Investigation of the effect of short term environmental contamination on energy production in photovoltaic panels: Dicle University solar power plant example

Solar power is an unlimited source of power in theory when compared to the needs of the planet, however, in practice it is still a source of power convertible to electrical energy on a limited basis. In this context, efficiency of this energy conversion by photovoltaic panels has a great importance. Panel surface taking a sufficient amount of light at the right angle has a direct effect on efficiency. This is related to keeping the panel surface as clear as possible of dust and similar objects which can be reflective and absorptive. The contamination of photovoltaic panels has a negative effect on the energy production of panels. In this study, the effect of panel surface contamination, one of the most important factors affecting panel efficiency, was investigated. The investigation was conducted by comparing data from two panel strings standing very close to each other in a plant, one of which was cleaned regularly and the other left contaminated.     

Red meat,diseases, and healthy alternatives: A critical review

Meat is an important food for human nutrition, by especially providing high-quality protein and also some essential micronutrients, in front iron, zinc, and vitamin B₁₂. However, a high intake of red and processed meat is associated with an increased risk for diseases, especially type 2 diabetes and colorectal cancer, as several epidemiological studies and meta-analyses have shown. This review summarizes meta-analyses of publications studying the association between red and processed meat intake and type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, colorectal and other cancers, and all-cause mortality. Various potential mechanisms involved in the increased disease risk are discussed. Furthermore, the beneficial effects of healthy alternatives for meat, like fish, nuts, vegetables and fruits, pulses and legumes, whole grains, and dairy products are reviewed by including selected papers and recent meta-analyses.     

Experimental Investigation of Aluminum Alloy and Steel Core Buckling Restrained Braces (BRBs)

International Journal of Steel Structures - Buckling restrained braces (BRBs) display balanced hysteretic behavior under reversed cyclic tension and compression forces and dissipate a significant...     

A design of cellular automata-based PUF and its implementation on FPGA

Since the number of networked devices increases continuously, ensuring the safety and reliability of these systems is growing at the same time. Today, a unique identity of a device can be obtained from physical unclonable functions (PUFs) and this identity as a trust anchor in higher-level security architectures. This article is exploring the cellular automaton (CA) paradigm to extract and magnify unique features of the underlying hardware to uniquely identify a device. The proposed PUF is based on a field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) implementation of CA with random memory (CARM) model. Implementation of the memory part of CARM is the challenge of the introduced PUF, and corresponding response is obtained from the introduced evolution figure metric. The uniqueness and reliability of the PUF hardware are compared with the results from the state-of-the-art PUF designs implemented on FPGA in the literature. The test results show that the introduced CA-based design is a promising and competitive candidate for PUF primitives.     

Wireless sensor networks for healthcare: A survey

Becoming mature enough to be used for improving the quality of life, wireless sensor network technologies are considered as one of the key research areas in computer science and healthcare application industries. The pervasive healthcare systems provide rich contextual information and alerting mechanisms against odd conditions with continuous monitoring. This minimizes the need for caregivers and helps the chronically ill and elderly to survive an independent life, besides provides quality care for the babies and little children whose both parents have to work. Although having significant benefits, the area has still major challenges which are investigated in this paper. We provide several state of the art examples together with the design considerations like unobtrusiveness, scalability, energy efficiency, security and also provide a comprehensive analysis of the benefits and challenges of these systems.     

Molecular origins of toughening mechanism in uniaxially stretched nylon 6 films with clay nanoparticles

Introduction of nanoplatelets into the nylon matrix preorients the polymer chains in the film plane during melt casting leading to uniplanar (001) texture in nylon 6 crystalline as well as clay phase. This behavior enhances the uniformity of films during cold deformation well above the glass transition temperature by suppressing the localized necking behavior. The clay platelets reduce the polymer interchain hydrogen bonding and entanglements leading to decrease of long range “connectivity”. As a result, a delay in strain hardening during deformation occurs allowing much larger deformations to be attained without fracture. This in turn leads to increase in toughness.     

Finite element modeling of block shear failure in coped steel beams

Block shear is a potential failure mode that is encountered in the connection regions of coped steel beams. Limited experimental studies completed so far have shown that the block shear failure in coped steel beams is a complex phenomenon, which is highly dependent on the number of bolt lines. In this paper, the use of the finite element method in predicting the block shear failure load was studied by making comparisons with experimental findings. The effects of numerical modeling details on load capacity predictions were investigated. In light of these investigations, a finite element analysis methodology has been developed and used to conduct a parametric study. Simplified load capacity prediction equations were developed based on the results of the parametric study and are presented herein.     

Application of Solid‐Phase Micro‐Extraction (SPME) for Determining Residues of Chlorpyrifos and Chlorpyrifos‐Methyl in Wine with Gas Chromatography (GC)

The incorrect use of insecticides in many countries' vineyards may result in some toxicological risks for the consumers by their presence on the grapes. In this research, a rapid gas chromatographic method was used for the determination of the residue levels of two organophosphorus pesticides (chlorpyrifos and chlorpyrifos‐methyl) in wine. Pesticides are described and compared with each other. Ten red wines from two different regions of Turkey were analyzed for their chlorpyrifos and chlorpyrifos‐methyl content. The samples were diluted with water and extracted by solid‐phase micro extraction. Nitrogen‐Phosphorus Detection (NDP) and Electron‐Capture Detection (ECD) were used to identify and quantify the pesticides, the findings being confirmed using Mass Spectrometric Detection. Individual detection limits were in the range of (chlorpyrifos) 0.02‐(chlor‐pyrifos‐methyl) 0.1 ng. Limits of quantification varied from (chlorpyrifos) 0.01‐(chlorpyrifos‐methyl) 0.05 mg kg^?1. The maximum residues limits of the two pesticides in the Turkish wines examined were much lower than the Turkish and European Union limits.     

Self-assembled manganese dioxide nanowires as electrode materials for electrochemical capacitors

The microstructure and morphology of sol-gel derived manganese dioxide (MnO₂) xerogels were affected by the synthesis conditions and post synthesis heat treatment. Manganese dioxide nanoparticles in sol that were dialyzed to more acidic pH (pH 5.7) value were observed to self-assemble into nanowires, whereas non-dialyzed sols remained nanoparticulate in nature. MnO₂ xerogels of disordered nanowire network exhibited comparatively higher porosity and BET surface areas. The electrochemical properties of both MnO₂ nanowire and nanoparticle thin-film electrodes were evaluated using cyclic voltammetry in a mild aqueous electrolyte (0.1 M Na₂SO₄). The charge capacities of MnO₂ nanowire-based thin-film electrodes were substantially higher (~ 800 F/g) than those of nanoparticulate thin-film electrodes (~ 700 F/g).