Surface Plasmon Polariton Excitation by a Phase Shift Grating

We focus on the excitation and propagation properties of surface plasmon polariton (SPP). We have developed a SPP excitation device in combination with a grating structures fabricated by using the scanning probe lithography. Perturbation approach was used to investigate the coupling properties of SPP with a spatial harmonic wave supported by a metallic grating. A phase shift grating SPP coupler has been fabricated and the optical property was evaluated by the Fraunhofer diffraction formula. We have been experimentally confirmed the induced stop band by diffraction measurement. We have also observed the wavenumber shift of the resonance condition of SPP owing to effect of a phase shift.

Modeling Corporate Memories using the ReCaRo Model, Some Experiments

This paper presents a model of case based corporate memory named ReCaRo (REsource, CAse, ROle). The approach suggested in ReCaRo decomposes the domain to model through a set of components. These components represent the objects developed by the company during its activity. They are reused, and sometimes, while bringing adaptations. These components are enriched by knowledge after each reuse. ReCaRo builds the corporate memory on the basis of these components. It models two types of knowledge: 1) Business Knowledge, which constitutes the main knowledge capital of the company, refers to its basic skill, thus, directly to the components and 2) the Experience Knowledge which is a specialised knowledge and represents the experience gained during the handling of business knowledge. ReCaRo builds corporate memories which are made up of five communicating ones.

Study on Mixed Convection Heat Transfer in Vertical Ducts with Radiation Effects

Experiments have been performed to investigate the radiation effects on mixed convection heat transfer for thermally developing airflow in vertical ducts with two differentially heated isothermal walls and two adiabatic walls. The investigation covers the Reynolds number Re = 800 to Re = 2900, heat flux varied from 256 W/m2 to 863 W/m2, hot wall temperature ranges from 27°C to 100 °C, aspect ratios 1 & 0.5 and the emissivity of internal walls are 0.05 and 0.85. In the present study, combined flow visualization was conducted to observe the flow patterns. The effect of surface temperature along the walls was studied to investigate the local Nusselt number variation within the duct. The result shows that flow condition and radiation significantly affect the total Nusselt number and tends to reduce the buoyancy condition.

Theoretical Investigation of the Instantaneous Folding Force during the First Fold Creation in a Square Column

In this paper, a theoretical formula is presented to predict the instantaneous folding force of the first fold creation in a square column under axial loading. Calculations are based on analysis of “Basic Folding Mechanism" introduced by Wierzbicki and Abramowicz. For this purpose, the sum of dissipated energy rate under bending around horizontal and inclined hinge lines and dissipated energy rate under extensional deformations are equated to the work rate of the external force on the structure. Final formula obtained in this research, reasonably predicts the instantaneous folding force of the first fold creation versus folding distance and folding angle and also predicts the instantaneous folding force instead of the average value. Finally, according to the calculated theoretical relation, instantaneous folding force of the first fold creation in a square column was sketched versus folding distance and was compared to the experimental results which showed a good correlation.

Improved IDR(s) Method for Gaining Very Accurate Solutions

The IDR(s) method based on an extended IDR theorem was proposed by Sonneveld and van Gijzen. The original IDR(s) method has excellent property compared with the conventional iterative methods in terms of efficiency and small amount of memory. IDR(s) method, however, has unexpected property that relative residual 2-norm stagnates at the level of less than 10-12. In this paper, an effective strategy for stagnation detection, stagnation avoidance using adaptively information of parameter s and improvement of convergence rate itself of IDR(s) method are proposed in order to gain high accuracy of the approximated solution of IDR(s) method. Through numerical experiments, effectiveness of adaptive tuning IDR(s) method is verified and demonstrated.

The Solar Wall in the Italian Climates

Passive systems were born with the purpose of the greatest exploitation of solar energy in cold climates and high altitudes. They spread themselves until the 80-s all over the world without any attention to the specific climate and the summer behavior; this caused the deactivation of the systems due to a series of problems connected to the summer overheating, the complex management and the rising of the dust. Until today the European regulation limits only the winter consumptions without any attention to the summer behavior but, the recent European EN 15251 underlines the relevance of the indoor comfort, and the necessity of the analytic studies validation by monitoring case studies. In the porpose paper we demonstrate that the solar wall is an efficient system both from thermal comfort and energy saving point of view and it is the most suitable for our temperate climates because it can be used as a passive cooling sistem too. In particular the paper present an experimental and numerical analisys carried out on a case study with nine different solar passive systems in Ancona, Italy. We carried out a detailed study of the lodging provided by the solar wall by the monitoring and the evaluation of the indoor conditions. Analyzing the monitored data, on the base of recognized models of comfort (ISO, ASHRAE, Givoni-s BBCC), is emerged that the solar wall has an optimal behavior in the middle seasons. In winter phase this passive system gives more advantages in terms of energy consumptions than the other systems, because it gives greater heat gain and therefore smaller consumptions. In summer, when outside air temperature return in the mean seasonal value, the indoor comfort is optimal thanks to an efficient transversal ventilation activated from the same wall.

Characterization of Adhesive Layers in Sandwich Composites by Nondestructive Technique

New nondestructive technique, namely an inverse technique based on vibration tests, to characterize nonlinear mechanical properties of adhesive layers in sandwich composites is developed. An adhesive layer is described as a viscoelastic isotropic material with storage and loss moduli which are both frequency dependent values in wide frequency range. An optimization based on the planning of experiments and response surface technique to minimize the error functional is applied to decrease considerably the computational expenses. The developed identification technique has been tested on aluminum panels and successfully applied to characterize viscoelastic material properties of 3M damping polymer ISD-112 used as a core material in sandwich panels.

Dynamic Response of a Water Tower Composed of Interlocked Panels

Earthquakes produce some of the most violent loading situations that a structure can be subjected to and if a structure fails under these loads then inevitably human life is put at risk. One of the most common methods by which a structure fails under seismic loading is at the connection of structural elements. The research presented in this paper investigates the interlock systems as a novel method for building structures. The main objective of this experimental study wasto determine the dynamic characteristics and the seismic behaviour of the proposed structures compared to conventional structural systemsduring seismic motions. Results of this study indicate that the interlock mechanism of the panels influences the behaviour of lateral load-resisting systems of the structures during earthquakes, contributing to better structural flexibility and easier maintenance.

Primer Design with Specific PCR Product using Particle Swarm Optimization

Before performing polymerase chain reactions (PCR), a feasible primer set is required. Many primer design methods have been proposed for design a feasible primer set. However, the majority of these methods require a relatively long time to obtain an optimal solution since large quantities of template DNA need to be analyzed. Furthermore, the designed primer sets usually do not provide a specific PCR product. In recent years, evolutionary computation has been applied to PCR primer design and yielded promising results. In this paper, a particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is proposed to solve primer design problems associated with providing a specific product for PCR experiments. A test set of the gene CYP1A1, associated with a heightened lung cancer risk was analyzed and the comparison of accuracy and running time with the genetic algorithm (GA) and memetic algorithm (MA) was performed. A comparison of results indicated that the proposed PSO method for primer design finds optimal or near-optimal primer sets and effective PCR products in a relatively short time.

Performance, Carcass Yield, Hematological Parameters, and Feather Pecking Damage of Thai Indigenous Chickens Raised Indoors or with Outdoor Access

An experiment was conducted to determine the effect of the rearing system on growth performance, carcass yield, hematological parameters, and feather pecking damage of Thai indigenous chickens. Three hundred and sixty 1-d-old chicks were randomly assigned to 2 treatments: indoor treatment and outdoor access treatment. In the indoor treatment, the chickens were housed in floor pens (5 birds/m2). In the outdoor access treatment, the chickens were housed in a similar indoor house; in addition, they also had an outdoor grass paddock (1 bird/m2). All birds were provided with same diet and were raised for 16 wk of age. The results showed that growth performance and carcass yield were not different among treatment (P>0.05). Outdoor access had no effect on hematological parameters (P>0.05). However, the feather pecking damage of the chickens in the outdoor access treatment was lower than that of the chickens in the indoor treatment (P

2D Spherical Spaces for Face Relighting under Harsh Illumination

In this paper, we propose a robust face relighting technique by using spherical space properties. The proposed method is done for reducing the illumination effects on face recognition. Given a single 2D face image, we relight the face object by extracting the nine spherical harmonic bases and the face spherical illumination coefficients. First, an internal training illumination database is generated by computing face albedo and face normal from 2D images under different lighting conditions. Based on the generated database, we analyze the target face pixels and compare them with the training bootstrap by using pre-generated tiles. In this work, practical real time processing speed and small image size were considered when designing the framework. In contrast to other works, our technique requires no 3D face models for the training process and takes a single 2D image as an input. Experimental results on publicly available databases show that the proposed technique works well under severe lighting conditions with significant improvements on the face recognition rates.

Photograph Based Pair-matching Recognition of Human Faces

In this paper, a novel system recognition of human faces without using face different color photographs is proposed. It mainly in face detection, normalization and recognition. Foot method of combination of Haar-like face determined segmentation and region-based histogram stretchi (RHST) is proposed to achieve more accurate perf using Haar. Apart from an effective angle norm side-face (pose) normalization, which is almost a might be important and beneficial for the prepr introduced. Then histogram-based and photom normalization methods are investigated and ada retinex (ASR) is selected for its satisfactory illumin Finally, weighted multi-block local binary pattern with 3 distance measures is applied for pair-mat Experimental results show its advantageous perfo with PCA and multi-block LBP, based on a principle.

Porous Particles Drying in a Vertical Upward Pneumatic Conveying Dryer

A steady two-phase flow model has been developed to simulate the drying process of porous particle in a pneumatic conveying dryer. The model takes into account the momentum, heat and mass transfer between the continuous phase and the dispersed phase. A single particle model was employed to calculate the evaporation rate. In this model the pore structure is simplified to allow the dominant evaporation mechanism to be readily identified at all points within the duct. The predominant mechanism at any time depends upon the pressure, temperature and the diameter of pore from which evaporating is occurring. The model was validated against experimental studies of pneumatic transport at low and high speeds as well as pneumatic drying. The effects of operating conditions on the dryer parameters are studied numerically. The present results show that the drying rate is enhanced as the inlet gas temperature and the gas flow rate increase and as the solid mass flow rate deceases. The present results also demonstrate the necessity of measuring the inlet gas velocity or the solid concentration in any experimental analysis.

Current Controlled Current Conveyor (CCCII)and Application using 65nm CMOS Technology

Current mode circuits like current conveyors are getting significant attention in current analog ICs design due to their higher band-width, greater linearity, larger dynamic range, simpler circuitry, lower power consumption and less chip area. The second generation current controlled conveyor (CCCII) has the advantage of electronic adjustability over the CCII i.e. in CCCII; adjustment of the X-terminal intrinsic resistance via a bias current is possible. The presented approach is based on the CMOS implementation of second generation positive (CCCII+), negative (CCCII-) and dual Output Current Controlled Conveyor (DOCCCII) and its application as Universal filter. All the circuits have been designed and simulated using 65nm CMOS technology model parameters on Cadence Virtuoso / Spectre using 1V supply voltage. Various simulations have been carried out to verify the linearity between output and input ports, range of operation frequency, etc. The outcomes show good agreement between expected and experimental results.

Fluid Differential Agitators

This research is to design and implement a new kind of agitators called differential agitator. The Differential Agitator is an electro- mechanic set consists of two shafts. The first shaft is the bearing axis while the second shaft is the axis of the quartet upper bearing impellers group and the triple lower group which are called as agitating group. The agitating group is located inside a cylindrical container equipped especially to contain square directors for the liquid entrance and square directors called fixing group for the liquid exit. The fixing group is installed containing the agitating group inside any tank whether from upper or lower position. The agitating process occurs through the agitating group bearing causing a lower pressure over the upper group leading to withdrawing the liquid from the square directors of the liquid entering and consequently the liquid moves to the denser place under the quartet upper group. Then, the liquid moves to the so high pressure area under the agitating group causing the liquid to exit from the square directors in the bottom of the container. For improving efficiency, parametric study and shape optimization has been carried out. A numerical analysis, manufacturing and laboratory experiments were conducted to design and implement the differential agitator. Knowing the material prosperities and the loading conditions, the FEM using ANSYS11 was used to get the optimum design of the geometrical parameters of the differential agitator elements while the experimental test was performed to validate the advantages of the differential agitators to give a high agitation performance of lime in the water as an example. In addition, the experimental work has been done to express the internal container shape in the agitation efficiency. The study ended up with conclusions to maximize agitator performance and optimize the geometrical parameters to be used for manufacturing the differential agitator

Study of the Elastic Scattering of 16O, 14N and 12C on the Nucleus of 27Al at Different Energies near the Coulomb Barrier

the measurement of the angular distribution for the elastic scattering of 16O, 14N and 12C on 27Al has been done at energy 1.75 MeV/nucleon. The optical potential code SPIVAL used in this work to analyze the experimental results. A good agreement between the experimental and theoretical results was obtained.

A Novel Architecture for Wavelet based Image Fusion

In this paper, we focus on the fusion of images from different sources using multiresolution wavelet transforms. Based on reviews of popular image fusion techniques used in data analysis, different pixel and energy based methods are experimented. A novel architecture with a hybrid algorithm is proposed which applies pixel based maximum selection rule to low frequency approximations and filter mask based fusion to high frequency details of wavelet decomposition. The key feature of hybrid architecture is the combination of advantages of pixel and region based fusion in a single image which can help the development of sophisticated algorithms enhancing the edges and structural details. A Graphical User Interface is developed for image fusion to make the research outcomes available to the end user. To utilize GUI capabilities for medical, industrial and commercial activities without MATLAB installation, a standalone executable application is also developed using Matlab Compiler Runtime.

Distributed Frequency Synchronization for Global Synchronization in Wireless Mesh Networks

In this paper, our focus is to assure a global frequency synchronization in OFDMA-based wireless mesh networks with local information. To acquire the global synchronization in distributed manner, we propose a novel distributed frequency synchronization (DFS) method. DFS is a method that carrier frequencies of distributed nodes converge to a common value by repetitive estimation and averaging step and sharing step. Experimental results show that DFS achieves noteworthy better synchronization success probability than existing schemes in OFDMA-based mesh networks where the estimation error is presented.

Synthesis of Silver Nanoparticles by Chemical Reduction Method and Their Antibacterial Activity

Silver nanoparticles were prepared by chemical reduction method. Silver nitrate was taken as the metal precursor and hydrazine hydrate as a reducing agent. The formation of the silver nanoparticles was monitored using UV-Vis absorption spectroscopy. The UV-Vis spectroscopy revealed the formation of silver nanopart├¡cles by exhibing the typical surface plasmon absorption maxima at 418-420 nm from the UV–Vis spectrum. Comparison of theoretical (Mie light scattering theory) and experimental results showed that diameter of silver nanoparticles in colloidal solution is about 60 nm. We have used energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDX), X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and, UV–Vis spectroscopy to characterize the nanoparticles obtained. The energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDX) of the nanoparticles dispersion confirmed the presence of elemental silver signal no peaks of other impurity were detected. The average size and morphology of silver nanoparticles were determined by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). TEM photographs indicate that the nanopowders consist of well dispersed agglomerates of grains with a narrow size distribution (40 and 60 nm), whereas the radius of the individual particles are between 10 and 20 nm. The synthesized nanoparticles have been structurally characterized by X-ray diffraction and transmission high-energy electron diffraction (HEED). The peaks in the XRD pattern are in good agreement with the standard values of the face-centered-cubic form of metallic silver (ICCD-JCPDS card no. 4-0787) and no peaks of other impurity crystalline phases were detected. Additionally, the antibacterial activity of the nanopart├¡culas dispersion was measured by Kirby-Bauer method. The nanoparticles of silver showed high antimicrobial and bactericidal activity against gram positive bacteria such as Escherichia Coli, Pseudimonas aureginosa and staphylococcus aureus which is a highly methicillin resistant strain.

Absorption of CO2 in EAF Reducing Slag from Stainless Steel Making Process by Wet Grinding

In the current study, we have conducted an experimental investigation on the utilization of electronic arc furnace (EAF) reducing slag for the absorption of CO2 via wet grinding method. It was carried out by various grinding conditions. The slag was ground in the vibrating ball mill in the presence of CO2 and pure water under ambient temperature. The reaction behavior was monitored with constant pressure method, and the changes of experimental systems volume as a function of grinding time were measured. It was found that the CO2 absorption occurred as soon as the grinding started. The CO2 absorption was significantly increased in the case of wet grinding compare to the dry grinding. Generally, the amount of CO2 absorption increased as the amount of water, weight of slag and initial pressure increased. However, it was decreased when the amount of water exceeds 200ml and when smaller balls were used. The absorption of CO2 occurred simultaneously with the start of the grinding and it stopped when the grinding was stopped. According to this research, the CO2 reacted with the CaO inside the slag, forming CaCO3.