Codeposition of organic carbon and arsenic in Bengal Delta aquifers

We present data showing that arsenic (As) was codeposited with organic carbon (OC) in Bengal Delta sediments as As and OC concentrations are highly (p < 0.001) positively correlated in core profiles collected from widely dispersed geographical sites with different sedimentary depositional histories. Analysis of modern day depositional environments revealed that the As-OC correlations observed in cores are due to As retention and high OC inputs in vegetated zones of the deltaic environment. We hypothesize that elevated concentrations of As occur in vegetated wetland sediments due to concentration and retention of arsenate in aerated root zones and animal burrows where copious iron(III) oxides are deposited. On burial of the sediment, degradation of organic carbon from plant and animal biomass detritus provides the reducing conditions to dissolve iron(III) oxides and release arsenite into the porewater. As tubewell abstracted aquifer water is an invaluable resource on which much of Southeast Asia is now dependent, this increased understanding of the processes responsible for As buildup and release will identify, through knowledge of the palaeosedimentary environment, which sediments are at most risk of having high arsenic concentrations in porewater. Our data allow the development of a new unifying hypothesis of how As is mobilized into groundwaters in river flood plains and deltas of Southeast Asia, namely that in these highly biologically productive environments, As and OC are codeposited, and the codeposited OC drives As release from the sediments.     

Solution of inverse dynamics problems for contour error minimization in CNC machines

For CNC machines governed by typical feedback controllers, the problem of compensating for inertia and damping of the machine axes is solved by a priori modifications to the commanded path geometry. Standard second-order models of axis dynamics are expressed in terms of the path parameter ξ rather than the time t as independent variable, incurring ordinary differential equations with polynomial coefficients. For a commanded path specified as a Pythagorean-hodograph curve R(ξ) and a P controller, a modified path $\hat{\bf R}(\xi)$ can be determined as a rational Bézier curve, that precisely compensates for the axis inertia and damping, and thus (theoretically) achieves zero contour error. For PI, PID, or P–PI controllers, exact closed-form solutions for $\hat{\bf R}(\xi)$ are no longer possible, but polynomial approximations may be computed in the numerically stable Bernstein basis on ξ?∈?[ 0,1 ]. The inverse-dynamics path modification procedure is applicable to both constant feedrates and variable feedrates defined by polynomial functions V(ξ) of the curve parameter. The method is described in the general context of PID controllers, and its implementation is then demonstrated for both P and PI controllers, governing motion along paths with extreme variations of curvature and/or parametric speed.     

Feature-based 3D non-manifold freeform object construction

This paper presents a novel technique for modeling a 3D non-manifold freeform model around a 3D reference model. To represent both the design abstractions and the incomplete topological information, a new non-manifold data structure is first defined. Our data structure embodies the functional vitalities of both the boundary representation data structure and the complex-based data structure. Along with our data structure, a set of topological operators is defined to manipulate the entities in the data structure. Based on the non-manifold data structure and the topological operators, we develop a technique to construct 3D freeform objects around a reference model. Intuitive 2D sketches are adopted to specify the detailed profile of the object constructed. The construction method is feature-based – every reference model has pre-defined features, and the feature template of the constructed object is related to the features of the reference model by feature node encoding. Therefore, the surfaces derived from one reference model can be regenerated automatically on another reference model with the same features. The geometry coverage of our geometric modeling approach includes both manifold and non-manifold 3D freeform objects.     

Data‐Driven Bending Elasticity Design by Shell Thickness

We present a method to design the deformation behavior of 3D printed models by an interactive tool, where the variation of bending elasticity at different regions of a model is realized by a change in shell thickness. Given a soft material to be used in 3D printing, we propose an experimental setup to acquire the bending behavior of this material on tubes with different diameters and thicknesses. The relationship between shell thickness and bending elasticity is stored in an echo state network using the acquired dataset. With the help of the network, an interactive design tool is developed to generate non‐uniformly hollowed models to achieve desired bending behaviors. The effectiveness of this method is verified on models fabricated by different 3D printers by studying whether their physical deformation can match the designed target shape.     

An interference-aware fair scheduling for multicast in wireless mesh networks

Multicast is a fundamental routing service in wireless mesh networks (WMNs) due to its many potential applications such as video conferencing, online games, and webcast. Recently, researchers proposed using link-quality-based routing metrics for finding high-throughput paths for multicast routing. However, the performance of such link-quality-based multicast routing is still limited by severe unfairness. Two major artifacts that exist in WMNs are fading which leads to low quality links, and interference which leads to unfair channel allocation in the 802.11 MAC protocol. These artifacts cause the multicast application to behave unfairly with respect to the performance achieved by the multicast receivers.     

Fusion of disconnected mesh components with branching shapes

Branching structure is a common feature of many natural objects. Given some mesh components with a branching shape missing, this paper presents a novel approach to fuse the mesh components: connectivity graph of the branching shape is constructed to seamlessly connect the boundaries of given components; then, natural geometry is imposed on the connectivity graph exploiting the information of given boundaries. We present a method to construct a branching connectivity graph to connect arbitrary number of given boundaries. Also, a method to generate natural geometry of the connectivity graph that smoothly fuses the boundaries of mesh components is exploited. Some examples are given to demonstrate that our new scheme can be used in a couple of applications, such as fast tree trunk modeling, mesh composition and shell generation.