Increased discharge capacity of a Li-air activated carbon cathode produced by preventing carbon surface passivation

A significant discharge capacity increase (larger than 3 times) for the gas-diffusion-electrode (GDE) used in Li-air cells was demonstrated through modification of the carbon surface with long-chain hydrophobic molecules. The capacity loss of the Li-air activated carbon cathode was found to be caused by the formation of undesired surface passivation. The mechanism of such passivation was identified as the formation of dense Li oxide films directly on the surface of the carbon during the oxygen reduction reaction. Such dense layers of Li oxide are here identified as the root cause of the undesired passivation, which blocks electrochemical reactions, increases the impedance and drops the discharge voltage rapidly. This investigation reveals that the capacity for the gas-diffusion-electrode can be substantially increased, if the activated carbon is modified by attaching long-chain hydrophobic molecules onto the surface. The carbon surface modification significantly delays the formation of the dense Li oxide layers. Therefore, the discharge capacity for the GDE is substantially increased.     

ID/Locator Split-Based Mobility Scheme for Heterogeneous New Generation Network

The new generation network or the future Internet should treat mobile hosts as first-class objects and allow them to move freely across different networks that use heterogeneous protocols. For this purpose, this paper presents a mobility scheme, designed on the basis of the ID/locator split concept. The scheme provides mobility support from the identity layer, a shim layer inserted between the transport and network layers in the new generation network architecture. Mobility functions are independent of network layer protocols, thus they support mobility across heterogeneous network protocols. These functions are distributed in both end hosts and edge routers so that the scheme provides seamless mobility by reducing handover delay and consequent interruption in communication sessions.     

Potential biomass supply for agro-pellet production from agricultural crop residue in Nepal

Nepal, a country rich in biomass, still does not have any commercial pellet production plants and is wasting large amounts of agricultural crop residue. The current study showed that about 5.61 million tonnes (Mt) of biomass in the form of pellets are potentially available from agricultural crop residues. The brick and cement industries could use these agro-pellets. Co-firing of pellets in such industries could play an important role in reducing the import volume of coal and minimize the related environmental loadings.     

Arabidopsis thaliana Plants with Different Levels of Aliphatic- and Indolyl-Glucosinolates Affect Host Selection and Performance of Bemisia tabaci

Generalist insects show reduced selectivity when subjected to similar, but not identical, host plant chemical signatures. Here, we produced transgenic Arabidopsis thaliana plants that over-express genes regulating the aliphatic- and indolyl- glucosinolates biosynthetic pathways with either a constitutive (CaMV 35S) or a phloem-specific promoter (AtSUC2). This allowed us to examine how exposure to high levels of aliphatic- or indolyl-glucosinolates in homogenous habitats (leaf cage apparatus containing two wild-type or two transgenic leaves) and heterogeneous habitats (leaf cage apparatus containing one wild-type and one transgenic leaf) affects host selection and performance of Bemsia tabaci, a generalist phloem-feeding insect. Data from homogenous habitats indicated that exposure to A. thaliana plants accumulating high levels of aliphatic- or indolyl-glucosinolates negatively affected the performance of both adult females and nymphs of B. tabaci. Data from heterogeneous habitats indicated that B. tabaci adult females selected for oviposition plants on which their offspring perform better (preference-performance relationship). However, the combinations of wild-type and transgenic plants in heterogeneous habitats increased the period of time until the first choice was made and led to increased movement rate on transgenic plants, and reduced fecundity on wild-type plants. Overall, our findings are consistent with the view that both performance and selectivity of B. tabaci decrease in heterogeneous habitats that contain plants with closely-related chemical signatures.     

IIPP: integrated IP paging protocol with a power save mechanism

The advent of advanced mobile/wireless systems has been facilitating the battery‐powered mobile computing devices (nodes) to remain always connected to the internet. However, until now, the power‐drain rate of mobile nodes is very high in comparison with the available power of portable batteries. To reduce the energy consumption of mobile nodes, we present an integrated IP paging protocol (IIPP) by integrating the IP‐layer paging protocol based on Mobile IPv4 regional registration (MIPRR) with a power save mechanism. IIPP reduces the frequency of signaling messages between mobile nodes and networks. When not sending or receiving data for a certain time, mobile nodes enter power save mode (PSM), and consume very low power. We formulate analytical models and carry out simulations to evaluate the proposed IIPP. The results show that, compared to MIPRR, IIPP significantly reduces the average power consumption of the mobile node and signaling overheads in the network. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Undercover careseekers: simulated clients in the study of health provider behavior in developing countries

The simulated client method (SCM) has been used for over 20 years to study health care provider behavior in a first-hand way while minimizing observation bias. In developing countries, it has proven useful in the study of physicians, drug retailers, and family planning services. In SCM, research assistants with fictitious case scenarios (or with stable conditions or a genuine interest in the services) visit providers and request their assistance. Providers are not aware that these clients are involved in research. Simulated clients later report on the events of their visit and these data are analyzed. This paper reviews 23 developing country studies of physician, drug retail, and family planning services in order to draw conclusions about (1) the advantages and limitations of the methods; (2) considerations for design and implementation of a simulated client study; (3) validity and reliability; and (4) ethical concerns. Examples are also drawn from industrialized countries, related methodologies, and non-health fields to illustrate the issues surrounding SCM. Based on this review, we conclude that the information gathered through the use of simulated clients is unique and valuable for managers, intervention planners and evaluators, social scientist, regulators, and others. Areas that need to be explored in future work with this method include: ways to ensure data validity and reliability; research on additional types of providers and health care needs; and adaptation of the technique for routine use.     

Iterative semiblind multiuser receivers for a space-time block-coded MC-CDMA uplink system

Iterative multiuser detection and space-time coding are two promising techniques to improve the capacity and performance of coded multiuser systems in wireless channels. In this paper, we present iterative multiuser detection schemes for a space-time block-coded multicarrier code-division multiple-access system with multiple transmit and receive antennas. We consider a more general case of an uplink system in the presence of both intra- and intercell interferences. We propose two types of iterative semiblind space-time receivers for such an uplink environment. The first is based on the minimum mean-square error criterion and the second is a hybrid scheme based on a combination of parallel interference cancellation and linear multiuser detection. These iterative receivers are derived, using a subspace approach, which utilizes known users' information for the computation of log-likelihood ratios (LLRs) while blindly suppressing the unknown interference. The LLRs are refined successively during the iterative process by using the extrinsic information available through decoding of all known users. A turbo code is used for channel coding. Simulation results in a frequency-selective Rayleigh-fading environment are presented to verify the performance of the proposed schemes.     

ID/Locator Split-Based Distributed Mobility Management Mechanism

We have designed the heterogeneity inclusion and mobility adaptation through locator ID separation (HIMALIS) architecture to support mobility natively in the New Generation Network. This paper proposes a new distributed mobility scheme in the HIMALIS architecture for supporting seamless mobility for the host moving across access networks of different network-layer protocols. The proposed scheme also supports mobility of an access network. It includes a signaling procedure to redirect downstream traffic from the previous gateway (or previous access router) to the new gateway (or new access router) to minimize the service disruption or packet losses during a handover. The performance results obtained from a testbed implementation in Linux validate the effectiveness of the proposal. The results demonstrate that it can achieve seamless (no packet loss) handovers if overlapped wireless access networks are available.