Cure Kinetics of Poly(acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene) Modified Epoxy–Amine System

The cure kinetics of epoxy based on the diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A (DGEBA) modified with different amounts of poly(acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene) (ABS) and cured with 4,4′-diaminodiphenylsulfone (DDS) was investigated by employing differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The curing reaction was followed by using an isothermal approach over the temperature range 150–180°C. The amount of ABS in the blends was 3.6, 6.9, 10 and 12.9 wt%. Blending of ABS in the epoxy monomer did not change the reaction mechanism of the epoxy network formation, but the reaction rate seems to be decreased with the addition of the thermoplastic. A phenomenological kinetic model was used for kinetic analysis. Activation energies and kinetic parameters were determined by fitting the kinetic model with experimental data. Diffusion control was incorporated to describe the cure in the latter stages, predicting the cure kinetics over the whole range of conversion. The reaction rates for the epoxy blends were found to be lower than that of the neat epoxy. The reaction rates decreased when the ABS contents was increased, due to the dilution effect caused by the ABS on the epoxy/amine reaction mixture.     

Integrated Access to Genomic and Other Bioinformation: An Essential Ingredient of the Drug Discovery Process

Abstract

Due to the high rate of data production and the need of researchers to have rapid access to new data, public databases have become the major medium through which genome mapping and sequencing data as well as macromolecular structural data are published. There are now more than 250 databases of biomolecular, structural, genetic, or phenotypic data, many of which are doubling in size annually. These databases, many of which were created and are maintained by experimentalists for their own research use, provide valuable collections of organized, validated data. However, the very number and diversity of databases now make efficient data resource discovery as important as effective data resource use. Existing autonomous biological databases contain related data which are more valuable when interconnected than when isolated. Political and scientific realities dictate that these databases will be built by different teams, in different locations, for different purposes, and using different data models and supporting DBMSs. As a consequence, connecting the related data they contain is not straightforward. Experience with existing biological databases indicates that it is possible to form useful queries across these databases, but that doing so usually requires expertise in the semantic structure of each source database. Advancing to the next level of integration among biological information resources poses significant technical and sociological challenges.     

Avoiding problems with hydrogen misplacement in reporting crystal structures

Intermolecular hydrogen bonding is an integral part of many crystal structures. Hydrogen bonding sometimes results in one‐, two‐ or three‐dimensional supramolecular assemblies, a common feature of which is positional disorder of H atoms related to space‐group symmetry. Yet some reported structures fail to include all possible donor–acceptor close contacts, or to seek H‐atom electron densities associated with apparent D—H...A trios, while some H‐atom positions violate principles of chemistry or crystal physics. Modern diffraction equipment and sophisticated computing systems provide high‐quality data; thus, failure to characterize and report fully an accurate, complete and physically correct hydrogen‐bonding model should not be acceptable. We illustrate the relevant issues with three published examples in the hope of slowing the proliferation of these problems, with the scientifically desirable goal of improving the accuracy of crystallographic models while also providing improved search keys for information retrieval.     

基于HMM的机载设备状态健康评估方法研究

针对机载设备的状态健康评估问题,采用隐马尔科夫模型(HMM)对其进行性能退化程度的评估。首先引入状态条件概率矢量对HMM进行不确定性改进,并推导了其表达式;其次以状态条件概率比值为基础,给出了机载设备状态等级量化分值的计算方法,并据此设计了机载设备状态健康评估流程。最后以飞机发动机温控放大器为例进行仿真验证,结果表明上述方法能够给出直观、准确的状态评估结果。     

大型砂尘风洞中砂尘浓度测量与控制方法的研究

砂尘浓度指标严重影响砂尘风洞试验效果;在大型砂尘风洞中准确的测量及有效的控制砂尘浓度是砂尘风洞设备研制中的两个关键问题;针对动态试验工况环境中浓度传感器标定的问题,分析了浓度测量时标定参数与风速和浓度的关系,使用模型树算法建立了三者之间的关系模型,以此模型来预测各种动态情况下的标定参数;针对复杂环境下浓度动态控制问题,采用专家PID算法,提出了多回路控制系统结构和专家规则;工程实践表明该测量和控制方法满足了动态试验环境的需求,取得了良好效果;模型树算法和专家PID系统能有效的解决动态工况下砂尘浓度的测量与控制问题。     

Contact duration aware evaluation for content dissemination delay in mobile social network

Groups of people with mobile phones using short‐range connections such as WiFi and Bluetooth to propagate messages can be modeled as, with regard to regular absence of end‐to‐end connection, mobile social networks (MSNs), which can be exploited to offload a significant amount of mobile content from the overloaded infrastructure networks such as 3G. The study of content transmission delay for the applications of mobile content dissemination in MSNs is an important problem, because to enhance the network capacity, the traffic is offloaded at the cost of inducing longer delay. In contrast to existing works, which ignore the factors of contact duration limits and large content size, we present a contact duration aware framework to model the content dissemination process in MSNs, give an explicit expression for the average content dissemination delay, and reveals its relationship with various system parameters of content size, users’ selfishness, number of involved subscribers, infecting ratio, and so on. We apply our proposed model to real‐life traces to assess its reliability by comparing the theoretical results with measured statistics and present extensive upshots to evaluate the influence of various parameters on system performance. The results demonstrate the accuracy of our proposed framework and reveal that system parameters of content size, system infecting ratio and intragroup transmission are the most important factors to influence the content dissemination delay. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Graph‐based resource allocation algorithms for multiuser downlink MIMO‐OFDMA networks

Multiuser multiple‐input multiple‐output orthogonal frequency division multiple access (MIMO‐OFDMA) is considered as the practical method to attain the capacity promised by multiple antennas in the downlink direction. However, the joint calculation of precoding/beamforming and resource allocation required by the optimal algorithms is computationally prohibitive. This paper proposes computationally efficient resource allocation algorithms that can be invoked after the precoding and beamforming operations. To support stringent and diverse quality of service requirements, previous works have shown that the resource allocation algorithm must be able to guarantee a specific data rate to each user. The constraint matrix defined by the resource allocation problem with these data rate constraints provides a special structure that lends to efficient solution of the problem. On the basis of the standard graph theory and the Lagrangian relaxation, we develop an optimal resource allocation algorithm that exploits this structure to reduce the required execution time. Moreover, a lower‐complexity suboptimal algorithm is introduced. Extensive simulations are conducted to evaluate the computational and system‐level performance. It is shown that the proposed resource allocation algorithms attain the optimal solution at a much lower computational overhead compared with general‐purpose optimization algorithms used by previous MIMO‐OFDMA resource allocation approaches. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effect of AMC on fixed‐rate traffic with hard delay constraints in mobile broadband systems

The adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) technique, which has been adopted by advanced mobile telecommunication systems, supports a flexible response to the random radio behaviour. As a result, the attained transmission rate over a wireless link is time varying. Hence, resource demands are not deterministic but fluctuating even for calls with constant bit rate service requirements. Consequently, constant bit rate calls are susceptible to a forced call termination because of insufficient resources not only in a target cell during inter‐cell handoffs but also in a serving cell during radio link deterioration. Furthermore, call blocking and dropping probabilities depend on radio propagation conditions among other factors and therefore they are dissimilar throughout a service area. The latter leads to unfairness problems. We analytically measure the impact of AMC on fixed‐rate service with hard delay constraints such as voice for different signal, mobility and traffic conditions. We consider a reference case (call requests are admitted into the system provided there are enough free resources) and two classes of admission control approaches: traditional (only inter‐cell handoffs are prioritised) and modified (all ongoing calls are prioritised). The reported results reveal conditions for which AMC affects voice call performance and can serve as guidelines on admission control design. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The frequency of CFVD speed report for highway traffic

The control signals of cellular networks have been used to infer the traffic conditions of the road network. In particular, consecutive handover events are being used to estimate the traffic speed. During traffic congestion, consecutive handover events may be rare because vehicles move slowly, and thus very few or no speed reports would be generated from the congested area.However, the traffic speed report rate during traffic congestion has not been investigated in the literature. In this paper, we present an analytic model to estimate the speed report rate from cellular network signaling in steady traffic conditions, that is, the traffic speed and flow are assumed constant. Real field trial data were used to validate our analytic model. In addition, computer simulations were conducted to study how speed reports are generated in dynamic traffic conditions when traffic speed and flow change rapidly. Our study indicates that in a typical cell of length 1.5 km with a typical expected call holding time of 1 min, no speed report was generated from a congested three‐lane highway. Our study demonstrates that the lack of speed reports from consecutive handover events during rush hours indicates severe traffic congestion, and new methods that can estimate traffic speed from cellular network data during severe traffic congestion need to be developed. 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.