing the constraint matrix of the LP into totally balanced matrices, our algorithm, unlike previous work, generalizes to the weighted and partial versions of the basic problem.     

Dejittering in the transport of MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 video

When multimedia information is transported over a packet-switched network, the quality of presentation can be degraded due to network delay variation or jitter. This paper presents a dejittering scheme that can be used in the transport of MPEG-4 and MPEG-2 video to absorb any introduced network jitter, thus preserving the presentation quality of transported media streams. The dejittering scheme is based on the statistical approximation of delay variation in the arrival times of video packets carrying encoded clock reference values and a filtering and re-stamping mechanism. In addition, a brief overview of the MPEG-4 system is presented.     

Roll manufacturing of flexible microfluidic devices in thin PMMA and COC foils by embossing and lamination

Microfluidics on foil is gaining momentum due to a number of advantages of employing thin films combined with the capability of cost-effective high-volume manufacturing of devices. In this work, ultra-thin, flexible Y-microreactors with microchannels of 100 μm width and 30 μm depth were fabricated in thermoplastic polymer foils. The fluidic pattern was hot roll embossed in 125 μm thick poly-methyl-methacrylate (PMMA) and 130 μm thick cyclic-olefin-copolymer (COC) films using a dry-etched microstructured silicon wafer as a flat embossing tool in a laminator. The sealing of the channels was performed with two different techniques, one based on lamination of SU8 dry film resist (DFR) and the other one based on spin-coated poly-dimethylsiloxane (PDMS). Testing of the interconnected microreactor was carried out using two dye colorant solutions to demonstrate mixing.     

Control of Corrosion-Induced Damage in Reinforced Concrete Beams Using Carbon Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Laminates

This paper presents the results of an experimental study conducted to investigate the effect of carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) confinement on the cracking damage induced by impressed current-accelerated corrosion of reinforced concrete beams. The beams were 254?mm deep by 152?mm wide by 3,200?mm long. Two different corrosion configurations, namely uniform and shear-span corrosion, were investigated in eight specimens at three different degrees of corrosion (5, 10, and 15% theoretical mass loss). Uniform corrosion along the whole length of the beams (3,000?mm) and shear-span corrosion (900?mm from each beam end) were considered. The different degrees of corrosion were induced using an accelerated corrosion technique with an impressed current. Based on the results, it was concluded that CFRP laminate confinement reduces corrosion expansion by up to 70% and slows the rate of corrosion through decreasing the corrosion mass loss by up to 35%.