Structural Investigations of La-2125 Mixed Oxide Superconducting System

Crystallographic studies on the (La_{2 – x} Nd _x )Ca _y Ba₂Cu_{4 + y} O _z [y = 2x; 0.0 x 0.5] samples are carried out using neutron diffraction technique. The analysis of the neutron diffraction patterns for the series of samples with 0.0 x 0.5 was done using Rietveld method. The La₂Ba₂Cu₄Oz (La-224, x = 0.0) system exhibits tetragonal phase and is a nonsuperconductor, which on addition of a CaCuO₂ rock salt like layer becomes superconducting. It is important to note the significant role played by Ca-doping in improvising the superconducting properties. Analysis of the structural data reveals that, as Ca concentration increases, the unit cell volume decreases while T _c increases with a maximum value of 78 K for y = 1.0. The detailed crystal structure for LaNdCaBCO series of samples has been studied in the light of changes in bond lengths with increase in Ca concentration and its role in turning on the superconductivity.     

Feasibility of using a chlorination step to reduce excess sludge in activated sludge process

The ultimate disposal of excess sludge generated from activated sludge processes has been one of the most challenging problems for wastewater treatment utilities. Previous work has shown that excess sludge can be minimized successfully by using sludge ozonation to dissolve it into substrates to be oxidized in the aeration tank. However, this approach is a costly option. Therefore, as an alternative solution, we propose to use chlorination to replace ozonation in excess sludge minimization in the light of operational cost. To investigate the feasibility of this low cost approach, this paper mainly focuses on the effect of chlorination on sludge reduction rate, formation of trihalomethanes, sludge settleability, and effluent quality. Two identical activated sludge membrane bioreactors were continuously operated with synthetic wastewater under the same operation conditions for several months. During this period, one pilot unit was used as the reference system without chlorination of excess sludge, while another served as a testing unit, where excess sludge was taken out for conducting chlorination at a dose of 133mg/g MLSS every day and the chlorinated liquor was then returned to the aeration tank. The sludge production rate and the water quality of both the units were analyzed daily. It was observed that the sludge production could readily be reduced by 65% once the chlorination treatment was involved. However, the chlorination treatment also resulted in poor sludge settleability as well as significant increase of soluble chemical oxygen demand in the effluent, which creates potential difficulties in the operation of a conventional treatment plant with gravity clarifiers. However, it has been demonstrated that by integrating the immersed membrane into the activated sludge process these difficulties can be overcome effectively.     

Blobworld: image segmentation using expectation-maximization and its application to image querying

Retrieving images from large and varied collections using image content as a key is a challenging and important problem. We present a new image representation that provides a transformation from the raw pixel data to a small set of image regions that are coherent in color and texture. This "Blobworld" representation is created by clustering pixels in a joint color-texture-position feature space. The segmentation algorithm is fully automatic and has been run on a collection of 10,000 natural images. We describe a system that uses the Blobworld representation to retrieve images from this collection. An important aspect of the system is that the user is allowed to view the internal representation of the submitted image and the query results. Similar systems do not offer the user this view into the workings of the system; consequently, query results from these systems can be inexplicable, despite the availability of knobs for adjusting the similarity metrics. By finding image regions that roughly correspond to objects, we allow querying at the level of objects rather than global image properties. We present results indicating that querying for images using Blobworld produces higher precision than does querying using color and texture histograms of the entire image in cases where the image contains distinctive objects.     

Oxidation of Fe-C alloys in the temperature range 600–850°C

The oxidation behavior of Fe-C alloys in the temperature range 600–850°C has been studied. CO ₂ evolved during oxidation was measured using an infrared gas analyzer. The presence of C lowers the oxidation rate relative to that of pure Fe and this has been related to the rejection of carbon at the alloy-scale interface causing poor contact between scale and alloy. As a result, the scale contains a higher proportion of magnetite, which reduces its overall growth rate. Very little carbon is lost to the atmosphere. The ease with which the rejected carbon is incorporated into the alloy depends on the alloy structure.     

Synthesis of an EPDM graft terpolymer

Summary An EPDM graft terpolymer was prepared using the macromer poly--methylstyryldicyclopentadiene (P-MSt-DCp) as the diene with ethylene and propylene. The new material was characterized by GPC, osmometry, nmr spectrometry, and TGA measurements. Number average molecular weights are in the 24,000–29,000 range, and the polymer carries two branches per chain.     

Robust Data Hiding in Audio Using Allpass Filters

A novel technique is proposed for data hiding in digital audio that exploits the low sensitivity of the human auditory system to phase distortion. Inaudible but controlled phase changes are introduced in the host audio using a set of allpass filters (APFs) with distinct parameters of allpass filters, i.e., pole-zero locations. The APF parameters are chosen to encode the embedding information. During the detection phase, the power spectrum of the audio data is estimated in the z-plane away from the unit circle. The power spectrum is used to estimate APF pole locations, for information decoding. Experimental results show that the proposed data hiding scheme can effectively withstand standard data manipulation attacks. Moreover, the proposed scheme is shown to embed 5-8 times more data than the existing audio data hiding schemes while providing comparable perceptual performance and robustness     

Engineering Interface Composition for Passivation of HgCdTe Photodiodes

A compositionally graded surface layer has been created for the passivation of Hg_1-xCd_xTe photodiodes. The graded CdTe-Hg_1-xCd_xTe interface was created by deposition of CdTe and subsequent annealing. It was found that the composition gradient and width of the graded region could be tailored by adopting a suitable annealing procedure. The effect of grading on the interface electrical properties and photoelectrical properties was studied by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), photoconductive decay, and C-V measurements. Insulator fixed-charge density and interface-trap density could be reduced to 3times10¹⁰ cm ^-2 and 2times10¹⁰ cm^-2middoteV^-1, respectively, by creating a graded interfacial composition. The interface conditions so engineered led to a low surface recombination velocity ~3000 cm/s. A direct correlation has been established between the process conditions, interfacial composition, and the electrical/photoelectrical properties of the CdTe-Hg_1-xCd_xTe heterostructures. The passivation layer formed by this method is shown to be suitable for the fabrication of high-performance infrared detectors     

The method of lines applied to crack problems including plasticity effect

To seek stress and strain distributions in flawed structures, the governing equations in elasto-plasticity are first derived in terms of displacement increments. The method of lines is then applied to derive the sets of ordinary differential equations with appropriate boundary conditions. Their solutions are sought along continuous lines of a discretized region. They are solved by a combination of power series and modal matrix method. A step by step integration is devised to determine the displacements at nodal points. Non-linear work-hardening is taken care of by the effective stress and strain approach. The cases of uncracked and cracked hollow cylinders of finite length under axisymmetrical loadings are studied in detail. The growth of plastic zone, crack-opening displacement and J-integral along various paths are illustrated.     

Hydrodynamic and micellar properties of sodium alkyl benzene sulphonates

This paper provides hydrodynamic data and micellar properties of some sodium alkyl benzene sulphonates. The free energy of micellisation. as deduced from experimental data, is compared with that calculated from the structural parameters and shows that these sulphonates form spherical and ellipsiodal micelles in aqueous medium. The ease of micellisation and micelle size increases as one goes from sodium decyl to sodium hexadecyl benzene sulphonates. The solubilisation data of n-octane and ethyl benzene in aqueous sodium alkyl benzene sulphonate solutions above the cmc indicates that aliphatic hydrocarbons when solubilised reside within the micellar core whereas aromatic hydrocarbons reside in the micellar core as well as in the annular space between hydrodynamic shear surface and surface of the micellar core,     

Capacitance Requirements for Isolated Self Excited Induction Generators

Capacitance requirements for isolated self excitd induction generators are discussed. It is shown that numerical methods based upon the steady state as well as operational equivalent circuit give similar predicted values. An analytical method is proposed to compute, Cmin, the minimun capacitance value required for self excitation under no load conditons. It is shown that Cmin is inversely proportional to the square of the speed. Furthermore, it is inversely proportional to the maximum saturated magnetizing reactance. The theoretical results are verified experimentally for a number of test machines and a good agreement is observed between the theoretical and the experimental values. The influence of load impedance and its power factor on the terminal capacitance required to maintain self excitation under steady state is also examined and it is shown that when machine is loaded, the terminal capacitance should be several times that required at no load. Furthermore, the influence of terminal capacitor upon the maximum available output power fron isolated induction generators is also examined.