Electrical and structural characterization of plasma polymerized polyaniline/TiO2 heterostructure diode: a comparative study of single and bilayer TiO2 thin film electrode

A heterostructure was fabricated using p-type plasma polymerized polyaniline (PANI) and n-type (single and bilayer) titanium dioxide (TiO2) thin film on FTO glass. The deposition of single and bilayer TiO2 thin film on FTO substrate was achieved through doctor blade followed by dip coating technique before subjected to plasma enhanced polymerization. To fabricate p-n heterostructure, a plasma polymerization of aniline was conducted using RF plasma at 13.5 MHz and at the power of 120 W on the single and bilayer TiO2 thin film electrodes. The morphological, optical and the structural characterizations revealed the formation of p-n heterostructures between PANI and TiO2 thin film. The PANI/bilayer TiO2 heterostructure showed the improved current-voltage (I-V) characteristics due to the substantial deposition of PANI molecules into the bilayer TiO2 thin film which provided good conducting pathway and reduced the degree of excitons recombination. The change of linear I-V behavior of PANI/TiO2 heterostructure to non linear behavior with top Pt contact layer confirmed the formation of Schottky contact at the interfaces of Pt layer and PANI/TiO2 thin film layers.     

An application of regression analysis to quantify a claim for increased costs

This paper is a case study of the use of multiple linear regression analysis to quantify a claim for extra payment to a subcontractor for work on a substantial construction earth-moving project. The basis of the claim was that the client and main contractor required the work to be executed in ways other than that originally planned by the subcontractor, reducing efficiency and so increasing costs. The authors of this paper represented the earth-moving subcontractor in a legal arbitration, in which this application of multiple linear regression analysis was fundamental to quantifying the amount claimed in the case. The analysis determined the time required to perform earth-moving tasks, based on a set of explanatory variables, using data sets recorded on-site. The same equation was then applied to the plan of work used for the tender and was used to show that the comparative efficiency between tender and actual was as low as 25%. The claim was successful, and the calculations described in this paper were used to quantify a total additional payment of approximately £;380 000.     

Framed slotted aloha based MAC protocol for low energy critical infrastructure monitoring networks

Recently, the IEEE TG4k has been formed to amend the IEEE 802.15 family to address the low energy critical infrastructure monitoring networks. The purpose is to facilitate point to multi‐thousands of point communication to collect the scheduled and event data from a large number of nonmains powered endpoints that are widely dispersed. It should support low energy operation, which is necessary for multiyear battery life. Other major features are application data rate up to 40 Kb/s, thousands of endpoints per mains powered infrastructure, asymmetric application data flow, small and infrequent messages, tolerant to data latency, etc. In this paper, we present a discussion on low energy critical infrastructure monitoring networks. We propose a medium access control protocol based on framed slotted aloha for these networks. We investigated probable packet sizes, energy consumptions, battery lifetime and the success rate for our protocol. The proposed protocol is simple to implement. Simulation results show that it is efficient in terms of packet success rate, energy consumption, and battery lifetime.Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

User-expertise modeling with empirically derived probabilistic implication networks

The application of user-expertise modeling for adaptive interfaces is confronted with a number of difficult challenges, namely, efficiency and reliability, the cost-benefit ratio, and the practical usability of user modeling techniques. We argue that many of these obstacles can be overcome by standard, automatic means of performing knowledge assessment. Within this perspective, we present the basis of a probabilistic user modeling approach, the POKS technique, which could serve as a standard user-expertise modeling tool.The POKS technique is based on the cognitive theory of knowledge structures: a formalism for the representation of the order in which we learn knowledge units (KU). The technique permits the induction of knowledge structures from a small number of empirical data cases. It uses an evidence propagation scheme within these structures to infer an individual's knowledge state from a sample of KU. The empirical induction technique is based, in part, on statistical hypothesis testing over conditional probabilities that are determined by the KUs' learning order.Experiments with this approach show that the technique is successful in partially inferring an individual's knowledge state, either through the monitoring of a user's behavior, or through a selective questioning process. However, the selective process, based on entropy minimization, is shown to be much more effective in reducing the standard error score of knowledge assessment than random sampling.     

ALPINE GEOWARPINGS IN THE ZAGROS-TAURUS RANGE: INFLUENCE ON HYDROCARBON GENERATION,MIGRATION AND ACCUMULATION

Megascale monoclinal flexures (“geowarpings”) with maximum angles of dip ranging from 5° to 13° occur in the Zagros-Taurus range of Iraq and Iran. They face south and SW, with amplitudes of 1.4 to 14.44 kms and axial lengths of 43 to 230 kms. Their axes are parallel to the host mountain range and lie in an en échelon configuration, and many are located in the high mountain zone, at or close to the mountain front (i.e. the border with the foothills zone). Neotectonic and stratigraphic evidence suggests the contemporaneous development of these flexures with their host fold-belt during the collision of the Eurasian and Afro-Arabian Plates, which culminated during Upper Miocene-Pliocene time. Differential vertical movements caused greater shortening and thickening in the upwarded regions (10–33%), which lie closer to the plate suture zones, compared to the downwarped regions (3–17%). Development of the geowarpings resulted in circumstances favourable for hydrocarbon generation in downwarped regions, where source rocks were buried sufficiently deeply to produce oil and gas; this then migrated upwards to be trapped in the growing folds, and was sealed by Miocene evaporites. On the other hand, upwarped regions were elevated, and suffered extensive erosion, leading to a reduction in the depth of burial of potential source rocks, and consequently limited possibilities of hydrocarbon generation. Furthermore, the non-deposition and/or erosion of Miocene evaporites in upwarped regions led to the dissipation of considerable volumes of the hydrocarbons which might have been generated. The effect of geowarpings on oil and gas reserves is evident from the distribution of oil- and gasfields, which are almost exclusively located in the downwarped foothills zone. Geowarpings may be located in the Taurus Range of E Turkey and NE Syria, but a lack of accurate data makes this difficult to investigate. Further studies are needed to develop an efficient exploration plan for oil and gas in that area.     

Enrichment of carotene from palm oil by organic solvent nanofiltration

Palm oil is one of the richest sources of natural plant carotene with typical concentration of about 0.5–0.7 g/L. Unfortunately, during physical refining of palm oil, most of the carotenes were destroyed by high temperatures and this represents a loss of potential source of natural carotene. Various techniques have been developed to extract and recover carotenes from palm oil, however these processes often require high energy usage, and usually renders the oil useless for further consumption. Recently, organic solvent nanofiltration (OSN) has become an important method for molecular separation particularly for the separation of low molecular weight bioactive compounds. This work presents the application of OSN membranes for the separation of carotene from a crude palm oil/solvent system. Several commercial OSN membranes (DuraMem and PuraMem series) fabricated from polyimide were evaluated for their separation abilities. PuraMem 280 showed the best selectivity performance, with the concentration of carotene in permeate oil increased from 0.60 to 0.79 g/L when hexane was used as the solvent. Runs by using DuraMem 150, DuraMem 300 and DuraMem 500 showed low or no selectivity between carotene and triglyceride in all solvents. It was found that the rejection of carotene depends strongly on the type of solvents. A coupled solution diffusion and film theory was also utilized to model carotene transport through OSN membrane. It was demonstrated that OSN can serve as an alternative for the direct carotene recovery from palm oil and can be potentially applied for other minor compounds recovery from vegetable oils.     

Development of Nano-tetragonal Zirconia-Incorporated Ni–P Coatings for High Corrosion Resistance

Pure tetragonal 10-20-nm-size zirconia-based Ni-P composite coating was developed. The physicochemical and electrochemical characteristics including corrosion resistance of the coating were investigated. The Ni-P-nano-tetragonal zirconia coating was partially crystalline having face-centered cubic phase. The coating had very high corrosion resistance due to its dense compact morphology and low surface roughness. The Ni-P-nano-tetragonal zirconia coatings exhibited a cathodic shift of open-circuit potential(OCP) in the range from-0.340 to-0.520 V. A high polarization resistance of the order of 13.2 kΩ/cm~2 and low corrosion current density of 3.9 μA/cm~2 were achieved due to the effective incorporation of zirconia into the coating.     

A Radon-Multiwavelet Based OFDM System Design and Simulation Under Different Channel Conditions

Finite Radon transform (FRAT) mapper has the ability to increase orthogonality of sub-carriers, it is non sensitive to channel parameters variations, and has a small constellation energy compared with conventional fast Fourier transform (FFT) based orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). It is also able to work as a good interleaver which significantly reduces the bit error rate (BER). Due to its good orthogonality, discrete Multiwavelet transform (DMWT) is attractive for implementation in OFDM systems which reduces inter-symbol interference (ISI) and inter-carrier interference (ICI) and eliminates the need for cyclic prefix and increases the spectral efficiency of the design. In this paper both FRAT and DMWT are implemented in a new design for OFDM. The new structure was tested and compared with conventional FFT-based OFDM, Radon-based OFDM, and DMWT-based OFDM for additive white Gaussian noise channel, flat fading channel, and multi-path selective fading channel. Simulation tests were generated for different channels parameters values. The obtained results showed that proposed system has increased spectral efficiency, reduced ISI and ICI, and improved BER performance compared with other systems.