Fourth-Order Semi-Compact Scheme for Flow Past a Rotating and Translating Cylinder

In the present investigation, the newly developed Higher Order Semi-Compact (HOSC) finite difference scheme has been tested for its capability in capturing the very complex flow phenomenon of unsteady flow past a rotating and translating circular cylinder. The physical problem has been modeled in stream function and vorticity formulation and the obtained governing equations are transformed into curvilinear coordinates using body fitted coordinate system to enable the developed scheme to handle the non-rectangular geometry of the problem. Qualitative and quantitative comparisons have been done at low-rotation parameters and found that the results obtained are in excellent agreement with the existing literature. Then simulations have been carried out at high-rotation parameters and noticed that the HOSC scheme is able to simulate some of the flow features known experimentally but not simulated numerically to the present date.     

Kinetics and mechanism of oligomerization of cardanol using acid catalysts

The kinetics and mechanism of oligomerization of cardanol over acid catalysts were studied. GPC results showed the formation of a mixture of oligomers such as dimer, trimer, tetramer, etc. IR spectra of the products of oligomerization showed a decrease in the intensity of the double bond absorption band at 1630 cm^?1 and the disappearance of terminal vinyl bands at 895 cm^?1 and 907 cm^?1. ¹H NMR spectra showed drastic changes in the unsaturated proton resonance signals at 5.5δ with respect to saturated protons at 0.2–2.5δ. The ratio of resonance integrals of unsaturated to saturated protons decreased from 1 : 6.5 to 1 : 20 after oligomerization. GPC studies showed that the rate of formation of the dimer, trimer, tetramer, etc. follow an identical path and that the individual oligomers are formed in the same weight percentage at any time during the reaction. A kinetic scheme is proposed to explain this phenomenon. Kinetic studies showed that the oligomerization reaction follows first order kinetics with respect to the monomer concentration and the rate constant is K = 6.6 × 10^?5s^?1. A probable mechanism for the oligomerization of cardanol is proposed.     

A kinetic model for the enzyme-catalyzed self-epoxidation of oleic acid

This paper reports a kinetic model for the selfepoxidation of oleic acid with toluene as solvent and Novozym 435 (a commercially available preparation of immobilized Candida antarctica lipase) as catalyst at 30°C. The effects of various parameters on the conversion and rates of reaction were studied. Both the initial rate and the progress curve data were used to fit an ordered bi-bi model. At low temperatures, the rate of epoxidation was faster than the rate of deactivation of the enzyme by hydrogen peroxide.     

Image formation in low-coherence and confocal interference microscopes

Image formation in the coherence probe microscope (CPM) and in optical coherence tomography (OCT) are compared. These systems differ in that CPM is a conventional interference microscope, but OCT is a confocal interference microscope. A major disadvantage of CPM for imaging through thick object structures is that there is no optical sectioning for the background image, which can saturate the detector. The behavior of the interference term in the presence of aberrations also exhibits some differences: Aberrations can be compensated in CPM, but not in OCT.     

Characterization of phospholipid reverse micelles in nonaqueous systems in relation to their rejection during membrane processing

The phospholipid (PL) rejection mechanism during membrane degumming was evaluated based on its critical micelle concentration (CMC) levels in undiluted and hexane-diluted vegetable oils. In this context, the influence of PL composition and solvent medium on the CMC levels has been investigated. In real and model systems, higher phosphatidylcholine to PL ratio lowered the CMC value and vice versa. The CMC of PL was lower in hexane-diluted systems when compared to undiluted oil systems owing to the greater hydrophobic-repulsive forces between hexane and amphiphilic PL. The PL rejection by UF membrane was near complete when the PL content of system was above CMC. Among the systems with lower PL contents (< CMC), rejection was greater in hexane-diluted systems (82-99% in lecithin-hexane system) than in undiluted oil systems (~ 40% in sunflower oil) owing to greater concentration polarization effect responsible for reverse micelle formation at the membrane surface leading to their subsequent rejection. UF membranes are generally preferred owing to higher productivity and the results suggest that their rejection performance could be kept high by careful manipulation of initial PL content. Nonporous membranes were effective in degumming vegetable oils irrespective of initial PL content and the type of system.     

Higher order semi compact scheme to solve transient incompressible Navier-Stokes equations

A fourth order semi compact finite difference scheme has been developed to solve unsteady incompressible Navier-Stokes equations in stream function and vorticity formulation. The governing equations are transformed into curvilinear coordinates using body fitted coordinate system to enable the developed scheme to handle non-regular domains. Two test problems are utilized to explore the efficiency of the scheme. It is found that the solutions obtained with the present scheme are in good agreement with the analytical results or with the existing results depending on the availability.     

Metadata requirements for digital museum environments

We describe a system which addresses all the processes involved in digitally acquiring, modelling, storing, manipulating and creating virtual exhibitions from 3D museum artefacts. More specifically, we examine the significance of metadata in enabling and supporting all of these processes and describe the extensive facilities provided for authoring, maintaining and managing metadata. The development of the system has been heavily influenced by factors relating to interoperability, standards, museum best practice and feedback from two museum pilot sites. Finally, we briefly consider the system in the wider context of applications such as virtual learning environments and distributed repositories of archives.     

Chronic dosing with aminoguanidine and novel advanced glycosylation end product-formation inhibitors ameliorates cross-linking of tail tendon collagen in STZ-induced diabetic rats

Solubility of tail tendon collagen from normal, streptozotocin-induced diabetic Lewis rats, and diabetic animals treated with aminoguanidine and two novel advanced glycosylation end products (AGE)-formation inhibitors was investigated by limited pepsin digestion under acidic conditions. Assays were conducted using tail tendon collagen from Lewis rats obtained from two different vendors, Harlan and Charles River Laboratories. Collagen solubility was assessed by following the kinetics of pepsin digestion. The data revealed that the rate of digestion for diabetic animals is markedly slow relative to that of normals. More strikingly, the kinetics of the diabetic animals showed the feature of a lag in digestion regardless of the animal source. Experiments designed to optimize the difference in solubility between normal and diabetic animals demonstrated that Charles River animals exhibit a greater window of solubility than the Harlan animals. More importantly, a pronounced effect of aminoguanidine, an AGE-formation inhibitor, was observed in Charles River animals, but not in the Harlan animals, presumably because of the larger window of solubility between the normal and the diabetic animals in the former. These data indicated that the Charles River Lewis rats are an animal model that demonstrates greater efficacy in this assay. Analysis of in vivo screens designed to test efficacy of aminoguanidine and two novel AGE-formation inhibitors, ALT 462 and ALT 486, demonstrated that monitoring an in vivo dose response is highly dependent on the enzyme concentration as well as the time of digestion, and that 1.5 h of digestion and 10 microg/ml pepsin (5 pg pepsin/mg collagen) appeared optimal. Under these conditions, a 29% normalization of solubility was observed with aminoguanidine at 100 mg/kg body wt, whereas a similar normalization was observed at 10 mg/kg body wt for both ALT 462 and ALT 486. Thus, on a molar basis, ALT 462 and ALT 486 are at least 20 times more potent than aminoguanidine. This is the first demonstration of dose-dependent efficacy for AGE-formation inhibitors in animal models, and as such, this assay provides a method with which to assess the in vivo efficacy of other such inhibitors.     

Transport behavior of n-alkane penetrants into castor oil based polyurethane-polyester nonwoven fabric composites

Castor oil based polyurethane (PU)-polyester nonwoven fabric composites were fabricated by impregnating the polyester nonwoven fabric in a composition containing castor oil and diisocyanate. Composites were fabricated with two different isocyanates such as toluene-2,4-diisocyanate (TDI) and hexamethylene diisocyanate (HMDI). Transport behavior of n-alkane penetrants (pentane, hexane and heptane) into both PUs and PU-polyester nonwoven fabric composites were studied. Sorption studies were carried out at different temperatures. From the sorption results, the diffusion (D) and permeation (P) coefficients of penetrants have been calculated. Significant increase in the diffusion and permeation coefficients was observed with increase in the temperature of sorption experiments. Drastical reduction in diffusion and permeation coefficients was noticed in the composites compared to neat PUs. Attempts were made to estimate the empirical parameters like n, which suggests the mode of transport and K is a constant depends on the structural characteristics of the composite in addition to its interaction with penetrants. The temperature dependence of the transport coefficients has been used to estimate the activation energy parameter for diffusion (E(D)) and permeation (E(P)) processes from Arrhenius plots. Furthermore, the sorption results have been interpreted in terms of the thermodynamic parameters such as enthalpy (DeltaH) and entropy (DeltaS).     

Emerging Trends in Terahertz Metamaterial Applications

The terahertz spectrum of electromagnetic waves is finding its position in various applications of day to day life because of its unique properties, including the penetration through opaque materials. Naturally occurring materials in this range are rare due to the display of a natural breakpoint of both electric, and magnetic resonances in these materials. However recent advances in artificially engineered materials, which show resonance in this region are able to harness desirable properties in the terahertz region. In this paper, terahertz design and fabrication issues have been explored along with their applications. A brief review of metamaterial terahertz applications has been carried out including metamaterial absorbers, filters, modulators, switches, lenses, and cloaking structures. The various patterns of metamaterial unit cells are discussed elaborately along with the possibility of flexible active terahertz structures.