FTIR-ATR studies of diffusion and perturbation of water in polyelectrolyte thin films. Part 4. Diffusion, perturbation and swelling processes for ionic solutions in SPEES/PES membranes

We report diffusion rates and equilibrium concentrations of water in a polyelectrolyte SPEES/PES film using ATR/FTIR spectroscopy. The data for water obtained by fitting spectral intensities to a dual mode diffusion model in the presence of different counter ions (at 0.2 mol dm⁻³) follow the order Li⁺>Cs⁺>Na⁺>Ca²⁺>K⁺. Diffusion is progressively slower for higher concentrations of NaCl (0.2-0.85 mol dm⁻³) and the NO₃⁻ counter anion leads to a faster diffusion rate than for Cl⁻ at the same concentration. Both water uptake and diffusion rates are broadly consistent with expectations based on the differential degrees of swelling, caused by changes in the SO₃⁻/SO₃⁻ interpolymer chain repulsive forces leading to a decrease in volume diffusion compared with the value for pure water. Direct spectral measurements of the degree of swelling confirm that the process does occur, although the order of the swelling amounts does not map directly onto that of the diffusion rates. This is probably because the interfacial dissociation processes are hydration dependent.     

Attitudes towards mobile banking: are there any differences between users and non-users?

Extant research has focused on monitoring the behaviour of people who use mobile banking (MB) but it has paid little attention to understanding the impact of information technology usage behaviour due to cultural differences. Humans are the weakest link in information technology adoption; past research has shown that not all users are predisposed to change their behaviour radically and adopt new channels of banking. This paper examines the demographic patterns of users and non-users of MB. The paper also investigates the attitudinal influences of users and non-users of MB based on innovation attributes. Using empirical research, the study identifies constructs of innovation attributes that were perceived to be significantly different among the users and non-users of MB. The study provides valuable insights into MB in Saudi Arabia that have not been previously investigated. From a practical point, findings of this study will be particularly useful to banks, financial institutions and telecommunication service providers.     

Role of situational method engineering to improve visual information systems in agile distributed environment

Software product prone to continuous evolution due to increase in the use of technology. Therefore, more stakeholders are involved in software evolution increases the cost and complexity. This required optimization of resources and cost to handle evolution with Global Software Development (GSD) to utilize time zones efficiently. The significance challenge of GSD reports: time zone difference, geographical location, communication delays, knowledge sharing, control among stakeholders and development team. Because of these challenges, the requirements for development in GSD environment are also challenge as compared to on site development. Different requirement engineering methods have been used to improve the requirements analysis to deal with ambiguities and inconsistency in large set of requirements. The customization and tailoring of requirements according to changing project’s situations required to improve project development with reusing existing agile methods during requirement engineering phase. Moreover, complex information systems where heterogeneity is inevitable that implies the involvement of divergent stakeholders and necessitate a comprehensive framework to capture multidimensional viewpoints and fulfill aforementioned issues. Therefore, a situational multi-dimensional agile requirement engineering method has been proposed to support team and stakeholders’ viewpoints. The schema of the proposed method is based on challenges recognized by performing Literature Review. Then proposed method has been evaluated via experimental approach and statistical analysis conducted to validated reliability of data collected. This result is significant approved both practically and statistically that the proposed approach ease to use, implement, trained and increased productivity and performance. Hence, the experimental study for the evaluation of the proposed approach results concluded that, proposed approach is the important multimedia tool for supporting organization and distributed development team for information sharing, collaboration, product development.

     

Biomathematical study of time-dependent flow of a Carreau nanofluid through inclined catheterized arteries with overlapping stenosis

Journal of Central South University - This work is concerned with the analysis of blood flow through inclined catheterized arteries having a balloon (angioplasty) with time-variant overlapping...     

Molecular dynamics simulations of enantiomeric separations as an interfacial process in HPLC

Since chromatographic separation is a dynamic process, with the interactions between the drug and the chiral stationary phase mediated by the solvent, no single interacting structure, such as could be found by minimizing the energy, could possibly describe and account for the ratio of residence times in the chromatographic column for the enantiomeric pair. We describe the use of explicit-solvent fully atomistic molecular dynamics simulations, permitting all the interactions between the atoms constituting the chiral stationary phase, solvent molecules and the drug molecule. This allows us to better understand the molecular dynamic chiral recognition that provides the discrimination, which results in the separation of enantiomers by high performance liquid chromatography. It also provides a means of predicting, for a given set of conditions, which enantiomer elutes first and an estimate of the expected separation factor. In this review, we consider the use of molecular dynamics toward this understanding and prediction.     

Dual Band PIFA MIMO Antenna Design with High Isolation for Mobile and Wireless Applications by Using the Genetics Algorithms and Non-uniform Overlapping Method

Wireless Personal Communications - Due to the development and growth of Internet platforms and web services as communication resources, the competition for the network and its limited resources is...     

Fuzzy based multi-criteria vertical handover decision modeling in heterogeneous wireless networks

Vertical handover gain significant importance due to the enhancements in mobility models by the Fourth Generation (4G) technologies. However, these enhancements are limited to specific scenarios and hence do not provide support for generic mobility. Similarly, various schemes are proposed based on these mobility models but most of them are suffered from the high packet loss, frequent handovers, too early and late handovers, inappropriate network selection, etc. To address these challenges, a generic vertical handover management scheme for heterogeneous wireless networks is proposed in this article. The proposed scheme works in three phases. In the first phase, a handover triggering approach is designed to identify the appropriate place for initiating handover based on the estimated coverage area of a WLAN access point or cellular base station. In the second phase, fuzzy rule based system is designed to eliminate the inappropriate networks before deciding an optimal network for handover. In the third phase, a network selection scheme is developed based on the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) decision mechanism. Various parameters such as delay, jitter, Bit Error Rate (BER), packet loss, communication cost, response time, and network load are considered for selecting an optimal network. The proposed scheme is tested in a mobility scenario with different speeds of a mobile node ranging from very low to very high. The simulation results are compared with the existing decision models used for network selection and handover triggering approaches. The proposed scheme outperforms these schemes in terms of energy consumption, handover delay and time, packet loss, good put, etc.     

Towards quantum reversible ternary coded decimal adder

Quantum ternary logic is a promising emerging technology for the future quantum computing. Ternary reversible logic circuit design has potential advantages over the binary ones like its logarithmic reduction in the number of qudits. In reversible logic all computations are done in an invertible fashion. In this paper, we propose a new quantum reversible ternary half adder with quantum cost of only 7 and a new quantum ternary full adder with a quantum cost of only 14. We termed it QTFA. Then we propose 3-qutrit parallel adders. Two different structures are suggested: with and without input carry. Next, we propose quantum ternary coded decimal (TCD) detector circuits. Two different approaches are investigated: based on invalid numbers and based on valid numbers. Finally, we propose the quantum realization of TCD adder circuits. Also here, two approaches are discussed. Overall, the proposed reversible ternary full adder is the best between its counterparts comparing the figures of merits. The proposed 3-qutrit parallel adders are compared with the existing designs and the improvements are reported. On the other hand, this paper suggested the quantum reversible TCD adder designs for the first time. All the proposed designs are realized using macro-level ternary Toffoli gates which are built on the top of the ion-trap realizable ternary 1-qutrit gates and 2-qutrit Muthukrishnan–Stroud gates.     

A model of a decision support system based on case-based reasoning for third-party logistics evaluation

The social demands for third‐party logistics (3PL) are further developing the model of supply chain management. The analysis of an effective approach for 3PL service supplier evaluation is given in terms of its direct relation to the operational efficiency and benefit of the service‐demanding enterprise as well as its supply chain management. An analysis of the traditional academic theoretical results and practical methods for 3PL supplier selection indicates the deficiencies of this approach. In this paper, a case‐based reasoning model framework is postulated for a 3PL evaluation and selection system. This work further expands upon the theoretical basis of this system and its reasoning process by discussing the advantages and practical value of this framework.