The strength of press-glued and screw-glued wood-plywood joints

The effects of screw-gluing and gap-filling phenol resorcinol formaldehyde (GPRF) adhesive using different glue line thicknesses on the shear strength of wood-plywood joints were studied to determine the use of screw-gluing fastening (SG) method and GPRF adhesive. The specimens were manufactured using either SG method with GPRF adhesive and fine threaded drywall screws or press-gluing (PG) method with GPRF adhesive. The Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used for statistical analyses. The results showed that the strength among fastening methods was significantly affected by the glue line thickness, so the strength decreased as the glue line thickness increased. The SG fastening method was found as effective as the PG method and more effective when thick glue lines present. The method can be successfully used to bond wood to plywood for wooden panels i.e. stressed skin and sandwich panels.     

Transmission losses based MW contingency ranking

Contingency ranking and selection is an indispensable tool for static security analysis. Several performance indices suffer either from misranking or computational inefficiencies. This paper presents a new performance index for MW line flow contingency selection and ranking. The proposed index is derived from real power transmission losses. It is a quadratic function of bus voltage angles and can easily be calculated from real power flows or DC load flow. It improves both the selectivity and the ranking of second order performance index without excessive computational effort. The proposed method is tested on IEEE 24-bus reliability test system and IEEE 30-bus test system. The results are compared with those of the conventional second order performance index and of the tenth order reference performance index from the point of ranking and selectivity.     

The effect of varying chill surface roughness on interfacial heat transfer during casting solidification

Experiments to investigate interfacial heat transfer mechanisms during casting solidification were carried out by varying the surface roughness of a Cu chill used to bring about unidirectional solidification of an Al-4.5 wt.% Cu alloy. Little variation in interfacial heat transfer coefficient with varying chill surface roughness was found, confirming previously published results. Examination of the as-cast surface of the casting showed the presence of predendritic contact areas, and also that the casting surface roughness did not form as a replica of the chill surface, as has often been proposed. Rather, the casting surface roughness was consistently greater than that of the chill, but varied little in the experiments. A sum surface roughness parameter was devised to characterise the casting–chill interface that included the roughness of both surfaces. The value of this parameter was strongly influenced by the greater roughness of the casting surface, rather than the chill surface roughness, and therefore also varied little in the experiments. This lack of variation in the casting surface roughness and hence the sum surface roughness parameter showed how interfacial heat transfer should be more strongly influenced by the greater roughness of the casting surface than of the chill surface, and explains why the interfacial heat transfer coefficient was not strongly influenced by the chill surface roughness in these types of experiments. At the time the work was carried out the authors were in the Manchester Materials Science Centre, University of Manchester and UMIST, Manchester M1 7HS, UK.     

Machine Learning and Classical Forecasting Methods Based Decision Support Systems for COVID-19

From late 2019 to the present day, the coronavirus outbreak tragically affected the whole world and killed tens of thousands of people. Many countries have taken very stringent measures to alleviate the effects of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and are still being implemented. In this study, various machine learning techniques are implemented to predict possible confirmed cases and mortality numbers for the future. According to these models, we have tried to shed light on the future in terms of possible measures to be taken or updating the current measures. Support Vector Machines (SVM), Holt-Winters, Prophet, and Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM) forecasting models are applied to the novel COVID-19 dataset. According to the results, the Prophet model gives the lowest Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) score compared to the other three models. Besides, according to this model, a projection for the future COVID-19 predictions of Turkey has been drawn and aimed to shape the current measures against the coronavirus.     

NIR photoluminescence and radioluminescence characteristics of Nd3+ doped BaTa2O6 phosphor

Barium tantalate phosphors activated with different concentrations of Nd³⁺ ion were synthesized via conventional solid state reaction method. The synthesized ceramic powders were characterized by X–ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy‐energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM‐EDS), laser diode (LD) excited near infrared (NIR) photoluminescence and X‐ray induced radioluminescence (RL) analyses. In XRD results, Nd³⁺ doped BaTa₂O₆ structure with tetragonal tungsten bronze (TTB) symmetry was observed to continue up to 10 mol%. In the examination of ceramic powders by SEM, grain size decreased with the increasing doping concentration. By using laser diode excited NIR photoluminescence of BaTa₂O₆:Nd³⁺ phosphor exhibited characteristic emissions at 877, 1080, and 1376 nm wavelengths due to ⁴F_3/2 → ⁴I_11/2, ⁴F_3/2 → ⁴I_11/2, and ⁴F_3/2 → ⁴I_11/2 band transitions respectively. Scintillation properties of Nd³⁺ doped samples from UV to near‐IR spectral region were carried out by the radioluminescence analysis. NIR and scintillation emissions initially increased by the doping concentration, and then decreased due to concentration quenching effect.     

Multifunctional amphoteric resin to remove both anionic and cationic dyes from aqueous solution

This study reports the synthesis and characterization of a new amphoteric resin, which can be used for the removal of both cationic, methylene blue (MB) and anionic dyes, reactive red-120 (RR-120). The amphoteric resin was characterized by ATR-FTIR, SEM–EDX, TGA/DTA, DLS, BET analysis and also its surface pHpzc was determined. The prepared resin has micro porous structure and its particle size was at the nano level. The prepared amphoteric resin showed high removal affinity for MB in both acidic and basic medium, while for RR-120 high removal affinity in acidic medium. Moreover, it was observed that the amphoteric resin has exhibited almost 100% dye removal up to 600 ppm for MB and up to 300 ppm for RR-120, respectively. The adsorption behavior of both dyes on the amphoteric resin is in agreement with the Langmuir isotherm and the pseudo-second order kinetic model and also electrostatic interaction is dominant in adsorption. Its capacity was slightly low for the MB than that of the commercial activated carbon, but higher for the RR-120. Furthermore, it was observed that the amphoteric resin almost did not lose its high removal efficiency in the concentrated matrix environment for both dyes. After five repeated adsorption–desorption cycles, the high removal efficiency of the resin for the MB (almost 100%) unchanged, but for the RR-120 decreased to 83%.     

Efficient adsorption of lead (II) and copper (II) from aqueous phase using oxidized multiwalled carbon nanotubes/polypyrrole composite

Polypyrrole coated oxidized multiwalled carbon nanotubes (oMWCNT/Ppy) were applied to determine the adsorption characteristics of Pb(II) and Cu(II) from their aqueous solutions. Structural and morphological characterization studies using scanning electron microscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, Fourier transform infrared and Raman spectroscopy showed successful preparation of the oMWCNT/Ppy composite. The influence of pH, contact time, and initial metal ion concentration on the adsorption of Pb(II) and Cu(II) was studied. The adsorption processes fitted well with Langmuir isotherm and pseudo-second-order kinetic models. The maximum adsorption capacities for Pb(II) and Cu(II) were determined as 26.32 and 24.39 mg/g, respectively. Desorption studies indicated that the oMWCNT/Ppy composite could be reused for five cycles with minimum loss of its initial adsorption capacity.     

Adsorption characteristics of Cu(II) and Pb(II) onto expanded perlite from aqueous solution

The adsorption characteristics of Cu(II) and Pb(II) onto expanded perlite (EP) from aqueous solution were investigated with respect to the changes in pH of solution, adsorbent dosage, contact time and temperature of solution. For the adsorption of both metal ions, the Langmuir isotherm model fitted to equilibrium data better than the Freundlich isotherm model. Using the Langmuir model equation, the monolayer adsorption capacity of EP was found to be 8.62 and 13.39 mg/g for Cu(II) and Pb(II) ions, respectively. Dubinin-Radushkevich (D-R) isotherm model was also applied to the equilibrium data and the mean free energies of adsorption were found as 10.82 kJ/mol for Cu(II) and 9.12 kJ/mol for Pb(II) indicating that the adsorption of both metal ions onto EP was taken place by chemical ion-exchange. Thermodynamic functions, the change of free energy (DeltaG degrees ), enthalpy (DeltaH degrees ) and entropy (DeltaS degrees ) of adsorption were also calculated for each metal ions. These parameters showed that the adsorption of Cu(II) and Pb(II) ions onto EP was feasible, spontaneous and exothermic at 20-50 degrees C. Experimental data were also evaluated in terms of kinetic characteristics of adsorption and it was found that adsorption process for both metal ions followed well pseudo-second-order kinetics.     

Improving UDP performance using intermediate QoD‐aware hop system for wired/wireless multimedia communication systems

Multimedia communication in wireless networks is challenging due to the inherent complexity and constraints of multimedia data. To reduce the high bandwidth requirement of video streaming, videos are compressed by exploiting spatial and temporal redundancy, thus yielding dependencies among frames as well as within a frame. Unnecessary transmission and maintenance of useless packets in the buffers cause further loss and degrade the quality of delivery (QoD) significantly. In this paper, we propose a QoD‐aware hop system that can decide when and which packets could be dropped without degrading QoD. Moreover, the transmission of useless packets causes network congestion and vain payment by the wireless system subscriber. In this paper, we focus on two types of frame discarding policies to maintain QoD: partial frame discarding policy (PFD) and early frame discarding policy (EFD). PFD policy discards the succeeding packets of a frame if a packet of the frame cannot be served. On the other hand, in EFD policy, when it is likely to fail to serve packets of a frame (based on a threshold) the subsequent packets of the frame are discarded. We first provide an analytical study of average buffer occupancy based on these discarding policies and show the closed‐form expressions for average buffer occupancy. We then perform our simulations by implementing a Markovian model and measure the frameput (the ratio of number of frames served) rather than the number of packets served. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dominant role of drivers’ attitude in prevention of road traffic crashes: A study on knowledge,attitude, and practice of drivers in Iran

Objective

Evaluating the relation between Iranian drivers’ knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) regarding traffic regulations, and their deterministic effect on road traffic crashes (RTCs).

Setting

Two cities of Tehran and Zahedan, Iran.

Methods

A cross-sectional study was designed. Using a simplified cluster sampling design, 2200 motor vehicle drivers including 1200 in Tehran and 1000 in Zahedan were selected. Sixty locations in Tehran and 50 in Zahedan were chosen. In each pre-identified location, 20 adult drivers were approached consecutively. A questionnaire developed by researchers was filled by each participant. The questionnaire had four sections including items assessing the demographics, knowledge, attitude and practice of drivers toward traffic regulations. Logistic regression analysis was used to evaluate the relationship between the RTCs and KAP variables.

Results

The study sample consisted of 619 (28.1%) occupational and 1580 (71.8%) private drivers. Among them, 86.4% were male. The median age was 33.6 ± 10.83. Drivers in Tehran and Zahedan had no significant differences between their mean scores of KAP items of the questionnaire. Higher knowledge, safer attitude, and safer practice were associated with a decreased number of RTC. After adjusting for possible confounders, increase of one standard deviation in attitude and practice scores (but not knowledge) resulted in 26.4% and 18.5% decrease in RTC, respectively. Finally, considering knowledge, attitude and practice of drivers in one model to assess their mutual effect, it was shown that only attitude is significantly associated with a decrease of RTC (OR = 0.76, P = 0.007).

Conclusion

Increase in attitude and practice accompanied with decreased number of RTCs in Iranian drivers. Specifically, drivers’ attitude had the crucial effect. It is not knowledge and standard traffic education; rather it is how such education is registered as an attitude that translates what is being learned into actions. Without safer attitude, even safer self-reported practice will not result in lower RTCs.