Ionic Liquids Promoted the C-Acylation of Acetals in Solvent-free Conditions

The synthesis of a series of fourteen 4-alkoxy-1,1,1-trihalo-3-alken-2-ones (2,3) [CX₃COC(R²)=C(R¹)OMe, where X = Cl, F; R¹/R² = Me/H, Bu/H, i-Bu/H, Ph/H, Thien-2-yl/H, –(CH₂)₄–, –CH(CH₂)₄CH(CH₂)₂–] from the acylation reactions of acetals (1) with trichloroacetyl chloride or trifluoroacetic anhydride in the presence of equimolar amounts of pyridine and imidazolium based ionic liquid ([BMIM][BF₄] or [BMIM][PF₆]) is reported. The reaction time, yields and IL recyclation are also investigated and this method showed advantages over the methods described in the literature.     

Graphene nanoencapsulation action at an air/lipid interface

Journal of Materials Science - In the present work, we apply a microfluidic channel platform to study mechanical and adhesion properties of suspended graphene in contact with oleic acid (a lipid)....     

Improved similarity trees and their application to visual data classification

An alternative form to multidimensional projections for the visual analysis of data represented in multidimensional spaces is the deployment of similarity trees, such as Neighbor Joining trees. They organize data objects on the visual plane emphasizing their levels of similarity with high capability of detecting and separating groups and subgroups of objects. Besides this similarity-based hierarchical data organization, some of their advantages include the ability to decrease point clutter; high precision; and a consistent view of the data set during focusing, offering a very intuitive way to view the general structure of the data set as well as to drill down to groups and subgroups of interest. Disadvantages of similarity trees based on neighbor joining strategies include their computational cost and the presence of virtual nodes that utilize too much of the visual space. This paper presents a highly improved version of the similarity tree technique. The improvements in the technique are given by two procedures. The first is a strategy that replaces virtual nodes by promoting real leaf nodes to their place, saving large portions of space in the display and maintaining the expressiveness and precision of the technique. The second improvement is an implementation that significantly accelerates the algorithm, impacting its use for larger data sets. We also illustrate the applicability of the technique in visual data mining, showing its advantages to support visual classification of data sets, with special attention to the case of image classification. We demonstrate the capabilities of the tree for analysis and iterative manipulation and employ those capabilities to support evolving to a satisfactory data organization and classification.     

Overall kinetics and morphology of the products of austenite decomposition in a Fe-0.46 Pct C-5.2 Pct Cr alloy transformed isothermally above the bay

The overall transformation kinetics of austenite isothermal decomposition above the bay of the time-temperature-transformation (TTT) curve and the eutectoid morphology of the resulting products have been studied in a Fe-0.46 pct C-5.2 pct Cr alloy. Classical lamellar pearlite was formed at high temperatures while complex ferrite plus carbide morphologies, sometimes described as spiky pearlite, arborescent structures, or nonclassical decompositions products of austenite in Fe-Cr-C alloys, formed at low temperatures. While X-ray diffraction of extracted carbides and selected area diffraction-transmission electron microscopy (TEM) showed evidence for a mixture of M₃C and M₇C₃ carbides, thermodynamic calculations results obtained only M₇C₃ as the equilibrium carbide at the temperatures studied. A tentative explanation for the arborescent morphology is presented, based on the hypothesis of the existence of a drag force or free energy dissipation term that is locally relaxed by the partition of Cr into the carbides at the reaction front, consequently removing Cr from the interface. This article is based on a presentation made in the “Hillert Symposium on Thermodynamics & Kinetics of Migrating Interfaces in Steels and Other Complex Alloys,” December 2–3, 2004, organized by The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.     

MineCap: super incremental learning for detecting and blocking cryptocurrency mining on software-defined networking

Annals of Telecommunications - Covert mining of cryptocurrency implies the use of valuable computing resources and high energy consumption. In this paper, we propose MineCap, a dynamic online...     

PEMPIs: A New Methodology for Modeling and Prediction of MPI Programs Performance

The evaluation and prediction of parallel programs performance are becoming more and more important, so that they require appropriate techniques to identify the factors which influence the application execution time and also the way they interact. In this paper, we present some contributions of our research in this area by describing PEMPIs, a new methodology applied to the performance analysis and prediction of MPI programs. A new task graph helps us both to understand details of the application and to increase the accuracy of the prediction models. The proposed techniques are detailed and tested through the modeling of a complete application. PEMPIs efficiency has been proved by the results of this application modeling—most tests executed in a cluster of computers showed errors up to 10.     

Grammar-based immune programming

This paper describes Grammar-based Immune Programming (GIP) for evolving programs in an arbitrary language by immunological inspiration. GIP is based on Grammatical Evolution (GE) in which a grammar is used to define a language and decode candidate solutions to a valid representation (program). However, by default, GE uses a Genetic Algorithm in the search process while GIP uses an artificial immune system. Some modifications are needed of an immune algorithm to use a grammar in order to efficiently decode antibodies into programs. Experiments are performed to analyze algorithm behavior over different aspects and compare it with GEVA, a well known GE implementation. The methods are applied to identify a causal model (an ordinary differential equation) from an observed data set, to symbolically regress an iterated function f(f(x)) = g(x), and to find a symbolic representation of a discontinuous function.     

A Hierarchical Segmentation of Articulated Bodies

This paper presents a novel segmentation method to assist the rigging of articulated bodies. The method computes a coarse‐to‐fine hierarchy of segments ordered by the level of detail. The results are invariant to deformations, and numerically robust to noise, irregular tessellations, and topological short‐circuits. The segmentation is based on two key ideas. First, it exploits the multiscale properties of the diffusion distance on surfaces, and then it introduces a new definition of medial structures, composing a bijection between medial structures and segments. Our method computes this bijection through a simple and fast iterative approach, and applies it to triangulated meshes.     

Restoration in wavelength-routed optical networks by means of ant colony optimization

Because of the distributed control of the network, the dynamic nature of the traffic and the unpredictability of a failure event, the flexibility and robustness of ant colony optimization (ACO) make it a suitable candidate for provisioning lightpaths in an optical network. In this work, we propose a fault-tolerant dynamic routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) algorithm based on the ACO framework, presenting its integration into the Generalized multi-protocol label switching (GMPLS) control plane. By simulating two different scenarios, we demonstrate the effectiveness of this algorithm when a single link or node failure occurs.