Remarks on random residence time distributions

A discrete stochastic mixing model for chemical reactor; is presented here. The turbulent flow system has been modeled as a network of ideally mixed compartments with interconnecting flows that are random variables. The model is particularly useful for studying the statistics of RTD and of the output concentration in a chemical reactor. Some computations of confidence intervals of concentration using information about the stochastic nature of flows are presented.     

Potential of CDMA450 for rural network connectivity

This article evaluates CDMA450 as a potential solution for rural data and voice connectivity. We begin by analyzing the main strengths of CDMA450, but also some of the potential limitations for rural coverage, from both a technical and an economic standpoint. We argue that CDMA450 is a promising technology, competitive in both capacity-centric urban environments and in coverage-centric rural environments. Consequently, we discuss the opportunities of providing universal coverage by adopting a business model targeting both urban and rural deployments, and utilizing urban to rural cross-subsidization. We then explore the advantages of deploying CDMA450 using a fixed wireless (WLL) model. To this end, we explore the effective range of WLL CDMA450, and the impact of using directional antennas and receive antenna diversity in real-world commercial CDMA450 deployment in Romania. If used properly, these techniques can aid us in increasing cell radii and thus lead to substantial cost benefits     

Discovering novel memory cell designs for sentiment analysis on tweets

Designing a Recurrent Neural Network to extract sentiment from tweets is a very hard task. When using memory cells in their design, the task becomes even harder due to the large number of design alternatives and the costly process of finding a performant design. In this paper we propose an original evolutionary algorithm to address the hard challenge of discovering novel Recurrent Neural Network memory cell designs for sentiment analysis on tweets. We used three different tasks to discover and evaluate the designs. We conducted experiments and the results show that the best obtained designs surpass the baselines—which are the most popular cells, LSTM and GRU. During the discovery process we evaluated roughly 17,000 cell designs. The selected winning candidate outperformed the others for the overall sentiment analysis problem, hence showing generality. We made the winner selection by using the cumulated accuracies on all three considered tasks.

     

Phthalimide‐N‐oxyl (PINO) Radical,a Powerful Catalytic Agent: Its Generation and Versatility Towards Various Organic Substrates

The last two decades represents a “start line” for the worldwide chemists, to develop new oxidizing methods, to replace the “old‐fashioned” ones, which are expensive, pollute the environment, and proceed in harsh conditions. One of the best candidates to satisfy the present global needs is N‐hydroxyphthalimide (NHPI), which can be used as a catalytic reagent successfully in a wide range of organic transformations. In this article, a review of the most frequently used methods to transform the NHPI into its nitroxyl radical correspondent, and the use of this powerful catalytic agent into various organic transformations, are presented.     

Engineering preliminaries to obtain reproducible mixtures of atelocollagen and polysaccharides

The critical stage in producing blends of biomacromolecules consists in the mixing of component solutions to generate homogenous diluted colloidal systems. Simple experimental investigations allow the establishment of the design rules of recipes and the procedures for preparing homogenous and compositionally reproducible mixtures. Starting from purified solutions of atelocollagen, hyaluronan and native gellan, having as low as possible inorganic salts content, initial binary and ternary mixtures can be prepared up to a total dry matter content of 0.150 g/dL, in no co-precipitating conditions. Two pH manipulation ways are feasible for homogenous mixing: (i) unbuffered prior correction at pH 5.5, and (ii) “rigid” buffering at pH 9.0, using organic species. Atelocollagen including co-precipitates can be obtained in the presence of one or both polysaccharides, preferably in pH domains far from the isoelectric point of scleroprotein. A critical behavior has been observed in mixtures containing gellan, due to its macromolecular dissimilarities compared with atelocollagen. In optimal binary mixtures, the coordinates of threshold points on the phase diagrams are 0.028% w/w atelocollagen/0.025% w/w hyaluronan, and 0.022% w/w atelocollagen/0.020% w/w gellan. Uni- or bi-phasic ternary systems having equilibrated ratios of co-precipitated components can be prepared starting from initial mixtures containing up to 0.032 g/dL atelocollagen, associated with, for example, 0.040 g/dL hyaluronan and 0.008 g/dL gellan, following the first pH manipulation way.     

Self-organized, free-standing TiO2 nanotube membrane for flow-through photocatalytic applications

In the present work we show a simple and robust fabrication process of a dense and free-standing membrane consisting of vertically oriented, both-side-open TiO2 nanotubes. This membrane structure allows direct, size-selective, flow-through photocatalytic reactions with a very high efficiency.     

Effect of species and grinding disc distance on the surface roughness parameters of medium density fiberboard

Surface quality of medium density fiberboard (MDF), as a very important criterion for further finishing and utilization, was evaluated using a wide range of measuring parameters (instruments, filters, filtering cut-off length, measuring length, measuring resolution, roughness parameters). However, these various approaches make any data comparison rather difficult. Furthermore, filtering the measured data with a simple Gaussian filter has proved unreliable for wood surfaces. A new, more robust approach by using a Robust Gaussian Regression filter together with a previously tested set of measuring and evaluating parameters was used in this paper in order to quantify the surface roughness of MDF manufactured from different species (beech, poplar, birch, Scots pine, mixture 50 % Scots pine and 50 % beech) and using three different grinding disc distances (0.06, 0.15 and 0.6 mm). If manufacturing parameters are kept constant, the processing roughness of MDF is similar, but variable species anatomy and fuzziness effects will give differentiation in total roughness. The results indicated that fibers made of a mixture of wood chips from Scots pine and beech led to the smoothest MDF surface, followed closely by poplar, birch, and Scots pine. The roughest surface was measured for the panels made of beech fibers. Investigating the influence of the grinding disc distance, the roughest MDF surface was obtained when a grinding gap of 0.6 mm was used. However, surface roughness was found to be quite similar applying a grinding disc distance of 0.06 mm slightly lower for 0.15 mm. This finding indicates that a too fine grinding gap does not improve the MDF surface roughness.