Neo Arithmetic and Ranking Techniques for Trapezoidal Generalized Interval Valued Fuzzy Numbers: Their Applications in Decision Making for Medical Investigation

Neural Processing Letters - The uncertainty caused mainly by the deficiency of precision and data, artificial/human-made errors, information accessed from expert opinions or very miniature size of...     

Extensive Study of Underlap Length Effect for 3-D SOI FinFET to Achieve High Switching Ratio and Low Power

Silicon - The primary purpose of this work is to study the effect of symmetric and asymmetric variation of underlap regions both on source and drain side of 3D SOI n-FinFET. Underlap length is...     

Adaptive broadcast by fault-tolerant spanning tree switching

Adaptation is a desirable requirement in a distributed system as it helps the system to perform efficiently under different environments. For many problems, more than one protocol exists, such that one protocol performs better in one environment while the other performs better in another. In such cases, adaptive distributed systems can be designed by dynamically switching between the protocols as the environment changes. Distributed protocol switching is also important for performance enhancement, or fault-tolerance of a distributed system. In this work, we illustrate distributed protocol switching by providing a distributed algorithm for adaptive broadcast that dynamically switches from a BFS tree to a DFS tree. The proposed switching algorithm can also handle arbitrary crash failures. It ensures that switching eventually terminates in spite of failures and the desired tree (DFS tree) results as the output. We also investigate the properties that can be guaranteed on the delivery of broadcast messages under specific failure conditions. We show that under no failure, each broadcast message is eventually correctly delivered to all the nodes in spite of switching. Under arbitrary crash fault, we ensure that switching eventually terminates with the desired tree as the broadcast topology. We also investigate the specific delivery guarantees that can be provided when a single crash fault happens, both during switching and when no switching is in progress.     

Reduction mammaplasty improves symptoms of macromastia

The condition macromastia has not been defined and characterized precisely by the medical community. Whether the patient with hypertrophic breasts is a candidate for or can be helped by reduction mammaplasty is unclear to both the medical and the lay community. A prospective study of 39 women undergoing reduction mammaplasty surgery was initiated to answer these questions. Patients rated the severity of their somatic pain symptoms and discomfort before reduction mammaplasty and again after complete recovery. The severity of their symptoms and complaints was numerically graded and analyzed. These data were compared with similar data obtained from 40 "small-breasted" women of similar age. Headache, neck pain, back pain, shoulder pain, and bra strap groove pain were present in 60 to 92 percent of patients, and 97 percent of patients had at least three of these pain symptoms preoperatively. All the patients had reduction of their pain symptomatology postoperative, and 25 percent of the study patients had total elimination of pain symptoms by reduction mammaplasty. The postoperative incidence and severity of pain symptoms and discomfort complaints were statistically equivalent to or less than the levels in the control group.     

Analysis of Elevated Temperature Flow Behavior of 316LN Stainless Steel Under Compressive Loading

To understand the flow behavior of a newly developed austenitic stainless steel 316LN with 0.14 wt% nitrogen, isothermal compression tests have been carried out in the hot working domain. From the analysis of flow behavior, it is observed that the nitrogen enhanced steel, in its hot working domain exhibits strain and strain rate hardening with thermal softening. The flow behavior analysis also demonstrates the coupled effect of strain–temperature and strain rate temperature on the flow stress. To depict the flow behavior of the material, strain compensated Arrhenius (SCA) equation and Model D8A have been used. The SCA predicts the flow curves with an average absolute error of 9.27% and a correlation coefficient of 0.977, whereas the prediction by Model D8A gives the average absolute relative error as 10.86% with a correlation coefficient of 0.966. For high temperature and intermediate strain rate, both Model D8A and SCA equation depict the flow behavior of 316L (0.14)N SS with good correlation and generalization. However, at low temperature and high strain rate domain, both the models are unable to depict the behavior; this is attributed to the fact that the material shows two slope behaviors where the constants have been calculated assuming a linear relationship between stress and strain rate.     

Acrylic-ester-polyol based novel two-component polyurethane clear coat: Evaluation of performance characteristics

In the current study, a combination of acrylic polyol (AP) and ester polyol (EP) were synthesized and reacted at variable ratios with hexamethylene diisocyanates and isophorone diisocyanates to prepare a transparent two-component polyurethane (PU) coating formulation. The formations of the polyol system, isocyanate system, and the PU systems were confirmed by ¹H nuclear magnetic resonance and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy. Transparency of the coatings was examined using haze, and gloss measurement, which showed acrylic-ester-polyurethane (aePU-5 and aePU-6) have 91.5% and 91.8% transparency and gloss of 90.3 and 90.7 GU respectively. The thermal properties like T_g and the thermal stability of the coatings were verified using differential scanning calorimetry, and thermogravimetric analysis respectively which was found to increase with increasing EP content and decreasing AP content which may be ascribed to improved compatibility of copolymers, and homogeneity in PU along with enhanced crosslinking density. The degree of adhesion of coating with the substrate was validated from lap-shear, and cross-cut tape test which showed improved performance at AP:EP ratio of 60:40. The coatings were found to exhibit resistance toward pencil hardness with aePU-5 and aePU-6 having the optimum resistance of 9H. The surface morphology and topography were observed under scanning electron microscopy, and atomic force microscopy, respectively. The outcome confirms the higher smoothness of the surfaces subjected to the increase in EP content. The PU system with 40 wt% AP content and 60 wt% EP designated as aePU-5 was found to exhibit optimum performance.     

Topology Management Ensuring Reliability in Delay Sensitive Sensor Networks with Arbitrary Node Failures

The lifetime of a sensor network is influenced by the efficient utilization of the resource constrained sensor nodes. The tree-based data gathering offers good quality of service (QoS) for the running applications. However, data gathering at the sink reduces the network lifetime due to a fast failure of highly loaded nodes. Loss of connectivity and sensing coverage affect the performance of the applications that demand critical QoS. In this paper, a data gathering tree management scheme has been proposed to deal with arbitrary node failures in delay-sensitive sensor networks. A load-balanced distributed BFS tree construction procedure has been introduced for an efficient data gathering. Based on the initial tree construction, a tree maintenance scheme and an application message handler have been designed to ensure the reliable delivery of the application messages. The correctness of the proposed scheme has been verified both theoretically and with the help of simulation. The proposed scheme offers low overhead, enhanced network lifetime and good QoS in terms of delay and reliability of the application messages.     

Polyacrylonitrile solution homogeneity study by dynamic shear rheology and the effect on the carbon fiber tensile strength

Poly(acrylonitrile‐co‐methacrylic acid) (PAN‐co‐MAA)/N,N‐dimethylformamide (DMF) solutions were prepared and dynamic shear rheology of these solutions were investigated. With increasing stirring time up to 72 h at 70°C, the polymer solution became less elastic (more liquid‐like) with a ～60% reduction in the zero‐shear viscosity. Relaxation spectra of the PAN‐co‐MAA/DMF solutions yield a decrease in relaxation time (disentanglement time, τ_d), corresponding to an about 8% decrease in viscosity average molecular weight. The log‐log plot of G′ (storage modulus) versus G″ (loss modulus) exhibited an increase in slope as a function of stirring time, suggesting that the molecular level solution homogeneity increased. In order to study the effect of solution homogeneity on the resulting carbon fiber tensile strength, multiple PAN‐co‐MAA/DMF solutions were prepared, and the precursor fibers were processed using gel‐spinning, followed by continuous stabilization and carbonization. The rheological properties of each solution were also measured and correlated with the tensile strength values of the carbon fibers. It was observed that with increasing the slope of the G′ versus G″ log‐log plot from 1.471 to 1.552, and reducing interfilament fiber friction during precursor fiber drawing through the addition of a fiber washing step prior to fiber drawing, the carbon fiber strength was improved (from 3.7 to 5.8 GPa). This suggests that along with precursor fiber manufacturing and carbonization, the solution homogeneity is also very important to obtain high strength carbon fiber. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 56:361–370, 2016. © 2016 Society of Plastics Engineers     

Solid‐state NMR study of spin finish of thermally treated PAN and PAN/CNT precursor fibers

Dry‐jet wet‐spun polyacrylonitrile (PAN) and PAN/carbon nanotubes (CNTs) precursor fibers coated by spin finishes were characterized using the solid‐state ¹H nuclear magnetic resonance technique. Series of fiber samples were prepared upon thermal treatment at different temperatures (room temperature to 180°C). Using the Hahn echo sequence, relatively mobile components were identified and the effect of the heat treatment on those components was studied. It was observed that the mobile components are mainly the spin finishes. Heat treatment caused loss of one of the spin finishes (Type B) to a great extent (～80%), whereas the other two spin finishes (Type A and Type C) were more stable. Additional information regarding the change in molecular mobility due to heat treatment was obtained by the spin‐lattice relaxation time ( T₁ ) analysis. It was found that the presence of CNT affects the T₁ relaxation time of the polymer in the composite fiber, however, that of relatively mobile components remains unaffected. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2014 , 131, 40734.     

Dynamic rheological,morphology and mechanical properties of compatibilized LLDPE/EMA blends

Blends of linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) and ethylene-co-methyl acrylate (EMA) having 60/40 composition was studied with and without compatibilizing agent. The compatibilizing agent used was maleic anhydride grafted linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE-g-MA). The LLDPE backbones of the compatibilizer are compatible with LLDPE blend component, whereas the maleic anhydride is affinated with carbonyl groups of EMA. The effectiveness of the compatibilizing agent was evaluated using different techniques like mechanical, thermal, scanning electron microscopy and rheological studies. Best compatibilization effect was found in the blend at a loading of 3 wt% of compatibilizer since at this level of compatibilizer complex viscosity, tensile strength, modulus, elongation at break, impact strength was found to be higher. The increase in the melt viscosity, storage modulus and thermal stability of the compatibilized blends indicated enhanced interactions between the discrete LLDPE and EMA phases induced by the functional compatibilizer.