A Combined Experimental and Theoretical Approach to Study Temperature and Moisture Dynamic Characteristics of Intermittent Paddy Rice Drying

Intermittent drying of paddy rice is fully investigated both theoretically and experimentally. A model is developed to describe simultaneous heat and mass transfer for the drying stages and mass transfer for the tempering ones. The model is considered for both cylindrical and spherical geometries. The model excels in considering non-constant paddy rice and air physical properties as well as surface vaporization and convection. The consequent equations are numerically solved with finite-difference method of line using implicit Runge–Kutta. Furthermore, a set of experiments is conducted in a laboratory-scale fluidized bed dryer to estimate the moisture diffusivity of rice and evaluate the effects of different parameters. Two correlations for moisture diffusivity are derived for each geometry based on the experimental results. It is noteworthy that the geometry choice leads to significantly different moisture diffusivities. As a result, the diffusivity values obtained for spherical presentation is 2.64 times greater than that of cylinder. Moreover, the cylindrical model fits the experimental results more precisely, especially for tempering stage (AARD_cyl = 1.03%; AARD_sph = 1.53%). Model results reveal that thermal equilibrium is quickly reached within the first 2 min. Air velocity shows no influential effect on drying upon establishment of fluidized condition. In addition, drying rate is drastically improved after applying the tempering stage. A definition for tempering stage efficiency is also proposed which shows that 3 h tempering will be 80% efficient for the studied case. Rising temperature significantly improves the drying rate, while it does not contribute much in the tempering efficiency.     

Micromechanics analysis of thermal expansion and thermal pressurization of a hardened cement paste

The results of a macro-scale experimental study of the effect of heating on a fluid-saturated hardened cement paste are analysed using a multi-scale homogenization model. The analysis of the experimental results revealed that the thermal expansion coefficient of the cement paste pore fluid is anomalously higher than the one of pure bulk water. The micromechanics model is calibrated using the results of drained and undrained heating tests and permits the extrapolation of the experimentally evaluated thermal expansion and thermal pressurization parameters to cement pastes with different water-to-cement ratios. It permits also to calculate the pore volume thermal expansion coefficient α_? which is difficult to evaluate experimentally. The anomalous pore fluid thermal expansion is also analysed using the micromechanics model.     

Impacts of prior parameter distributions on Bayesian evaluation of groundwater model complexity

This study used the marginal likelihood and Bayesian posterior model probability for evaluation of model complexity in order to avoid using over-complex models for numerical simulations. It focused on investigation of the impacts of prior parameter distributions (involved in calculating the marginal likelihood) on the evaluation of model complexity. We argue that prior parameter distributions should define the parameter space in which numerical simulations are made. New perspectives on the prior parameter distribution and posterior model probability were demonstrated in an example of groundwater solute transport modeling with four models, each simulating four column experiments. The models had different levels of complexity in terms of their model structures and numbers of calibrated parameters. The posterior model probability was evaluated for four cases with different prior parameter distributions. While the distributions substantially impacted model ranking, the model ranking in each case was reasonable for the specific circumstances in which numerical simulations were made. For evaluation of model complexity, it is thus necessary to determine the parameter spaces for modeling, which can be done by conducting numerical simulation and using engineering judgment based on understanding of the system being studied.     

The effect of royal jelly and propolis alone and in combination on inhibition of Aspergillus parasiticus growth,aflatoxin production,and aflR gene expression

The objective of this study was to determine the inhibitory effect of royal jelly (RJ) and propolis on growth, aflatoxin production and aflR gene expression in Aspergillus parasiticus. Inhibitory effect of RJ and propolis against a standard strain of A. parasiticus(ATCC 15517) was determined alone and in combination in accordance with the CLSI M38-A2 and checkerboard methods, respectively. The aflatoxin concentrations in the control and treated media were determined by HPLC. Also, the quantitative changes in the aflR gene expression were analyzed. The minimum inhibitory concentrations (MIC) of RJ and propolis alone were 3,200 and 100μg/ml, respectively. Also, the MICs of RJ and propolis in combination were 200 and 25μg/ml, respectively. When combined, a synergistic interaction was observed with a FICI of 0.312. Total levels of aflatoxin decreased from 386.1ppm to 8.72, 3.01 and 1.75ppm at 1,600μg/ml of RJ, 50μg/ml of propolis and 100+12.5μg/ml of RJ and propolis, respectively. In addition, the level of afIR gene expression was significantly decreased after treatment with RJ and propolis extracts alone and with their combination. The findings reveal that RJ and propolis extracts, either alone or in combination, have a significant inhibitory effect on aflR gene expression in aflatoxin production.     

Spectrum sensing and power/rate control in CDMA cognitive radio networks

In this paper, a two‐phase algorithm for the spectrum sensing and power/rate control of a secondary user (S‐user) or cognitive radio is proposed. In the first phase, the primary base station (P‐BS), which is conscious of both the number and the data rate of primary active users (P‐user), broadcasts theitusage capacity percentage (UCP) of its cell. Since knowing only the UCP is not enough to guarantee that the total load (of P‐users and S‐users) is less than a maximum permissible load, the S‐user must measure the total interference received from both the P‐users and other S‐users. In this direction, using both the UCP and measurement of the interference received from the P‐users and the S‐users by the S‐user or secondary base station (S‐BS), we mathematically derive an equation for issuing data transmission permission, which if it is held then the second phase of the algorithm: the transmit power/rate control starts. In this phase, the S‐user and the S‐BS look for feasible values for the transmit power level and transmission rate. If there are feasible values, it starts its transmission at these feasible transmit power and rate. Since both the location of the S‐user and the channel condition vary in time, the whole algorithm is iterated periodically with a period faster than the coherence time of the channel. Furthermore, we consider the down link of the above system with cooperation among neighboring S‐users to overcome fading channels and we investigate the amount of improvement in the reliability of the issuing data transmission permission. As well, we consider the uplink of the system with multiple antennas in the S‐BS to investigate the improvement in the same parameter over spatially correlated and independent fading channels. Theoretical analysis is validated using computer simulations. Both theoretical analysis and computer simulations show that the proposed cooperative spectrum sensing algorithm performs properly at SNR = ?5dB in flat Nakagami‐m fading channels with m = 1 even in correlated fading channels. We also address the improvement of the reliability of the issuing data transmission permission in the uplink in case of using multiple antennas only in the S‐BS. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Comparison of MVDR and LCMV Beamformers’ Floating Point Implementations on FPGAs

Adaptive beamformers are designed with the aim of detection of noise and intentional destructive interference and then removing them from the desired signal. This is done by placing high attenuation in the direction of the destructive signal in the radiation pattern of antenna arrays without attenuating the signal from a known direction. Minimum variance distortionless response and linearly constrained minimum variance are among such algorithms in mobile communications. A short explanation of the theory and weights formulae of these beamformers will be given. Two designs for weights calculations in Simulink with the added library of DSP-Builder tool from Altera will be presented. Quadrature Rectangular decomposition with Modified Gram-Schmidt algorithm is used instead of the direct matrix inversion. All calculations are done in single floating point mode for the required high accuracy. Modelsim has been used for hardware simulation and measuring the required clock cycles. The target FPGA is Aria10 from Altera which has floating point DSP blocks for high-performance computations. Hardware resources usage, power consumption, maximum clock frequency and update rate for different matrix sizes of these two beamformers are compared and discussed. The results are also compared with some other relevant reported works.     

European trends in library development

The time-to-market and cost constraints of designing VLSI circuits, together with increasing complexity, necessitate a structured design methodology. Such a methodology should be based on an extensive use of libraries of generic components and previously designed macro blocks. An ideal library for modern design strategies that are based on a top-down structured approach is described. The concepts of portability, migratability, and interoperability of libraries are discussed. It is shown that libraries capitalize on knowledge gained over generations of designs, and successful libraries demand a serious effort at standardization     

Modeling Thermal Conductivity of Iranian Flat Bread Using Artificial Neural Networks

The objective of this work was to develop Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based thermal conductivity (K) prediction model for Iranian flat breads. Experimental data needed for ANN models were obtained from a pilot-scale set-up. Breads were made from three different cultivars of wheat and were baked in an eclectic oven at three different baking temperatures (232°C, 249°C and 260°C). A data set of 205 conditions was used for developing ANN and empirical models. To model K using ANN, 16 different MLP (multilayer perceptron) configurations ranging from one to two hidden layers of neurons were investigated and their prediction performances were evaluated. The (4-3-5-1)-MLP network, that is a network having two hidden layers, with three neurons in its first hidden layer and five neurons in its second hidden layer, had the best results in predicting the thermal conductivity of flat bread. For this network, R², MRE, MAE and SE were 0.988, 0.6323, 1.66×10^{? 3}, and 8.56×10^?4, respectively. Overall, ANN models (with R² ≥ 0.95) performed superior than the empirical model (with R² = 0. 870).