Human Body Shadowing at 28 GHz

Wireless Personal Communications - It is well known that human body shadowing is a significant propagation effect in indoor communications especially at frequencies higher than 10 GHz....     

UWB Fractal Antennas with Low Group Delay Variation

Wireless Personal Communications - It is well known that the safety, reliability and energy efficiencies are the prime concerns while designing and deploying wireless sensor networks. Therefore,...     

Numerical analysis on the interaction of guided Lamb waves with a local elastic stiffness reduction in quasi-isotropic composite plate structures

This paper investigates how Lamb waves respond to the presence of material degradation in a plate-like structure using a series of finite element analyses. To facilitate this study, the propagation of these guided waves was interpreted with the dispersion characteristics and displacement profiles were analysed in the frequency and wave number domain. The results show that the material degradation simulated by a local stiffness reduction which leads to changes in the dispersive characteristic of the propagating waves has made the Lamb waves technique become an effective tool to assess the material degradation.     

Propagation Loss Measurement of Wireless Body Area Network at 2.4 GHz and 3.35 GHz Bands

The main purpose of this work is to measure and analyze the propagation loss of the Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) in frequency and time domain at two frequency bands, namely 2.4 GHz band with 80 MHz bandwidth and 3.35 GHz band with 500 MHz bandwidth. Four different scenarios (front to front, front to back, front to off-body node and back to off-body node) using many antenna´s locations on the body are used to investigate the channel response (path loss) of WBAN. It is found that the front to front channels and the front to off-body node channels have a low fading. The front to back channels and the back to off-body node channels have a high fading that can be approximated by the Distorted Rayleigh fading. Thus the WBAN range for the front to off-body node scenario is more than the range of the back to off-body node scenario.

     

A direct and neural controller performance study with beam wandering mitigation control in free space optical link

The beam wander on the detector plane is one of the main causes for major power loss which severely degrades the performance of Free Space Optical (FSO) link. Designing a suitable controller to correct the beam motion at a faster rate to increase the beam stability becomes significant. This paper presents an investigation on the performance of two types of controller designed for aiming a laser beam to be at a particular point under dynamic disturbances. The first design is based on the Taguchi’s method (direct controller) while the second is the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) method (neural-controller). These controllers process the beam location information and generate the necessary outputs to mitigate the beam wandering. The pipelined-parallel architecture for both controllers are developed in a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and installed at the receiver station. Evidence of the suitability and the effectiveness of the proposed controller in terms of prediction exactness, prediction error, reduction of focal point wander, response to impulse and scintillation are provided through experimental results from the FSO link established for the horizontal range of 0.5 km at an altitude of 15.25 m.     

Enzymic synthesis of fatty esters by hydrophobic lipase derivatives immobilized on organic polymer beads

Lipase fromCandida rugosa was modified with several hydrophobic modifiers before being adsorbed onto organic polymer beads. The effects of different enzyme modifiers, supports, solvents, reaction temperatures, fatty acids, and alcohols on the activity of the immobilized enzyme were investigated. The immobilized lipases were good biocatalysts for esterification reactions in organic solvents. They exhibited high activities in all solvents tested, including polar solvents. The activity seemed to depend on the type of support rather than on the modifier of the enzyme. The medium polar support, XAD7, appeared to be the best for the modified lipases. The immobilized lipase favored the medium-chain fatty acids rather than the long-chain fatty acids as acyl donors. The alcohol selectivity of the enzyme was unchanged upon immobilization. The native and immobilized lipases favored the short-chain and terpene alcohols as nucleophiles.     

Amidination of lipase with hydrophobic imidoesters

Lipase fromCandida rugosa was chemically modified by amidination with imidoester hydrochlorides of different hydrophobicity. The modified enzyme showed a higher ester synthesis activity but a lower ester hydrolysis activity compared with the native enzyme. The maximum specific activity of the modified enzyme depended on its degree of derivatization. Benzene was found to be the best solvent for the synthesis reaction. The optimal temperature for the reaction was not affected by modification of the lipase. The modified lipase was more thermostable and solvent-stable than the native enzyme. When fatty acids of different carbon chainlength were tested as substrates in the synthesis of esters with the modified lipase, the highest activity was observed with myristic acid and propanol.     

Solid contents of palm‐based biofuel mixtures with respect to storage and handling

The solid content (SC) of biofuel mixtures obtained from mixing crude palm oil (CPO) with medium fuel oil (MFO), and refined palm oil (RPO) with petroleum diesel (PD), was investigated. The SC of these mixtures will impact on their applications, storage and handling. The concentrations of CPO and RPO in the investigated mixtures ranged from 5 to 90% for the CPO‐MFO system and from 0 to 10% for the RPO‐PD system. For CPO/MFO mixtures, their SC exhibited eutectic behavior over the temperature range measured (5–20 °C). Eutectic minima were observed in the 80–90% CPO concentration range for all temperatures. These eutectic minima are due to dilution effects and the formation of van der Waals hydrogen bonds between the asphaltenes in MFO and the triacylglycerols. RPO/PD mixtures did not show any eutectic behavior. The SC for the RPO/PD mixtures were observed to be below 4% at 5 °C after 24 h of tempering and 0% at 15 °C over the same tempering period. When semi‐solid, ambient PO is used as a biofuel, heating is required to liquify it for ease of handling. When mixed with petroleum‐based fuels in the correct proportion, present handling and storage equipment and facilities are adequate for handling these mixtures.     

Combination of Oxyanion Gln114 Mutation and Medium Engineering to Influence the Enantioselectivity of Thermophilic Lipase from Geobacillus zalihae

The substitution of the oxyanion Q114 with Met and Leu was carried out to investigate the role of Q114 in imparting enantioselectivity on T1 lipase. The mutation improved enantioselectivity in Q114M over the wild-type, while enantioselectivity in Q114L was reduced. The enantioselectivity of the thermophilic lipases, T1, Q114L and Q114M correlated better with log p as compared to the dielectric constant and dipole moment of the solvents. Enzyme activity was good in solvents with log p < 3.5, with the exception of hexane which deviated substantially. Isooctane was found to be the best solvent for the esterification of (R,S)-ibuprofen with oleyl alcohol for lipases Q114M and Q114L, to afford E values of 53.7 and 12.2, respectively. Selectivity of T1 was highest in tetradecane with E value 49.2. Solvents with low log p reduced overall lipase activity and dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) completely inhibited the lipases. Ester conversions, however, were still low. Molecular sieves employed as desiccant were found to adversely affect catalysis in the lipase variants, particularly in Q114M. The higher desiccant loading also increased viscosity in the reaction and further reduced the efficiency of the lipase-catalyzed esterifications.