Phase locked loop-based clock synthesizer for reconfigurable analog-to-digital converters

Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing - This paper presents the complete design of a phase locked loop-based clock synthesizer for reconfigurable analog-to-digital converters. The...     

OWL‐based acquisition and editing of computer‐interpretable guidelines with the CompGuide editor

Computer‐Interpretable Guidelines (CIGs) are the dominant medium for the delivery of clinical decision support, given the evidence‐based nature of their source material. Therefore, these machine‐readable versions have the ability to improve practitioner performance and conformance to standards, with availability at the point and time of care. The formalisation of Clinical Practice Guideline knowledge in a machine‐readable format is a crucial task to make it suitable for the integration in Clinical Decision Support Systems. However, the current tools for this purpose reveal shortcomings with respect to their ease of use and the support offered during CIG acquisition and editing. In this work, we characterise the current landscape of CIG acquisition tools based on the properties of guideline visualisation, organisation, simplicity, automation, manipulation of knowledge elements, and guideline storage and dissemination. Additionally, we describe the CompGuide Editor, a tool for the acquisition of CIGs in the CompGuide model for Clinical Practice Guidelines that also allows the editing of previously encoded guidelines. The Editor guides the users throughout the process of guideline encoding and does not require proficiency in any programming language. The features of the CIG encoding process are revealed through a comparison with already established tools for CIG acquisition.     

Inferring kinetic dissolution of NaCl in aqueous glycol solution using a low-cost apparatus and population balance model

An experimental methodology for inferring brine dissolution rate in monoethylene glycol (MEG) solutions at different temperatures using a webcam combined with a mathematical model is presented. The measurement system is designed to track the RGB (red, green, and blue) colour variations during the dissolution process. A dynamic model augmented with the population balance equation is applied to describe the dissolution process. Moreover, the dissolution rate is consistently related to the temperature and MEG concentration through the driving force based on the Gibbs energy and chemical affinity. The applied low-cost measurement apparatus proved to be a useful resource for tracking the dissolution dynamics in a wide range of undersaturation.     

Time Decay of the Activity of the Reduction Reaction of NO by CO on a Pd/Al2O3 Catalyst

An experimental study is made of the time decay of activity of the CO–NO reaction on a Pd/Al₂O₃ looking at the effect on reaction order and apparent activation energy. The optimum kinetics parameters fitting the steady state data at moderate pressures are determined. The time decay curves are analyzed through various catalyst deactivation models.     

Transmission loss allocation through equivalent bilateral exchanges and economical analysis

A new loss allocation (LA) scheme based on the principle of equivalent bilateral exchanges (EBEs) is presented and compared with other available techniques. Formulation and results from extensive simulations including consistency tests show that the suggested methodology has several desirable properties: It is flow-based, requiring only a solved load flow for its implementation; it is not dependent on the choice of a slack bus; it is straightforward to apply; undesirable negative loss allocation is not produced; and low volatilities are shaped. An economic analysis with various LA methods is also carried out when these are integrated into a combined economic dispatch/load flow dispatch strategy, a likely scenario for LA in a real system. This combined dispatch strategy yields prices charged to the loads and rates received by the generators that account for loss allocation and loss supply. Results show that these economic indexes are very close to the marginal costs derived from an optimal power flow (OPF) approach with the advantage of reducing volatility.     

Transmission Fiber Chromatic Dispersion Dependence on Temperature: Implications on 40 Gb/s Performance

In this letter, we will evaluate the performance degradation of a 40 km high‐speed (40 Gb/s) optical system, induced by optical fiber variations of the chromatic dispersion induced by temperature changes. The chromatic dispersion temperature sensitivity will be estimated based on the signal quality parameters.