Phase investigations of fats. II. Systems containing oleic and stearic acids and an organic solvent

1. The ternary systems oleic acid-stearic acid-commercial hexane and oleic acid-stearic acid-acetone containing varying amounts of the three components have been equilibrated at 0°C., −10°C., −20°C., −30°C., and −40°C.
2. From compositional data of the liquid and solid phases in equilibrium at each isotherm, ternary phase diagrams have been constructed. From these diagrams it is possible to predict the degree of separation which can be obtained with any given mixture of oleic and stearic acids, using either acetone or commercial hexane as solvent.
3. With practical solvent ratios the phase diagrams at −20°C., −30°C., and −40°C., exhibit closed areas representing liquid phase composition. The liquid phase boundaries have been established for each isotherm investigated.
4. The intersolubilizing effect of oleic acid on stearic acid, greater in commercial hexane than in acetone, and the possible formation of mixed crystals of oleic and stearic acid have been noted.
5. Oleic acid of high purity can be obtained as one of the practical applications of these data.

     

Tabula Rasa: Pitfalls and Possibilities with Clean Slate Initiatives

If an IT system is so so hopelessly and fundamentally flawed that there's no practical way to address its deficiencies one by one, a clean slate initiative might be the only way out of the swamp. The key is to make sure the drivers are sound, the process is retrospective, the solution is robust, and expectations are realistic.     

Recognition of Complex Settings by Aggregating Atomic Scenes

This approach imitates human reasoning to enable flexible context recognition. Its usefulness is demonstrated by employing audio-signal processing to recognize several everyday situations.     

Self-stabilizing somersaults

We investigate the open-loop stability of a planar biped robot performing a periodic motion of forward somersaults with alternating single-leg contacts. The robot has a trunk and two actuated telescopic legs with point feet which are coupled to the trunk by actuated hinges. There is compliance and damping in the hip and in the legs. The concept of open-loop control implies that all actuators of the system receive predetermined inputs that are never altered by any feedback interference. Only with the right choice of model parameters and actuator inputs is it possible to create such self-stabilizing motions exploiting the natural stability properties of the system. These unknowns have been determined using special-purpose stability-optimization methods. The resulting motion is not only stable, but also a more efficient form of forward motion than running for the investigated robot.     

DefSim: A Remote Laboratory for Studying Physical Defects in CMOS Digital Circuits

This paper describes a unique remote laboratory for studying CMOS physical defects that is meant to be used in advanced courses in the scope of microelectronic design and test. Both the measurement equipment and the remote access mechanism were custom developed in the frame of the European Union project REASON. The core of the equipment is an educational chip that contains different manufacturing defects physically implemented into standard digital cells and small logic circuits on the layout level. The chip is supplied with a dedicated plug-and-play measurement box, which provides an interface between the chip and the training software. This measurement kit offers a glimpse into the silicon reality, revealing behavior of the most common defects and their influence on the circuits' operations. Students can choose between approximately 500 different defects, which can be classified into different groups by studying their properties, and find differences or similarities. The remote server-based version of the laboratory is accessible over the Internet, thereby supporting distance learning and e-learning modes of training. A personal version of the training software is also available.     

Thermal convection in a horizontal porous layer with spatially periodic boundary temperatures: small Ra flow

This study considers a small Rayleigh number thermal convection in a fluid-saturated porous medium between two infinite-horizontal walls. The lower and upper walls have sinusoidal temperature distributions with a wave number and a phase difference, and the effect of the parameters on the flow and heat transfer characteristics is investigated. For a given wave number, an out-of-phase configuration yields minimum heat transfer at the walls. Maximum heat transfer occurs at the wave number of 2.286 with an in-phase configuration.     

Structural system identification: from reality to models

The paper is an expository contribution on the subject of structural system identification, measured signal processing and their applications to model-based structural health detection. The materials covered in this paper are by and large extracted from the three theses of the first three authors. The paper focuses on the state-space oriented system identification theory as specialized to structural dynamics governing equations of motion, a judicious use of wavelet transformation techniques for extracting impulse response functions, various input-output combinations for multi-input and multi-output problems, robust ways of identifying both proportional and non-proportional damping parameters, and the use of localized identification theory for damage detection from measured response data. The authors then offer several outstanding challenges in structural system identification theory and their applications.     

New Meaning to it Alignment

One of the perennial top issues in surveys of IT management concerns is IT alignment. It always seems to be in the top-ten, but cyclically rises to number-one at times of economic decline. When the economy turns down, information services departments are called upon to redouble their vigilance on spending and to focus their attention on projects and initiatives that are in line with the near-term objectives of the overall business. the enterprises that have developed collaborative management processes between the business and information services organizations do this best and with the least amount of disruption. in fact, it seems that there has been tremendous progress in the past ten or fifteen years in terms of leadership and management practices on the part of both business and information services organizations that have contributed to a dramatic improvement in the handling of downward economic adjustments. Upward economic change, on the other hand, poses more perplexing challenges.     

Space sickness on earth

During the first days in space, i.e., after a transition from 1G to 0G, more than 50% of the astro- (and cosmonauts) suffer from the Space Adaptation Syndrome (SAS).The symptoms of SAS, like nausea and dizziness, are especially provoked by head movements. Astronauts have mentioned close similarities between the symptoms of SAS and the symptoms they experienced after a 1 hour centrifuge run on Earth, i.e., after a transition from 3G to 1G (denoted by Sickness Induced by Centrifugation, SIC). During several space missions, we related susceptibility to SAS and to SIC in 11 astronauts and found 4 of them being susceptible to both SIC and SAS, and 7 being not susceptible to SIC nor to SAS. This correspondence in susceptibility suggests that SIC and SAS share the same underlying mechanism. To further study this mechanism, several vestibular parameters have been investigated (e.g. postural stability, vestibularly driven eye movements, subjective vertical). We found some striking changes in individual cases that are possibly due to the centrifuge run. However, the variability between subjects generally is very large, making physiological links to SIC and SAS still hard to find.