Fault-tolerant and real-time scheduling for mixed-criticality systems

The design and analysis of real-time scheduling algorithms for safety-critical systems is a challenging problem due to the temporal dependencies among different design constraints. This paper considers scheduling sporadic tasks with three interrelated design constraints: (i) meeting the hard deadlines of application tasks, (ii) providing fault tolerance by executing backups, and (iii) respecting the criticality of each task to facilitate system’s certification. First, a new approach to model mixed-criticality systems from the perspective of fault tolerance is proposed. Second, a uniprocessor fixed-priority scheduling algorithm, called fault-tolerant mixed-criticality (FTMC) scheduling, is designed for the proposed model. The FTMC algorithm executes backups to recover from task errors caused by hardware or software faults. Third, a sufficient schedulability test is derived, when satisfied for a (mixed-criticality) task set, guarantees that all deadlines are met even if backups are executed to recover from errors. Finally, evaluations illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed test.     

Acrylic ampholytic ionomers

In a continuing study of the preparation of ampholytic ionomers from the polymerization of ion-pair comonomers (cationic-anionic monomer pairs) with nonionic comonomers, the preparation of such ionomers from methyl methacrylate and n-butyl acrylate is described. For both systems, ionomers of varying ion contents were obtained. In the n-butyl acrylate system, a linear relationship of T_q vs. mol % ion content was found, but this did not occur for the methyl methacrylate ionomers. The solubilities of these materials in a wide variety of solvents is discussed. It appears that for n-butyl acrylate ionomers of high ion content in aqueous solution, a new form of polymeric surfactant is obtained.     

Potential of chitosan coating in delaying the postharvest anthracnose (Colletotrichum gloeosporioides Penz.) of Eksotika II papaya

The in vitro and in vivo fungicidal activity of chitosan was studied against Colletotrichum gloeosporioides, the causal agent of anthracnose in papaya fruits. Chitosan at 1.5% and 2.0% concentrations showed a fungistatic effect with 90–100% inhibition (significant at P ≤ 0.05) of the fungal mycelial growth. Changes in the conidial morphology were also observed with the higher chitosan concentrations after 7‐ h incubation. In vivo studies showed that 1.5% and 2.0% chitosan coatings on papaya not only controlled the fruit decay but also delayed the onset of disease symptoms by 3–4 weeks during 5 weeks storage at 12 ± 1 °C and slowed down the subsequent disease development. However, when leaving the fruits to ripen at ambient temperature (28 ± 2 °C), 2.0% chitosan was less effective than 1.5% in controlling the disease development. Chitosan coatings also delayed the ripening process by maintaining the firmness levels, soluble solids concentration and titratable acidity values during and after storage.     

Modeling and Diagnosing Eccentricity Fault Using Three-dimensional Magnetic Equivalent Circuit Model of Three-phase Squirrel-cage Induction Motor

This article presents the three-dimensional modeling of an induction motor using a magnetic equivalent circuit. The main goal of introducing the three-dimensional model is to include axial fluxes in the machine equations. Furthermore, enhancement of the precision of teeth flux estimation and air-gap permeances, as the most important and dominant factors, is another achievement of this model compared to that of the two-dimensional model. This increases the accuracy of the estimated torque. Although it is possible to include the impact of the bar skew in the two-dimensional modeling using a magnetic equivalent circuit, this can be included more precisely in the three-dimensional model due to the three-dimensional nature of the bar skew. Therefore, the three-dimensional model as an efficient method with rapid computations and suitable precision is used for modeling various types of eccentricity. It is shown that the three-dimensional model results are closer to the experimental results compared to that of the two-dimensional model. This confirms the merit of the three-dimensional model. Also, this method can be a proper substitution to the finite-element method in modeling a machine under fault and fault diagnosis.     

Effect of trehalose accumulation on response to saline stress in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

To examine the effect of trehalose accumulation on response to saline stress in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, we constructed deletion strains of all combinations of the trehalase genes ATH1, NTH1 and NTH2 and examined their growth behaviour and intracellular trehalose accumulation under non‐stress and saline‐stress conditions. Saline stress was induced in yeast cells by NaCl addition at the exponential growth phase. All deletion strains showed similar specific growth rates and trehalose accumulation to their parent strain under non‐stress conditions. However, under the saline stress condition, one single deletion strain, nth1Δ, two double deletion strains, nth1Δ ath1Δ and nth1Δ nth2Δ, and the triple deletion strain nth1Δnth2Δ ath1Δ, all of which carry the nth1Δ deletion, showed increased trehalose accumulation as compared to the parent and other deletion strains. In particular, our statistical analysis revealed that the triple deletion strain showed a higher growth rate under the saline stress condition than the parent strain. Moreover, some deletion strains showed further trehalose accumulation under non‐stress conditions by overexpression of the TPS1 or TPS2 genes encoding the enzymes related to trehalose biosynthesis at the mid‐exponential phase. Such increased trehalose accumulation prior to NaCl addition could improve the growth of these strains under saline stress. Our results indicate that high trehalose accumulation prior to NaCl addition, rather than after NaCl addition, is necessary to achieve high growth activity under stress conditions. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Supervised Single Channel Speech Enhancement Based on Stationary Wavelet Transforms and Non-negative Matrix Factorization with Concatenated Framing Process and Subband Smooth Ratio Mask

Journal of Signal Processing Systems - In this paper, we propose a novel single channel speech enhancement approach that takes up the Stationary Wavelet Transform (SWT) and Nonnegative Matrix...     

Optimizing acido-basic profile of support in Ni supported La2O3+Al2O3 catalyst for dry reforming of methane

The increasing alarm of global warming always draws interest in reactions like dry reforming of methane (DRM) where both global warming gases (CO₂ and CH₄) are converted into value-added chemical building blocks, such as syngas. Nickel catalyst active sites along with support acid-base profiles play a key role in DRM. Herein, xLa₂O₃+(100-x) Al₂O₃ (x = 0, 10, 15, 20%) supports are prepared and followed by NiO dispersion over the produced support by impregnation method. It was tested for DRM reaction and characterized with TGA, XRD, TEM, IR, Surface area and porosity measurement, H₂-TPR, CO₂-TPD and NH₃-TPD techniques. Upon increasing the basic lanthana proportion in the acidic alumina support, the crystallinity of alumina and acidity of total support decline. Up to 15% Lanthana addition in support claims a low acid and rich basic surface including super basic sites (related to unidentate carbonates) which governed optimum catalytic performance 64% CH₄ conversion, 79% CO₂ conversion and H₂/CO ~ 1 up to 460-min in time on stream test. 20% lanthanum oxide loading led to inferior performance due to rapid loss of surface area, pore-volume, pore diameter, acidity and medium basic strength sites. Fine-tuning of acid-base lanthana-alumina support with dispersed Ni species are a means for understanding DRM.     

Physical properties of fish gelatin-based bio-nanocomposite films incorporated with ZnO nanorods

Well-dispersed fish gelatin-based nanocomposites were prepared by adding ZnO nanorods (NRs) as fillers to aqueous gelatin. The effects of ZnO NR fillers on the mechanical, optical, and electrical properties of fish gelatin bio-nanocomposite films were investigated. Results showed an increase in Young''s modulus and tensile strength of 42% and 25% for nanocomposites incorporated with 5% ZnO NRs, respectively, compared with unfilled gelatin-based films. UV transmission decreased to zero with the addition of a small amount of ZnO NRs in the biopolymer matrix. X-ray diffraction showed an increase in the intensity of the crystal facets of (10^ī1) and (0002) with the addition of ZnO NRs in the biocomposite matrix. The surface topography of the fish gelatin films indicated an increase in surface roughness with increasing ZnO NR concentrations. The conductivity of the films also significantly increased with the addition of ZnO NRs. These results indicated that bio-nanocomposites based on ZnO NRs had great potentials for applications in packaging technology, food preservation, and UV-shielding systems.