Fused ring and linking groups effect on overcharge protection for lithium-ion batteries

The derivatives of 1,3-benzodioxan (DBBD1) and 1,4-benzodioxan (DBBD2) bearing two tert-butyl groups have been synthesized as new redox shuttle additives for overcharge protection of lithium-ion batteries. Both compounds exhibit a reversible redox wave over 4 V vs Li/Li⁺ with better solubility in a commercial electrolyte (1.2 M LiPF₆ dissolved in ethylene carbonate/ethyl methyl carbonate (EC/EMC 3/7) than the di-tert-butyl-substituted 1,4-dimethoxybenzene (DDB). The electrochemical stability of DBBD1 and DBBD2 was tested under charge/discharge cycles with 100% overcharge at each cycle in MCMB/LiFePO₄ and Li₄Ti₅O₁₂/LiFePO₄ cells. DBBD2 shows significantly better performance than DBBD1 for both cell chemistries. The structural difference and reaction energies for decomposition have been studied by density functional calculations.     

Dodecylhydroxydiphosphonic Acid for Solvent Extraction

Abstract

The extraction behavior of Zn(II) and Cu(II) in acetate media has been investigated using dodecylhydroxydiphosphonic acid, DHDPA, which was previously synthesized and characterized. The extraction of both cations was carried out in different media with the addition of CH₃COOH, HCl or H₂SO₄ at different pH. The maximum extraction yield of 80% for zinc, was obtained in one step after the addition of sulfuric acid at pH_i=5.5 and for copper after the addition of 10 mg of sodium acetate. The authors plan additional tests using polar solvents.     

Shear effect on dynamic behavior of microcantilever beam with manufacturing process defects

This paper is concerned with the investigation of the shear effect on the dynamic behavior of a thin microcantilever beam with manufacturing process defects. Unlike the Rayleigh beam model (RBM), the Timoshenko beam model (TBM) takes in consideration the shear effect on the resonance frequency. This effect become significant for thin microcantilever beams with larger slenderness ratios that are normally encountered in MEMS devices such as sensors. The TBM model is presented and analyzed by numerical simulation using Finite Element Method (FEM) to determine corrective factors for the correction of the effect of manufacturing process defects like the underetching at the clamped end of the microbeam and the nonrectangular cross section of the area. A semi-analytical approach is proposed for the extraction of the Young’s modulus from 3D FEM simulation with COMSOL Multiphysics software. This model was tested on measurements of a thin chromium microcantilever beam of dimensions (80 × 2 × 0.95 μm³). Final results indicate that the correction of the effect of manufacturing process defects is significant where the corrected value of Young’s modulus is very close to the experimental results and it is about 280.81 GPa.

     

Semantic indexing of Arabic texts for information retrieval system

As part of information retrieval systems (IRS) and in the context of the use of ontologies for documents and queries indexing, we propose and evaluate in this paper the contribution of this approach applied to Arabic texts. To do this we indexed a corpus of Arabic text using Arabic WordNet. The disambiguation of words was performed by applying the Lesk algorithm. The results obtained by our experiment allowed us to deduct the contribution of this approach in IRS for Arabic texts.     

Influences of haptic communication on a shared manual task

With the advent of new haptic feedback devices, researchers are giving serious consideration to the incorporation of haptic communication in collaborative virtual environments. For instance, haptic interactions based tools can be used for medical and related education whereby students can train in minimal invasive surgery using virtual reality before approaching human subjects. To design virtual environments that support haptic communication, a deeper understanding of humans′ haptic interactions is required. In this paper, human′s haptic collaboration is investigated. A collaborative virtual environment was designed to support performing a shared manual task. To evaluate this system, 60 medical students participated to an experimental study. Participants were asked to perform in dyads a needle insertion task after a training period. Results show that compared to conventional training methods, a visual-haptic training improves user′s collaborative performance. In addition, we found that haptic interaction influences the partners′ verbal communication when sharing haptic information. This indicates that the haptic communication training changes the nature of the users′ mental representations. Finally, we found that haptic interactions increased the sense of copresence in the virtual environment: haptic communication facilitates users′ collaboration in a shared manual task within a shared virtual environment. Design implications for including haptic communication in virtual environments are outlined.     

Internet of Things for the Future of Smart Agriculture: A Comprehensive Survey of Emerging Technologies

This paper presents a comprehensive review of emerging technologies for the internet of things(IoT)-based smart agriculture.We begin by summarizing the existing surveys and describing emergent technologies for the agricultural IoT,such as unmanned aerial vehicles,wireless technologies,open-source IoT platforms,software defined networking(SDN),network function virtualization(NFV)technologies,cloud/fog computing,and middleware platforms.We also provide a classification of IoT applications for smart agriculture into seven categories:including smart monitoring,smart water management,agrochemicals applications,disease management,smart harvesting,supply chain management,and smart agricultural practices.Moreover,we provide a taxonomy and a side-by-side comparison of the state-ofthe-art methods toward supply chain management based on the blockchain technology for agricultural IoTs.Furthermore,we present real projects that use most of the aforementioned technologies,which demonstrate their great performance in the field of smart agriculture.Finally,we highlight open research challenges and discuss possible future research directions for agricultural IoTs.     

An artificial negotiating agent modeling approach embedding dynamic offer generating and cognitive layer

In this paper, a dynamic offer generating unit and cognitive layer are suggested for artificial agents based negotiation systems. For this purpose, first, adaptive time and behavior dependent tactics are developed taking advantages from time continuity and dynamics aspects (features) integrated in their modeling. Then, a negotiation strategy (bilateral over single issue) based on these two tactics is suggested. Second, a cognitive negotiation model for a negotiator agent is developed using Win-Lose and Win-Win orientations which will be formed based on personality factors. Afterwards, an experimental validation is conducted for testing applicability of time dependent tactics, the effect of offering time, and the effect of cognitive orientations (Win-Lose and Win-Win) on final negotiation outcomes. The results prove the applicability of the suggested time and behavior dependent tactics as well as the proposed cognitive negotiation model.     

An efficient VLSI architecture and FPGA implementation of the Finite Ridgelet Transform

In this paper, an efficient architecture for the Finite Ridgelet Transform (FRIT) suitable for VLSI implementation based on a parallel, systolic Finite Radon Transform (FRAT) and a Haar Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) sub-block, respectively is presented. The FRAT sub-block is a novel parametrisable, scalable and high performance core with a time complexity of O(p ²), where p is the block size. Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) implementations are carried out to analyse the performance of the FRIT core developed.

A two-stage gene selection scheme utilizing MRMR filter and GA wrapper

Gene expression data usually contain a large number of genes, but a small number of samples. Feature selection for gene expression data aims at finding a set of genes that best discriminates biological samples of different types. In this paper, we propose a two-stage selection algorithm for genomic data by combining MRMR (Minimum Redundancy–Maximum Relevance) and GA (Genetic Algorithm). In the first stage, MRMR is used to filter noisy and redundant genes in high-dimensional microarray data. In the second stage, the GA uses the classifier accuracy as a fitness function to select the highly discriminating genes. The proposed method is tested for tumor classification on five open datasets: NCI, Lymphoma, Lung, Leukemia and Colon using Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Naïve Bayes (NB) classifiers. The comparison of the MRMR-GA with MRMR filter and GA wrapper shows that our method is able to find the smallest gene subset that gives the most classification accuracy in leave-one-out cross-validation (LOOCV).     

Facility layout problems: A survey

Layout problems are found in several types of manufacturing systems. Typically, layout problems are related to the location of facilities (e.g., machines, departments) in a plant. They are known to greatly impact the system performance. Most of these problems are NP hard. Numerous research works related to facility layout have been published. A few literature reviews exist, but they are not recent or are restricted to certain specific aspects of these problems. The literature analysis given here is recent and not restricted to specific considerations about layout design.

We suggest a general framework to analyze the literature and present existing works using such criteria as: the manufacturing system features, static/dynamic considerations, continual/discrete representation, problem formulation, and resolution approach. Several research directions are pointed out and discussed in our conclusion.