Catalytic combustion of carbon tetrachloride

The catalytic combustion of carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) by metal oxide catalysts coated on the monolith support was investigated. The prepared catalysts were tested at temperatures between 300 and 800 degrees C and at varying gas hourly space velocity (GHSV) values with an excess air ratio of 3100%. The catalyst, whose composition was 18% Cr2O3, 2% Ce2O3 and 80% gamma-Al2O3, was found to almost completely oxidize CCl4. The operating conditions proposed are 5702 h(-1) for GHSV, 3100% excess air and a temperature slightly higher than 800 degrees C. The reaction rate expression was found to be independent of oxygen partial pressure but strongly dependent on CCl4 partial pressure.     

Sequential enzymatic quantification of two sugars in a single microchannel

This paper presents the implementation of a multiple analyte enzyme assay, based on the sequential injection of the different enzyme solutions, in an electrokinetic driven microfluidic chip. The assay methodology for the simultaneous quantification of d-glucose and d-fructose was reported in previous publications but here the real integration of both enzyme assays was achieved. When assays were executed separately, good reproducibility was observed with average CV values of 5.2% and 4.5% for the d-glucose and d-fructose assay, respectively. Next, the assays for the quantification of d-glucose and d-fructose were integrated simultaneously on chip, where each assay was executed consecutively in the same microreactor by applying a specific sequence of potentials at the reservoirs. This article proves the integration of a sequential based quantification approach in continuous microfluidic chips with electrokinetic actuation.     

The kernel common vector method: a novel nonlinear subspace classifier for pattern recognition.

The common vector (CV) method is a linear subspace classifier method which allows one to discriminate between classes of data sets, such as those arising in image and word recognition. This method utilizes subspaces that represent classes during classification. Each subspace is modeled such that common features of all samples in the corresponding class are extracted. To accomplish this goal, the method eliminates features that are in the direction of the eigenvectors corresponding to the nonzero eigenvalues of the covariance matrix of each class. In this paper, we introduce a variation of the CV method, which will be referred to as the modified CV (MCV) method. Then, a novel approach is proposed to apply the MCV method in a nonlinearly mapped higher dimensional feature space. In this approach, all samples are mapped into a higher dimensional feature space using a kernel mapping function, and then, the MCV method is applied in the mapped space. Under certain conditions, each class gives rise to a unique CV, and the method guarantees a 100% recognition rate with respect to the training set data. Moreover, experiments with several test cases also show that the generalization performance of the proposed kernel method is comparable to the generalization performances of other linear subspace classifier methods as well as the kernel-based nonlinear subspace method. While both the MCV method and its kernel counterpart did not outperform the support vector machine (SVM) classifier in most of the reported experiments, the application of our proposed methods is simpler than that of the multiclass SVM classifier. In addition, it is not necessary to adjust any parameters in our approach.     

Quadrilateral meshes with provable angle bounds

In this paper, we present an algorithm that utilizes a quadtree data structure to construct a quadrilateral mesh for a simple polygonal region in which no newly created angle is smaller than 18.43^° (=arctan(\frac13)){{18.43}}^{\circ} ({=}\hbox{arctan}(\frac{1}{3})) or greater than 171.86^° (=135^° + 2arctan(\frac13)){{171.86}}^{\circ} ({=}{{135}}^{\circ} + 2\hbox{arctan}(\frac{1}{3})). This is the first known result, to the best of our knowledge, on a direct quadrilateral mesh generation algorithm with a provable guarantee on the angles.     

How do Virtual Badges Incentivize Voluntary Contributions to Online Communities?

Online communities rely heavily on badges to incentivize users to participate in voluntary activities. We examine the relationship between earned badges/pursued badges and contributions in the Stack Overflow question and answer community. Our main results reveal that different levels of earned and pursued badges increase the amount of subsequent answering activity. In addition, earned gold badges are the most influential in the motivation of users while earned bronze badges are the least impactful. Furthermore, the effect of badges involves positive spillovers from higher levels of earned badges to lower ones. Our findings offer important theoretical and managerial implications for online communities.     

Dynamic modeling and fuzzy logic control of vibrations of a railway vehicle for different track irregularities

Safe and comfortable transportation of passengers and goods on railways can be achieved by solving the vibration problem. In this study, the dynamic modeling of the full railway vehicle is used to perform vibration analysis in order to observe displacements and accelerations. The full railway vehicle model consists of 54 degrees of freedom which are defined by differential equations. Additionally, wheel–rail contact problem (i.e. creepage factors and hertzian spring stiffness of rails) is analyzed by finite element method. Dynamic modeling and vibration analysis are carried out using Matlab–Simulink software. Using the developed model, the car body vibrations, caused by a lateral and two vertical sinusoidal track irregularities, are controlled by fuzzy logic controllers placed between the car body and bogies. The fuzzy logic algorithm herein is used for realizing the active control of car body vibrations. The simulations of vibration analysis are obtained in time and frequency domains and compared with passive controlled status. The robustness of the designed controller is verified by simulations, carried out for the cases of car body mass variations. The results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.     

Design optimization of an enzymatic assay in an electrokinetically-driven microfluidic device

Microfluidic systems are increasingly popular for rapid and cheap determinations of enzyme assays and other biochemical analysis. In this study reduced order models (ROM) were developed for the optimization of enzymatic assays performed in a microchip. The model enzyme assay used was β-galactosidase (β-Gal) that catalyzes the conversion of Resorufin β-d-galactopyranoside (RBG) to a fluorescent product as previously reported by Hadd et al. (Anal Chem 69(17): 3407–3412, 1997). The assay was implemented in a microfluidic device as a continuous flow system controlled electrokinetically and with a fluorescence detection device. The results from ROM agreed well with both computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulations and experimental values. While the CFD model allowed for assessment of local transport phenomena, the CPU time was significantly reduced by the ROM approach. The operational parameters of the assay were optimized using the validated ROM to significantly reduce the amount of reagents consumed and the total biochip assay time. After optimization the analysis time would be reduced from 20 to 5.25 min which would also resulted in 50% reduction in reagent consumption.     

Silhouette-based 3-D model reconstruction from multiple images

The goal of this study is to investigate the reconstruction of three-dimensional (3-D) graphical models of real objects in a controlled imaging environment and present the work done in our group based on silhouette-based reconstruction. Although many parts of the whole system have been well-known in the literature and in practice, the main contribution of the paper is that it describes a complete, end-to-end system explained in detail. Based on a multi-image calibration method, an algorithm to extract the rotation axis of a turn-table has been developed. Furthermore, this can be extended to estimate robustly the initial bounding volume of the object to be modeled. The disadvantages of the silhouette-based reconstruction can be removed by an algorithm using photoconsistency. This algorithm has a simpler visibility check, and it eliminates the selection of threshold existing in similar algorithms. Besides, in order to construct the appearance, we use the concept of particles. The reconstruction results are shown both on real world and synthetic objects.     

SoSyM significantly reduces its backlog

Software and Systems Modeling -     

Projection based method for segmentation of human face and its evaluation

We detect facial features and then circumscribe each facial feature with the smallest rectangle possible by using vertical and horizontal gray value projections of pixels. The result is evaluated with respect to the manually located enclosing rectangle on the images of a publicly available database.