Effect of waste serpentine on the properties of basic insulating refractories

Basic insulating refractories were fabricated by the pressing route using dead-burned magnesia, pure calcined alumina, expanded perlite, and calcined waste serpentine as starting raw materials in four compositions from F1 to F4. Periclase and forsterite were major phases in F1 and F2 compositions, while spinel was also detected in the XRD patterns of F3 and F4 samples. Quantitative phase analysis showed that F4 sample sintered at 1450?°C has the highest forsterite content among all other samples. On the other hand, it has lower thermal conductivity compared to F1 to F3, and even lower than aluminosilicate IFBs with the same bulk density. It is concluded that forsterite is a highly insulating material, compared to periclase, corundum, periclase-spinel, aluminosilicates, such as mullite, etc.     

Region-based surveillance video retrieval with effective object representation

Retrieving the most relevant video frames that contain the object specified in a given query (query-by-region) remains a challenging task. Two common challenges of region-based retrieval approaches are to accurately extract or segment object(s) and select a proper matching strategy. This paper addresses these problems by proposing a retrieval approach that uses a new region-based matching technique equipped with an effective object representation method. In the first stage, the proposed approach selects the most informative instances of each object that appeared in the video by utilizing an adapted clustering algorithm over the extracted features. In the retrieval stage, the new matching technique returns the most relevant sequences of video by mapping a given region with those identified representative instances of objects based on their similarity scores. The proposed approach is evaluated on standard datasets and the results demonstrate a 31% improvement in the retrieval performance compared to other state-of-the-art methods.     

PBSVM: Partitioning and biased support vector machine for vocal fold pathology assessment using labeled and unlabeled data sets

Most of the existing classification methods, used for voice pathology assessment, are built based on labeled pathological and normal voice signals. This paper studies the problem of building a classifier using labeled and unlabeled data. We propose a novel learning technique, called Partitioning and Biased Support Vector Machine Classification (PBSVM), which tries to utilize all the available data in two steps: (1) a new heuristically partition-based algorithm, which extracts high quality pathological and normal samples from an unlabeled set, and (2) a more principle approach based on biased formulation of support vector machine, which is fairly robust to mislabeling and unbalance data problem. Experiments with wavelet-based energy features extracted from sustained vowels show that the new recognition scheme is highly feasible and significantly outperform the baseline classical SVM classifier, especially in the situation where the labeled training data is small.     

Geometric Patterns,Light and Shade: Quantifying Aperture Ratio and Pattern Resolution in the Performance of Shading Screens

This research focuses on the application and performance assessment of geometric patterns as shading screens and shows how the geometric patterns can function as a design agency, an environmental control system, and a cultural element. We begin with a brief review of the underlying rules of creating two-dimensional geometric patterns, and then look at how these patterns evolve as three-dimensional shading screens in buildings. We next discuss a predictive model for translating complex patterns to simple patterns concerning their perforation ratio, granularity, and morphology. This is followed by an experimental and simulation study for measuring the daylighting performance of some simple shading screens. The result of this phase assesses the agreement among experimental and numerical studies. Finally, we evaluate the performance of a screen inspired by a Persian pattern.     

Mesoporous silica coated gold nanorods: a multifunctional theranostic platform for radiotherapy and X-ray imaging

Journal of Porous Materials - The development of theranostic nanostructures is one of the most advanced branches of pharmaceutical and medical sciences in the world today. Due to the unique...     

The effect of promoters on the CO<Subscript>2</Subscript> reforming activity and coke formation of nanocrystalline Ni/Al<Subscript>2</Subscript>O<Subscript>3</Subscript> catalysts prepared by microemulsion method

Mesoporous nanocrystalline nickel-alumina promoted catalysts with high surface area were prepared by microemulsion (ME) method and employed in dry reforming of methane reaction. The catalysts were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller surface area analysis (BET), temperature programmed reduction (TPR) and temperature programmed oxidation (TPO) techniques. The results showed that the prepared catalysts had high porosity with great surface area and small crystallite size. Among the K₂O, MgO, CaO and BaO promoters, the MgO promoter showed considerable effect on catalytic performance and coke suppression of catalyst.     

Sixty-four years of informetrics research: productivity,impact and collaboration

This paper analyses the information science research field of informetrics to identify publication strategies that have been important for its successful researchers. The study uses a micro-analysis of informetrics researchers from 5,417 informetrics papers published in 7 core informetrics journals during 1948–2012. The most productive informetrics researchers were analysed in terms of productivity, citation impact, and co-authorship. The 30 most productive informetrics researchers of all time span several generations and seem to be usually the primary authors of their research, highly collaborative, affiliated with one institution at a time, and often affiliated with a few core European centres. Their research usually has a high total citation impact but not the highest citation impact per paper. Perhaps surprisingly, the US does not seem to be good at producing highly productive researchers but is successful at producing high impact researchers. Although there are exceptions to all of the patterns found, researchers wishing to have the best chance of being part of the next generation of highly productive informetricians may wish to emulate some of these characteristics.     

Design and Fabrication of a Movable Langmuir Probe for Plasma Edge Parameters Measurement in the IR-T1 Tokamak

For the edge plasma parameters measurement, a movable Langmuir probe is fabricated and installed on the IR-T1 tokamak. The set-up consists of two sets of single Langmuir probes with tungsten tip movable in the radial direction. Edge plasma parameters including electron temperature, Ion density, floating potential and the corresponding radial changes are measured. Using two-point correlation technique clearly reveal that in the SOL region the poloidal propagation of floating potential fluctuation is in the direction of ion diamagnetic drift and in the edge it propagates in the electron diamagnetic drift direction.     

CO<Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">x</Emphasis></Subscript>-free hydrogen and carbon nanofibers production by methane decomposition over nickel-alumina catalysts

Nickel catalysts supported on mesoporous nanocrystalline gamma alumina with various nickel loadings were prepared and employed for thermocatalytic decomposition of methane into CO _x -free hydrogen and carbon nanofibers. The prepared catalysts with different nickel contents exhibited mesoporous structure with high surface area in the range of 121.3 to 66.2m²g^?1. Increasing in nickel content decreased the pore volume and increased the crystallite size. The catalytic results revealed that the nickel content and operating temperature both play important roles on the catalytic performance of the prepared catalysts. The results showed that increasing in reaction temperature increased the initial conversion of catalysts and significantly decreased the catalyst lifetime. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis of the spent catalysts evaluated at different temperatures revealed the formation of intertwined carbon filaments. The results showed that increasing in reaction temperature decreased the diameters of nanofibers and increased the formation of encapsulating carbon.