Mixing characteristics for the single and air-water two-phase flows in miniaturized parallel multichannel-based devices

Investigation on the miniaturized parallel multichannel-based devices packed with glass beads to improve the mass exchange execution is the critical focal point of the current study. One of the essential parameters to specify the miniaturized devices' flow distribution is the residence time distribution (RTD). In the present context, the RTDs of a liquid tracer were investigated for the air-water multiphase flows (concurrent) across the multichannel-based miniaturized devices (comprising of 11 similar dimensional parallel channels). The devices were variable in height and packed with glass beads. The conductivity estimations generated the RTD curves and were addressed by the axial dispersion model (ADM). The fluid-flow rates differed within the range of 5–23 ml min⁻¹. The axial dispersion coefficients and the rate of the specific energy dispersion were investigated. The effects of pressure difference and geometry on the hydrodynamic attributes and mixing properties were well-illustrated, and the new correlations were suggested.     

Determinants of the intention to use non-medical insertable digital devices: The case of Chile and Colombia

In the past, thinking of carrying electronic devices inside our bodies was only posed by non-real scenarios. The emergence of insertable devices has changed this. Since this technology is still in its initial development stages, few studies have investigated factors that influence its acceptance. This paper analyzes the predictors of the intention to use non-medical insertable devices in two Latin American contexts. We used partial least squares structural equation modeling to examine whether six constructs predicted intention to use insertable devices. A questionnaire was administered to undergraduate students located in Colombia and Chile (n = 672). We also examined whether these predictors influenced intention differently for both of them. Four common constructs significantly and positively influenced both Chilean and Colombian respondents to use insertable devices (hedonic motivation, habit, performance expectancy, and social influence). Also, the habit has a complementary mediating effect on the relationship between social influence and behavioral intention. By contrast, effort expectations were a positive and significant predictor, but only among Chilean respondents. Findings suggest that when technologies are emerging, well-known predictors of intention (e.g., performance and effort expectations) are less influential than predictors related to self-efficacy (e.g., habit and hedonic motivation). The use of insertable devices has a significant impact on society. Thus, a better understanding of what motivates their use has implications for both academia and industry.     

Trade-off study between risk and benefit in safety devices for hydrogen refueling stations using a dynamic physical model

As hydrogen refueling stations become increasingly common, it is clear that a high level of economic efficiency and safety is crucial to promoting their use. One way to reduce costs is to use a simple orifice instead of an excess flow valve, which Japanese safety regulations have identified as a safety device. However, there is concern about its effect on refueling time and on risk due to hydrogen leakage. To clarify the effect, we did a study of model-based refueling time evaluation and quantitative risk assessment for a typical refueling station. This study showed that an orifice is an effective alternative safety device. The increase in refueling time was less than 10%, based on simulations using a dynamic physical model of the station. Neither was there a significant difference in the risk between a configuration with excess flow valves and one with an orifice.     

2.3–21 GHz broadband and high linearity distributed low noise amplifier

This paper focuses on the design of a 2.3–21 GHz Distributed Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) with low noise figure (NF), high gain (S₂₁), and high linearity (IIP3) for broadband applications. This distributed amplifier (DA) includes S/C/X/Ku/K-band, which makes it very suitable for heterodyne receivers. The proposed DA uses a 0.18 μm GaAs pHEMT process (OMMIC ED02AH) in cascade architecture with lines adaptation and equalization of phase velocity techniques, to absorb their parasitic capacitances into the gate and drain transmission lines in order to achieve wide bandwidth and to enhance gain and linearity. The proposed broadband DA achieved an excellent gain in the flatness of 13.5 ± 0.2 dB, a low noise figure of 3.44 ± 1.12 dB, and a small group delay variation of ±19.721 ps over the range of 2.3–21 GHz. The input and output reflection coefficients S₁₁ and S₂₂ are less than −10 dB. The input compression point (P_1dB) and input third-order intercept point (IIP3) are −1.5 dBm and 11.5 dBm, respectively at 13 GHz. The dissipated power is 282 mW and the core layout size is 2.2 × 0.8 mm².     

无线电综合测试仪校准装置的研究及其不确定度分析

This calibration device of radio comprehensive tester is studied and established in this paper. It solves the verification and calibration of a large number of general-purpose radio comprehensive testers. The calibration device consists of four calibration sub- systems and calibration software system, including RF generator, audio generator, audio analyzer and RF analyzer. It also researches on the configuration of standard equipment and analyzes the uncertainty of the calibration devices, ensuring accurate and reliable val- ue transfer.     

Rethinking Enterprise Architecture for Sustainable Energy System Development

The development of a sustainable energy system throughout an enterprise is a complex task, which requires an agile holistic approach. Such an approach needs to include a variety of objectives including energy strategy formation and strategic decision-making, which are directly related to the analysis and management of the main areas of sustainable development:The economic, technological, environmental, and social. These multidimensional requirements of sustainability are often difficult to achieve within the enterprise, because these aspects are interrelated and influenced by various internal and external environment factors. This paper first reviews the main challenges for an energy system, and then demonstrates how a strategic agile enterprise architecture driven approach could effectively guide the sustainable energy system development. The study presented in this paper provides a holistic approach that contributes to the advancement and usage of literature dealing with issues of sustainable energy system development and agile enterprise architecture, which has not been discussed before to any great extent.     

Resistive switching characteristics of ZnO–graphene quantum dots and their use as an active component of an organic memory cell with one diode-one resistor architecture

We investigated the resistive switching characteristics of a polystyrene:ZnO–graphene quantum dots system and its potential application in a one diode-one resistor architecture of an organic memory cell. The log–log I–V plot and the temperature-variable I–V measurements revealed that the switching mechanism in a low-current state is closely related to thermally activated transport. The turn-on process was induced by a space-charge-limited current mechanism resulted from the ZnO–graphene quantum dots acting as charge trap sites, and charge transfer through filamentary path. The memory device with a diode presented a ∼10³ I_ON/I_OFF ratio, stable endurance cycles (10² cycles) and retention times (10⁴ s), and uniform cell-to-cell switching. The one diode-one resistor architecture can effectively reduce cross-talk issue and realize a cross bar array as large as ∼3 kbit in the readout margin estimation. Furthermore, a specific word was encoded using the standard ASCII character code.     

Combined hardware–software multi-parallel prefiltering on the Convey HC-1 for fast homology detection

Protein databases used in research are huge and still grow at a fast pace. Many comparisons need to be done when searching similar (homologous) sequences for a given query sequence in these databases. Comparing a query sequence against all sequences of a huge database using the well-known Smith–Waterman algorithm is very time-consuming. Hidden Markov Models pose an opportunity for reducing the number of entries of a database and also enable to find distantly homologous sequences. Fewer entries are achieved by clustering similar sequences in a Hidden Markov Model. Such an approach is used by the bioinformatics tool HHblits. To further reduce the runtime, HHblits uses two-level prefiltering to reduce the number of time-consuming Viterbi comparisons. Still, prefiltering is very time-consuming. Highly parallel architectures and huge bandwidth are required for processing and transferring the massive amounts of data. In this article, we present an approach exploiting the reconfigurable, hybrid computer architecture Convey HC-1 for migrating the most time-consuming part. The Convey HC-1 with four FPGAs and high memory bandwidth of up to 76.8 GB/s serves as the platform of choice. Other bioinformatics applications have already been successfully supported by the HC-1. Limited by FPGA size only, we present a design that calculates four first-level prefiltering scores per FPGA concurrently, i.e. 16 calculations in total. This score calculation for the query profile against database sequences is done by a modified Smith–Waterman scheme that is internally parallelized 128 times in contrast to the original Streaming ‘Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD)’ Extensions (SSE)-supported implementation where only 16-fold parallelism can be exploited and where memory bandwidth poses the limiting factor. Preloading the query profile, we are able to transform the memory-bound implementation to a compute- and resource-bound FPGA design. We tightly integrated the FPGA-based coprocessor into the hybrid computing system by employing task-parallelism for the two-level prefiltering. Despite much lower clock rates, the FPGAs outperform SSE-based execution for the calculation of the prefiltering scores by a factor of 7.9.     

Simplified anode architecture for PEMFC systems based on alternative fuel feeding: Experimental characterization and optimization for automotive applications

The need to reduce PEMFC systems cost as well as to increase their durability is crucial for their integration in various applications and especially for transport applications. A new simplified architecture of the anode circuit called Alternating Fuel Feeding (AFF) offers to reduce the development costs. Requiring a new stack concept, it combines the simplicity of Dead-End Anode (DEA) with the operation advantages of the hydrogen recirculation. The three architectures (DEA, recirculation and AFF) are compared in terms of performance on a 5-kW test bench in automotive conditions, through a sensitivity analysis. A gain of 17% on the system efficiency is observed when switching from DEA to AFF. Moreover, similar performances are obtained both for AFF and for recirculation after an accurate optimization of the AFF tuning parameters. Based on DoE data, a gain of 25% on the weight of the anodic line has been identified compared to pulsed ejector architecture and 43% with the classic recirculation architecture with blower only (Miraï).