Breaking Bad in Cyberspace: Understanding why and how Black Hat Hackers Manage their Nerves to Commit their Virtual Crimes

Information Systems Frontiers - What is happening in hacker’s minds when they are committing criminal activities? How black hat hackers manage nerves, which is about managing fear and...     

A scalable solution to the nearest neighbor search problem through local-search methods on neighbor graphs

Pattern Analysis and Applications - Nearest neighbor search is a powerful abstraction for data access; however, data indexing is troublesome even for approximate indexes. For intrinsically...     

The Resource-Energy Nexus as a Key Factor for Circular Economy

The extraction of raw materials is associated with energy input and CO₂ emissions. What is obvious for extraction from mining, however, also applies to recycling. Mostly, recycling is preferred for reasons of climate protection or because of the geological scarcity of raw materials, which is controversially discussed. While in mining, the declining ore grade is a driver for the energy demand, in case of recycling it is the dissipation of materials into products or waste. As concentration decreases, the effort required also increases disproportionately. The “closing the loop” metaphor of Circular Economy is therefore inappropriate in its stricter meaning. It is rather about optimizing the overall system and finding the optimal recycling rate. However, first, it must be clarified what the political goals for Circular Economy are.     

Compatibilization of an immiscible blend of EPDM and POM with an Ionomer

Immiscible blends of ethylene-propylene-diene-monomer (EPDM) and polyoxymethylene (POM), when EPDM is the major phase were compatibilized on the addition of an ionomer, poly(ethylene-co-methacrylic acid). The inclusion of the ionomer reduced the interfacial tension between the two phases, such that the diameter of the POM domains were significantly reduced to between 0.5 and 2 μm, typical of that required to toughen ductile polymers. The mechanical properties of the resultant compatibilized blends were significantly enhanced with increases in Young's modulus (↑54%), tensile strength (σ, ↑139%), elongation at break (ε, ↑97%), and tensile toughness (↑500%) with increasing ionomer content, relative to EPDM rubber alone. The ShoreA hardness of the compatibilized blend was 70.1 compared with 56.8 for the immiscible binary blend and, 50.2 for neat EPDM rubber.     

Studies concerning the effect of nitrogen on the oxidation behavior of TiAl-based intermetallics at 900°C

The oxidation behavior of the titanium aluminides Ti-50Al and Ti-48Al-5Nb has been investigated in Ar+20%O₂ and in air at 900°C. Thermogravimetric studies in combination with structural analyses using optical metallography, SEM/EDX and X-ray diffraction show a marked influence of nitrogen on the composition and growth rate of the oxide scales. For a more detailed study concerning the effect of nitrogen on the scale-growth kinetics, thermogravimetrical analyses were carried out during which the gas atmosphere was changed from air to Ar–O₂, and vice versa, without intermediate cooling of the specimen. The results show, that nitrogen adversely affects the formation of the initially formed alumina scale and that it enhances the growth rate of the rapidly growing Ti-rich oxide. This effect was observed in both alloys investigated, although the thermogravimetric results at first sight indicated an opposite effect for the Nb-containing alloy. This apparent contradiction is caused by internal oxidation which occurs in this alloy during exposure in Ar–O₂.     

Effect of surface condition on the oxidation behaviour of MCrAlY coatings

Coatings of the MCrAlY type (M = Ni, Co) are commonly used as overlay coatings and as bond coats (BC's) for ceramic thermal barrier coatings (TBC's) in industrial gas turbines. During high temperature service the MCrAlY coatings form aluminium based surface oxide scales. The technologically most relevant properties of the oxide scales, growth rate and adherence do not only depend on the exact MCrAlY composition but also on the surface condition after coating manufacturing. Depending on the coating manufacturing process, the MCrAlY surfaces may substantially differ in roughness. In addition the coatings may be subjected to surface treatments (e.g. shot peening, grinding or smoothening prior to deposition of TBC). In the present work the effect of the surface roughness commonly prevailing in the case of vacuum plasma sprayed MCrAlY coatings on the morphology and composition of the alumina scales formed during high-temperature oxidation was studied. For this purpose free standing coatings with rough and polished surfaces were oxidised in the temperature range from 800 to 1100 °C with exposure times up to 1000 h. The surface scale composition and morphology were analysed by optical metallography and SEM. Fluorescence spectroscopy was used for stress measurements in the oxide scales. It has been found that the oxide scales formed on rough surfaces of MCrAlY coatings have an intrinsically different morphology and growth rate compared to those formed on the flat ground surfaces.     

Pre-annealing effect of electroless Ni−B deposit as a diffusion barrier for electroplated Cu electrodes

Ni−B film of 1 μm thickness was electrolessly deposited on an electroplated Cu bus electrode. The film, which encapsulates the Cu bus electrodes, prevents Cu oxidation and serves as a diffusion barrier against Cu contamination of the transparent dielectric layer in a plasma display during the firing process at 580 °C. The microstructure of theas-deposited barrier film was amorphous phase and crystallized to Ni and Ni₃B after annealing at 300 °C. The good barrier properties observed here can be explained by Ni₃B precipitates at the grain boundaries acting as a fast diffusion path via pre-annealing at 300 °C before the firing process at 580 °C.     

The Nyquist stability criterion in the Nichols chart

The Nyquist stability criterion is a widely used technique for determining in the complex s‐plane the stability of a dynamical system with feedback. This paper presents a practical and comprehensive method to compute the Nyquist stability criterion directly in the Nichols (magnitude/phase) chart. The proposed method also gives guidelines to design controllers to stabilize unstable plants when dealing with frequency domain techniques like the quantitative feedback theory robust control. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Flexible multibody simulation using hybrid integration scheme

One issue in the dynamic simulation of flexible multibody system is poor computation efficiency, which is due to high frequency components in the solution associated with a deformable body. Standard explicit numerical methods should take very small time steps in order to satisfy the absolute stability condition for the high frequency components and, in turn, the computational efficiency deteriorates. In this study, a hybrid integration scheme is applied to solve the equations of motion of a flexible multibody system for achieving better computational efficiency. The computation times and simulation results are compared between the hybrid scheme and conventional methods. The results demonstrate that the efficiency of a flexible multibody simulation can be improved by using the hybrid scheme.     

Notes on spiking neural P systems and finite automata

Spiking neural P systems (in short, SN P systems) are membrane computing models inspired by the pulse coding of information in biological neurons. SN P systems with standard rules have neurons that emit at most one spike (the pulse) each step, and have either an input or output neuron connected to the environment. A variant known as SN P modules generalize SN P systems by using extended rules (more than one spike can be emitted each step) and a set of input and output neurons. In this work we continue relating SN P modules and finite automata. In particular, we amend and improve previous constructions for the simulatons of deterministic finite automata and state transducers. Our improvements reduce the number of neurons from three down to one, so our results are optimal. We also simulate finite automata with output, and we use these simulations to generate automatic sequences.