Whey Drying on Porous Carriers

Whey is an undurable product. treated very often as a waste which pollutes the natural environment. Whey which is a valuable source of protein, lactose, vitamins and mineral salts should be utilized completely. The present paper is a proposal of whey drying on porous carriers. It is proved experimentally that the proposed drying method guarantees good product quality.     

Bamboo reinforced concrete: a critical review

The use of small diameter whole-culm (bars) and/or split bamboo (a.k.a. splints or round strips) has often been proposed as an alternative to relatively expensive reinforcing steel in reinforced concrete. The motivation for such replacement is typically cost—bamboo is readily available in many tropical and sub-tropical locations, whereas steel reinforcement is relatively more expensive—and more recently, the drive to find more sustainable alternatives in the construction industry. This review addresses such ‘bamboo-reinforced concrete’ and assesses its structural and environmental performance as an alternative to steel reinforced concrete. A prototype three bay portal frame, that would not be uncommon in regions of the world where bamboo-reinforced concrete may be considered, is used to illustrate bamboo reinforced concrete design and as a basis for a life cycle assessment of the same. The authors conclude that, although bamboo is a material with extraordinary mechanical properties, its use in bamboo-reinforced concrete is an ill-considered concept, having significant durability, strength and stiffness issues, and does not meet the environmentally friendly credentials often attributed to it.     

Interpretations of open default theories in non-monotonic logics

It is shown that the translation of an open default into a modal formula x(L(x)LM ₁ (x)...LM _m (x)w(x)) gives rise to an embedding of open default systems into non-monotonic logics.     

Kernel orthonormalization in radial basis function neural networks

This paper deals with optimization of the computations involved in training radial basis function (RBF) neural networks. The main contribution of the reported work is the method for network weights calculation, in which the key idea is to transform the RBF kernels into an orthonormal set of functions (using the standard Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization). This significantly reduces the computing time if the RBF training scheme, which relies on adding one kernel hidden node at a time to improve network performance, is adopted. Another property of the method is that, after the RBF network weights are computed, the original network structure can be restored back. An additional strength of the method is the possibility to decompose the proposed computing task into a number of parallel subtasks so gaining further savings on computing time. Also, the proposed weight calculation technique has low storage requirements. These features make the method very attractive for hardware implementation. The paper presents a detailed derivation of the proposed network weights calculation procedure and demonstrates its validity for RBF network training on a number of data classification and function approximation problems.     

Context-free languages over infinite alphabets

In this paper we introduce context-free grammars and pushdown automata over infinite alphabets. It is shown that a language is generated by a context-free grammar over an infinite alphabet if and only if it is accepted by a pushdown automaton over an infinite alphabet. Also the generated (accepted) languages possess many of the properties of the ordinary context-free languages: decidability, closure properties, etc.. This provides a substantial evidence for considering context-free grammars and pushdown automata over infinite alphabets as a natural extension of the classical ones. Received November 27, 1995 / March 4, 1997     

A General Framework for Trajectory Triangulation

The multiple view geometry of static scenes is now well understood. Recently attention was turned to dynamic scenes where scene points may move while the cameras move. The triangulation of linear trajectories is now well handled. The case of quadratic trajectories also received some attention. We present a complete generalization and address the problem of general trajectory triangulation of moving points from non-synchronized cameras. Two cases are considered: (i) the motion is captured in the images by tracking the moving point itself, (ii) the tangents of the motion only are extracted from the images. The first case is based on a new representation (to computer vision) of curves (trajectories) where a curve is represented by a family of hypersurfaces in the projective space ?⁵. The second case is handled by considering the dual curve of the curve generated by the trajectory. In both cases these representations of curves allow: (i) the triangulation of the trajectory of a moving point from non-synchronized sequences, (ii) the recovery of more standard representation of the whole trajectory, (iii) the computations of the set of positions of the moving point at each time instant an image was made. Furthermore, theoretical considerations lead to a general theorem stipulating how many independent constraints a camera provides on the motion of the point. This number of constraint is a function of the camera motion. On the computation front, in both cases the triangulation leads to equations where the unknowns appear linearly. Therefore the problem reduces to estimate a high-dimensional parameter in presence of heteroscedastic noise. Several method are tested.     

Bulk and Surface Properties of Liquid Al-Li and Li-Zn Alloys

Physicochemical properties like density, surface tension, and viscosity of liquid binary Al-Li and Li-Zn alloys have been measured using draining crucible method. The experimentally measured surface-tension values have been compared to theoretical results based either on the Butler model or the compound formation model assuming the existence of the most favored A ₁ B ₂ and A ₂ B ₃ clusters. Several models for viscosity calculation have been also applied and discussed in confrontation with measured data. Finally, the clustering effects in the liquid Al-Li and Li-Zn alloys have been examined using two microscopic functions, i.e., the concentration fluctuation function in the long-wavelength limit and the Warren-Cowley short-range order parameter.     

Intercomparison of a portable and two stationary mobility particle sizers for nanoscale aerosol measurements

During occupational exposure studies, the use of conventional scanning mobility particle sizers (SMPS) provides high quality data but may convey transport and application limitations. New instruments aiming to overcome these limitations are being currently developed. The purpose of the present study was to compare the performance of the novel portable NanoScan SMPS TSI 3910 with that of two stationary SMPS instruments and one ultrafine condensation particle counter (UCPC) in a controlled atmosphere and for different particle types and concentrations.

The results show that NanoScan tends to overestimate particle number concentrations with regard to the UCPC, particularly for agglomerated particles (ZnO, spark generated soot and diesel soot particles) with relative differences >20%. The best agreements between the internal reference values and measured number concentrations were obtained when measuring compact and spherical particles (NaCl and DEHS particles). With regard to particle diameter (modal size), results from NanoScan were comparable < [± 20%] to those measured by SMPSs for most of the aerosols measured.

The findings of this study show that mobility particle sizers using unipolar and bipolar charging may be affected differently by particle size, morphologies, particle composition and concentration. While the sizing accuracy of the NanoScan SMPS was mostly within ±25%, it may miscount total particle number concentration by more than 50% (especially for agglomerated particles), thus making it unsuitable for occupational exposure assessments where high degree of accuracy is required (e.g., in tier 3). However, can be a useful instrument to obtain an estimate of the aerosol size distribution in indoor and workplace air, e.g., in tier 2.     

Absorbing photonic crystals for silicon thin-film solar cells: Design,fabrication and experimental investigation

In this paper, we present the integration of an absorbing photonic crystal within a thin-film photovoltaic solar cell. Optical simulations performed on a complete solar cell revealed that patterning the hydrogenated amorphous silicon active layer as a 2D photonic crystal membrane enabled to increase its integrated absorption by 28 % between 300 and 720 nm, comparing to a similar but unpatterned stack. In order to fabricate such promising cells, we developed a high throughput process based on holographic lithography and reactive ion etching. The influences of the parameters taking part in those processes on the obtained patterns are discussed. Optical measurements performed on the resulting “photonized” solar cell structures underline the regularity of the 2D pattern and a significant absorption increase above 550 nm, similarly to what is observed on the simulated absorption spectra. Moreover, our patterned cells are found to be robust with regards to the angle of incidence of the light.