What do we want specifically from the cell phone? An age related study

This study investigated the evolution of specific cell phone feature preferences among high school, undergraduate and graduate college students in Finland. Following the relevant literature review, the paper analyzed the responses of 118 high school, 268 undergraduate and 84 graduate students from educational institutions located in the metropolitan area of Tampere, Finland. The results indicate that the students in Finland appreciate the specific feature “clock”, “phone”, “high battery life”, “alarm”, and “calendar” as very important, and the specific features “TV connectivity”, “joystick”, “live TV”, “Twitter”, and “small screen size” as unimportant features. There were also significant differences in the specific feature preferences between the students between high school, undergraduate and graduate students. In addition there were differences in the way the respondents conceptualize the specific feature preferences of the cell phone. The paper concludes with a discussion regarding the academic and managerial implications.     

Distributed channel selection in CRAHNs: A non-selfish scheme for mitigating spectrum fragmentation

In this paper, we consider the problem of spectrum sharing in CRAHNs and propose a distributed channel selection scheme. The key functionality of our proposal, best-fit channel selection (BFC) is that it accounts both the primary channel traffic activity and CR traffic activity in channel selection. We assume CR nodes have the capability of estimating the primary channel traffic activities. In BFC, each CR selects a channel among the primary user (PU) channels for transmission that best fits to its transmission time requirement. We compare the performance of BFC to the widely known longest idle time channel selection (LITC) scheme. In LITC, a CR selects the channel that has the longest expected idle time independent of its transmission needs. In a multi-user CRN, this may degrade the network performance compared to the non-selfish BFC approach. LITC is considered selfish since each CR aims to maximize its own benefit and thus wastes resources that may be utilized by other nodes in the network. BFC providing an efficient spectrum sharing mechanism implicitly mitigates the effect of spectrum fragmentation which is a significant issue degrading the CR spectrum utilization. In CRNs, spectrum may be fragmented in various dimensions, e.g. time and frequency, such that some parts of the spectrum can not be used although being idle. Our proposal provides a solution to the spectrum fragmentation issue in time dimension at the medium access control (MAC) layer. By a set of simulations, we highlight the performance improvement by BFC over the conventional LITC under various CR/PU traffic, number of CRs, estimation accuracy and buffering capability. Simulation results show that the performance of the proposed BFC is significantly superior to that of LITC in terms of probability of successful transmission, spectrum opportunity utilization and fragmentation.     

InRout - A QoS aware route selection algorithm for industrial wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks are a key enabling technology for industrial monitoring applications where the use of wireless infrastructure allows high adaptivity and low cost in terms of installation and retrofitting. To facilitate the move from the current wired designs to wireless designs, concerns regarding reliability must be satisfied. Current standardization efforts for industrial wireless systems lack specification on efficient routing protocols that mitigate reliability concerns. Consequently, this work presents the InRout route selection algorithm, where local information is shared among neighbouring nodes to enable efficient, distributed route selection while satisfying industrial application requirements and considering sensor node resource limitations. Route selection is described as a multi-armed bandit task and uses Q-learning techniques to obtain the best available solution with low overhead. A performance comparison with existing approaches demonstrates the benefits of the InRout algorithm, which satisfies typical quality of service requirements for industrial monitoring applications while considering sensor node resources. Simulation results show that InRout can provide gains ranging from 4% to 60% in the number of successfully delivered packets when compared to current approaches with much lower control overhead.     

Elemental labelling combined with liquid chromatography inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry for quantification of biomolecules: A review

This article reviews novel quantification concepts where elemental labelling is combined with flow injection inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (FI-ICP-MS) or liquid chromatography inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LC–ICP-MS), and employed for quantification of biomolecules such as proteins, peptides and related molecules in challenging sample matrices. In the first sections an overview on general aspects of biomolecule quantification, as well as of labelling will be presented emphasizing the potential, which lies in such methodological approaches. In this context, ICP-MS as detector provides high sensitivity, selectivity and robustness in biological samples and offers the capability for multiplexing and isotope dilution mass spectrometry (IDMS). Fundamental methodology of elemental labelling will be highlighted and analytical, as well as biomedical applications will be presented. A special focus will lie on established applications underlining benefits and bottlenecks of such approaches for the implementation in real life analysis. Key research made in this field will be summarized and a perspective for future developments including sophisticated and innovative applications will given.     

Tuneable Sagnac comb filter including two wave retarders

In this paper we study theoretically and experimentally a wavelength-tuneable Sagnac birefringence filter. The device is a Sagnac interferometer including a symmetric fibre coupler and a length of high-birefringence fibre in the loop. A wave retarder is inserted at each end of the birefringent fibre for absolute wavelength tuning. We show theoretically that wavelength tuning through wave plate orientation ensuring constant amplitude of the filtering function is possible only if a minimum of two wave retarders are included in the setup. The position of the transmission peaks then varies linearly with the angle of one of the retarders and can be adjusted over one entire channel spacing. This happens only when a quarter-wave retarder and a half-wave retarder are used, if the former is oriented at 45° with respect to the fibre birefringence axes, while the orientation of the latter serves as the adjustment parameter. The theoretical predictions are confirmed by the experimental results.     

A modification to the Peng–Robinson-fitted equation of state for pure substances

In this work we present two modifications to the Peng–Robinson-Fitted equation of state where pure component parameters are regressed to vapor pressure and saturated liquid density data. The first modification (PR-f-mod) is a method that enhances the equation of state pure component property predictions through simple temperature dependent pure component parameters. In the second modification (PR-f-prop) we propose a temperature dependency for co-volume b in the repulsive parameter of the EoS, and revise the temperature function in the attractive term. The agreement with experimental data for 72 pure substances, including highly polar compounds, is remarkably good. We obtain average absolute deviations in saturated liquid density of less than 1% for all substances studied.