CARD: A Contact-based Architecture for Resource Discovery in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

Traditional protocols for routing in ad hoc networks attempt to obtain optimal or shortest paths, and in doing so may incur significant route discovery overhead. Such approaches may be appropriate for routing long-lived transfers where the initial cost of route discovery may be amortized over the life of the connection. For short-lived connections, however, such as resource discovery and small transfers, traditional shortest path approaches may be quite inefficient. In this paper we propose a novel architecture, CARD, for resource discovery in large-scale wireless ad hoc networks. Our mechanism is suitable for resource discovery as well as routing very small data transfers or transactions in which the cost of data transfer is much smaller than the cost of route discovery. Our architecture avoids expensive mechanisms such as global flooding and complex hierarchy formation and does not require any location information. In CARD resources within the vicinity of a node, up to a limited number of hops, are discovered using a proactive scheme. For resources beyond the vicinity, each node maintains a few distant nodes called contacts. Contacts help in creating a small world in the network and provide an efficient way to query for distant resources. Using contacts, the network view (or reachability) of the nodes increases, reducing the discovery overhead and increasing the success rate. On the other hand, increasing the number of contacts also increases control overhead. We study such trade-off in depth and present mechanisms for contact selection and maintenance that attempt to increase reachability with reduced overhead. Our schemes adapt gracefully to network dynamics and mobility using soft-state periodic mechanisms to validate and recover paths to contacts. Our simulation results show that CARD is scalable and can be configured to provide desirable performance for various network sizes. Comparisons with other schemes show overhead savings reaching over 93% (vs. flooding) and 80% (vs. bordercasting or zone routing) for high query rates in large-scale networks.     

Robust weighted likelihood estimation of exponential parameters

The problem of estimating the parameter of an exponential distribution when a proportion of the observations are outliers is quite important to reliability applications. The method of weighted likelihood is applied to this problem, and a robust estimator of the exponential parameter is proposed. Interestingly, the proposed estimator is an /spl alpha/-trimmed mean type estimator. The large-sample robustness properties of the new estimator are examined. Further, a Monte Carlo simulation study is conducted showing that the proposed estimator is, under a wide range of contaminated exponential models, more efficient than the usual maximum likelihood estimator in the sense of having a smaller risk, a measure combining bias & variability. An application of the method to a data set on the failure times of throttles is presented.     

Manganese Distribution between FeO‐MnO‐SiO2–CaO–MgO‐Al2O3 Slags and Molten Iron

Pretreatment of high manganese hot metal is suggested to produce hot metal suitable for further processing to steel in conventional LD converter and rich manganese slags satisfy the requirements for the production of silicomanganese alloys. Manganese distribution between slag and iron represents the efficiency of manganese oxidation from hot metal. The present study has been done to investigate the effect of temperature, slag basicity and composition of oxidizer mixture on the distribution coefficient of manganese between slag and iron. Ferrous oxide activity was determined in molten synthetic slag mixtures of FeO‐MnO‐SiO₂–CaO–MgO‐Al₂O₃. The investigated slags had chemical compositions similar to either oxidizer mixture or slags expected to result from the treatment of high manganese hot metal. The technique used to measure the ferrous oxide activity in the investigated slag systems was the well established one of gas‐slag‐metal equilibration in which molten slags contained in armco iron crucibles are exposed to a flowing gas mixture with a known oxygen potential until equilibrium has been attained. After equilibration, the final chemical analysis of the slags gave compositions having a particular ferrous oxide activity corresponding to the oxygen potential of the gas mixture. The determined values of ferrous oxide activity were used to calculate the equilibrium distribution of manganese between slag and iron. Higher manganese distribution between slag and iron was found to be obtained by using oxidizer containing high active iron oxide under acidic slag and relatively low temperature of about 1350°C.     

New nanocomposite materials based on polymerization of [oligo(oxyethylene) methacrylates] in the presence of montmorillonite clay

Intercalation of poly[oligo(oxyethylene) methacrylates] onto sodium montmorillonite (MMT) clay has been investigated. A polymer–clay hybrid has been synthesized through intercalation of the monomer followed by its solution free‐radical polymerization. Eight polymer–clay hybrids were prepared using different weight ratios of clay, different oligo(oxyethylene) lengths and different proportions of crosslinker. Evidence of the development of nanostructures is obtained from scanning electron microscopy, and wide‐angle X‐ray diffraction studies support these results which show disappearance of the peak characteristic to d₀₀₁ spacing. In this hybrid MMT is dispersed homogeneously in the polymer matrix. © 2003 Society of Chemical Industry     

Vibration and damping analysis of beams with composite coats

Numerical and experimental investigations of the dynamic behavior for coated laminate composite beams has been presented and discussed in the present work. A numerical technique is utilized to compute the eigen parameters of coated laminated composite beams. An attempt to study the variations in the natural frequencies and damping properties of laminated composite coated beams taking into account different lamina orientation of coat and various kinds of core isotropic material (steel and aluminium) is introduced. The variations of the eigen parameters vs. the code number of the coated layer with the use of various types of isotropic material are measured by utilizing (the frequency response displayed on) an (FFT) analyzer. The experimental and numerical work is carried out on four different fiber orientations, aligned longitudinally, transversely, making 45 ° with the fibers direction and randomly oriented. Comparison between experimental and numerical results shows a tight connection between them.     

Sintering of an ultra pure α-alumina powder: I. Densification,grain growth and sintering path

Sintering in air of an ultra pure α-alumina powder has been investigated. Isothermal experiments have been conducted on green samples shaped by slip casting. The grain growth and densification kinetics have been established. The “relative density/grain size” trajectory, called “sintering path”, has been drawn. Hypotheses concerning the mechanisms controlling grain growth and densification have been formulated. For the first time, it is shown that grain growth and densification kinetics exhibit two distinct regimes, where an initial point defect formation step plays a key role. When point defects have been generated, the diffusion of the associated Al³⁺ cations controls grain growth and densification.     

Preface

Multibody System Dynamics -     

Radiation polymerization of acrylonitrile in a viscous system with styrene

Radiation polymerization of acrylonitrile in a viscous system with styrene was performed at ambient temperature by using γ‐rays. It is found that the overall rate of polymerization was accelerated after critical conversion due to the gel effect. As the molar fraction of styrene in monomer feed (f_St) is increased, both the total polymer conversion and molar fraction of acrylonitrile in the copolymer feed (F_AN) were decreased. The monomer reactivity ratios for acrylonitrile and styerne were determined to be r₁ (AN) = 0.25 and r₂ (St) = 2.0, respectively. The copolymers obtained were characterized by Fourier transformed infrared spectra (FTIR), X‐ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), ¹H‐NMR, and pyrolysis mass spectrometry (PMS). It was found that the slight addition of styrene to acrylonitrile strongly changes crystallinity, morphology, and thermal decomposition of the resulting polymer. ¹H‐NMR measurment of AN/St copolymer showed the appearance of aromatic proton signals and shifted the resonance of the methylene proton to lower chemical shifts. The mass spectra of AN/St copolymers showed fragments of pyrolysates corresponding to oligonitriles with styrene end groups. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 84: 268–275, 2002; DOI 10.1002/app.10324     

Identification of urinary dipeptidase as the released form of renal dipeptidase

Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome (BWS) comprises of a number of childhood abnormalities, often associated with one or more tumors. Thirty-eight patients were investigated to determine clinical and/or biological signs associated with a tumor presence. Our patients exhibited a higher incidence of tumor development (21%) than that previously reported, underlying the care with which such patients should be followed, when particular clinical features are observed: visceromegaly affecting three organs (liver, kidney, spleen), and also family history with sign of BWS such as macroglossia, omphalocele, hemihypertrophy, embryonic tumor), high body weight at birth (> or = +2 standard deviations and diastasis recti.     

Low-temperature unit-cell parameters of La1−x Pr x CaBaCu3O7 compounds

The suppression of the superconductivity by praseodymium in La_1−x Pr _x CaBaCu₃O₇ may be explained in terms of the difference in the electronic or crystal structure between these compounds. Three compositions with x=0.0, 0.5, 1.0 were, therefore, investigated by X-ray diffraction in order to determine the unit-cell dimensions at room temperature as well as at lower temperatures down to 5 K. The results showed no considerable changes in the orthorhombic unit-cell dimensions on decreasing the temperature to 5 K. Unit-cell volumes at low temperatures were 0.99 of the room temperature values. The intensity sequence of reflections in the diffraction pattern was the same for all samples throughout the range of temperature studied.