Assessing the visual quality of sanitary ware by fuzzy logic

Quality control systems focus on maintaining standards in manufactured products. To improve the homogeneity of batches received by final users and to detect manufacturing defaults, a visual control stage is integrated into production line before the packing operation. At this stage, the products are inspected, mostly by human eye, for their obvious external defects; e.g., chips, cracks, scratches, holes and pitting, lumps, spots, notches, and glazing. This task is often referred to as visual inspection which is important to categorize the final products into quality-constant batches. Prototypes are of invaluable help while inspecting the visual attributes of products. Visual quality of products is assessed with respect to these standard units and some quality ratings are made there on the results. However, assessing visual quality is somewhat an ambiguous and troublesome work. Therefore, it will be helpful to utilize a decision making technique, such as fuzzy logic, to facilitate and improve the process. This paper addresses first to the significance of visual inspection and assessment of visual quality of industrial products, and second, gives a unique application of visual quality assessment of vitreous china ceramic sanitary wares by using fuzzy logic method.     

Dispersion polymerization of methyl methacrylate in supercritical carbon dioxide using a silicone‐containing fluoroacrylate stabilizer

Free radical dispersion polymerization of methyl methacrylate (MMA) was carried out in supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO₂) using poly{(heptadecafluorodecyl acrylate)‐co‐3‐[tris(trimethylsilyloxy)silyl]propyl methacrylate} (p(HDFDA‐co‐SiMA)) as stabilizer. Dry, fine powdered spherical poly(methyl methacrylate) (pMMA) particles with well‐defined sizes were produced. The resulting high yield of spherical and relatively uniform micron‐size pMMA particles was formed utilizing various amounts of p(HDFDA‐co‐SiMA) random copolymer. The particle diameter was shown to be dependent on the weight percent of the stabilizer added to the system. The effects of varying the concentration of stabilizer (1–7 wt%), reaction time (4–12 h) and pressure (15–35 MPa) upon the polymerization yield, molar mass and morphology of pMMA were investigated. Copyright © 2005 Society of Chemical Industry     

Feasibility of Neural Stimulation With Floating-Light-Activated Microelectrical Stimulators

Neural microstimulation is becoming a powerful tool for the restoration of impaired functions in the central nervous system. Microelectrode arrays with fine wire interconnects have traditionally been used in the development of these neural prosthetic devices. However, these interconnects are usually the most vulnerable part of the neuroprosthetic implant that can eventually cause the device to fail. In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of floating-light-activated microelectrical stimulators (FLAMES) for wireless neural stimulation. A computer model was developed to simulate the micro stimulators for typical requirements of neural activation in the human white and gray matters. First, the photon densities due to a circular laser beam were simulated in the neural tissue at near-infrared (NIR) wavelengths. Temperature elevation in the tissue was calculated and the laser power was retrospectively adjusted to 325 and 250 mW/cm(2) in the gray and white matters, respectively, to limit ΔT to 0.5 °C. Total device area of the FLAMES increased with all parameters considered but decreased with the output voltage. We conclude that the number of series photodiodes in the device can be used as a free parameter to minimize the device size. The results suggest that floating, optically activated stimulators are feasible at submillimeter sizes for the activation of the brain cortex or the spinal cord.     

Subprofile-aware diversification of recommendations

A user of a recommender system is more likely to be satisfied by one or more of the recommendations if each individual recommendation is relevant to her but additionally if the set of recommendations is diverse. The most common approach to recommendation diversification uses re-ranking: the recommender system scores a set of candidate items for relevance to the user; it then re-ranks the candidates so that the subset that it will recommend achieves a balance between relevance and diversity. Ordinarily, we expect a trade-off between relevance and diversity: the diversity of the set of recommendations increases by including items that have lower relevance scores but which are different from the items already in the set. In early work, the diversity of a set of recommendations was given by the average of their distances from one another, according to some semantic distance metric defined on item features such as movie genres. More recent intent-aware diversification methods formulate diversity in terms of coverage and relevance of aspects. The aspects are most commonly defined in terms of item features. By trying to ensure that the aspects of a set of recommended items cover the aspects of the items in the user’s profile, the level of diversity is more personalized. In offline experiments on pre-collected datasets, intent-aware diversification using item features as aspects sometimes defies the relevance/diversity trade-off: there are configurations in which the recommendations exhibits increases in both relevance and diversity. In this paper, we present a new form of intent-aware diversification, which we call SPAD (Subprofile-Aware Diversification), and a variant called RSPAD (Relevance-based SPAD). In SPAD, the aspects are not item features; they are subprofiles of the user’s profile. We present and compare a number of different ways to extract subprofiles from a user’s profile. None of them is defined in terms of item features. Therefore, SPAD is useful even in domains where item features are not available or are of low quality. On three pre-collected datasets from three different domains (movies, music artists and books), we compare SPAD and RSPAD to intent-aware methods in which aspects are item features. We find on these datasets that SPAD and RSPAD suffer even less from the relevance/diversity trade-off: across all three datasets, they increase both relevance and diversity for even more configurations than other approaches to diversification. Moreover, we find that SPAD and RSPAD are the most accurate systems across all three datasets.

     

Morphological characterization of aluminum-doped zinc oxide nanomaterials (AZO) for dye-sensitized solar cells

In this work, aluminum-doped ZnO (AZO, Al:ZnO) nanocomposite materials were prepared by a simple hydrothermal method using the microwave oven. Zinc oxide nanostructures were doped with aluminum in different dopant concentrations (0.5%, 1.0%, 1.5% and 2.0%). AZO materials were analyzed using XRD, SEM and EDX measurements. Also dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) performances of AZOs were investigated. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis confirms that the synthesized AZO nanomaterials were nanorods and nanoplates in shape and have 200 nm to 974 nm sizes in length and 116.1-269.5 nm in diameters (shown Figure 4-5). Dye-sensitized solar cell efficiencies are higher in 0.5% and 1% AZO nanorod materials. We have found the maximum efficiency as 1.94% for 1% doped AZO nanorod materials.     

Nonlocal effects in the forced vibration of an elastically connected double-carbon nanotube system under a moving nanoparticle

This study presents an analytical method for the forced vibration of an elastically connected double-carbon nanotube system (DCNTS) carrying a moving nanoparticle based on the nonlocal elasticity theory. The two nanotubes are identical and are connected with each other continuously by elastic springs. The problem is also solved numerically by using the Galerkin method and the time integration method of Newmark to establish the reliability of the analytical method. Two sets of critical velocity exist for DCNTS. The closed-form solutions for the dynamic deflections of the two nanotubes are derived for these two sets of critical velocity for the first time in this study. The influences of the nonlocal parameter, aspect ratio, velocity of the moving nanoparticle and the elastic layer between the nanotubes on the dynamic responses are discussed. The study shows that the dynamic behavior of the double-carbon nanotube system is greatly influenced by the nonlocal effects. The dynamic deflections predicted by the classical theory are always smaller than those predicted by the nonlocal theory due to the nonlocal effects. Thus, the classical beam models are not suitable in modeling carbon nanotubes with small aspect ratio, and nonlocal effects should be taken into account. Furthermore, the velocity of the nanoparticle and the stiffness of the elastic layer have significant effects on the dynamic behavior of DCNTS.     

Different Mechanisms for Establishing Liquid Walls in Advanced Reactor Systems

The APEX study is investigating the use of free flowing liquid surfaces to form the inner surface of the chamber around a fusion plasma. In this study the modeling of APEX hybrid reactor produced by using ARIES-RS hybrid reactor technology, was performed by using the Monte Carlo code and ENF/B–V–VI nuclear data. The most important feature of APEX hybrid reactor is that the first wall surrounding the plasma is liquid. The advantages of utilizing a liquid wall are high power density capacity, good power transformation productivity the magnitude of the reactor’s operational duration, low failure percentage, short maintenance time and the inclusion of the system’s simple technology and material. Around the fusion chamber, molten salt Li₂BeF₄ and natural lithium were used as cooling materials. The result of the study indicated that fissile material production UF₄ and ThF₄ heavy metal salt increased nearly at the same percentage.     

Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Hydrocarbon-Contaminated Porous Media

Nuclear magnetic resonance response measurement is a nondestructive and nonintrusive technique, which is potentially useful for in situ characterization, mapping, and diagnostic purposes in hydrocarbon-contaminated subsurface, including rock. Magnetic resonance measurements of a porous medium allow the determination of necessary parameters to evaluate permeability and porosity of the medium and the type of hydrocarbons present in the pore fluid. This information is of particular importance in evaluation of hydrocarbon transport in contaminated soils. This paper presents the results of a preliminary study intended to evaluate the robustness of the magnetic resonance imaging technology using well-characterized laboratory specimens of porous material containing hydrocarbon liquids. First, a dry uniform sand pack impregnated with an aqueous coal tar mixture was imaged to evaluate discernable hydrocarbon distribution in the pore space of the sand column. Then, packed columns of glass beads of various sizes, permeated with distilled water and trichloroethylene, were imaged. The discernable images of the pore space and the interface of the two liquids in the pore space indicated that magnetic resonance imaging could be a viable tool to determine spatial distribution and mass fraction of hydrocarbon liquids in contaminated subsurface.     

Surface structure and properties of functionalized nanodiamonds: a first-principles study

The goal of this work is to gain fundamental understanding of the surface and internal structure of functionalized detonation nanodiamonds (NDs) using quantum mechanics based density functional theory (DFT) calculations. The unique structure of ND assists in the binding of different functional groups to its surface which in turn facilitates binding with drug molecules. The ability to comprehensively model the surface properties, as well as drug-ND interactions during functionalization, is a challenge and is the problem of our interest. First, the structure of NDs of technologically relevant size (～5 nm) was optimized using classical mechanics based molecular mechanics simulations. Quantum mechanics based density functional theory (DFT) was then employed to analyse the properties of smaller relevant parts of the optimized cluster further to address the effect of functionalization on the stability of the cluster and reactivity at its surface. It is found that functionalization is preferred over reconstruction at the (100) surface and promotes graphitization in the (111) surface for NDs functionalized with the carbonyl oxygen (C = O) group. It is also seen that the edges of ND are the preferred sites for functionalization with the carboxyl group (-COOH) vis-à-vis the corners of ND.     

Desulphurization of some low-rank Turkish lignites with crude laccase produced from Trametes versicolor ATCC 200801

In this paper, data obtained during the oxidative desulphurization of some low-rank Turkish lignites with crude laccase enzyme produced from Trametes versicolor ATCC 200801 are presented. In order to optimize desulphurization conditions, effects of incubation time, pulp density, incubation temperature, medium pH, and also lignite source on the desulphurization have been examined. The values for incubation period, pulp density, temperature and pH in optimum incubation condition were found as 30 min, 5%, 35 °C, and pH 5.0, respectively. Under optimum conditions, treatment of coal samples with crude laccase has caused nearly 29% reduction in their total sulphur content. During the study, the rate of desulphurization of coal sample provided from Tunçbilek with crude laccase was found to be relatively higher than the other examined coal samples. Results of analytical assays have indicated that the treatment of coals with crude laccase has caused no change in their calorific values but reduced their sulphur emissions. 35%, 13%, and 25% reductions of pyritic sulphur, sulphate and organic sulphur in a period of 30 min were achieved, for a particle size of 200 μm under optimal conditions with enzymatic desulphurization. Also, statistical analyses such as Tukey Multiple Comparison tests and ANOVA were performed.