Boosting the activity of FeOOH via integration of ZIF-12 and graphene to efficiently catalyze the oxygen evolution reaction

Transition metal oxyhydroxides have been used as promising electrocatalysts for water splitting however, their catalytic activity is restricted due to low surface area and poor conductivity. Herein, we report novel composite FeOOH@ZIF-12/graphene composite as electrocatalyst for water oxidation, whereby ZIF-12 provide extra surface for the FeOOH dispersion whilst graphene act as excellent electron mediator. The composite shows a low overpotential value of 291 mV to attain a current density of 10 mA cm^?2 and a low Tafel slope value of 78 mV dec^?1. The catalyst offers a maximum current density of 101 mA cm^?2, while it gives a turnover frequency (TOF) value of 0.031 s^?1 at an overpotential of 291 mV only. The excellent activity and remarkable stability of composite is attributed to highly conductive and porous support.     

The use of natural (Pinus pinaster) resin in the production of printing ink and the printability effect

Alkyd resins are generally used in the production of printing inks. All industries look for alternative raw materials in the production of ink with the growing inclination toward using natural products. Resins forming the vehicle of the ink to be obtained from natural resources will provide benefits for the environment, nature, and living creatures. The aim of the study was to promote the use of natural resin in the ink system. Natural Pinus pinaster resin was added into vegetable and mineral oil-based solvents in pure form with alkyd resin in different amounts and ink varnishes of different combinations were prepared. Then, printing inks were produced from these varnishes in pure and hybrid form. Following the assessment of the rheological properties of the inks prepared, printing tests were conducted to assess the printing quality parameters. Ideal mixing ratios of the natural resins in the ink were determined for printability. The environmental importance and advantages of the use of natural resins were discussed. Recommendations were given in line with the results to encourage widespread use of natural resins in near future.     

Dynamic analysis and drilling degrees of freedom

Finite element methods for dynamic analysis employing elements with drilling degrees of freedom are presented. The formulation is based on a variational principle in which displacements and rotations are interpolated independently. The issue of zero masses corresponding to rotational degrees of freedom is addressed and techniques for defining consistent and lumped rotational mass matrices are presented.     

A knowledge-based system for sensor selection

This paper presents a Knowledge-based system (KBS) developed to allow users, who may not be knowledgeable about sensors, to select sensors suitable for their specific needs. The KBS runs on a micro-computer. The selection criteria are user specified and are based on the desired measurement parameters. The system output includes all of the operational and dimensional parameters of the recommended sensor, price, and vendor information.     

Reusable silicon IP cores for discrete wavelet transform applications

Architectures and methods for the rapid design of silicon cores for implementing discrete wavelet transforms over a wide range of specifications are described. These architectures are efficient, modular, scalable, and cover orthonormal and biorthogonal wavelet transform families. They offer efficient hardware utilization by exploiting a number of core wavelet filter properties and allow the creation of silicon designs that are highly parameterized, including in terms of wavelet type and wordlengths. Control circuitry is embedded within these systems allowing them to be cascaded for any desired level of decomposition without any interface glue logic. The time to produce chip designs for a specific wavelet application is typically less than a day and these are comparable in area and performance to handcrafted designs. They are also portable across a wide range of silicon foundries and suitable for field programmable gate array and programmable logic data implementation. The approach described has also been extended to wavelet packet transforms.     

Assessment of the energy and exergy utilization efficiencies in the Turkish agricultural sector

This study deals with evaluating the energy and exergy utilization efficiencies in the Turkish agricultural sector over a 12‐year period from 1990 to 2001. In the energy and exergy analyses, two main energy sources, namely fuels and electricity, are taken into consideration, while the sectoral energy and exergy efficiencies are compared for this period. These main energy sources include diesel for tractors and other vehicles, and electricity for pumps. Overall energy utilization efficiencies are obtained to vary between 29.1 and 41.1%, while overall exergy utilization efficiencies are found to range from 27.9 to 37.4% in the analysed years, respectively. It may be concluded that the present technique proposed here may be used as a useful tool in analysing and evaluating the energy and exergy utilization efficiencies, identifying energy efficiency and/or energy conservation opportunities and dictating the energy strategies of countries. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Statistically correlated multi-task learning for autonomous driving

Neural Computing and Applications - Autonomous driving research is an emerging area in the machine learning domain. Most existing methods perform single-task learning, while multi-task learning...     

Soil–conduit interaction: an artificial intelligence application for reinforced concrete and corrugated steel conduits

Neural Computing and Applications - Marston’s load theory is commonly used for understanding the soil–conduit interaction. However, there are no practical methods available which can...     

对中国入世后洗涤剂工业形势及相关问题的分析 --国内外业界高层人士访谈

中国加入WTO后，中国洗涤用品行业面临着新的机遇与挑战，中国洗涤用品市场将面临更加激烈的竞争。由于环保的呼声越来越高，中国已开始在部分地区禁磷。中国洗涤用品工业将如何发展，其前景如何，专家的看法又如何，就这些问题本刊专访了有关人士。     

Ellipsoidal neighbourhood outlier factor for distributed anomaly detection in resource constrained networks

Anomaly detection in resource constrained wireless networks is an important challenge for tasks such as intrusion detection, quality assurance and event monitoring applications. The challenge is to detect these interesting events or anomalies in a timely manner, while minimising energy consumption in the network. We propose a distributed anomaly detection architecture, which uses multiple hyperellipsoidal clusters to model the data at each sensor node, and identify global and local anomalies in the network. In particular, a novel anomaly scoring method is proposed to provide a score for each hyperellipsoidal model, based on how remote the ellipsoid is relative to their neighbours. We demonstrate using several synthetic and real datasets that our proposed scheme achieves a higher detection performance with a significant reduction in communication overhead in the network compared to centralised and existing schemes.