Influence of compaction on the interfacial transition zone and the permeability of concrete

The interfacial transition zone (ITZ) is regarded as a key feature for the transport properties and the durability of concrete. In this study one self-compacting concrete (SCC) mixture and two conventionally vibrated concrete (CVC) mixtures are studied in order to determine the influence of compaction on the porosity of the ITZ. Additionally oxygen permeability and water conductivity were measured in vertical and horizontal direction. The quantitative analysis of images made with an optical microscope and an environmental scanning electron microscope shows a significantly increased porosity and width of the ITZ in CVC compared to SCC. At the same time oxygen permeability and water conductivity of CVC are increased in comparison to SCC. Moreover, considerable differences in the porosity of the lower, lateral and upper ITZ are observed in both types of concrete. The anisotropic distribution of pores in the ITZ does not necessarily cause anisotropy in oxygen permeability and water conductivity though.     

Underpotential alloy formation in the system Ag(hkl)/Cd2+

The underpotential deposition (UPD) of Cd on “real” and “quasi-ideal” silver single crystal surfaces of (111) and (100) crystallographic orientation as well as on polycrystalline silver substrate has been investigated in 0.5 M Na₂SO₄ supporting electrolyte solutions. At high underpotentials 100 < ΔE < 350 mV, the UPD is characterized by a quasi-reversible adsorption/desorption of Cd whereas at low underpotentials. ΔE < 50 mV, an increase of the anodic stripping charge with the polarization time is found due to the formation of an AgCd alloy at the substrate surface. The time dependence of this process can be described by a parabolic rate law, the rate constant of which is a function of ΔE and temperature T. Relatively low activation energies of about 70 kJmol^?1 were determined from measurements at 293 ? T ? 338 K. The results are discussed in terms of a semi-infinite-linear diffusion model. The alloy formation process is assumed to be initiated by a place exchange between Ag substrate atoms and vacancy sites within a mobile Cd adsorbate layer thus forming the initial stage of a highly distorted AgCd alloy. The further growth will take place by the movement of Ag atoms through the vacancy-rich surface alloy and the simultaneous deposition of Cd at the interface AgCd/Cd²⁺.     

Energieinformatik

Due to the increasing importance of producing and consuming energy more sustainably, Energy Informatics (EI) has evolved into a thriving research area within the CS/IS community. The article attempts to characterize this young and highly dynamic field of research by describing current EI research topics and methods and provides an outlook of how the field might evolve in the future. It is shown that two general research questions have received the most attention so far and are likely to dominate the EI research agenda in the coming years: How to leverage information and communication technology (ICT) to (1) improve energy efficiency, and (2) to integrate decentralized renewable energy sources into the power grid. Selected EI streams are reviewed, highlighting how the respective research questions are broken down into specific research projects and how EI researchers have made contributions based on their individual academic background.     

Novel image fusion scheme based on dependency measure for robust multispectral palmprint recognition

Multispectral palmprint is considered as an effective biometric modality to accurately recognize a subject with high confidence. This paper presents a novel multispectral palmprint recognition system consisting of three functional blocks namely: (1) novel technique to extract Region of Interest (ROI) from the hand images acquired using a contact less sensor (2) novel image fusion scheme based on dependency measure (3) new scheme for feature extraction and classification. The proposed ROI extraction scheme is based on locating the valley regions between fingers irrespective of the hand pose. We then propose a novel image fusion scheme that combines information from different spectral bands using a Wavelet transform from various sub-bands. We then perform the statistical dependency analysis between these sub-bands to perform fusion either by selection or by weighted fusion. To effectively process the information from the fused image, we perform feature extraction using Log-Gabor transform whose feature dimension is reduced using Kernel Discriminant Analysis (KDA) before performing the classification by employing a Sparse Representation Classifier (SRC). Extensive experiments are carried out on a CASIA multispectral palmprint database that shows the strong superiority of our proposed fusion scheme when benchmarked with contemporary state-of-the-art image fusion schemes.     

Ubicon and its applications for ubiquitous social computing

The combination of ubiquitous and social computing is an emerging research area which integrates different but complementary methods, techniques, and tools. In this paper, we focus on the Ubicon platform, its applications, and a large spectrum of analysis results. Ubicon provides an extensible framework for building and hosting applications targeting both ubiquitous and social environments. We summarize the architecture and exemplify its implementation using four real-world applications built on top of Ubicon. In addition, we discuss several scientific experiments in the context of these applications in order to give a better picture of the potential of the framework, and discuss analysis results using several real-world data sets collected utilizing Ubicon.     

Airwriting: a wearable handwriting recognition system

We present a wearable input system which enables interaction through 3D handwriting recognition. Users can write text in the air as if they were using an imaginary blackboard. The handwriting gestures are captured wirelessly by motion sensors applying accelerometers and gyroscopes which are attached to the back of the hand. We propose a two-stage approach for spotting and recognition of handwriting gestures. The spotting stage uses a support vector machine to identify those data segments which contain handwriting. The recognition stage uses hidden Markov models (HMMs) to generate a text representation from the motion sensor data. Individual characters are modeled by HMMs and concatenated to word models. Our system can continuously recognize arbitrary sentences, based on a freely definable vocabulary. A statistical language model is used to enhance recognition performance and to restrict the search space. We show that continuous gesture recognition with inertial sensors is feasible for gesture vocabularies that are several orders of magnitude larger than traditional vocabularies for known systems. In a first experiment, we evaluate the spotting algorithm on a realistic data set including everyday activities. In a second experiment, we report the results from a nine-user experiment on handwritten sentence recognition. Finally, we evaluate the end-to-end system on a small but realistic data set.     

Einfluß von Lösungsmitteln auf den Partikeldurchmesser von Dispersionen anionischer Polyurethanionomerer

Aqueous dispersions of anionic polyurethanes were prepared by reaction of polyethers, 1,6-hexamethylene diisocyanate, 1,2,4-benzenetricarboxylic acid anhydride and triethyl amine. Formation of the dispersion was achieved by phase reversal or by precipitation. Phase reversal occurred when the solution or the melt of the polymer was treated with water, while precipitation took place when the solution was stirred into water. The amount of acetone used has an effect on the mean particle diameter, D?_T, obtained by turbidity measurements. There was an optimal acetone concentration at which D?_T reached a minimum. A similar effect was observed when tetrahydrofuran, 2-butanone or acetonitrile were used as solvents instead of acetone. When the dispersion was formed by precipitation, only adequately diluted acetonic solutions formed colloidal dispersions, while concentrated solutions gave dispersions with a broad particle size distribution.     

Metallo-Supramolecular Polymerization: A Route to Easy-To-Process Organic/Inorganic Hybrid Materials

The self-assembly polymerization of ditopic macromolecules via metal–ligand binding is a facile route for the preparation of metallo-supramolecular polymers (MSPs). We herein review our recent work focused on the synthesis and investigation of metallo-supramolecular polymers based on 2,6-bis(1′-methylbenzimidazolyl)pyridine endcapped poly(p-phenylene ethynylene) and poly(p-xylene) macromonomers. These materials are readily solution-processable and display appreciable mechanical properties as well as other attractive properties such as specific opto/electrical functions or high thermal stability. Our work illustrates that metallosupramolecular polymerization offers an attractive approach to assemble high-molecular-weight macromolecules from well-defined, easy to process precursors. Variation of the ditopic ligands and metal ions allows one to easily tailor the desired properties. This paper is dedicated to Professor Ian Manners and his scientific accomplishments.     

Temporal evolution of contacts and communities in networks of face-to-face human interactions

Temporal dynamics of social interaction networks as well as the analysis of communities are key aspects to gain a better understanding of the involved processes, important influence factors, their effects, and their structural implications. In this article, we analyze temporal dynamics of contacts and the evolution of communities in networks of face-to-face proximity. As our application context, we consider four scientific coil- ferences. On a structural level, we focus on static and dynamic properties of the contact graphs. Also, we analyze the resulting community structure using state-of-the-art automatic community detection algorithms. Specifically, we analyze tile evolution of contacts and communities over time to consider the stability of the respective conmmnities. Furthermore, we assess different factors which have an influence on the quality of com- munity prediction. Overall, we provide first important insights into the evolution of contacts and communities in face-to-face contact networks.     

PID auf Aneuploidie des Embryos?

Definition of problem

At least in some cases, testing for aneuploidy as part of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) can be medically useful for pregnancy care. The current legal situation in Germany seems to not generally exclude PGD to detect a maldistribution of chromosomes in an embryo, but testing would require approval by a PGD ethics committee on a case-by-case basis and a well-reasoned application by the concerned woman. This article examines ethically and legally whether fundamental reasons prevent PGD commissions from admitting requests to perform aneuploidy tests as part of PGD.

Arguments

Three constellations – each with differing ethical implications – can be distinguished in which testing for aneuploidy could be considered or could occur: Testing for aneuploidy can (i) be the main reason for in vitro fertilization (IVF), which in itself is not medically indicated; (ii) IVF is done as infertility treatment in which case PGD and aneuploidy testing could be done additionally; or (iii) PGD with IVF is indicated in order to prevent a congenital disease or chromosomal aberration leading to a diagnosis of aneuploidy as an incidental or additional finding. Ethical arguments which could lead to a general rejection of aneuploidy testing are the prevention of discrimination against people with aneuploidy, as well as the protection of embryos. These concerns oppose constellation (i), but do not apply to (ii) and (iii). Yet there are at least three ethical arguments in favour of an admissibility of a request for aneuploidy testing: the “good practice” of IVF, the duty to the emerging child and the parent’s right to have a voice in the discussion.

Conclusion

Aneuploidy testing as part of PGD is not ruled out by legal or ethical reasons and should be openly discussed by the relevant German ethics commissions.