Conditions for worm-robot locomotion in a flexible environment: theory and experiments

Biological vessels are characterized by their substantial compliance and low friction that present a major challenge for crawling robots for minimally invasive medical procedures. Quite a number of studies considered the design and construction of crawling robots; however, very few focused on the interaction between the robots and the flexible environment. In a previous study, we derived the analytical efficiency of worm locomotion as a function of the number of cells, friction coefficients, normal forces, and local (contact) tangential compliance. In this paper, we introduce the structural effects of environment compliance, generalize our previous analysis to include dynamic and static coefficients of friction, determine the conditions of locomotion as function of the external resisting forces, and experimentally validate our previous and newly obtained theoretical results. Our experimental setup consists of worm robot prototypes, flexible interfaces with known compliance and a Vicon motion capture system to measure the robot positioning. Separate experiments were conducted to measure the tangential compliance of the contact interface that is required for computing the analytical efficiency. The validation experiments were performed for both types of compliant conditions, local and structural, and the results are shown to be in clear match with the theoretical predictions. Specifically, the convergence of the tangential deflections to an arithmetic series and the partial and overall loss of locomotion verify the theoretical predictions.     

Unsteady conjugate natural convection in a square enclosure filled with a porous medium

Mathematical simulation of unsteady natural convection modes in a square cavity filled with a porous medium having finite thickness heat-conducting walls with local heat source in conditions of heterogeneous heat exchange with an environment at one of the external boundaries has been carried out. Numerical analysis was based on Darcy–Forchheimer model in dimensionless variables such as a stream function, a vorticity vector and a temperature. The special attention was given to analysis of Rayleigh number effect Ra = 10⁴, 10⁵, 10⁶, of Darcy number effect Da = 10^?5, 10^?4, 10^?3, ∞, of the transient factor effect 0 < τ < 1000 and of the heat conductivity ratio k_2,1 = 3.7 × 10^?2, 5.7 × 10^?4, 6.8 × 10^?5 on the velocity and temperature fields. The influence scales of the defining parameters on the average Nusselt number have been detected.     

Ecologically safe destruction of the detoxification products of mustard–lewisite mixtures from the Russian chemical stockpile

An integrated chemical/biological method has been developed to create an environmentally safe technology for the destruction of the detoxification products of mustard–lewisite mixtures (MLM) from the Russian Stockpile of Chemical Warfare (CW) Agents. This method includes three sequential steps: (1) detoxification by alkaline hydrolysis, (2) electrochemical treatment of detoxification products including electrolysis and electrocoagulation for removing arsenic salts and for converting all organic components to bioutilized substances, and (3) bioutilization of the electrochemical products by a selected microbial association. This integrated system makes it possible to achieve an environmentally safe destruction of MLM. The approach provided for an effective engineering process that was able to biodegrade the organic materials resulting from the alkaline hydrolysis of sulfur mustard–lewisite mixtures once toxic arsenate was removed by electrochemical means. © 2000 Society of Chemical Industry     

The influence of random microstructure on wave propagation through heterogeneous media

In this paper the influence of mechanical and geometrical properties, both deterministic and stochastic in nature, of a heterogeneous periodic composite material on wave propagation has been analysed in terms of the occurrence of stop-bands. Numerical analyses have been used to identify those parameters that have the most significant effect on the wave filtering properties of the medium. A striking conclusion is that randomness in geometrical properties has a much larger effect than randomness in mechanical properties.     

Precursor synthesis and properties of iron and lithium co-doped cadmium oxide

Journal of Electroceramics - Lithium and iron co-doped cadmium oxide Cd0.9(Li1-xFex)0.1O (x?=?0.1, 0.3, 0.5, 0.7) with NaCl structure has been synthesized using formate of the...     

Minimization of earliness, tardiness and due date penalties on uniform parallel machines with identical jobs

We consider a problem of scheduling n identical nonpreemptive jobs with a common due date on m uniform parallel machines. The objective is to determine an optimal value of the due date and an optimal allocation of jobs onto machines so as to minimize a total cost function, which is the function of earliness, tardiness and due date values. For the problem under study, we establish a set of properties of an optimal solution and suggest a two-phase algorithm to tackle the problem. First, we limit the number of due dates one needs to consider in pursuit of optimality. Next, we provide a polynomial-time algorithm to build an optimal schedule for a fixed due date. The key result is an O(m² log m) algorithm that solves the main problem to optimality.Scope and purpose: To extend the existing research on cost minimization with earliness, tardiness and due date penalties to the case of uniform parallel machines.     

APPLYING SEMANTIC TECHNOLOGY TO BUSINESS NEWS ANALYSIS

This article addresses business news analysis by using artificial intelligence. An interdisciplinary method combining financial textual data mining and ontology-based reasoning is proposed and evaluated. The experiments are performed using a well-known Cyc ontology and textual material from the financial domain. Our experiments show that using semantic technologies for business news analysis helps to provide the user with more relevant answers to his/her queries.     

OntoPlus: Text-driven ontology extension using ontology content,structure and co-occurrence information

This paper addresses the process of semi-automatic text-driven ontology extension using ontology content, structure and co-occurrence information. A novel OntoPlus methodology is proposed for semi-automatic ontology extension based on text mining methods. It allows for the effective extension of the large ontologies, providing a ranked list of potentially relevant concepts and relationships given a new concept (e.g., glossary term) to be inserted in the ontology. A number of experiments are conducted, evaluating measures for ranking correspondence between existing ontology concepts and new domain concepts suggested for the ontology extension. Measures for ranking are based on incorporating ontology content, structure and co-occurrence information. The experiments are performed using a well known Cyc ontology and textual material from two domains – finances and, fisheries & aquaculture. Our experiments show that the best results are achieved by combining content, structure and co-occurrence information. Furthermore, ontology content and structure seem to be more important than co-occurrence for our data in the financial domain. At the same time, ontology content and co-occurrence seem to have higher importance for our fisheries & aquaculture domain.     

Laser‐Directed Assembly of Nanorods of 2D Materials

Herein, the previously unrealized ability to grow nanorods and nanotubes of 2D materials using femtosecond laser irradiation is demonstrated. In as short as 20 min, nanorods of tungsten disulfide, molybdenum disulfide, graphene, and boron nitride are grown in solutions. The technique fragments nanoparticles of the 2D materials from bulk flakes and leverages molecular scale alignment by nonresonant intense laser pulses to direct their assembly into nanorods up to several micrometers in length. The laser treatment process is found to induce phase transformations in some of the materials, and also results in the modification of the nanorods with functional groups from the solvent atoms. Notably, the WS₂ nanoparticles, which are ablated from semiconducting 2H WS₂ crystallographic phase flakes, reassemble into nanorods consisting of the 1T metallic phase. Due to this transition, and the 1D nature of the fabricated nanorods, the WS₂ nanorods display substantial improvements in electrical conductivity and optical transparency when employed as transparent conductors.     

Pinacol rearrangement of jojoba bis-epoxide

Jojoba bis-epoxide (1.6 mmol) undergoes pinacol rearrangement upon reaction with the iodide ion (60 mmol) under slightly acidic conditions, via an iodohydrin as an intermediate, to yield bis-ketojojoba in high yield (92%) after 25 h reflux in THF; no hydroxy derivatives were detected. Since the nucleophilic opening of the epoxide ring is statistically equal on both sides, the rearranged product may have the two carbonyl groups on either side of the original carbon atoms of the two epoxide rings, both completely opened. MS of the rearranged products reveals that the ring opening is approximately equal on both sides of the epoxide ring. Other nucleophiles, such as acetate and amine, open the ring sluggishly without rearrangement.