A knowledge-based scheduling system for Emergency Departments

A knowledge-based reactive scheduling system is proposed to answer the requirements of Emergency Departments (EDs). The algorithm includes detailed patient priority, arrival time, flow time and doctor load. The main aim is to determine the patients who have higher priorities initially, and then minimize their waiting times. To achieve this aim, physicians and the other related workers can use an interactive system. In this study, we evaluated the existing system by comparing the proposed system. Also, reactive scheduling cases were evaluated for some items such as decreasing the number of doctors, changing durations and entering of an urgent patient to the system. All experiments were performed with proposed algorithm and right shift rescheduling approach.     

Investigation of acetyl ferrocene migration from hydroxyl‐terminated polybutadiene based elastomers by means of ultraviolet–visible and atomic absorption spectroscopic techniques

Migration and leakage of some mobile components in rocket propellant produces an inhomogeneous composition region at which migration takes place, which can lead to premature detonation, changes in ballistic characteristics, and so on. It is, therefore, important to be able to predict the behavior of low‐molecular‐weight mobile additives and to control the leakage of them from the propellant. At this point, our chief interest was to study the magnitude of the migration and to understand the factors that influence the migration process. In this study, the migration of a ferrocene‐based burning‐rate catalyst [acetyl ferrocene (AcF)] a from hydroxyl‐terminated polybutadiene (HTPB) based elastomer in the presence of a plasticizer (dioctyl adipate) was examined in accelerated aging conditions at 60°C for various time intervals. We also tried to minimize the migration of AcF from the loaded to the unloaded part by using an extra barrier layer consisting of polyfunctional aziridine (AST D45+) in addition to the HTPB–toluene diisocyanate composition. The migration enhanced with aging of the AcF and the barrier effects of the layer with intensified crosslink density to this migration were studied extensively. The migration was monitored by both ultraviolet–visible and atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) methods. A comparison of the data obtained from both of these methods was also done. The two techniques were found to be in agreement, and the Fe determinations from both methods were highly correlated, suggesting that the data were reliable, although the AAS data were found to be symmetrically somewhat higher. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 96: 1654–1661, 2005     

The effect of tube end constraining on the axial crushing behavior of an aluminum tube

The effect of various types of end constraining on the deformation and load–displacement behavior of a 3003-H14 Al tube were experimentally and numerically studied. No effect of single-end constraining of tubes was found. Few conditions of double-end constraining tended to revert the deformation mode to mixed and/or diamond mode of deformation. Double-end constraining of tube ends further resulted in an increase in initial drop-load values, widening the initial overshot region in average load–displacement curves. The agreement between numerical and experimental results showed the capabilities of the used numerical model in order to predict end-condition effects in tubular structures.     

Matching actions in presence of camera motion

When the camera viewing an action is moving, the motion observed in the video not only contains the motion of the actor but also the motion of the camera. At each time instant, in addition to the camera motion, a different view of the action is observed. In this paper, we propose a novel method to perform action recognition in presence of camera motion. Proposed method is based on the epipolar geometry between any two views. However, instead of relating two static views using the standard fundamental matrix, we model the motions of independently moving cameras in the equations governing the epipolar geometry and derive a new relation which is referred to as the “temporal fundamental matrix.” Using the temporal fundamental matrix, a matching score between two actions is computed by evaluating the quality of the recovered geometry. We demonstrate the versatility of the proposed approach for action recognition in a number of challenging sequences.     

Radiation impedance of collapsed capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers

The radiation impedance of a capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) array is a critical parameter to achieve high performance. In this paper, we present a calculation of the radiation impedance of collapsed, clamped, circular CMUTs both analytically and using finite element method (FEM) simulations. First, we model the radiation impedance of a single collapsed CMUT cell analytically by expressing its velocity profile as a linear combination of special functions for which the generated pressures are known. For an array of collapsed CMUT cells, the mutual impedance between the cells is also taken into account. The radiation impedances for arrays of 7, 19, 37, and 61 circular collapsed CMUT cells for different contact radii are calculated both analytically and by FEM simulations. The radiation resistance of an array reaches a plateau and maintains this level for a wide frequency range. The variation of radiation reactance with respect to frequency indicates an inductance-like behavior in the same frequency range. We find that the peak radiation resistance value is reached at higher kd values in the collapsed case as compared with the uncollapsed case, where k is the wavenumber and d is the center-to-center distance between two neighboring CMUT cells.     

First‐principles based group additivity values for thermochemical properties of substituted aromatic compounds

A set of 7 Benson group additive values (GAV) together with 15 correction terms for non‐nearest neighbor interactions (NNI) is developed to calculate the gas phase standard enthalpies of formation, entropies and heat capacities of monocyclic aromatic compounds containing methyl, ethyl, vinyl, formyl, hydroxyl, and methoxy substituents. These GAVs are obtained through least squares regression of a database of thermodynamic properties of 143 molecules, calculated at the post‐Hartree–Fock G4 composite method. Out of the 15 NNIs, which account for several well‐known substituent effects in aromatic molecules, 13 have been determined for the first time. All but two group additively calculated standard enthalpies of formation agree within 4 kJ mol^?1. The entropies and the heat capacities generally deviate less than 4 J mol^?1 K^?1 from the ab initio results. Natural bond orbital analysis is utilized to identify the underlying causes of the observed NNIs. © 2015 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 61: 3858–3870, 2015     

Improvement of energy demand forecasts using swarm intelligence: The case of Turkey with projections to 2025

The energy supply and demand should be closely monitored and revised the forecasts to take account of the progress of liberalization, energy efficiency improvements, structural changes in industry and other major factors. Medium and long-term forecasting of energy demand, which is based on realistic indicators, is a prerequisite to become an industrialized country and to have high living standards. Energy planning is not possible without a reasonable knowledge of past and present energy consumption and likely future demands. Energy demand management activities should bring the demand and supply closer to a perceived optimum. Turkey's energy demand has grown rapidly almost every year and is expected to continue growing. However, the energy demand forecasts prepared by the Turkey Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources overestimate the demand. Recently many studies are performed by researchers to forecast the energy demand of Turkey. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) technique has never been used for such a study. In this study a model is proposed, using PSO-based energy demand forecasting (PSOEDF), to forecast the energy demand of Turkey more efficiently. Although there are other indicators as well, gross domestic product (GDP), population, import and export are used as basic energy indicators of energy demand. In order to show the accuracy of the algorithm, a comparison is made with the ant colony optimization (ACO) energy demand estimation model which is developed for the same problem.     

Giant Magnetoresistance and Magnetic Properties of CoFe/Cu Multilayer Films: Dependence of Electrolyte pH

The effect of NaOH with different concentrations on CoFe/Cu multilayer films was studied between pH=3.70 and pH=2.70. The effect of different electrolyte pH from 3.7 to 2.7, which was obtained at various NaOH concentrations, on CoFe/Cu multilayer films was studied. The structural studies by x-ray diffraction (XRD) revealed that the multilayers have face-centered cubic structure. The preferential orientation of the multilayer is in the (220), (111), (111), and (222) direction at pH=3.7,3.3,3.0 and 2.7, respectively. It was observed that at pH=3.0, the film composition, by energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDX), contains 3.22 at. Co % and 96.78 at. Cu %, and at low pH (2.7), 10.58 at. Co %, 4.18 at. Fe % and 85.24 at. Cu %. Magnetoresistance measurements made at room temperature showed that all films exhibited giant magnetoresistance (GMR), which was affected by the electrolyte pH. The observed GMR values are 4.0 %, 4.6 %, 4.2 %, and 12 % at the pH values of 3.7, 3.3, 3.0 and 2.7, respectively. Magnetic measurements of the films were made at ±20 kOe by using ADE EV 9 model a vibrating sample magnetometer. The magnetic measurements revealed that the coercivity of the films increased from 70 Oe to 93 Oe and stayed there, and the saturation magnetization monotonically increased form 7.40 emu/g to 17.05 emu/g with decreasing electrolyte pH from 3.7 to 2.7.