Condensation–cyclization reaction for one-pot synthesis of 1,3-thiazolidin-4-one derivatives by poly(p-phenylenediamine) grafted on LDHs as a catalyst with green tool

The three-component reaction between amine, carbonyl compound and thioglycolic acid is now considered as a major strategy for synthesis of 1,3-thiazolidin-4-ones, which consists of the following steps: (i) condensation of aldehyde and amine which results the formation of an imine; (ii) the reaction between thioglycolic acid and the imine which is followed by an intramolecular cyclization reaction, which leads to the formation of the final product. In this way, if no suitable catalyst is employed, the completion of the reaction will not be achieved. Hence, it is of great importance to select an appropriate catalyst so that these compounds can be successfully synthesized. Herein, we employed LDHs@PpPDA as a versatile catalyst for the fabrication of novel derivatives of 1,3-thiazolidin-4-one.     

An analytical framework for event mining in video data

With the high availability of digital video contents on the internet, users need more assistance to access digital videos. Various researches have been done about video summarization and semantic video analysis to help to satisfy these needs. These works are developing condensed versions of a full length video stream through the identification of the most important and pertinent content within the stream. Most of the existing works in these areas are mainly focused on event mining. Event mining from video streams improves the accessibility and reusability of large media collections, and it has been an active area of research with notable recent progress. Event mining includes a wide range of multimedia domains such as surveillance, meetings, broadcast, news, sports, documentary, and films, as well as personal and online media collections. Due to the variety and plenty of Event mining techniques, in this paper we suggest an analytical framework to classify event mining techniques and to evaluate them based on important functional measures. This framework could lead to empirical and technical comparison of event mining methods and development of more efficient structures at future.     

Hierarchy-Debug: a scalable statistical technique for fault localization

Considering the fact that faults may be revealed as undesired mutual effect of program predicates on each other, a new approach for localizing latent bugs, namely Hierarchy-Debug, is presented in this paper. To analyze the vertical effect of predicates on each other and on program termination status, the predicates are fitted into a logistic lasso model. To support scalability, a hierarchical clustering algorithm is applied to cluster the predicates according to their presence in different executions. Considering each cluster as a pseudo-predicate, a distinct lasso model is built for intermediate levels of the hierarchy. Then, we apply a majority voting technique to score the predicates according to their lasso coefficients at different levels of the hierarchy. The predicates with relatively higher scores are ranked as fault relevant predicates. To provide the context of failure, faulty sub-paths are identified as sequences of fault relevant predicates. The grouping effect of Hierarchy-Debug helps programmers to detect multiple bugs. Four case studies have been designed to evaluate the proposed approach on three well-known test suites, Space, Siemens, and Bash. The evaluations show that Hierarchy-Debug produces more precise results compared with prior fault localization techniques on the subject programs.     

A new image encryption scheme with Feistel like structure using chaotic S-box and Rubik cube based P-box

Multimedia Tools and Applications - In this paper, a novel chaos-based dynamic encryption scheme with a permutation-substitution structure is presented. The S-boxes and P-boxes of the scheme are...     

A Multi-Criteria Group Decision Making Methodology Using Interval Type-2 Fuzzy Sets: Application to Water Resources Management

In this paper, a new fuzzy group decision-making methodology which determines and incorporates negotiation powers of decision makers is developed. The proposed method is based on a combination of interval type-2 fuzzy sets and a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) model, namely TOPSIS. To examine the applicability of the proposed methodology, it is used for finding the best scenario of allocating water and reclaimed wastewater to domestic, agricultural, and industrial water sectors and restoring groundwater quantity and quality in the Varamin region located in Tehran metropolitan area in Iran. The results show that the selected scenario leads to an acceptable groundwater conservation level during a long-term planning horizon. Although the capital cost of this scenario is high, which leads to groundwater restoration during the 34-year planning horizon, it is determined as the best allocation scenario. This scenario also entails the second least pumping cost, due to less water allocation from the groundwater. To evaluate the results of the proposed methodology, they are compared with those obtained using some well-known interval type-2 decision-making approaches including arithmetic-based, TOPSIS-based, and likelihood-based comparison methods. The Spearman correlation coefficient shows that the obtained results generally concur with those of the other methods. It is also concluded that the proposed methodology gives more reasonable results by calculating and considering the negotiation powers of decision makers in an extended TOPSIS-based group decision-making model.

     

Preparation and characterization of poly(vinyl alcohol)/gum tragacanth/cellulose nanocomposite film

The effects of gum tragacanth obtained from two species of Astragalus Gossypinus (GT-G) and A. Parrowianus (GT-P) at two levels of 10% and 30% combined with cellulose nanofibers (CNF; 5%) on the physico-mechanical and structural properties of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) nanocomposite film were investigated in this study. The water solubility and water vapor permeability of the films decreased with increasing the content of both gums, especially in the film containing 30% GT-P. The highest values of the tensile strength (39.3 MPa) and elongation at break (445%) belonged to the treatment containing 10% GT-P (90/10P/0). The FTIR and DSC analyses confirmed good interactions between GT and PVA in the 90/10P/0 treatment. SEM images indicated the dense structure of this film as the optimum treatment. Although the presence of CNF in the films containing GT-G improved some properties, especially the Young modulus, it impaired all the functional properties of nanocomposite GT-P film.     

Characterization of minocycline loaded chitosan/polyethylene glycol/glycerol blend films as antibacterial wound dressings

Wound care has been a challenging subject for medical teams and researchers. Bacterial infections are one of the most serious complications in injured skins that often affect healing process. Antibacterial wound dressings can be used to facilitate wound healing process. The purpose of this study is to fabricate chitosan (Chito)/polyethylene glycol (PEG) antibacterial wound dressing doped with minocycline, and to evaluate the influence of composition ratio on the blending properties of the films. To improve the mechanical properties of these films, we examined various amounts of glycerol as a plasticizer. Moreover, we investigated morphological and mechanical aspects, water uptake, degradation, water vapor transmission and wettability properties of the films prepared with various ratios of Chito/PEG/Gly. Assessment of mechanical properties revealed that film containing 80:20 ratio Chito/PEG with 40 PHR Gly content exhibits the highest ultimate tensile strength and elongation at break (9.74 MPa and 45.73% respectively). Furthermore, results demonstrated that upon increasing PEG and Gly contents, degradability and hydrophilicity of the films increased whereas water uptake decreased. Water vapor transmission rate of the films was close to the range of 530–1200 g/m²d, indicating that the as formed films are possible candidates for dressing low exudate wounds or burns. Minocycline loaded films exhibited a biphasic drug release profile and it was more effective on gram-positive bacteria than on gram-negative bacteria. The polymeric film with the highest amount of loaded drug (2%) exhibited insignificant cytotoxicity (88%) against normal fibroblast cell line.     

Modeling and robust discrete LQ repetitive control of electrically driven robots

Discrete linear quadratic control has been efciently applied to linear systems as an optimal control.However,a robotic system is highly nonlinear,heavily coupled and uncertain.To overcome the problem,the robotic system can be modeled as a linear discrete-time time-varying system in performing repetitive tasks.This modeling motivates us to develop an optimal repetitive control.The contribution of this paper is twofold.For the frst time,it presents discrete linear quadratic repetitive control for electrically driven robots using the mentioned model.The proposed control approach is based on the voltage control strategy.Second,uncertainty is efectively compensated by employing a robust time-delay controller.The uncertainty can include parametric uncertainty,unmodeled dynamics and external disturbances.To highlight its ability in overcoming the uncertainty,the dynamic equation of an articulated robot is introduced and used for the simulation,modeling and control purposes.Stability analysis verifes the proposed control approach and simulation results show its efectiveness.     

Congestion-aware channel assignment for multi-channel wireless mesh networks

In this paper, we propose a distributed congestion-aware channel assignment (DCACA) algorithm for multi-channel wireless mesh networks (MC–WMNs). The frequency channels are assigned according to the congestion measures which indicate the congestion status at each link. Depending on the selected congestion measure (e.g., queueing delay, packet loss probability, and differential backlog), various design objectives can be achieved. Our proposed distributed algorithm is simple to implement as it only requires each node to perform a local search. Unlike most of the previous channel assignment schemes, our proposed algorithm assigns not only the non-overlapped (i.e., orthogonal) frequency channels, but also the partially-overlapped channels. In this regard, we introduce the channel overlapping and mutual interference matrices which model the frequency overlapping among different channels. Simulation results show that in the presence of elastic traffic (e.g., TCP Vegas or TCP Reno) sources, our proposed DCACA algorithm increases the aggregate throughput and also decreases the average packet round-trip compared with the previously proposed Load-Aware channel assignment algorithm. Furthermore, in a congested IEEE 802.11b network setting, compared with the use of three non-overlapped channels, the aggregate network throughput can further be increased by 25% and the average round-trip time can be reduced by more than one half when all the 11 partially-overlapped channels are used.     

Introducing realistic tire–pavement contact stresses into Pavement Analysis using Nonlinear Damage Approach (PANDA)

Realistic tire–pavement interface contact areas and stresses were incorporated into the Pavement Analysis using Nonlinear Damage Approach (PANDA) user interface (PUI). PANDA is a software library developed to simulate the complex thermo-viscoelastic–viscoplastic–viscodamage responses of the pavement to mechanical and environmental loads. The PUI is an interface generating a finite element representation of the pavement within PANDA. The application of realistic tire loading is necessary to calculate accurate pavement responses. The PUI incorporates a database of tire contact areas and stresses obtained from tire finite element simulations. The database includes tire interface characteristics with pavements for various applied loads, tire inflation pressures, vehicle speeds and scenarios of different rolling simulations. A parametric study was conducted to investigate the effect of simulations of tire contact stresses that match field measurements on viscoelastic and viscoplastic pavement responses. Pavement responses are greatly affected using realistic tire loading contact stresses and contact geometry as compared to simplified contact models. The impact on rutting and damage predictions cannot be ignored if reliable projections of pavement performance are to be made. This study confirms the importance of considering realistic three-dimensional contact stresses to design and analyse pavements.