Effect of milling and reinforcement on mechanical properties of nanostructured magnesium composite

Recycled Mg chips were used to synthesize nanostructured Mg composite of Mg–5 wt%Al reinforced with x wt% (x = 1, 2 and 5) in-situ formed AlN powder. Mechanical milling was employed to produce the composite powder of crystalline size 30–43 nm. The mechanically milled (MMed) powders were subjected to uniaxial pressing, sintering and hot extrusion processes to produce bulk solid samples. After sintering at 400 °C and hot extrusion at 350 °C, the crystalline size of the composite samples still remains in nanometer range from 52 to 84 nm. The effect of milling and the percentage of reinforced AlN on the mechanical properties such as tensile strength and ductility were discussed with the general explanation of deformation mechanisms involved.     

Resistance of plain and blended cement mortars exposed to severe sulfate attacks

To emphasize the effect of physical sulfate attack on pozzolanic additions, the resistance of plain and blended cement mortars was investigated using 10% Na₂SO₄ and MgSO₄ solutions under four exposure regimes which included the standard conventional exposure and field-like exposures that created the physical sulfate attack. Although the performance of blended cement mortars was observed to be better under a conventional exposure regime, the damage in blended cement mortars was more severe under the exposure regimes that promoted the physical sulfate attack in a Na₂SO₄ environment. However, the physical attack by MgSO₄ was not apparent. Overall, MgSO₄ was found to be more damaging than Na₂SO₄ from the aspect of chemical attack; however Na₂SO₄ was more harmful than MgSO₄ as far as the physical attack is considered.     

Prognostics of slow speed bearings using a composite integrated Gaussian process regression model

Prognostics of manufacturing systems enables improved maintenance scheduling and cost reduction through reduced downtime, improved allocation of maintenance resources and reduced consequential costs of breakdowns. Prognostics are necessary for predictive maintenance of bearings in manufacturing systems. The findings show that in general the composite integrated GPR models perform better than the simple mean simple covariance GPR models, irrespective of whether the training or test sets are dependent or independent. In this investigation the Affine Mean GPR (AMGPR) was found to be the most effective prognostic model for prognostics of slow speed bearings on both dependent and independent data samples.     

Performance of SCHT Sequences in Asynchronous CDMA System

In this letter, the performance of a new set of spreading sequences for a direct sequence (DS) code division multiple access (CDMA) system is examined. These new sequences are derived from sequency-ordered complex Hadamard transform (SCHT). Various correlation properties are presented and the performance of the new sequence is analyzed by comparing it with the other well-known existing spreading sequences, such as UCHT, WHT, Gold, small set of Kasami and m-sequences. According to the simulation results, it is shown that the SCHT sequences provide smaller mean square cross correlation values and offer better average bit error rate for an asynchronous CDMA system over the multipath fading channel.     

Supercritical water gasification of Victorian brown coal: Experimental characterisation

Supercritical water gasification is an innovative thermochemical conversion method for converting wet feedstocks into hydrogen-rich gaseous products. The non-catalytic gasification characteristics of Victorian brown coal were investigated in supercritical water by using a novel immersion technique with quartz batch reactors. Various operating parameters such as temperature, feed concentration and reaction time were varied to investigate their effect on the gasification behaviour. Gas yields, carbon gasification efficiency and the total gasification efficiency increased with increasing temperature and reaction time, and decreasing feed concentration. The mole fraction of hydrogen in the product gases was lowest at 600 °C, and increased to over 30 % at a temperature of 800 °C. Varying parameters, especially reaction time, did not improve the coal utilisation for gas production significantly and the measured data showed a large deviation from the equilibrium level.     

Breaking the Fourth Wall: Modulating Quaternary Associations for Protein Regulation and Drug Discovery

Protein–protein interactions (PPIs) are an effective means to orchestrate intricate biological processes required to sustain life. Approximately 650 000 PPIs underlie the human interactome; thus underscoring its complexity and the manifold signaling outputs altered in response to changes in specific PPIs. This minireview illustrates the growing arsenal of PPI assemblies and offers insights into how these varied PPI regulatory modalities are relevant to customized drug discovery, with a focus on cancer. First, known and emerging PPIs and PPI-targeted drugs of both natural and synthetic origin are categorized. Building on these discussions, the merits of PPI-guided therapeutics over traditional drug design are discussed. Finally, a compare-and-contrast section for different PPI blockers, with gain-of-function PPI interventions, such as PROTACS, is provided.     

A Robust Watermarking Scheme Using Sequency-ordered Complex Hadamard Transform

This paper presents a robust phase watermarking scheme for still digital images based on the sequency-ordered complex Hadamard transform (SCHT). The transform matrix of the SCHT exhibits sequency ordering which is analogous to frequency in the discrete Fourier transform (DFT). Hence, sequency-based image analysis can be performed for image watermarking while providing simple implementation and with less computational complexity for computation of the transform. As the SCHT coefficients are complex numbers which consist of both magnitudes and phases, they are suited to adopt phase modulation techniques to embed the watermark. In this proposed scheme, the phases of the SCHT coefficients in the sequency domain are altered to convey the watermark information using the phase shift keying (PSK) modulation. Low amplitude block selection (LABS) is used to enhance the imperceptibility of digital watermark, and amplitude boost (AB) method is employed to improve the robustness of the watermarking scheme. Spread spectrum (SS) technique is adopted to increase the security of watermark against various unintentional or intentional attacks. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed watermarking scheme, simulations are conducted under various kinds of attacking operations. The results show that the proposed scheme is able to sustain a series of attacks including common geometric transformations such as scaling, rotating, cropping, painting, and common image-processing operations such as JPEG compression, low-pass filtering, sharpening, noising and phase perturbation, etc. Comparisons of the simulation results with the other schemes are also mentioned and the results reveal that the proposed scheme shows better robustness.     

Opening the door on refrigerator energy consumption: quantifying the key drivers in the home

There is little concrete understanding of the energy consumption of refrigerating appliances during normal use or the main influences on their energy consumption. To date, no widely accepted method to disaggregate measured energy consumption measured in the home into its key components has been demonstrated. This paper examines the main external factors that impact on the energy consumption of existing refrigerating appliances in the home and how they respond to changing conditions, namely: room air temperature, defrosting behaviour and user interactions. Analysis of field data from 235 homes in Australia demonstrates that room air temperature is by far the largest factor accounting for typically around 75% of total energy consumption. Where present, energy used for defrosting is relatively small at around 10%, but this does vary by household and the type of defrost controller. User interactions typically account for 15% of total energy consumed by main household refrigerating appliances, but this varies from a few percent to as much as 45% in large households. The method set out in this paper provides a basis for more in depth analysis and a better understanding of energy consumption of household refrigerators in different regions.