Prediction of Air-Drying of Milk Droplet Under Relatively High Humidity Using the Reaction Engineering Approach

Spray-drying is the prime process for manufacturing powders. Optimization of spray-drying processes requires both modeling the drying characteristics of a single milk droplet and the dryer-wide simulations incorporating computational fluid dynamics. In computational fluid dynamics simulations, it is desirable to have an accurate yet simple model for drying of single droplet, which does not require resolving partial differential equation. Here the experimental results on constant drying conditions with high humidity air flows are reported for the first time. Previously, a mathematical model using the reaction engineering approach (the REA model) was established using the very dry air conditions. The same REA model has been used to predict the current high humidity results. It has been shown that the predictions agree well with the experimental results, showing the good promise of this approach.     

Structural characterization of a “Signature” phosphatidylethanolamine as the major 10-hydroxy stearic acid-containing lipid of Cryptosporidium parvum oocysts

A 10-hydroxy stearic acid-containing lipid from Cryptosporidium parvum was purified by thin-layer chromatography and analyzed by infrared spectroscopy, fast-atom bombardment mass spectrometry, ¹H and ³¹P nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and was identified as phosphatidylethanolamine.     

Surface Wave Forces Acting on Submerged Logs

Drag forces exerted on cylindrical simulated logs by flowing water are measured in a laboratory flume. Drag coefficient values calculated from these data are presented for a range of log submergence and slenderness values. Drag coefficients for large submergence values are consistent with those previously published. However, at submergence values less than eight element diameters, the observed drag coefficients are consistently higher than those previously published. This discrepancy is due to the additional drag created by stationary surface waves which causes the drag coefficient to increase considerably when a log is positioned near the free surface. This phenomenon, which has not been accounted for in previous studies on large woody debris, is shown to depend on log slenderness, submergence, and Froude number.     

PhysicsGP: A Genetic Programming approach to event selection

We present a novel multivariate classification technique based on Genetic Programming. The technique is distinct from Genetic Algorithms and offers several advantages compared to Neural Networks and Support Vector Machines. The technique optimizes a set of human-readable classifiers with respect to some user-defined performance measure. We calculate the Vapnik-Chervonenkis dimension of this class of learning machines and consider a practical example: the search for the Standard Model Higgs Boson at the LHC. The resulting classifier is very fast to evaluate, human-readable, and easily portable. The software may be downloaded at: http://cern.ch/~cranmer/PhysicsGP.html.     

An integrated testbed for wireless multimedia computing

A testbed has been constructed to evaluate node architectures that support multimedia applications and services across a wireless network. Using this testbed, a low bitrate subband video compression algorithm has been prototyped in a field programmable gate array (FPGA) and evaluated for video networking across bandwidth-limited RF channels. A radio interface has been prototyped in an FPGA and a common applications programming interface (API) has been developed to allow experimentation with multiple radios. This testbed has been used to evaluate node performance under two different wireless applications: 1) simultaneous video and data networking (VTALK) and 2) TCP/IP utilities such as FTP and telnet. Based on this evaluation, the design of a battery-operated high throughput wireless multimedia node is presented.