Evaluation and selection of hedging policies using stochastic reservoir simulation

A hedging policy is characterized by three parameters, namely, starting water availability (SWA), ending water availability (EWA) and hedging factor (HF). The effects of these three parameters on the reservoir performance indicators have been evaluated and discussed for a southwest monsoon-dependent within-year reservoir system in southern India. For the performance evaluation, synthetically generated periodic inflow sequences from a periodic autoregressive model have been used. Quite a number of the 1800 hedging policies considered for the reservoir system, yield a better overall performance compared to the standard operating policy (SOP). Reliability, Resilience and vulnerability are found to increase with SWA for a specified EWA. On the other hand, all these performance indicators are found to decrease with EWA for a specified SWA. Hence, it is desirable to start the hedging at reasonably high SWA. All performance indicators remain practically constant at higher ranges of EWA for a given SWA. If hedging is started when there is enough water in storage, reliability, resilience and average deficit increase with degree of hedging, whereas vulnerability decreases significantly up to a hedging factor of 0.3. An interactive computer program has been developed for the selection of compromising hedging policies, and its usefulness has been discussed.     

Nanoscale Investigation of Grain Growth in RF-Sputtered Indium Tin Oxide Thin Films by Scanning Probe Microscopy

This work studied the electronic characteristics of the grains and grain boundaries of indium tin oxide (ITO) thin films using electrostatic and Kelvin probe force microscopy. Two types of ITO films were compared, deposited using radiofrequency magnetron sputtering in pure argon or 99% argon + 1% oxygen, respectively. The average grain size and surface roughness increased with substrate temperature for the films deposited in pure argon. With the addition of 1% oxygen, the increase in the grain size was inhibited above 150°C, which was suggested to be due to passivation of the grains by the excess oxygen. Electrostatic force microscopy and Kelvin probe force microscopy (KPFM) images confirmed that the grain growth was defect mediated and occurred at defective interfaces at high temperatures. Films deposited at room temperature with 1% oxygen showed crystalline nature, while films deposited with pure argon at room temperature were amorphous as observed from KPFM images. The potential drop across the grain and grain boundary was determined by taking surface potential line profiles to evaluate the electronic properties.     

Dual-mode control of tri-state boost converter for improved performance

A tri-state boost converter with an additional boost-inductor free-wheeling interval was proposed earlier to eliminate the right-half-plane (RHP) zero that occurs in the control-to-output transfer function of a classical boost converter under continuous-conduction mode of operation. A "constant-D/sub o/" control scheme, in which the "capacitor-charging" interval of the converter was kept constant, was employed. This resulted in a relatively large inductor current, especially under high line and load conditions, thereby causing high circuit losses. This paper proposes two variations of a novel dual-mode control (DMC) scheme that vary both the "boost" and the "capacitor-charging" intervals. Control analysis, design, and limitations of the proposed DMC schemes are presented. Through computer simulations and hardware experiments the performance of the tri-state boost converter with DMC schemes are compared with those of the tri-state boost converter with "constant-D/sub o/" control scheme, and the classical PI-controlled boost converter. The DMC schemes achieve a significant (about 10%) improvement in converter's efficiency for a wide load range over the "constant-D/sub o/" control scheme.     

FastFabric: Scaling hyperledger fabric to 20 000 transactions per second

Blockchain technologies are expected to make a significant impact on a variety of industries. However, one issue holding them back is their limited transaction throughput, especially compared to established solutions such as distributed database systems. In this paper, we rearchitect a modern permissioned blockchain system, Hyperledger Fabric, to increase transaction throughput from 3000 to 20 000 transactions per second. We focus on performance bottlenecks beyond the consensus mechanism, and we propose architectural changes that reduce computation and I/O overhead during transaction ordering and validation to greatly improve throughput. Notably, our optimizations are fully plug‐and‐play and do not require any interface changes to Hyperledger Fabric.     

Improved neural heuristics for multicast routing

Future networks must be adequately equipped to handle multipoint communication in a fast and economical manner. Services requiring such support include desktop video conferencing, tele-classrooms, distributed database applications, etc. In networks employing the asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) technology, routing a multicast is achieved by constructing a minimum cost tree that spans the source and all the destinations. When the network is modeled as a weighted, undirected graph, the problem is that of finding a minimal Steiner tree for the graph, given a set of destinations. The problem is known to be NP-complete. Consequently, several heuristics exist which provide approximate solutions to the Steiner problem in networks, We show how the random neural network (RNN) can be used to significantly improve the quality of the Steiner trees delivered by the best available heuristics which are the minimum spanning tree heuristic and the average distance heuristic. We provide an empirical comparison and find that the heuristics which are modified using the neural network yield significantly improved trees     

Modeling of power supply noise in large chips using the circuit-based finite-difference time-domain method

In this paper, a multilayered on-chip power distribution network consisting of two million passive elements has been modeled using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. In this method, a branch capacitor has been used. The use of the branch capacitor is important for simulating multilayered power grids. In addition, a method for including the CMOS inverter characteristics into the FDTD simulation has been presented. As an example of the application of this method, an H-tree clock network was simulated to compute the power supply noise distribution across an entire chip. Various scenarios with varying decoupling capacitances, load capacitances, number of clock buffers, and rise times have been analyzed to demonstrate the importance of circuit nonlinearity on power supply noise. Also, a method has been presented for analyzing package and board planes. Based on the methods presented, the interaction between chip and package has been discussed for capturing the resonant behavior that is otherwise absent when each section of the system is analyzed separately.     

Carbon Nanotube‐Encapsulated Noble Metal Nanoparticle Hybrid as a Cathode Material for Li‐Oxygen Batteries

Although Li‐oxygen batteries offer extremely high theoretical specific energy, their practical application still faces critical challenges. One of the main obstacles is the high charge overpotential caused by sluggish kinetics of charge transfer that is closely related to the morphology of discharge products and their distribution on the cathode. Here, a series of noble metal nanoparticles (Pd, Pt, Ru and Au) are encapsulated inside end‐opened carbon nanotubes (CNTs) by wet impregnation followed by thermal annealing. The resultant cathode materials exhibit a dramatic reduction of charge overpotentials compared to their counterparts with nanoparticles supported on CNT surface. Notably, the charge overpotential can be as low as 0.3 V when CNT‐encapsulated Pd nanoparticles are used on the cathode. The cathode also shows good stability during discharge–charge cycling. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations reveal that encapsulation of “guest” noble metal nanoparticles in “host” CNTs is able to strengthen the electron density on CNT surfaces, and to avoid the regional enrichment of electron density caused by the direct exposure of nanoparticles on CNT surface. These unique properties ensure the uniform coverage of Li₂O₂ nanocrystals on CNT surfaces instead of localized distribution of Li₂O₂ aggregation, thus providing efficient charge transfer for the decomposition of Li₂O₂.     

Classification of Amniotic Fluid Level Using Bi-LSTM with Homomorphic filter and Contrast Enhancement Techniques

Wireless Personal Communications - Ultrasound scan plays a predominant role in assisting the health care provider for monitoring pregnancy. This methods is employed for providing insights about...     

Top‐Down Fabrication of High Quality III–V Nanostructures by Monolayer Controlled Sculpting and Simultaneous Passivation

In the fabrication of III–V semiconductor nanostructures for electronic and optoelectronic devices, techniques that are capable of removing material with monolayer precision are as important as material growth to achieve best device performances. A robust chemical treatment is demonstrated using sulfur (S)‐oleylamine (OA) solution, which etches layer by layer in an inverse epitaxial fashion and simultaneously passivates the surface. The application of this process to push the limits of top‐down nanofabrication is demonstrated by the realization of InP‐based high optical quality nanowire arrays, with aspect ratios more than 50, and nanostructures with new topologies. The findings are relevant for other III–V semiconductors and have potential applications in III–V device technologies.