An N-path user equilibrium for transportation networks

The traditional trip-based approach to transportation modeling has been employed for the past decade. The last step of the trip-based modeling approach is traffic assignment, which has been typically formulated as a user equilibrium (UE) problem. In the conventional perspective, the definition of UE traffic assignment is the condition that no road user can unilaterally change routes to reduce their travel time. An equivalent definition is that the travel times of all the used paths between any given origin–destination pair are equal and less than those of the unused paths. The underlying assumption of the UE definition is that road users have full information on the available transportation paths and can potentially use any path if the currently used path is overly congested. However, a more practical scenario is that each road user has a limited path set within which she/he can choose routes from. In this new scenario, we call the resulting user equilibrium an N-path user equilibrium (NPUE), in which each road user has only N paths to select from when making route choices in the network. We introduce a new formulation of the NPUE and derive optimality conditions based on this formulation. Different from traditional modeling framework, the constraints of the proposed model are of linear form, which makes it possible to solve the problem with conventional convex programming techniques. We also show that the traditional UE is a special case of an NPUE and prove the uniqueness of the resulting flow pattern of the NPUE. To efficiently solve this problem, we devise path-based and link-based solution algorithms. The proposed solution algorithms are empirically applied to networks of various sizes to examine the impact of constrained user path sets. Numerical results demonstrate that NPUE results can differ significantly from UE results depending on the number of paths available to road users. In addition, we observed an interesting phenomenon, where increasing the number of paths available to road users can sometimes decrease the overall system performance due to their selfish routing behaviors. This paradox demonstrates that network information should be provided with caution, as such information can do more harm than good in certain transportation systems.     

Coordination polymers based on building blocks of dimethyltin(IV) Chloride iso‐thiocyanate and dimethyltin(IV) di‐iso‐thiocyanate with pyrazine‐2‐carboxylate and 4, 4′‐bipyridine

The reaction of 4,4′‐bipy with dimethyltin(IV) chloride iso‐thiocyanate affords the one‐dimensional (1D) coordination polymer, [Me₂Sn(NCS)Cl·(4,4′‐bipy)]_n ( 1 ), whereas reaction of dimethyltin(IV) dichloride with sodium pyrazine‐2‐carboxylate in the presence of potassium iso‐thiocyanate affords the two‐dimensional (2D) coordination polymer, {[Me₂Sn(C₄H₃N₂COO)₂]₂ [Me₂Sn(NCS)₂]}_n ( 2 ). Both coordination polymers were characterized by elemental analysis and infrared spectroscopy in addition to ¹H and ¹³C NMR spectroscopy of the soluble coordination polymer ( 1 ). A single‐crystal structure determination showed that the asymmetric unit in 1 contains Me₂Sn(NCS)Cl and 4,4′‐bipy moieties and a 1D infinite rigid chain structure forms through bridging of the 4,4′‐bipy ligand between tin atoms and the geometry around the tin atom is a distorted octahedral. Coordination polymer 2 contains two distinct tin atom geometrics in which one tin atom is seven coordinate, and the other is six coordinate. The two tin atom environments are best described as a pentagonal bipyramidal in the former and distorted octahedral in the latter where the carboxylate groups bridge the two tin atoms and construct a 2D‐coordination polymer. The ¹¹⁹Sn NMR spectroscopy indicates the octahedral geometry of 1 retains in solution. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Heteroatom Chem 22:699–706, 2011; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com . DOI 10.1002/.20736     

Solvent effect in the chromatographic enantioseparation of 1,1′-bi-2-naphthol on a polysaccharide-based chiral stationary phase

Enantioseparation of 1,1′-bi-2-naphthol (BINOL) was performed on a polysaccharide-based chiral stationary phase, Chiralcel OD-H, under normal-phase mode. The effects of polar modifier in the mobile phase on the retention, enantioseparation and elution order were investigated in detail. Solvent-induced reversal of elution order for BINOL was observed. When linear alcohols were adopted, R-BINOL was always eluted first. S-BINOL was eluted first when 2-propanol was used as a polar modifier. Enantioseparation could not be obtained when sec-butyl alcohol or tert-butyl alcohol was used as a polar modifier. When isoamyl alcohol or cyclohexanol was used as a polar modifier, favorable enantioseparation was obtained as with 1-pentanol or 1-hexanol; also, R-BINOL was the first-eluted enantiomer. It is worth emphasizing that significantly better enantioseparation was obtained when higher alcohols were used as polar modifier of the mobile phase. A nonlinear characteristic for the ln α against 1/T plots was universally observed in this study though the ln k against 1/T plots exhibited a linear feature. Associated with the obtained thermodynamic parameters, some interesting inferences about chiral recognition mechanism were proposed.     

Adhesive-based liquid metal radio-frequency microcoil for magnetic resonance relaxometry measurement

This paper reports the fabrication and characterization of an adhesive-based liquid-metal microcoil for magnetic resonance relaxometry (MRR). Conventionally, microcoils are fabricated by various techniques such as electroplating, microcontact printing and focused ion beam milling. These techniques require considerable fabrication efforts and incur high cost. In this paper, we demonstrate a novel technique to fabricate three-dimensional multilayer liquid-metal microcoils together with the microfluidic network by lamination of dry adhesive sheets. One of the unique features of the adhesive-based technique is that the detachable sample chamber can be disposed after each experiment and the microcoil can be reused without cross-contamination multiple times. The integrated microcoil has a low direct-current (DC) resistance of 0.3 Ω and a relatively high inductance of 67.5 nH leading to a high quality factor of approximately 30 at 21.65 MHz. The microcoil was characterized for ～0.5 T proton MRR measurements. The optimal pulse duration, amplitude, and frequency for the 90° pulse were 131 μs, -30 dB (1.56 W) and 21.6553 MHz, respectively. In addition, we used the liquid-metal microcoil to perform a parametric study on the transverse relaxation rate of human red blood cells at different hematocrit levels. The transverse relaxation rate increases quadratically with the hematocrit level. The results from the liquid-metal microcoil were verified by measurements with a conventional solenoid coil.     

Selective and Effective Binding of Pillar[5,6]arenes toward Secondary Ammonium Salts with a Weakly Coordinating Counteranion

The selective and effective binding of secondary ammoniums with a weakly coordinating tetrakis[3,5-bis(trifluoromethyl)phenyl]borate (BArF) counteranion by per-ethylated pillar[5,6]arenes is reported. The construction of a first pillararene-based self-sorting system consisting of two wheels and two axles is also described.     

Combustion synthesis and electrochemical properties of the small hydrofullerene C50H10

The hydrofullerene C(50)H(10) is synthesized by low-pressure benzene-oxygen diffusion combustion. The structure of C(50)H(10) is identified through NMR, mass spectrometry, and IR and Raman spectroscopy as a D(5h) symmetric closed-cage molecule with five pairs of fused pentagons stabilized by ten hydrogen atoms. UV/Vis and fluorescence spectrometric analyses disclose its optical properties as comparable with those of its chloride cousin (C(50)Cl(10)). Cyclic and square-wave voltammograms reveal that the first reduction potential of C(50)H(10) is more negative than that of C(50)Cl(10) as well as C(60), with implications for the utilization of C(50)H(10) as a promising electron acceptor for photovoltaic applications.     

Reflective fiber-optic refractometer based on a thin-core fiber tailored Bragg grating reflection

A novel reflective refractometer based on a thin-core fiber (TCF) sandwiched between a leading single-mode fiber (SMF) and a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) imprinted SMF stub was demonstrated. The reflection from the fiber stub occurs in two well-defined wavelength bands, corresponding to the Bragg core mode and cladding modes. The TCF section functions as a tailorable bridge between the FBG core mode reflection and the surrounding refractive index (SRI). Linear response with enhanced sensitivity of 133.26 dB/refractive index unit for temperature-immune SRI measurement within the biologically desirable sensing range of 1.33-1.41 has been achieved via cost-effective power detection.     

分光计望远镜与平行光管的共轴调节

目前分光计的调节方法仅能实现望远镜、平行光管的轴线相互平行,但无法实现共轴且垂直相交于中心转轴.这种调节方法虽然不影响夹角的测量,但是无法准确确定光束的传输方向.在本论文中,我们给出了一种调节望远镜、平行光管的轴线共轴且垂直相交中心转轴的方法.     

Synthesis and Characterization of 8-hydroxyquinoline Complexes of Tin(IV) and Their Application in Organic Light Emitting Diode

A series of 8-hydroxyquinoline complexes of tin, Q(2)SnCl(2) (Q?=?2-methyl-8-hydroxyquinoline, 8-hydroxyquinoline, 5,7-dibromo-8-hydroxyquinoline, 5-chloro-8-hydroxyquinoline, 5,7-dichloro-8-hydroxyquinoline and 5-nitro-8-hydroxyquinoline) were prepared by reacting stannous dichloride with 8-hydroxyquinoline and its derivatives. All complexes were characterized by elemental analysis, mass spectrometry and infrared, UV-vis and (1)H NMR spectroscopes. Furthermore, the molecular structure of a representative complex, dichlorido-bis(5-nitro-quinolin-8-olato-2N,O)tin(IV), was determined by single-crystal X-ray diffraction. The photoluminescence (PL) properties of all prepared compounds and electroluminescence (EL) property of a selected complex (Q?=?5-chloro-8-hydroxyquinoline) were investigated. The results showed that the emission wavelength can be tuned by electron donating or withdrawing group substituent on 8-hydroxyquinoline. Application of prepared complexes in fabrication of an OLED has been demonstrated.     

Steganographic data hiding in image processing using predictive differencing

In this paper, we propose a stenography scheme based on predictive differencing to embed data in a grey-image. In order to promote the embedding capacity of pixel-value differencing (PVD), we use differencing between a predictive value and an input pixel as the predictive differencing to embed the message where a predictive value is calculated by using various predictors. If the predictive differencing is large, then it means that the input pixel is located in the edge area and, thus, has a larger embedding capacity than the pixel in a smooth area. The experimental result shows that our proposed scheme is capable of providing greater embedding capacity and high quality of stego-images then previous works. Furthermore, we have also applied various predictors to evaluate our proposed scheme.