Second-law efficiency analysis of a coal gasification process

The present paper summarizes a comprehensive Second-Law analysis of the SYNTHANE process of coal gasification⁽¹⁾, based on the available-energy concept as applied to design conditions and data. The analysis yields an overall process efficiency of 46%. For every 100 MJ of useful energy supplied with coal, 51 MJ are consumed during the various unit operations while effluents carry 3 MJ. Unit 30, Steam and Power Production, consumes nearly 20 MJ; Unit 15, Gasification, used up nearly 16 MJ; Units 12 and 14, Coal Preparation and Feeding, about 5 MJ; Units 16 and 17, Raw Gas Quenching and Shift Conversion, 4 MJ; Unit 32, Oxygen Plant, approximately 2 MJ; other miscellaneous units contribute a combined available-energy destruction of 4 MJ. The Second-Law analysis unveils the inefficiencies present in the process and their sources, thus pinpointing the opportunities for improvement in the SYNTHANE process.     

Variability for oil and fatty acid composition in castorbean varieties

Thirty-six castorbean varieties were surveyed for oil and fatty acid composition, in order to determine variability of these seed compounds. A large variability of seed oil percentage was observed, ranging from 39.6 to 59.5%. Concerning the fatty acids, little variability was observed for ricinoleic acid, which was the most abundant in the oil, ranging from 83.65 to 90.00%. The other fatty acids appeared in small concentrations and showed a small range: 0.87 to 2.35, 0.68 to 1.84, 2.96 to 5.64, 3.19 to 5.98, and 0.34 to 0.91%, for palmitic, stearic, oleic, linoleic, and linolenic acid, respectively. Non-significant correlations were observed between fatty acids and seed oil percentage. However, significant correlations were observed among fatty acid concentrations: positive and negative ones. These significant correlations could be associated with the biosynthetic pathways of the fatty acids, which are not fully elucidated. They suggest, however, that selection for a particular fatty acid will tend to increase those positively correlated, and decrease those negative ones. Selection and plant breeding techniques could then be applied to modify the oil content of the castorbean seeds, considering the variability observed. For the fatty acid composition, however, the variability was not large enough to make substantial changes in their concentrations by selection procedures. More varieties should be surveyed to find out if such variability is available.     

A novel attractant for Mexican fruit fly,Anastrepha ludens,from fermented host fruit

Chemicals from fermented chapote fruit were identified and evaluated as attractants for hungry adult Mexican fruit flies in laboratory and greenhouse bioassays. Twenty-eight chemicals identified from an attractive gas-chromatography fraction were as attractive as a chapote volatiles extract (CV) when mixed in the same amounts found in CV. Sixteen of the chemicals were slightly attractive to flies when tested individually. A mixture containing 15 of the chemicals by design and the 16th as an impurity, in arbitrary concentrations, was at least as attractive as the original CV. In a series of experiments, the number of chemicals was reduced to three by elimination of unnecessary components. The three-component mixture retained the attractiveness of the 15-component mixture. The three chemicals were 1,8-cineole, ethyl hexanoate, and hexanol (CEH). Attractiveness of the three-chemical mixture was equal to the sum of the attractiveness of the three individual components, suggesting that each chemical binds to a different receptor type that independently elicits partial attraction behavior. Optimal ratios were 1011 of the three chemicals, respectively. Optimal test quantities ranged between 0.4–4g of 1,8-cineole and 40–400 ng each of ethyl hexanoate and hexanol applied to filter paper in the laboratory bioassays. A neat 1011 mixture of the chemicals was 1.8 times more attractive than aqueous solutions ofTorula dried yeast and borax to starved 2-day-old flies when the lures were tested in competing McPhail traps in a large greenhouse cage.Diptera: Tephritidae.     

Frontline robots in tourism and hospitality: service enhancement or cost reduction?

Electronic Markets - Robots are being implemented in many frontline services, from waiter robots in restaurants to robotic concierges in hotels. A growing number of firms in hospitality and tourism...     

Beyond multi-adjoint logic programming

In ‘multi-adjoint logic programming’, MALP in brief, each fuzzy logic program is associated with its own ‘multi-adjoint lattice’ for modelling truth degrees beyond the simpler case of true and false, where a large set of fuzzy connectives can be defined. On this wide repertoire, it is crucial to connect each implication symbol with a proper conjunction thus conforming constructs of the form (←_i, &_i) called ‘adjoint pairs’, whose use directly affects both declarative and operational semantics of the MALP framework. In this work, we firstly show how the strong dependence of adjoint pairs can be largely weakened for an interesting ‘sub-class’ of MALP programs. Then, we reason in a similar way till conceiving a ‘super-class’ of fuzzy logic programs beyond MALP, which definitively drops out the need for using adjoint pairs, since the new semantics behaviour relies on much more relaxed lattices than multi-adjoint ones.     

Parallel simulation of Population Dynamics P systems: updates and roadmap

Population Dynamics P systems are a type of multienvironment P systems that serve as a formal modeling framework for real ecosystems. The accurate simulation of these probabilistic models, e.g. with Direct distribution based on Consistent Blocks Algorithm, entails large run times. Hence, parallel platforms such as GPUs have been employed to speedup the simulation. In 2012, the first GPU simulator of PDP systems was presented. However, it was able to run only randomly generated PDP systems. In this paper, we present current updates made on this simulator, involving an input modu le for binary files and an output module for CSV files. Finally, the simulator has been experimentally validated with a real ecosystem model, and its performance has been tested with two high-end GPUs: Tesla C1060 and K40.     

Pose consensus in networks of heterogeneous robots with variable time delays

This paper proposes a novel pose (position and orientation) consensus controller for networks of heterogeneous robots modeled in the operational space. The proposed controller is a distributed proportional plus damping scheme that, with a slight modification, solves both the leader–follower and leaderless consensus problems. A singularity‐free representation, unit quaternion, is used to describe the robots orientation, and the network is represented by an undirected and connected interconnection graph. Furthermore, it is shown that the controller is robust to interconnection variable time delays. Experiments with a network of two 6‐degrees‐of‐freedom robots are presented to illustrate the performance of the proposed scheme. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Neural Network and Classification Approach in Identifying Customer Behavior in the Banking Sector: A Case Study of an International Bank

The customer relationship focus for banks is in development of main competencies and strategies of building strong profitable customer relationships through considering and managing the customer impression, influence on the culture of the bank, satisfactory treatment, and assessment of valued relationship building. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are used after data segmentation and classification, where the designed model register records into two class sets, that is, the training and testing sets. ANN predicts new customer behavior from previously observed customer behavior after executing the process of learning from existing data. This article proposes an ANN model, which is developed using a six‐step procedure. The back‐propagation algorithm is used to train the ANN by adjusting its weights to minimize the difference between the current ANN output and the desired output. An evaluation process is conducted to determine whether the ANN has learned how to perform. The training process is halted periodically, and its performance is tested until an acceptable result is obtained. The principles underlying detection software are grounded in classical statistical decision theory.     

Real-time lane tracking using Rao-Blackwellized particle filter

A novel approach to real-time lane modeling using a single camera is proposed. The proposed method is based on an efficient design and implementation of a particle filter which applies the concepts of the Rao-Blackwellized particle filter (RBPF) by separating the state into linear and non-linear parts. As a result the dimensionality of the problem is reduced, which allows the system to perform in real-time in embedded systems. The method is used to determine the position of the vehicle inside its own lane and the curvature of the road ahead to enhance the performance of advanced driver assistance systems. The effectiveness of the method has been demonstrated implementing a prototype and testing its performance empirically on road sequences with different illumination conditions (day and nightime), pavement types, traffic density, etc. Results show that our proposal is capable of accurately determining if the vehicle is approaching the lane markings (Lane Departure Warning), and the curvature of the road ahead, achieving processing times below 2 ms per frame for laptop CPUs, and 12 ms for embedded CPUs.     

Managing Citizen Profiles in the Domain of e-Government: The cPortfolio Project

The provision of support for holistic operations in the scope of a horizontal digital administration requires the fulfillment of a number of previous steps that guarantee the viability of services in the domain. One of these tasks is the proper management of documents. Documents are a key element of any democratic administration and their digital management is a clear pre-requisite for the arrival of digital government. This article tackles how this service can be provided using the support of semantics as a technological cornerstone. The implementation of such a tool is made through the so-called cPortfolio. This platform is deeply discussed and details about its design and implementation are provided. This system is designed to manage both the personal information from the citizen and the documents they possess. Tests on the prototype showed interesting features regarding the simplicity of use and the interoperability support provided to third party agents.