UWB coplanar waveguide‐fed coplanar strips rectangular spiral antenna

This article proposes an ultra‐wideband coplanar strips (CPS) rectangular spiral antenna that is fed by coplanar waveguide (CPW). The CPS is formed by gradually reducing the width of the CPW ground planes without the need of a balun. The antenna operates in the frequency band (3.5‐10.6 GHz) and has miniaturized size of 50 × 40 × 0.508 mm on a Rogers RO4003C substrate. The CPS spiral is terminated with a 100 Ω chip resistor for matching. A parametric study was performed to choose the CPS spiral dimensions. A good agreement is found between simulations and measurements in the radiation pattern and the return loss which was found to be better than 10 dB over the band. The measured peak gain ranges between 1 and 4.7 dBi.     

A subthreshold low-power CMOS LC-VCO with high immunity to PVT variations

This paper presents a current driver with a novel high voltage (HV) switch schematic for the use as a protective switch for recording circuits during the stimulation sequence in neural measurement system. The current driver can source and sink currents of amplitudes up to ±8.2 mA with a HV tolerance from 30 V up to 120 V. The proposed HV switch also tolerates the voltage difference up to 120 V between its terminals. Between stimulation sequences the driver provides the effective isolation of the stimulation electrode from ground and HV supply voltage. The inter pulse current is no more than 60 pA. The chip was fabricated with AMS HV 0.35 \(\mu\)m CMOS technology. For test purposes the complete stimulation system including the proposed chip and the external C8051F410 controller was build. For the proposed system the mismatch between the sourced and sinked current does not exceed 20 \(\mu\)A. The possibility to stimulate with frequencies up to 1 kHz is proven by measurement along with the electrode-tissue model.     

Mixing analysis in a coaxial mixer

The performance of a coaxial mixer in the laminar-transitional flow regime was numerically investigated with Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids. These mixers comprised two shafts: a central fast speed shaft mounted with an open turbine, and a slow speed shaft fitted with a wall scraping anchor arm. To model the complex hydrodynamics inside the vessel, the virtual finite element method (POLY3D^TM software) coupled with a Lagrange multiplier approach to cope with the non-linearity coming from the rheological model was employed. Co-rotation and counter-rotation mode were compared, based on several numerical criteria, namely, mixing time, power consumption and pumping rate. It was found that co-rotating mode is more efficient than counter-rotating mode in terms of energy, pumping rate and homogenization time.     

Taking context into account in conceptual models using a Model Driven Engineering approach

Context

In public transport, travelers (considered as information systems users) do not have the same objectives and/or concerns at the same time. For this reason it is not always easy to provide them with the right information at the right time. If personalizing the information to the user allows to do this to some extend it is not enough since the information could also depend on the use of the context and the environment (e.g., place, time, etc.).

Objective

This paper proposes a solution allowing the context to be managed inside an application’s conceptual models in order to provide more flexible web applications from the user’s point of view.

Method

Our work is based on a modeling method using the Model Driven Engineering (MDE) approach and on practical field experiences permitting us to validate our solution. Our domain of application is personalized transport information.

Results

Introducing the notion of context into rules and decision trees that are used inside conceptual models allowed us to incorporate context as important information for personalizing web applications.

Conclusion

The context should be integrated into an application during the modeling phase to allow a smooth integration inside the application and to facilitate the evolution over time. Our solution offers a better user’s experience through an extended personalization of web applications.     

Effect of green and black teas (Camellia sinensis L.) on the characteristic microflora of yogurt during fermentation and refrigerated storage

The effect of tea on the fermentation and survival of yogurt microorganisms was studied. Green and black teas were added to milk at the beginning of fermentation. Acidity of yogurt products and survival of their microflora were studied during 42 days at 4 °C. Results showed that the presence of tea did not significantly (P < 0.05) influence the yogurt characteristic microorganisms. HPLC studies demonstrated that yogurt bacteria did not affect tea catechins when they were incubated together for 48 h. Indeed, all five products reached about 10⁹ CFU/ml after 6 h of fermentation. Viability during 6 weeks storage at 4 °C varied very little (8.35 < log CFU/ml < 8.65). Similarly, green and black teas had no effect on lactic acid levels of the final products (after 6 weeks of storage, acidity remained above 80 °D). According to these findings, addition of teas or tea catechins to yogurt can be recommended to take advantage of their beneficial properties on human health attributed to their antioxidant and antimicrobial activities.     

Motor Overvoltage Limitation by Means of a New EMI-Reducing PWM Strategy for Three-Level Inverters

Pulsewidth-modulated (PWM) voltage-source inverters are known to provoke high-frequency disturbances in motor-drive applications, particularly when long cables are used. Indeed, the parasitic elements of the cable, along with steep voltage transitions due to semiconductor switchings, are responsible for the conducted electromagnetic emissions and high overvoltages on the motor terminals. Therefore, several specific PWM schemes have been proposed in order to reduce these phenomena without requiring large passive filters. However, strategies that reduce common-mode currents (mainly conducted electromagnetic emissions) tend to increase the overvoltages generated on the motor. This paper focuses on a new PWM strategy that reduces the common-mode currents generated by three-level inverters. It provides a control algorithm that makes sure that the motor overvoltages never exceed those of conventional strategies while improving the electromagnetic-compatibility performance of the drive.     

Optimal Natural Convection Heat Transfer Improvement by Combining Periodic Heating Temperature,Cavity Inclination,and Nanofluid

Natural convection within a square inclined cavity filled with Al₂O₃–water nanofluid is investigated numerically. The temperature of the cooled surface is maintained constant, while that of the opposite surface (heating temperature) is varied sinusoidally in time. The remaining walls are considered adiabatic. The parameters governing the problem are the amplitude and the period of the variable temperature, the Rayleigh number, the inclination of the cavity, and the solid volume fraction. A substantial enhancement of heat transfer is obtained by combining the beneficial effects of the variable heating temperature (via its period and amplitude), the inclination of the cavity, and the nanoparticles fraction. In comparison with the constant heating conditions, it is found that both the variable heating temperature and the inclination of the cavity may lead to drastic changes in the flow structure and the corresponding heat transfer. The resonance phenomenon, observed for critical periods of the exciting temperature, is amplified by adding Al₂O₃ nanoparticles to the base fluid.     

1,3-Dipolar Cycloaddition Reactions between some C-aryl nitrogen oxides with electron-deficient dipolarophils

Both C-(2-methylphenyl)-N-phenyl and C-(3-methylphenyl)-N-phenyl nitrones ( 1a, b ) reacted with N-phenylmaleinimide and fumaronitrile to give the normal primary cycloadducts. The reaction of the two nitrones ( 1a, b ) with 4-phenyl-1,2,4-triazoline-3,5-dione and diacetylacetylene afforded rearrangement products. The unexpected 1,3,4-oxadiazolidin-2-ones were isolated from reaction with phenylisocyanate. In contrast, tetracyanoethylene forms charge-transfer complexes with both nitrones instead of cycloaddition products. The structural elucidation of the reaction products was made on the bases of the elemental analysis as well as i.r. and ¹H-n.m.r. spectral data.     

A deep stacked wavelet auto-encoders to supervised feature extraction to pattern classification

The major issue in pattern classification is in the extraction of features in the training phase. The focus of this work is on combining the ability of wavelet networks and the deep learning techniques to propose a new supervised feature extraction method to pattern classification. This new approach allows the classification of all classes of the dataset by the reconstruction of a Deep Stacked wavelet Auto-Encoder. This Network is obtained after a series of wavelet Auto-Encoders followed by a Softmax classifier at the last layer. Finally, a fine-tuning is applied for the improvement of our result using a back propagation algorithm. Our approach is tested with different image datasets which are the COIL-100, the APTI and the ImageNet datasets and is also tested with two other audio corpuses that contain Arabic words and French words. The experimental test demonstrates the efficiency of our network for image and audio classification compared to other methods.