Degeneration of mechanical characteristics and performances with Zr nanoparticles inserted in Bi-2223 superconducting matrix and increment in dislocation movement and cracks propagation

This study explains the role of Zr concentration level on mechanical characteristics and performance belonging to the bulk Bi-2223 superconducting materials by means of standard Vickers microhardness (H _v ) measurements at different applied loads in the range of 0.245–2.940 N and evaluated theoretical calculations. The experimental measurement results obtained display that the mechanical performances regress with the increment of the Zr addition level due to the increased artificial disorders/damages/breaks/voids/cracks and irregular grain orientation distribution. In other words, the Zr addition accelerates both the dislocation movement and especially the cracks/voids propagation of as a consequence of the decrement in the Griffith critical crack length, being one of the most striking points deduced from this work. These vital findings are also favored by the extracted parameters of Young’s modulus, yield strength, fracture toughness and brittleness index. Nevertheless, it is found that every sample studied exhibit typical indentation size effect (ISE) behavior due to the production of the elastic and plastic deformations simultaneously in the system. Moreover, the load dependent microhardness values are theoretically analyzed with the aid of six available models such as six available approaches: Meyer’s law, proportional sample resistance model, modified proportional sample resistance model, elastic/plastic deformation, Hays–Kendall (HK) and indentation-induced cracking model for the first time. The results obtained show that the HK approach exhibits perfectly performance on the analysis of the mechanical characteristics of the superconducting materials exhibiting ISE behavior whereas the other models are inadequate to explain the load independent mechanical characteristics of the Bi-2223 system added by the Zr nanoparticles.     

An integrated on-line audio watermark decoding scheme for broadcast monitoring

This paper proposes an on-line audio watermarking system for broadcast monitoring. The designed watermark (WM) encoder is a nonlinear data adaptive system that performs perceptual embedding. It allows working at very low watermark-to-signal ratio (WSR) levels thus preserves the inaudibility. The developed decoder adopts wavelet de-noising for blind watermark extraction and it is capable of watermark decoding while establishing the synchronization between the transmitter and the receiver. Unlike the published watermarking schemes, it is shown that the introduced WM embedding scheme minimizes false alarm ratio by adaptively controlling the WSR. Furthermore it integrates synchronization and WM extraction into one processing step resulting in an on-line decoding scheme suitable to audio broadcast monitoring. The proposed system is robust to Digital-to-Analog (D/A), Analog-to-Digital (A/D) conversions, compression and noise as well as the attenuations that arise from FM broadcasting and acoustic transmission. Performance under Stirmak attacks is also reported. It is shown that error free transmission of 24 bps is achieved at around WSR = −32 dB when the PSNR is around 50 dB. Granularity of the system is 0.6 s thus it is capable of tracking short audio clips i.e. commercials.

The role of ceramic and glass science research in meeting societal challenges: Report from an NSF‐sponsored workshop

Under the sponsorship of the U.S. National Science Foundation, a workshop on emerging research opportunities in ceramic and glass science was held in September 2016. Reported here are proceedings of the workshop. The report details eight challenges identified through workshop discussions: Ceramic processing: Programmable design and assembly; The defect genome: Understanding, characterizing, and predicting defects across time and length scales; Functionalizing defects for unprecedented properties; Ceramic flatlands: Defining structure‐property relations in free‐standing, supported, and confined two‐dimensional ceramics; Ceramics in the extreme: Discovery and design strategies; Ceramics in the extreme: Behavior of multimaterial systems; Understanding and exploiting glasses and melts under extreme conditions; and Rational design of functional glasses guided by predictive modeling. It is anticipated that these challenges, once met, will promote basic understanding and ultimately enable advancements within multiple sectors, including energy, environment, manufacturing, security, and health care.     

Unsupervised classification of SAR images using normalized gamma process mixtures

We propose an image prior for the model-based nonparametric classification of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images that allows working with infinite number of mixture components. In order to enclose the spatial interactions of the pixel labels, the prior is derived by incorporating a conditional multinomial auto-logistic random field into the Normalized Gamma Process prior. In this way, we obtain an image classification prior that is free from the limitation on the number of classes and includes the smoothing constraint into classification problem. In this model, we introduced a hyper-parameter that can control the preservation of the important classes and the extinction of the weak ones. The recall rates reported on the synthetic and the real TerraSAR-X images show that the proposed model is capable of accurately classifying the pixels. Unlike the existing methods, it applies a simple iterative update scheme without performing a hierarchical clustering strategy. We demonstrate that the estimation accuracy of the proposed method in number of classes outperforms the conventional finite mixture models.     

Removal of Orange II from Aqueous Solutions Using N-Vinyl Imidazole-based Hydrogels as Adsorbents

Poly(N-vinyl imidazole) hydrogel (p-VIm) and its partially quaternized analogue (p-VIm-Ar) were prepared and used for the removal of Orange II (OII). A fourier transform infrared spectrophotometer, scanning electron microscope with an energy dispersive X-ray spectrometer attached, thermogravimetric analyzer, zeta potential analyzer, and a drop shape analyzer were used for the characterization of the hydrogels. The influence of some experimental parameters, such as pH of the OII solution, contact time, and initial OII concentration on the adsorption process, was examined, and the obtained data were used to calculate the isotherm and kinetic parameters. Adsorption processes of OII onto adsorbents were coherent with the Langmuir isotherm and pseudo-second-order kinetic models. The quaternized analogue exhibited remarkable adsorption performance in the pH range of 2–12, while the effective adsorption with p-VIm occurred only at pH 2.0. The maximum adsorption capacity values of adsorbents were determined as 2331 (for p-VIm) and 1327 mg g^?1 (for p-VIm-Ar) at pH 2.0 and 132 (for p-VIm) and 1357 mg g^?1 (for p-VIm-Ar) at pH 6.0.     

Ammonia borane-based reactive mixture for trapping and converting carbon dioxide

Ammonia borane (NH₃BH₃) is a reducing agent, able to trap and convert carbon dioxide. In the present work, we used a reactive solid consisting of a mixture of 90 wt.% of NH₃BH₃ and 10 wt.% of palladium chloride, because the mixture reacts in a fast and exothermic way while releasing H₂ and generating catalytic Pd⁰. We took advantage of such reactivity to trap and convert CO₂ (7 bar), knowing besides that Pd⁰ is a CO₂ hydrogenation catalyst. The operation (i.e. stage 1) was effective: BNH polymers, and B−O, C=O, C−O, and C−H bonds (like in BOCH₃ and BOOCH groups) were identified. We then (in stage 2) pyrolyzed the as-obtained solid at 1250 °C and washed it with water. In doing so, we isolated cyclotriboric acid H₃B₃O₆ (stemming from B₂O₃ formed at 1250 °C), hexagonal boron nitride, and graphitic carbon. In conclusion, the stage 1 showed that CO₂ can be ‘trapped’ and converted, resulting in the formation of BOCH₃ and BOOCH groups (possible sources of methanol and formic acid), and the stage 2 showed that CO₂ transforms into graphitic carbon.     

Content-based copy detection by a subspace learning based video fingerprinting scheme

We propose a video copy detection scheme that employs a transform domain global video fingerprinting method. Video fingerprinting has been performed by the subspace learning based on nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF). It is shown that the binary video fingerprints extracted from the basis and gain matrices of the NMF representation enable us to efficiently represent the spatial and temporal content of a video segment respectively. An extensive performance evaluation has been carried out on the query and reference dataset of CBCD task of TRECVID 2011. Our results are compared with the average and the best performance reported for the task. Also NDCR and F1 rates are reported in comparison to the performance achieved via the global methods designed by the TRECVID 2011 participants. Results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves higher correct detection rates with good localization capability for the transformation of text/logo insertion, strong re-encoding, frame dropping, noise addition, gamma change or their mixtures; however there is still potential for improvement to detect copies with picture-in-picture transformations. It is also concluded that the introduced binary fingerprinting scheme is superior to the existing transform based methods in terms of the compactness.     

Phytochemical Characterization of Phagnalon graecum Boiss. by HPLC and GC-MS with its Enzyme Inhibitory and Antioxidant Activity Profiling by Spectrophotometric Methods

In the current study, the n-hexane, chloroform, ethyl acetate, methanol, and water extracts of Phagnalon graecum Boiss. (Asteraceae), a spice plant, were investigated for their enzyme inhibitory activity against acetylcholinesterase, butyrylcholinesterase, lipoxygenase, tyrosinase, and antioxidant activities. Antioxidant activity of the extracts was determined by 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl radical scavenging, ferric ion-chelation activity, and ferric-reducing antioxidant power tests. Total phenol (gallic acid equivalent) and flavonoid (quercetin equivalent) contents were calculated. Essential oil of the plant was analyzed by GC-MS, while the selected phenolic acids were analyzed by HPLC. The extracts had insignificant inhibition against the tested enzymes, whereas they displayed a remarkable antioxidant activity. Therefore, to the best of our knowledge, this study presents the first data on biological activity and phytochemical content of P. graecum and this species could be utilized as potential antioxidant applicable for food preservation.