Inside Front Cover: Inkjet Printing of Luminescent CdTe Nanocrystal–Polymer Composites (Adv. Funct. Mater. 1/2007)

Schubert and co‐workers have performed a detailed investigation on ink‐jet printing of well‐defined dots of luminescent CdTe nanocrystals (NCs) embedded in a poly(vinyl alcohol) matrix, as reported on p. 23, and subsequently made studies of their morphology and photoluminescence. The inside cover shows a photograph of an ink‐jet‐printed combinatorial library of differently sized CdTe NCs emitting at different wavelengths, and a 3D profilometer image of an array of printed dots. Inkjet printing is used to produce well‐defined patterns of dots (with diameters of ca. 120 μm) that are composed of luminescent CdTe nanocrystals (NCs) embedded within a poly(vinylalcohol) (PVA) matrix. Addition of ethylene glycol (1–2 vol %) to the aqueous solution of CdTe NCs suppresses the well‐known ring‐formation effect in inkjet printing leading to exceptionally uniform dots. Atomic force microscopy characterization reveals that in the CdTe NC films the particle–particle interaction could be prevented using inert PVA as a matrix. Combinatorial libraries of CdTe NC–PVA composites with variable NC sizes and polymer/NC ratios are prepared using inkjet printing. These libraries are subsequently characterized using a UV/fluorescence plate reader to determine their luminescent properties. Energy transfer from green‐light‐emitting to red‐light‐emitting CdTe NCs in the composite containing green‐ (2.6 nm diameter) and red‐emitting (3.5 nm diameter) NCs are demonstrated.     

A new approach for physical human activity recognition based on co-occurrence matrices

The Journal of Supercomputing - In recent years, it has been observed that many researchers have been working on different areas of detection, recognition and monitoring of human activities. The...     

A novel multicriteria sustainability investigation of energy storage systems

Affordable, clean, efficient, flexible, and reliable energy storage is an important component of sustainable energy systems. There are several studies in the literature concentrating on improving the sustainability performance of energy storage systems from economic and technical perspectives. However, a comprehensive performance investigation of energy storage systems that take economic, environmental, social, and technical criteria into account is still needed. For that reason, in the present study, it is aimed to perform a complete assessment and analysis of the sustainability of energy storage systems for residential applications in communities and cities. Pumped hydro, conventional batteries, high‐temperature batteries, flow batteries, and hydrogen are the selected energy storage systems. In order to handle the vagueness and ambiguity during the assessment and to eliminate the perceived hesitancy in the decision makers' preferences, an innovative method, a hybrid hesitant fuzzy multicriteria decision‐making (MCDM) methodology composed of hesitant fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (HFAHP) and hesitant fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (HFTOPSIS), is utilized to assess the sustainability of the selected systems. In this study, four different performance criteria: economic (power cost and energy cost), environmental (pollutant emissions, area requirement, wastewater quality, and solid waste production), social (safety, accessibility, ease of use, and public acceptance), and technical (efficiency, storage capacity, cycling limit, and performance degradation) are taken into consideration. The performance evaluation results indicate that technical performance has the highest influence and social performance has the lowest influence when evaluating the sustainability of the selected energy storage systems. And hydrogen has the highest sustainability performance compared with the other selected energy storage options.     

Influence of Bi2O3 concentration on barium-telluro-borate glasses: Physical,structural and radiation-shielding properties

In this study, a series of Bi₂O₃ reinforced bariumtelluroborate (TBX) glasses with the nominal composition 20TeO₂ + (50-x)B₂O₃ + 29.5BaO + xBi₂O₃ + 0.5Er₂O₃ (where x=0,5,10,15 and 20 in wt%) were manufactured using traditional melt-quenching method. The structural and compositional studies were performed by using XRD and FTIR spectra. In general, the glass matrix consists of the trigonal-planar and tetrahedral units of borates, tellurate and tellurite groups of tellurites, and the non-bridging oxygen (nBO). In addition to that, BiO₃ and BiO₆ groups are present in top-order glasses. The gamma-ray shielding (γ-RS) ability was evaluated through the vital parameters like the mass-attenuation coefficient (MAC), mean free-path (MFP), half-value layer (HVL), and effective atomic-number (Z_eff). TB20 glass is happened to be the best candidate by giving the highest value for MAC and the lowest MFP and HVL, owing to its large density, 6.922 g/cm³. The fast neutron-removal cross-section (∑R) is assessed to investigate the neutron shielding capacity of TBX glasses. The γ-rays shielding properties of TBX glasses were observed better than some ordinary shields such as barite-concrete and commercial shielding glasses developed by SCHOTT Company.     

Phytosterols in 17 Turkish hazelnut (Corylus avellana L.) cultivars

The phytosterol contents of the oils from 17 Turkish hazelnut cultivars were determined by gas chromatography with a flame ionization detector. The total phytosterol content varied from 1180.4 (Uzunmusa‐Ordu) to 2239.4 mg/kg (Cavcava), and the average was 1581.6 ± 265.1 mg/kg. One of the most significant commercial cultivars, Tombul, contained quite low total phytosterols (1297.7 mg/kg). Total and individual phytosterol contents of hazelnut cultivars were significantly different at p <0.01, except for phytostanol and campestanol. The main component was β‐sitosterol which ranged from 82.8 to 86.7% in all cultivars. This was followed by campesterol, Δ⁵‐avenasterol, sitostanol and stigmasterol. Interestingly, the same cultivars from different regions showed similar total phytosterol contents, and fall almost within the same range according to Duncan's test, which may indicate that the phytosterol content is highly related to the cultivar.     

Noise-Shaping Gain-Filtering Techniques for Integrated Receivers

In this paper, a new technique for realizing area-efficient, low-noise filters is introduced. The proposed filter topologies utilize noise shaping techniques to shift the noise of the passive and active filter components out of the passband of the filter. This is illustrated by implementing a programmable noise-shaped post-mixer gain-filtering circuit for a CMOS Mobile-TV tuner. The proposed circuits relax the noise-linearity tradeoff in the receiver chain by providing blocker rejection following the mixer outputs. The filter provides an in-band input referred noise density as low as 7.5 nV/sqrt(Hz). The measured out-of-band IIP3 values are 30 dBV and 31.5 dBV for the 3.8-MHz (DVB-H) and 750-kHz (ISDB-T) modes, respectively. Total current consumption is 5.5 mA from a 1.2-V supply. The gain of the block is programmable to be 0 dB, 8 dB, 14 dB, or 20 dB. The design occupies a die area of 0.28 mm² in a 65-nm CMOS process covering a frequency band of 700 kHz to 5.2 MHz as a universal mobile-TV integrated baseband gain-filtering solution.     

Preparation of additive package for gear lubricants and determination of tribological properties

In this study an extreme pressure and anti-corrosion additive package for gear oils has been created. In this context three different organic molecules were synthesized. Methylene-bis (dibutyldithiocarbamate), Sulfured oleic acid and o,o-Dialkyldithio Phosphate. Mass spectrums and Elemental analyses were carried out for these three molecules. For each molecule 4-ball weld points (WP), 4-ball Wear Scar Diameter (WSD), Copper corrosion (CC) and salt spray tests (SS) were carried out. Antioxidant properties of synthesized molecules were determined. According to the test results eight different additive packages were prepared and WP, WSD, CC and SS tests were applied to each package to determine a suitable package content. The highest yield was obtained in the five and six additive package with 250, 300 kg weld point and 0.41, 0.53 mm scar diameter respectively. For all additive packages the extreme pressure and corrosion resistance properties of gear oil increase by increasing the percentage of Methylene-bis (dibutyldithiocarbamate). o,o-Dialkyldithio Phosphate showed the highest antioxidant activity and it has been obtained bets corrosion protection with Sulfured oleic acid.     

Consumer awareness and acceptance of irradiated foods: Results of a survey conducted on Turkish consumers

Consumer awareness and acceptance, and influence of benefit statements and price on acceptance of irradiated foods were investigated in Turkey. Consumer awareness of food irradiation was very low (29%). Majority of consumers (80%) were uncertain about the safety of irradiated foods. Only 11% expressed irradiated foods are safe. Level of positive attitude towards irradiated foods increased substantially (62%) upon hearing a benefit statement of food irradiation. Purchase intent of irradiated foods was highest (44%) when price is same as unirradiated foods, but significant proportion of consumers indicated to pay 5% premium price for irradiated foods. A successful market for irradiated foods can be achieved by educating consumers with the benefit and uses of irradiation process.