A new composite of crystalline silicotitanate for sequestration of 137Cs and 90Sr from low-level aqueous waste solution

ABSTRACT

A new composite of crystalline silicotitanate (CST) has been synthesized for the sequestration of Cs and Sr from low-level liquid waste generated in the nuclear industry. The product characterization using X-RAY DEFRACTION (XRD) and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) confirmed the presence of CST crystals in the composite. Sorption studies carried out under various test conditions showed that the composite has high affinity for both Cs and Sr. Results of structural characterization of Cs and Sr-loaded CST indicated that the overall structural integrity remained intact after substitution of Na⁺ by Cs⁺ or Sr²⁺. The exceedingly good Cs and Sr sorption performance displayed by the CST composite will find applications in the treatment of nuclear waste.     

Broadcasting in multi-radio multi-channel wireless networks using simplicial complexes

We consider the broadcasting problem in multi-radio multi-channel ad hoc networks. The objective is to minimize the total cost of the network-wide broadcast, where the cost can be of any form that is summable over all the transmissions (e.g., the transmission and reception energy, the price for accessing a specific channel). Our technical approach is based on a simplicial complex model that allows us to capture the broadcast nature of the wireless medium and the heterogeneity across radios and channels. Specifically, we show that broadcasting in multi-radio multi-channel ad hoc networks can be formulated as a minimum spanning problem in simplicial complexes. We establish the NP-completeness of the minimum spanning problem and propose two approximation algorithms with order-optimal performance guarantee. The first approximation algorithm converts the minimum spanning problem in simplical complexes to a minimum connected set cover (MCSC) problem. The second algorithm converts it to a node-weighted Steiner tree problem under the classic graph model. These two algorithms offer tradeoffs between performance and time-complexity. In a broader context, this work appears to be the first that studies the minimum spanning problem in simplicial complexes and weighted MCSC problem.     

In-Flight Synthesis of Core–Shell Mg/Si–SiOx Particles with Greatly Reduced Ignition Temperature

Magnesium is a promising candidate as a solid fuel for energetic applications, however, the diffusion-controlled oxidation mechanism impedes its reaction with an oxidizer, often resulting in diminished performance. In this study, non-thermal plasma processing is implemented to modify the surface of magnesium nanoparticles with silicon in-flight, in the gas-phase to enhance the rate of interfacial reactions and tune the ignition pathways. Allowing the silicon coating to partially oxidize provides direct contact between the fuel and oxidizer, resulting in a nanostructured thermite system at the single particle level. The proximal distance between oxidizer and fuel directly impacts the ignition temperature and, therefore, the combustion kinetics. An intermetallic reaction occurs within the magnesium/silicon system to supplement the heating of the magnesium fuel to initiate its reaction with the oxidizer, resulting in highly reduced ignition thresholds. The ignition temperature is lowered significantly from ≈740 °C for magnesium particles with a native oxide layer to ≈520 °C for particles coated via the in-flight plasma process.     

Performance analysis of long-lived cooperative transactions in active DBMS

Active database management systems (ADBMS) are used in different application domains and especially for cooperative and long duration activity management. This paper deals with performance analysis of long-lived cooperative transaction processing in an ADBMS. We first briefly discuss NP-QuadLock – a concurrency control scheme for cooperative and long durational transactions in ADBMS. A restricted version of NP-QuadLock named 2L-QuadLock has been used for simulation. We have modeled such an ADBMS supporting 2L-QuadLock scheme by a queuing model. The failure of the transactions running in such systems has been modeled by a failure recovery model. We have simulated this model for a transaction processing system serving long-lived and cooperative transactions. We also discuss some important emerging application scenarios, where the proposed cooperative complex transaction mechanism can be used (e.g. 3G-service environment, ubiquitous computing environment, feature composition in intelligent network environment, multi-site and multi-domain web-services).

An important objective of our work is to analyze quantitatively (a) the performance penalty on the system due to the partial abort, the number of locks held by a transaction, the number of states of the transactions, and (b) the gain in the performance of the system with the cooperation semantics proposed in 2L-QuadLock concurrency control mechanism. We have analyzed the effect of various parameters such as partial abort rate, cooperation rate, number of locks held by a transaction, multiprogramming level, on the performance metrics such as average service time, average saga length and the degree of compensation. Later, we characterize the application scenarios based on some important simulation parameters, and discuss the application performance needs for each of the application scenarios. The required performance parameters that need to be used for these application scenarios and the corresponding performance results using 2L-QuadLock are also discussed.     

Dynamic Task-Based Anycasting in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) have received significant attention in the recent past owing to the proliferation in the numbers of tetherless portable devices, and rapid growth in popularity of wireless networking. Most of the MANET research community has remained focused on developing lower layer mechanisms such as channel access and routing for making MANETs operational. However, little focus has been applied on higher layer issues, such as application modeling in dynamic MANET environments. In this paper, we present a novel distributed application framework based on task graphs that enables a large class of resource discovery based applications on MANETs. A distributed application is represented as a complex task comprised of smaller sub-tasks that need to be performed on different classes of computing devices with specialized roles. Execution of a particular task on a MANET involves several logical patterns of data flow between classes of such specialized devices. These data flow patterns induce dependencies between the different classes of devices that need to cooperate to execute the application. Such dependencies yield a task graph (TG) representation of the application.We focus on the problem of executing distributed tasks on a MANET by means of dynamic selection of specific devices that are needed to complete the tasks. In this paper, we present simple and efficient algorithms for dynamic discovery and selection (instantiation) of suitable devices in a MANET from among a number of them providing the same functionality. This is carried out with respect to the proposed task graph representation of the application, and we call this process Dynamic Task-Based Anycasting. Our algorithm periodically monitors the logical associations between the selected devices, and in the event of a disruption in the application owing to failures in any component in the network, it adapts to the situation and dynamically rediscovers the affected parts of the task graph, if possible. We propose metrics for evaluating the performance of these algorithms and report simulation results for a variety of application scenarios differing in complexity, traffic, and device mobility patterns. From our simulation studies, we observed that our protocol was able to instantiate and re-instantiate TG nodes quickly and yielded high effective throughput at low to medium degrees of mobility and not much below 70% effective throughput for high mobility scenarios.     

On convergence of the multi-objective particle swarm optimizers

Several variants of the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm have been proposed in recent past to tackle the multi-objective optimization (MO) problems based on the concept of Pareto optimality. Although a plethora of significant research articles have so far been published on analysis of the stability and convergence properties of PSO as a single-objective optimizer, till date, to the best of our knowledge, no such analysis exists for the multi-objective PSO (MOPSO) algorithms. This paper presents a first, simple analysis of the general Pareto-based MOPSO and finds conditions on its most important control parameters (the inertia factor and acceleration coefficients) that govern the convergence behavior of the algorithm to the optimal Pareto front in the objective function space. Computer simulations over benchmark MO problems have also been provided to substantiate the theoretical derivations.     

Thermal and mechanical properties of poly(N‐isopropylacrylamide)‐based hydrogels as a function of porosity and medium change

Poly(N‐isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAAm) has been a well‐known stimuli–responsive material and has been used in multiple novel applications. One of the key attributes to make the hydrogel more attractive is to control the response time and temperature. This work focused on comparing the physical properties, such as response time, transition temperature, heat of fusion, and mechanical strength, of macroporous and microporous PNIPAAm hydrogels, respectively. It was found that the macroporous hydrogels synthesized from a low‐temperature polymerization with addition of tetramethyl orthosilicate exhibited a faster response time and superior mechanical strength. Furthermore, to modulate the transition temperature, both the macroporous and microporous hydrogels were subjected to different qualities of media by introducing a cosolvent (methanol) or an anionic surfactant (sodium dodecyl sulfate). Interestingly, addition of a cosolvent demonstrated a more pronounced effect on the macroporous hydrogel, whereas the surfactant resulted in a more pronounced effect on the microporous hydrogel. Such results revealed that based on their porosity; there were appreciable differences when the PNIPAAm hydrogels interacted with media molecules. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2015 , 132, 42776.     

Dynamic economic dispatch using harmony search algorithm with modified differential mutation operator

Dynamic economic dispatch (DED), which is a complex non-linear constrained optimization problem, has a pivotal role in power system operation. It is one of the prime functions of power generation and control, where the aim is to operate an electrical power system most economically while the system operation is within its security limits. This problem possess non-convex characteristic when generation unit valve-point effects are considered. This paper proposes to solve DED problem with valve-point effects, using a modified form of recently developed differential harmony search algorithm. A five- and ten-unit system with non-smooth fuel cost function is used to establish the effectiveness of the proposed method over various other methods. It is shown that the proposed method is capable of providing better quality solutions.