Blast furnace slags as functional fillers on rheological,thermal, and mechanical behavior of thermoplastics

Blast furnace slags (BFS) is a secondary byproduct of iron industry, which has a combination of acidic and basic oxides and show a complex, multiphase structure. If appropriately tailored, BFS could be an effective functional filler, improving the property profile of thermoplastics such as polypropylene (PP) and polystyrene (PS). As a raw material, the proposed filler may introduce both economic and ecological advantages, as it is considered an inexpensive secondary product rather than a natural resource. The current study aims at investigating the effect of incorporating BFS as a micro‐sized filler on the rheological, thermal, and mechanical behavior of PP and PS. BFS types in this study are air‐cooled, crystalline, and amorphous, grounded types. Both types are ground into 71, 40, and 20 μm batches and introduced in 10, 20, and 30 weight fractions via melt kneading. Mixtures are then formed into 4‐mm and 2‐mm thick plates via compression molding. Slight increase in rheological factors is observed with increasing filler loading. BFS hinders the crystallization of PP, resulting in slight increase of crystallization temperatures (T_c) and lowering of crystallization enthalpy (ΔH_c). No significant effect of filler on transition temperatures (T_g) is reported. Mechanically, BFS increases the tensile modulus of PP, but decreases its strength. For PS formulations, a modest toughening effect is observed by slag filler. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2016 , 133, 43021.     

Trans-Splicing Improvement by the Combined Application of Antisense Strategies

Spliceosome-mediated RNA trans-splicing has become an emergent tool for the repair of mutated pre-mRNAs in the treatment of genetic diseases. RNA trans-splicing molecules (RTMs) are designed to induce a specific trans-splicing reaction via a binding domain for a respective target pre-mRNA region. A previously established reporter-based screening system allows us to analyze the impact of various factors on the RTM trans-splicing efficiency in vitro. Using this system, we are further able to investigate the potential of antisense RNAs (AS RNAs), presuming to improve the trans-splicing efficiency of a selected RTM, specific for intron 102 of COL7A1. Mutations in the COL7A1 gene underlie the dystrophic subtype of the skin blistering disease epidermolysis bullosa (DEB). We have shown that co-transfections of the RTM and a selected AS RNA, interfering with competitive splicing elements on a COL7A1-minigene (COL7A1-MG), lead to a significant increase of the RNA trans-splicing efficiency. Thereby, accurate trans-splicing between the RTM and the COL7A1-MG is represented by the restoration of full-length green fluorescent protein GFP on mRNA and protein level. This mechanism can be crucial for the improvement of an RTM-mediated correction, especially in cases where a high trans-splicing efficiency is required.     

Enhancing the temperature stability of PLA by compounding strategies

The low thermal stability of polylactid acid (PLA) limits its use for various applications such as microwave‐ready dishes or hot beverage packaging. Furthermore, contained items might be damaged by occurring temperature peaks during transport (e.g., shipping container internal temperature exceeds 80°C) or other usage (e.g., car dashboard heated by sun). The aim of this study was the development of a PLA compound with an operating temperature above 100°C. Therefore, different formulations (e.g., stereocomplex of PLLA and PDLA, cross‐linking of PLA or use of commercial additives) were identified and compounds with varying conditions produced and tested regarding their thermal and mechanical properties. The results showed clearly possible routes for improving the thermal properties of PLA. Using such compounds respectively processing routes and additives helps to overcome one of the most significant problems when using PLA. The higher operating temperature of this biopolymer will lead to a wider field of application and will avoid shipping hazards. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 55:2849–2858, 2015. © 2015 Society of Plastics Engineers     

An effective quantum potential for particle–particle interactions in three-dimensional semiconductor device simulations

The classical Coulomb potential and force can be calculated efficiently using fast multi-pole methods. Effective quantum potentials, however, describe the physics of electron transport in semiconductors more precisely. Such an effective quantum potential was derived previously for the interaction of an electron with a barrier for use in particle-based Monte Carlo semiconductor device simulators. The method is based on a perturbation theory around thermodynamic equilibrium and leads to an effective potential scheme in which the size of the electron depends upon its energy and which is parameter-free. Here we extend the method to electron-electron interactions and show how the effective quantum potential can be evaluated efficiently in the context of many-body problems. Finally several examples illustrate how the momentum of the electrons changes the classical potential.     

Removing web spam links from search engine results

Web spam denotes the manipulation of web pages with the sole intent to raise their position in search engine rankings. Since a better position in the rankings directly and positively affects the number of visits to a site, attackers use different techniques to boost their pages to higher ranks. In the best case, web spam pages are a nuisance that provide undeserved advertisement revenues to the page owners. In the worst case, these pages pose a threat to Internet users by hosting malicious content and launching drive-by attacks against unsuspecting victims. When successful, these drive-by attacks then install malware on the victims’ machines. In this paper, we introduce an approach to detect web spam pages in the list of results that are returned by a search engine. In a first step, we determine the importance of different page features to the ranking in search engine results. Based on this information, we develop a classification technique that uses important features to successfully distinguish spam sites from legitimate entries. By removing spam sites from the results, more slots are available to links that point to pages with useful content. Additionally, and more importantly, the threat posed by malicious web sites can be mitigated, reducing the risk for users to get infected by malicious code that spreads via drive-by attacks.     

FAST

We propose Frontier Allocation Synchronized by Token passing (FAST), a distributed algorithm for online terrain coverage using multiple mobile robots, ensuring mutually exclusive selection of frontier cells. Many existing approaches cover the terrain in an irregular fashion, without considering the usability of the already covered region. For instance, in the task of floor cleaning in an office building, these approaches do not guarantee the cleanliness of large unbroken areas until a majority of the task is complete. FAST on the other hand, incrementally traverses the terrain generating structured trajectories for each robot. Following a structured trajectory for coverage path planning is proven to be a very powerful approach in literature. This renders large portions of the terrain usable even before the completion of the coverage task. The novel map representation techniques used in FAST render it scalable to large terrains, without affecting the volume of communication among robots. Moreover, the distributed nature of FAST allows incorporation of fault-tolerance mechanisms. Empirical investigations on maps of varied complexities and sizes both in simulation and on an experimental test-bed demonstrate that the proposed algorithm performs better than some of the benchmark approaches in terms of coverage completion time and less redundant coverage.     

Scoring- und beidseitige Due-Diligence-Prozesse im Rahmen der Lieferantenauswahl beim Infrastrukturoutsourcing

Scoring and double-sided due diligence processes employed with vendor selection for IT infrastructure outsourcing Outsourcing opens the procurement of semi-finished products from business partners that are able to provide the respective processes in the required quality but at lower prices, e. g. because of bundling effects and specialization advantages. In particular, services that are not based on core-processes of an enterprise are well-suited for outsourcing. The evaluation of IT service outsourcing is difficult, because of its strategic position in enterprises. Against this background, this article describes a method to select a suitable vendor for IT infrastructure outsourcing employing scoring and double-sided due diligence processes. Our findings are based on experiences when selecting the vendor for outsourcing the European Information Technology Infrastructure (IT/I) area of the Deutsche Bank AG.     

MPOA lesions affect female pacing of copulation in rats.

This study examined the effects of electrolytic and ibotenic acid (IA) lesions of the medial preoptic area (MPOA) on the temporal pattern of female sexual behavior in the laboratory rat. Both electrolytic and IA MPOA lesions significantly increased the female's latency to return to the male after an intromission or an ejaculation, thereby decreasing the percentage of time spent with a male. Both types of MPOA lesions significantly increased the percentage of times the female left the male's chamber following intromissions. These results demonstrate that neurons in the MPOA regulate the female's temporal copulatory behavior, and the authors suggest that they do so by virtue of their response to vaginocervical stimulation. Studies of female pacing draw attention to parallels between male and female sexual behaviors, including the possibility that they are regulated by similar neural substrates in the MPOA. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

pROST: a smoothed \ell _p-norm robust online subspace tracking method for background subtraction in video

An increasing number of methods for background subtraction use Robust PCA to identify sparse foreground objects. While many algorithms use the \(\ell _1\) -norm as a convex relaxation of the ideal sparsifying function, we approach the problem with a smoothed \(\ell _p\) -quasi-norm and present pROST, a method for robust online subspace tracking. The algorithm is based on alternating minimization on manifolds. Implemented on a graphics processing unit, it achieves realtime performance at a resolution of \(160 \times 120\) . Experimental results on a state-of-the-art benchmark for background subtraction on real-world video data indicate that the method succeeds at a broad variety of background subtraction scenarios, and it outperforms competing approaches when video quality is deteriorated by camera jitter.     

Real-time scheduling for energy harvesting sensor nodes

Energy harvesting has recently emerged as a feasible option to increase the operating time of sensor networks. If each node of the network, however, is powered by a fluctuating energy source, common power management solutions have to be reconceived. This holds in particular if real-time responsiveness of a given application has to be guaranteed. Task scheduling at the single nodes should account for the properties of the energy source, capacity of the energy storage as well as deadlines of the single tasks. We show that conventional scheduling algorithms (like e.g. EDF) are not suitable for this scenario. Based on this motivation, we have constructed optimal scheduling algorithms that jointly handle constraints from both energy and time domain. Further we present an admittance test that decides for arbitrary task sets, whether they can be scheduled without deadline violations. To this end, we introduce the concept of energy variability characterization curves (EVCC) which nicely captures the dynamics of various energy sources. Simulation results show that our algorithms allow significant reductions of the battery size compared to Earliest Deadline First scheduling.