Effects of gating design on structural and mechanical properties of high manganese steel by optimizing casting process parameters

Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology - The impacts of gating design and riser system on structure-property relationship of high manganese steel specimens produced by CO2 sand molding...     

Measurement and targeting of thermophysical properties of carrot and meat based alginate particles for thermal processing applications

The objective of the study was to investigate the thermo-physical properties of meat and carrot based alginate particles as influenced by the formulation variables. A response surface methodology (RSM) was used to study the effect of sodium alginate concentration, calcium chloride concentration and dipping time in the calcium chloride solution, at five levels each, on the thermo-physical properties of the fabricated particles (9 mm in diameter and 9 mm in height). Density was similar for all conditions. Increasing sodium alginate concentration resulted in a significant decrease in the heat capacity and thermal conductivity values. These changes were primarily attributed to the lowering of moisture content of the particles resulting from the treatment. Using RSM, optimum conditions for fabricating particles having similar thermo-physical properties to real foods were obtained as 5.3% and 4.9% sodium alginate, 2.2% calcium chloride and 14.2 and 36.0 h immersion in the calcium chloride solution for meat and carrot alginate particles, respectively.     

A 1.44-mW, 1-MHz bandwidth continuous-time Σ∆ modulator with 10-bit ENOB in 130-nm CMOS

A low-power, low-pass continuous-time sigma-delta A/D modulator with 1-MHz bandwidth is implemented in a 130-nm CMOS process. The circuit is targeted for an IEEE 802.15.4 direct conversion receiver operating in the 2.4-GHz band. It has a third-order feedforward single-loop filter and a 1-bit quantizer to minimize power consumption. Non-return-to-zero DAC pulse shaping is used to reduce sensitivity to clock jitter. Clocked at 64 MHz, the prototype chip achieves 62-dB peak SNR, −70-dB peak THD, 63-dB dynamic range with an oversampling ratio of 32. The built-in anti-alias filter provides alias attenuation greater than 57 dB, which improves coexistence of the receiver with other devices that operate in the 2.4-GHz band. The circuit dissipates 1.44 mW from the 1.2-V supply and the active die area is 0.1 mm².     

Detection of debonding in composite-aluminum joints using gamma-ray Compton scattering

Gamma-ray Compton scattering is used for the detection of debonding in adhesively bonded composite-aluminum joints. A collimated narrow beam of monochromatic photons, generated by a ¹³⁷CS source, is directed towards the joint and scattered photons are recorded, using a detector located on the same side as the source. The energy of the scattered radiation is measured and related to the angle of scattering. The occurrence of debonding is indicated by a change in the count rate at an energy corresponding to its location. The performance of the technique is successfully demonstrated experimentally for joints of different adhesive-bonding thicknesses and for artificially induced debonds.     

Privacy preserving broadcast message authentication protocol for VANETs

Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) will start becoming deployed within the next decade. Among other benefits, it is expected that VANETs will support applications and services targeting the increase of safety on the road, and assist in improving the efficiency of the road transportation network. However, several serious challenges remain to be solved before efficient and secure VANET technology becomes available, one of them been efficient authentication of messages in a VANET. There is a significant body of research work addressing this issue, however, while progress has been made, the challenge is still far from having been resolved and reliable and secure systems ready for deployment becoming available. In this paper, we propose the Privacy Preserving Broadcast Message Authentication (PPBMA) scheme, which, instead of performing asymmetric verification, uses Message Authentication Code (MAC) functionality and HASH operations to authenticate messages. Moreover, we use two-level key hash chain, which assists avoiding message losses. Simulation results demonstrate that PPBMA has superior performances in terms of packet loss rate and message delivery latency when compared to existing solutions. Due to this advantage, it can support emergency and routine messages alike, while existing solutions can only support routine messages.     

Medication take-home doses and contingency management.

Two studies examined contingent take-home medication doses during treatment of opiate or cocaine dependence. In the first study, methadone maintenance patients were randomly assigned to one of two 8-week baseline take-home (TH) conditions differing in frequency of clinic visits per week. This was followed by a 12-week contingency management (CM) procedure in which frequent THs resulted from drug-free urines. Participants receiving more frequent THs during baseline had lower illicit drug use during the first 6 weeks of CM. In the second study, fluoxetine (0-, 20-, 40-mg) TH doses were similarly contingent in treatment of cocaine dependence. The 40-mg group used less cocaine during contingency than did other groups. The combination of fluoxetine and environmental contingencies may produce benefit where neither alone is sufficient. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recovery from control plane failures in GMPLS‐controlled optical networks

The health status of the control plane and the data plane of a GMPLS‐controlled optical network is independent in the physically separated control network implementation. In most control plane designs, besides the topology information, the entities of the routing protocol only record the number of available wavelengths on each link. However, the status of each wavelength is maintained by the entities of the signalling protocol. Without recovery ability of the signalling protocol CR‐LDP, a failure in the control plane will result in the permanent loss of the status information of wavelengths. A mechanism to recover the status information of the wavelengths is proposed. A downstream node maintains a label information database (LID) about assignable (free) labels in each incoming link. A copy of LID is redundantly stored in the upstream node as a label information mirror (LIM). A systematic procedure is proposed to synchronize the contents of a LIM and the corresponding LID. The initialization of a new LDP session with the enhanced recovery mechanism will guarantee the revival of the status information of wavelengths. It can recover multiple control channel failures, but it only applies to single node failure among any pair of adjacent nodes. © Crown copyright 2002. Reproduced with the permission of Her Majesty's Stationery Office. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.