Reduced migration from flexible poly(vinyl chloride) of a plasticizer containing beta-cyclodextrin derivative

The migration of endocrine-disrupting di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) poses a serious threat to public health and the environment. In this study, we successfully prepared a plasticizerwith reduced DEHP migration by directly incorporating 2,3,6-per-O-benzoyl-beta-cyclodextrin (Bz-beta-CD) into DEHP. Bz-beta-CD was prepared by esterification between the hydroxyl groups of beta-CD and benzoyl chloride. The presence of this cyclodextrin is expected to facilitate formation of stable complexes through pi-pi association with DEHP molecules. The flexible PVC was prepared with a gelation-fusion process that uses the prepared migration-resistant plasticizer, and its properties (flexibility, thermal stability, and clarity) were evaluated by carrying out DSC and tensile testing, TGA, and haze testing, respectively. No significant changes in the physical properties of the flexible PVC were observed when Bz-beta-CD was added. DEHP migration tests were carried out for the flexible PVC according to the ISO 3826:1993(E) test method, and the quantity of migrated DEHP was then determined with UV-vis spectroscopy. It was found that the addition of Bz-beta-CD decreases the levels of DEHP migration from the flexible PVC samples by almost 40%. We investigated the molecular interaction between Bz-beta-CD and DEHP using molecular mechanics simulations, and we conclude that this reduction in DEHP migration is due to the formation of stabilized pi-pi attractive association and inclusion complexes of Bz-beta-CD and DEHP in flexible PVC.     

Optimizing microencapsulation of peanut sprout extract by response surface methodology

This study was carried out to optimize conditions for peanut sprout extract microencapsulation by response surface methodology (RSM). The coating materials of microencapsulation were medium-chain triacylglycerol (MCT) for primary emulsion, and whey protein concentrates (WPC), maltodextrin (MD) and gum Arabic (AG) for secondary emulsion. The yield of microencapsulation of peanut sprout extract was investigated with respect to four variables (ratio of core and coating materials, concentration of primary emulsifier, ratio of W/O emulsion and secondary coating materials and concentration of secondary emulsifier) in RSM. The optimal conditions for microencapsulation of peanut sprout extract were 1:2 as the ratio of core material to coating material, 1.25% (w/v) of primary emulsifier concentration, 1:1.23 as W/O emulsion to secondary coating material, 1.21% (w/v) as secondary emulsifier concentration and 30% (w/w) as WPC concentration for spray drying. In conclusion, the microencapsulation of peanut sprout extract under the optimized conditions by RSM ensures the smaller size (3–7 μm) of microcapsules with the highest yield reaching to 98.74%.     

Detection Technique of Software-Induced Rowhammer Attacks

Side-channel attacks have recently progressed into software-induced attacks. In particular, a rowhammer attack, which exploits the characteristics of dynamic random access memory (DRAM), can quickly and continuously access the cells as the cell density of DRAM increases, thereby generating a disturbance error affecting the neighboring cells, resulting in bit flips. Although a rowhammer attack is a highly sophisticated attack in which disturbance errors are deliberately generated into data bits, it has been reported that it can be exploited on various platforms such as mobile devices, web browsers, and virtual machines. Furthermore, there have been studies on bypassing the defense measures of DRAM manufacturers and the like to respond to rowhammer attacks. A rowhammer attack can control user access and compromise the integrity of sensitive data with attacks such as a privilege escalation and an alteration of the encryption keys. In an attempt to mitigate a rowhammer attack, various hardware- and software-based mitigation techniques are being studied, but there are limitations in that the research methods do not detect the rowhammer attack in advance, causing overhead or degradation of the system performance. Therefore, in this study, a rowhammer attack detection technique is proposed by extracting common features of rowhammer attack files through a static analysis of rowhammer attack codes.     

Effects of Annealing Temperature on Microstructure and Tensile Properties in Ferritic Lightweight Steels

An investigation was conducted into the effects of annealing temperature on microstructure and tensile properties of ferritic lightweight steels. Two steels were fabricated by varying the C content, and were annealed at 573 K to 1173 K (300 °C to 900 °C) for 1 hour. According to the microstructural analysis results, κ-carbides were formed at about 973 K (700 °C), which was confirmed by equilibrium phase diagrams calculated from a THERMO-CALC program. In the steel containing low carbon content, needle-shaped κ-carbides were homogeneously dispersed in the ferrite matrix, whereas bulky band-shaped martensites were distributed in the steel containing high carbon content. In the 973 K (700 °C)-annealed specimen of the steel containing high carbon content, deformation bands were formed throughout the specimen, while fine carbides were sufficiently deformed inside the deformation bands, thereby resulting in the greatest level of strength and ductility. These results indicated that the appropriate annealing treatment of steel containing high carbon content was useful for the improvement of both strength and ductility over steel containing low carbon content.     

Generalized mean for feature extraction in one-class classification problems

Biased discriminant analysis (BDA), which extracts discriminative features for one-class classification problems, is sensitive to outliers in negative samples. This study focuses on the drawback of BDA attributed to the objective function based on the arithmetic mean in one-class classification problems, and proposes an objective function based on a generalized mean. A novel method is also presented to effectively maximize the objective function. The experimental results show that the proposed method provides better discriminative features than the BDA and its variants.     

Physicochemical properties of nanopowdered eggshell

This study was carried out to investigate the physicochemical properties of nanopowdered eggshell (NPES). These characteristics were determined based on the particle size, particle morphology, zeta potential, moisture sorption behaviour, purity and crystallinity. Homogeneous, aggregated and spherical crystals of NPES particles were observed through scanning electron microscope and transmission electron microscope. The average particle sizes of NPES and powdered eggshell (PES) were 202.3 ± 28.9 nm and 113.89 ± 79.37 μm, respectively. Zeta potentials of NPES (?15.41 mV) suggested an incipient instability of the colloidal system. Moisture sorption analysis indicated a higher water adsorption capacity of NPES than that of PES. X‐ray diffractometer (XRD) analysis confirmed the presence of calcite in both NPES and PES. The chemical compositions of the NPES and PES particles were strongly associated with the presence of calcium carbonate, as determined by the Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra. Therefore, eggshell nanopowder has a great potential to be utilised as a component for biomedical applications.     

Multistage PRIM: patient rule induction method for optimisation of a multistage manufacturing process

Industries such as automotive, LCD, PDP, semiconductor and steel produce products through multistage manufacturing processes. In a multistage manufacturing process, performances of stages are not independent. Therefore, the relationship between stages should be considered when optimising the multistage manufacturing process. This study proposes a new procedure of optimising a multistage manufacturing process, called multistage PRIM (patient rule induction method). Multistage PRIM extends the scope of process optimisation from a single stage to the multistage process, and it can use the information encapsulated in the relationship between stages when maximising each stage's performance. A case study in a multistage steel manufacturing process is conducted to illustrate the proposed procedure.     

Situation dependent decision selector for production control in testing and rework cell

This paper presents a production control approach for the testing and rework cell in a dynamic and stochastic computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) system. The proposed situation dependent decision selector (SDDS) observes the status of the system and jobs at every decision point, and makes its three different decisions on dispatching, pre-emption, and dispatching within pre-emption in real time. This paper also develops a new feature selection algorithm for the SDDS. Experimental results show that the SDDS is better than other static control rules and another dynamic control approach with respect to the number of tardy jobs.     

TESLA: an extended study of an energy-saving agent that leverages schedule flexibility

This paper presents transformative energy-saving schedule-leveraging agent (TESLA), an agent for optimizing energy usage in commercial buildings. TESLA’s key insight is that adding flexibility to event/meeting schedules can lead to significant energy savings. This paper provides four key contributions: (i) online scheduling algorithms, which are at the heart of TESLA, to solve a stochastic mixed integer linear program for energy-efficient scheduling of incrementally/dynamically arriving meetings and events; (ii) an algorithm to effectively identify key meetings that lead to significant energy savings by adjusting their flexibility; (iii) an extensive analysis on energy savings achieved by TESLA; and (iv) surveys of real users which indicate that TESLA’s assumptions of user flexibility hold in practice. TESLA was evaluated on data gathered from over 110,000 meetings held at nine campus buildings during an 8-month period in 2011–2012 at the University of Southern California and Singapore Management University. These results and analysis show that, compared to the current systems, TESLA can substantially reduce overall energy consumption.     

Thermoeconomic analysis of ground‐source heat pump systems

A thermoeconomic analysis of a ground‐source heat pump (GSHP) system with a vertical or horizontal ground heat exchanger, a type of heat delivery system, was performed using the modified productive structure analysis method. In this analysis, the unit cost of geothermal heat delivered to a room using GSHP system was estimated. The unit cost of heat delivered was calculated to be $0.063/kWh for input of electricity with a unit cost of $0.140/kWh for a GSHP with a coefficient of performance (COP) of 3.27. Exergy destruction and monetary losses due to the irreversibility that occurs at each component of the system were also estimated. The unit cost of heat was found to be inversely proportional to the COP of the heat pump and proportional to the electricity input. The greatest monetary loss occurs in the geothermal heat exchanger in which considerable mass of brine flows in long pipes and in the fan‐coil unit which features a complex configuration of pipes in the air passages, respectively. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.