Wind turbine power curve estimation based on cluster center fuzzy logic modeling

Wind energy applications and turbine installation at different scales have been increased for last decade. Technically wind turbine capacity has been improved at high levels. However, electricity could not be generated at all stages of wind speed and so there are some limits related to cut-in and cut-out data. One of the main problems in wind engineering is to estimate output data of wind turbines depends on wind speed and system values. Wind speed problematic values, that are less than cut-in and greater than cut-out, take the most important role for estimating wind power curve models. All wind turbines have different cut-in and cut-out limits and generating of electricity could be achieved in a certain interval that could be called as affective interval. Fuzzy logic that is a new and novel verbal logical approach has many applications in the field of engineering. Cluster center fuzzy logic modeling is also a new and the effective method in this scientific area. In this paper, the first power curve of a wind turbine is modeled by least square methodology. After that depending on the fuzzy logic approach a new application is realized. It is seen that, this curve type could be well represented and modeled by the clustering center fuzzy logic modeling than classical least square methodology. It is estimated that four or five cluster centers are enough for representing wind turbine power curve by running proposed method.     

Whole-Cell Fatty Acid Composition of Total Coliforms to Predict Sources of Fecal Contamination

The objective of this study was to test the hypothesis that total coliforms isolated from human and nonhuman sources have distinctly different whole-cell fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) profiles. The FAME profiles studied included total coliforms isolated from sewage; feces of livestock, including bovine (dairy cattle), poultry, and swine; and feces of wildlife, including waterfowl and deer. Multiple samples within each category were collected and 303 total coliform isolates were cultured. It was found that the FAMEs 12:0 2OH and 14:0 2OH were exclusively associated with sewage samples, whereas the FAMEs 18:0 and 19:0 ISO were identified only in isolates from the livestock samples. In addition to the presence of signature FAMEs, the average relative masses of 16:1 ω7c, 18:1 ω7c, and 19:0 CYCLO ω8c were significantly different between human and nonhuman sources of total coliforms. A linear discriminant function based on these differences discriminated total coliform isolates of human origin against the other five host categories at a 77% rate of correct classification (RCC). These results strongly support the validity of our hypothesis and suggest that the FAME profiles of total coliforms have the potential to be used as a phenotypic microbial source tracking (MST) tool for predicting the sources of microbial contamination in water environments.     

Odor control during post-digestion processing of biosolids through bioaugmentation of anaerobic digestion.

The effects of bioaugmenting anaerobic biosolids digestion with a commercial product that contained selected strains of bacteria from genera Bacillus, Pseudomonas, and Actinomycetes, along with ancillary organic compounds containing various micronutrients were evaluated. The main objective of the study was to investigate the effects of bioaugmentation specifically on the performance of methanogenesis during anaerobic digestion, as well as on the generation and fate of odor-causing compounds during the storage of the digested biosolids. The bench-scale digester with 5 g/L bioaugment generated 29% more net CH4 than a control during the eight weeks of operation. In addition, the average residual propionic acid concentration in the bioaugmented digester was 46% lower than that in the control. The biosolids digested in the bioaugmented digester generated a negligible amount of methyl mercaptan (CH3SH) during 10 days of post-digestion storage, while CH3SH concentration in the control reached nearly 300 ppmv during the same period. Similarly peak dimethyl sulfide (CH3SCH3) generated by stored biosolids from the bioaugmented digester was only 37% of that from the control. Similar results were obtained in a subsequent short term study designed to confirm the repeatability of the findings.     

Effect of turbulent flow on the anodic and cathodic kinetics of API X52 steel corrosion in H2S containing solutions. A rotating cylinder electrode study

This work presents the electrochemical kinetics results measured during the corrosion of API X52 pipeline steel immersed in aqueous environments, containing dissolved hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) under turbulent flow conditions. In order to control the turbulent flow conditions, a rotating cylinder electrode (RCE) was used. Five different rotation rates were studied: 0 (or static conditions), 1000, 3000, 5000 and 7000 rpm. It was found that the turbulent flow increases the corrosion rate and the corrosion mechanism for X52 steel exhibits a significant dependence on mass transfer on the cathodic kinetics.     

Effects of extensive crossfostering on performance of pigs on a farm

OBJECTIVE: To compare mortality and growth rates of pigs subjected to continuous or limited crossfostering. DESIGN: Prospective study. ANIMALS: 80 liters containing 879 pigs. PROCEDURE: In half of the litters, crossfostering was limited to the first 2 days of life. In the other litters, pigs were crossfostered throughout the lactation period to maintain uniform body weights within litters. RESULTS: Restricting crossfostering to the first 2 days of life resulted in a 20% increase in body weight at weaning, compared with crossfostering throughout the nursing period. Mortality rates did not differ between the limited and continuous crossfostering groups. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: The emphasis placed on reducing variation of body weights within litters is unwarranted and veterinarians should advise limiting crossfostering to the first 2 days of life. Excessive crossfostering late in the nursing period may be identified by low within-litter SD of mean body weight.     

Minimizing the multimodal functions with Ant Colony Optimization approach

The ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithms, which are inspired by the behaviour of ants to find solutions to combinatorial optimization problem, are multi-agent systems. This paper presents the ACO-based algorithm that is used to find the global minimum of a nonconvex function. The algorithm is based on that each ant searches only around the best solution of the previous iteration. This algorithm was tested on some standard test functions, and successful results were obtained. Its performance was compared with the other algorithms, and was observed to be better.     

A Proposal for Error Handling in OpenMP

OpenMP has been focused in performance applied to numerical applications, but when we try to move this focus to other kind of applications, like Web servers, we detect one important lack. In these applications, performance is important, but reliability is even more important, and OpenMP does not have any recovery mechanism. In this paper we present a novel proposal to address this lack. In order to add error handling to OpenMP we propose some extensions to the current OpenMP specification. A directive and a clause are proposed, defining a scope for the error handling (where the error can occur) and specifying a behaviour for handling the specific errors. Some examples of use are presented, and we present also an evaluation showing the impact of this proposal in OpenMP applications. We show that this impact is low enough to consider the proposal worthwhile for OpenMP.     

The Design of OpenMP Tasks

OpenMP has been very successful in exploiting structured parallelism in applications. With increasing application complexity, there is a growing need for addressing irregular parallelism in the presence of complicated control structures. This is evident in various efforts by the industry and research communities to provide a solution to this challenging problem. One of the primary goals of OpenMP 3.0 is to define a standard dialect to express and efficiently exploit unstructured parallelism. This paper presents the design of the OpenMP tasking model by members of the OpenMP 3.0 tasking sub-committee which was formed for this purpose. The paper summarizes the efforts of the sub-committee (spanning over two years) in designing, evaluating and seamlessly integrating the tasking model into the OpenMP specification. In this paper, we present the design goals and key features of the tasking model, including a rich set of examples and an in-depth discussion of the rationale behind various design choices. We compare a prototype implementation of the tasking model with existing models, and evaluate it on a wide range of applications. The comparison shows that the OpenMP tasking model provides expressiveness, flexibility, and huge potential for performance and scalability.     

Infantile fibre type disproportion, myofibrillar lysis and cardiomyopathy: a disorder in three unrelated Dutch families

An apparently new cardioskeletal myopathy is reported in three unrelated families. Five infants were affected by rapidly progressive generalized muscle weakness, with onset shortly after birth, and dilated cardiomyopathy. All had generalized tremor (clonus) starting in the first week of life. The disease was lethal in all cases between 4 and 6 months. Muscle biopsy, performed in four of the five patients, showed a light microscopic pattern of small type I and normal-sized type II fibres. By electron microscopy small fibres were affected by myofibrillar disruption and swelling of organelles. Findings in blood and urine suggested a disturbance in energy metabolism but an extensive search for respiratory chain disorders and disorders of mitochondrial fatty acid oxidation in frozen muscle and cultured fibroblasts was negative. The findings support a new progressive autosomal recessive infantile cardioskeletal myopathy in which type I muscle fibres are preferentially affected.