A strategy for the electro-organic synthesis of new hydrocaffeic acid derivatives

Electrochemical treatment processes can significantly contribute to the protection of the environment through the minimization of waste and toxic materials in effluents. From a pharmaceutical point of view and due to the existing resemblance between the electrochemical and biological reactions, it can be assumed that the oxidation mechanisms on the electrode and in the body share similar principles. In this paper, the application of electrochemical studies in the design of an environmentally friendly method was delineated for the new hydrocaffeic acid (HCA, 3,4-dihydroxy hydrocinnamic acid) derivatives synthesis at carbon electrodes in an undivided cell. In this cell, the EC mechanism reaction was involved, comprising two steps alternatively; (1) electrochemical oxidation and (2) chemical reaction. In particular, the electro-organic reactions of HCA, an important biological molecule, were studied in a water–acetonitrile (90:10 v/v) mixture in the presence of benzenesulfinic acid (3) and p-toluenesulfinic acid (4). The research included the use of a variety of experimental techniques, such as cyclic voltammetry, controlled-potential electrolysis and product spectroscopic identification.     

Trends in intelligent manufacturing research: a keyword co-occurrence network based review

Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing - In recent years, driven by Industry 4.0 wave, academic research has focused on the science, engineering, and enabling technologies for intelligent and cyber...     

Multi-player detection in soccer broadcast videos using a blob-guided particle swarm optimization method

Soccer is the most popular sport around the world, and automatic processing of soccer images is a precious alternative to the manual solutions regarding the explosive growth of soccer videos. A new multi-player detection algorithm in far view frames as an initial step to a wide range of applications, such as player tracking, is addressed in this paper. In the proposed detector, a two-step blob detection (grass-based blob detection followed by an edge-based blob detection) is combined with an efficient search mechanism based on particle swarm optimization (PSO) by assigning sub-swarms to each detected blob. Then, a sub-swarm is initialized and tripled to search for three models corresponding to two teams and the referee. Therefore, the most player-like regions in detected blobs are simultaneously searched by all sub-swarms flying through the solution space, thus expanding the scope of single player detection to multi-player detection. Experimental results demonstrate the efficiency and robustness of the algorithm.     

Broadband amplifier and high performance tunable laser with an extinction ratio of higher than 60 dB using bismuth oxide-based erbium-doped fiber

A Bi₂O₃-based erbium-doped fiber (Bi-EDF) ring laser with a 70?nm tunable range is demonstrated with a 49?cm long Bi-EDF in which tuning range can be extended to larger than 100?nm using an optical switch to alter the length of Bi-EDF in the laser cavity. With an extinction ratio of better than 60?dB throughout the entire tuning range, the measured FWHM of laser lines are measured to be 0.09?nm. In addition, the common amplification parameters are measured and studied in detail for various pumping configurations.     

A local linear level set method for the binarization of degraded historical document images

Document image binarization is a difficult task, especially for complex document images. Nonuniform background, stains, and variation in the intensity of the printed characters are some examples of challenging document features. In this work, binarization is accomplished by taking advantage of local probabilistic models and of a flexible active contour scheme. More specifically, local linear models are used to estimate both the expected stroke and the background pixel intensities. This information is then used as the main driving force in the propagation of an active contour. In addition, a curvature-based force is used to control the viscosity of the contour and leads to more natural-looking results. The proposed implementation benefits from the level set framework, which is highly successful in other contexts, such as medical image segmentation and road network extraction from satellite images. The validity of the proposed approach is demonstrated on both recent and historical document images of various types and languages. In addition, this method was submitted to the Document Image Binarization Contest (DIBCO??09), at which it placed 3rd.     

Effect of different titania phases on the hydrogen gas sensing features of polyaniline/TiO2 nanocomposite

This paper presents a resistance-based hydrogen gas sensor using polyaniline (emeraldine)/TiO₂ nanocomposite (PT–NC) thin film. It is demonstrated that different gas sensing features can arise when various TiO₂ phases (anatase and rutile) are applied. The different wt% of TiO₂ phases were dispersed into an acidic solution of aniline monomers and PT–NCs were synthesized by an in-situ self-assembly chemical oxidative polymerization method of aniline. PT–NCs deposited on an epoxy glass substrate having Cu-interdigited electrodes for hydrogen gas sensing at air pressure and room temperature. Our results show that the better sensitivity of the sensor strongly depends on the sensor surface morphology and its components. Furthermore, hydrogen gas sensing mechanism of the sensor based contact areas between Pani chains and TiO₂ grains was studied.     

Studying the rheology,optical clarity and surface tension of an acrylic/melamine automotive clearcoat loaded with different additives

Acrylic/melamine based automotive clearcoats were prepared by inclusion of functional and conventional additives. The conventional additives used were based on polysiloxane chains without any reactive groups. On the other hand, the functional additives were based on polyacrylate and polysiloxane backbones. The additives were added to the clearcoat formulations at different concentrations. Surface tension, optical properties and rheological behaviors of the clearcoats were studied by tensiometer, gonio-spectrophotometer, rheometric mechanical spectrometer (RMS) and Brookfield techniques. Results showed that addition of both conventional and functional additives reduced the surface tension of the clearcoat up to a certain value of the additive concentration. It was seen that functional additives could reduce surface tension much greater than the conventional ones. The coating clarity and transparency were not affected in presence of conventional additives. However, the functional additives, especially the one having higher molecular weight, reduced the coating transparency. The clearcoat viscosity was increased using functional additives. A shear thickening behavior of the clearcoats loaded with functional additives was seen. The conventional additives did not change the clearcoat viscosity. It was concluded that the additive functionality, molecular weight and chemical structure were influential parameters affecting the final properties.     

A multi-criteria context-sensitive approach for social image collection summarization

Recent increase in the number of digital photos in the content sharing and social networking websites has created an endless demand for techniques to analyze, navigate, and summarize these images. In this paper, we focus on image collection summarization. Earlier methods in image collection summarization consider representativeness and diversity criteria while recent ones also consider other criteria such as image quality, aesthetic or appeal. In this paper, we propose a multi-criteria context-sensitive approach for social image collection summarization. In the proposed method, two different sets of features are combined while each one looks at different criteria for image collection summarization: social attractiveness features and semantic features. The first feature set considers different aspects that make an image appealing such as image quality, aesthetic, and emotion to create attractiveness score for input images while the second one covers semantic content of images and assigns semantic score to them. We use social network infrastructure to identify attractiveness features and domain ontology for extracting ontology features. The final summarization is provided by integrating the attractiveness and semantic features of input images. The experimental results on a collection of human generated summaries on a set of Flickr images demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed image collection summarization approach.     

Electromagnetic Scattering From Multilayer Rough Surfaces With Arbitrary Dielectric Profiles for Remote Sensing of Subsurface Soil Moisture

Radar remote sensing of soil moisture content at low frequencies requires an accurate scattering model of realistic soils, which often involves multilayer rough surfaces and dielectric profiles. In this paper, a hybrid analytical/numerical solution to two-dimensional scattering from multilayer rough surfaces separated by arbitrary dielectric profiles based on the extended boundary condition method (EBCM) and scattering matrix technique is presented. The reflection and transmission matrices of rough interfaces are constructed using EBCM. The dielectric profiles are modeled as stacks of piecewise homogeneous dielectric thin layers, whose scattering matrices are computed by recursively cascading reflection and transmission matrices of individual dielectric interfaces. The interactions between the rough interfaces and stratified dielectric profiles are taken into account by applying the generalized scattering matrix technique. The scattering coefficients are obtained by combining the powers computed from the resulting Floquet modes of the overall system. The bistatic scattering coefficients are validated against existing analytical and numerical solutions. Field-collected soil moisture data are then used for numerical simulations to investigate the penetration capability at different frequencies and to address the potential of low-frequency radar systems in estimating deep soil moisture. In particular, soil moisture profiles during dry ground, wet ground, and wet subsurface layer conditions are examined. The results show that both backscattering coefficients and copolarized phase difference at low frequencies are sensitive to the roughness of subsurface interfaces and deep soil moisture. Also, much larger depth sensitivity can be achieved using copolarized phase difference than scattering coefficients