Optical and Electronic Properties of Different Kinds of Water‐Soluble Porphyrin Films

Water‐soluble porphyrin‐porphyrin and porphyrin‐CdSe nanoparticle monolayer films were self‐assembled on different substrates. The influence of substrates, types of films, and heat treatment temperature on fluorescence of different kinds of porphyrin films was investigated. The SEM images showed the formation of monolayer films on porous alumina foil. The films assembled on porous alumina foil possessed higher fluorescence intensity and thermal stability. The result of conductance measurement indicated that the interaction of trimethylamidophenylporphyrin iodide (TAPPI) molecules with hydroxyl groups on porous alumina foil was weakened after CdSe nanoparticles assembled with TAPPI.     

The liquid crystal properties of symmetric and non-symmetric dimers based on the azobenzene mesogenic group

A novel system of symmetric and non-symmetric dimers containing azobenzene groups has been synthesized and studied in an attempt to understand further the molecular origins of the intercalated smectic phases. For the non-symmetric dimers, the lack of symmetry was derived solely from the differences in length of the two terminal alkyl chains. Both the spacer and terminal chain lengths were varied. The spacer length was found to exert a profound influence on the clearing temperatures of these materials and a large odd-even effect was observed for the series. The smectic A phase stability was observed to increase with the terminal chain length, yet decrease with increasing spacer length. X-ray diffraction has revealed the structure of the smectic A phase of both the symmetric and non-symmetric azobenzene dimers to be of the monolayer type and not intercalated. The existence of the intercalated phase has previously been explained in terms of either a charge-transfer interaction, or by an electrostatic quadrupolar interaction. However, it has been thought that it may also be the result of an excluded volume or space filling constraint. For the non-symmetric liquid crystal dimers described here, a charge-transfer interaction should be minimal, as should the stabilization from the quadrupolar interaction between the two mesogens. However, it appears that some sort of specific interaction is required to stabilize the intercalated structure.     

Supramolecular main-chain liquid crystalline polymers and networks with competitive hydrogen bonding

A series of supramolecular polymers and networks with variable liquid crystalline characteristics have been created. These species are formed though the benzoic acid/pyridine associations of a flexible bisacid and a mixture of a rigid bispyridyl and a non-mesogenic tetrapyridyl. The networked systems displayed liquid crystalline characteristics up to and including 22.5% netpoint inclusion. Above this concentration, only crystalline and melting behaviours were observed. This observed phenomenon would seem to be linked to the statistical correlation of hydrogen bond acceptors and donors. There was also no observed phase segregation of the species after multiple heat/cool cycles and extended periods of time in the isotropic state. This would indicate that the thermodynamically more stable mesogenic phase cannot out-compete the non-liquid crystalline network. Computational analysis indicates no significant difference in hydrogen bond strength between the two different hydrogen bond acceptors.     

On a problem of Hornik

In 1991,Hornik proved that the collection of single hidden layer feedforward neural networks(SLFNs)with continuous,bounded,and non-constant activation functionσis dense in C(K)where K is a compact set in R~s(see Neural Networks,4(2),251-257(1991)).Meanwhile,he pointed out"Whether or not the continuity assumption can entirely be dropped is still an open quite challenging problem".This paper replies in the affirmative to the problem and proves that for bounded and continuous almost everywhere(a.e.)activation functionσon R,the collection of SLFNs is dense in C(K)if and only ifσis un-constant a.e..     

Multicast communications in cognitive radio networks using directional antennas

This paper presents a study on multicast communications in cognitive radio networks (CRNs)using directional antennas. The objective is to maximize the throughput of the CRN. The spectrum is divided into multiple channels and licensed to the primary network. While the CRN is accessing the spectrum, the interference power is carefully controlled to avoid impacting the operation of the primary network. The mathematical model is presented and subsequently formulated as a mixed integer non‐linear programming (MINLP) problem, which is non‐deterministic polynomial‐time hard. Therefore, a greedy algorithm is designed to approximate the optimal performance. The MINLP problem is then relaxed and an upper bound is developed. Simulation results are presented to compare the performance of the greedy algorithm and the upper bound, which demonstrates the efficacy of the greedy algorithm as well as the tightness of the upper bound. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Coordination mechanism based on mobile actuator design for wireless sensor and actuator networks

Wireless sensor and actuator networks combine a large number of sensors and a lower number of actuators that are connected with wireless medium, providing distributed sensing and executing appropriate tasks in a special region of interest. To accomplish effective sensing and acting tasks, efficient coordination mechanism among the nodes is required. As an attempt in this direction, this paper develops a collaborative control and estimation mechanism, which addresses the nodes coordination in a distributed manner. First, we propose a regional controllability‐based virtual force algorithm as an actuator deployment strategy to enhance area coverage after an initial random placement of actuators. During this process, a dynamic coordination mechanism is adopted to control nodes. This mechanism incorporates two components, namely, proportional‐integral‐derivative neural network and recursive least squares‐based Kalman filter algorithms. Taking advantage of feedback control and online learning technology, the proposed coordination mechanism schedules the corresponding nodes on the basis of the characteristics of current events, utilizes proportional‐integral‐derivative neural network controller inside each actuator to improve system transient and steady‐state responses, and deals with system state/parameter estimation problems according to the recursive least squares‐based Kalman filter algorithm, so as to achieve better control accuracy. Simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed methods. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Non‐cooperative game‐based packet ferry forwarding for sparse mobile wireless networks

In sparse mobile wireless networks, normally, the mobile nodes are carried by people, and the moving activity of nodes always happens in a specific area, which corresponds to some specific community. Between the isolated communities, there is no stable communication link. Therefore, it is difficult to ensure the effective packet transmission among communities, which leads to the higher packet delivery delay and lower successful delivery ratio. Recently, an additional ferry node was introduced to forward packets between the isolated communities. However, most of the existing algorithms are working on how to control the trajectory of only one ferry work in the network. In this paper, we consider multiple ferries working in the network scenario and put our main focus on the optimal packet selection strategy, under the condition of mutual influence between the ferries and the buffer limitation. We introduce a non‐cooperative Bayesian game to achieve the optimal packet selection strategy. By maximizing the individual income of a ferry, we optimize the network performance on packet delivery delay and successful delivery ratio. Simulation results show that our proposed packet selection strategy improves the network performance on packet delivery delay and successful delivery ratio. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.