An experimental approach towards increasing mechanical durability of extruded fish feed in the drying process

Mechanical durability of extruded fish feed must be optimized to lower economic losses as well as emission of organic matter to aquatic environments. The glass transition hypothesis for viscoelastic biopolymers is demonstrated and confirmed experimentally to be valid for extruded fish feed pellets. It is proposed and demonstrated that it is important to avoid early glass transition onset, to optimize the obtained mechanical durability. From the proposed glass transition hypothesis, immediate process relevance to the pre-drying transport mechanism is demonstrated. Furthermore, measured mechanical durability is found to range from 1.5 to 5.0% loss, for different combinations of drying parameters.     

Cooperative Communication Enabled Cognitive Radio in a Home-Care Application

Wireless Personal Communications - In this paper, cooperative communication (CC) assisted cognitive wireless sensor network (CWSN) is presented for monitoring health and activity of an end-user in...     

Household endotoxin reduction in the Louisa Environmental Intervention Project for rural childhood asthma

Endotoxin exacerbates asthma. We designed the Louisa Environmental Intervention Project (LEIP) and assessed its effectiveness in reducing household endotoxin and improving asthma symptoms in rural Iowa children. Asthmatic school children (N = 104 from 89 homes) of Louisa and Keokuk counties in Iowa (aged 5-14 years) were recruited and block-randomized to receive extensive (education + professional cleaning) or educational interventions. Environmental sampling collection and respiratory survey administration were done at baseline and during three follow-up visits. Mixed-model analyses were used to assess the effect of the intervention on endotoxin levels and asthma symptoms in the main analysis and of endotoxin reduction on asthma symptoms in exploratory analysis. In the extensive intervention group, dust endotoxin load was significantly reduced in post-intervention visits. The extensive compared with the educational intervention was associated with significantly decreased dust endotoxin load in farm homes and less frequent nighttime asthma symptoms. In exploratory analysis, dust endotoxin load reduction from baseline was associated with lower total asthma symptoms score (Odds ratio: 0.52, 95% confidence interval: 0.29-0.92). In conclusion, the LEIP intervention reduced household dust endotoxin and improved asthma symptoms. However, endotoxin reductions were not sustained post-intervention by residents.     

Adaptive actuator failure compensation design for unknown chaotic multi‐input systems

In this paper, an adaptive control approach is designed for compensating the faults in the actuators of chaotic systems and maintaining the acceptable system stability. We propose a state‐feedback model reference adaptive control scheme for unknown chaotic multi‐input systems. Only the dimensions of the chaotic systems are required to be known. Based on Lyapunov stability theory, new adaptive control laws are synthesized to accommodate actuator failures and system nonlinearities. An illustrative example is studied. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the design method. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.