GOP-SDN: an enhanced load balancing method based on genetic and optimized particle swarm optimization algorithm in distributed SDNs

Wireless Networks - One of the biggest challenges of distributed software defined networks (SDNs) is to create load balancing on controllers to reduce response time. Although recent studies have...     

Pyrolysis and TG Analysis of Shivee Ovoo Coal from Mongolia

The coal sample of the Shivee Ovoo deposits has been non-isothermally pyrolysed in a thermogravimetric analyser to determine the influence of temperature, heating rate and purge gas employed on the thermal degradation of the sample. The heating rates investigated in the TG were 10–50 K min^–1 to final temperature of 1000°C. N₂or CO₂ were employed as well as type of purge gas on the process of thermal degradation of the coal sample. The coal was also investigated in a fixed bed reactor to determine the influence of temperature and heating rate of the pyrolysis on the yield of products and composition of the gases evolved. The main gases produced were H₂, CH₄, C₂H₂, C₂H₄, C₂H₆, C₃H₆ and C₃H₈ and also minor concentrations of other gases. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Delay times in Si MOSFETS in the 4.2–400 K temperature range

Temperature dependence of propagation delay time and power-delay product in Si MOSFETs (fabricated using 1 μm X-ray lithography) has been measured using 19-stage ring oscillators. The delay time was found to decrease with lowering temperature. As a numerical example we found that a delay time of 30 ps at room temperature decreased to 22 and 18 ps at 77 and 4.2 K respectively, and increased to 38 at 400 K. The power showed a slight increase with decreasing temperature, while the power-delay product decreased. The decrease in the delay time has been explained in terms of increase in the electron drift velocity with decreasing temperature, as well as decrease in one component of the capacitive load, namely the source-drain junction capacitance, due to carrier freeze-out.     

Speech enhancement using linearly constrained adaptive constant directivity beam-formers

This paper aims to extend previous work on constant directivity beam-formers (CDBs), for the case of multiple desired speech sources, by designing a linearly constrained adaptive CDB (LCA-CDB) which preserves the beam-pattern in multiple look directions. Also, the proposed LCA-CDB, adaptively, minimizes the transient noise power in the output of the beam-former, and furthermore, produces some controlled nulls (controlled in both amplitude and angle) on the beam-pattern. This strengthens the system in removing permanent directional noises and producing a frequency-invariant beam-pattern with multiple main-lobes and controlled nulls in arbitrary frequency bands. Through simulating the system and the acoustical situations, the authors have tried to demonstrate the capability of the proposed method in enhancement of broadband and telephony speech in the presence of various noise sources (transient noise, permanent noise and uncorrelated white Gaussian noise). The simulation results obtained in this study confirm the efficiency of the proposed method in suppression of environmental noises.     

“Confinement effects for nano-electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction reaction”

Oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is one of the most technologically relevant reactions. It occurs at the interface of the electrocatalyst and electrolyte, where oxygen reacts with protons and electrons to produce water. Because the electrocatalyst is dispersed on a high surface area support, morphological confinement becomes critical, as it dictates proton and oxygen transport. Furthermore, confinement is induced by ionomer, ionic liquids (ILs), or molecular additives, and their impact on electrocatalyst reactivity and transport properties is currently not well understood. We present an overview of electrostatics and mass transport–induced confinement and zoom in into ILs and molecular additives and try to unravel how local confinement induced by them impacts ORR.     

Load‐balanced data gathering in Internet of Things using an energy‐aware cuckoo‐search algorithm

This paper deals with the lifetime problem in the Internet of Things. We first propose an efficient cluster‐based scheme named “Cuckoo‐search Clustering with Two‐hop Routing Tree (CC‐TRT)” to develop a two‐hop load‐balanced data aggregation routing tree in the network. CC‐TRT uses a modified energy‐aware cuckoo‐search algorithm to fairly select the best cluster head (CH) for each cluster. The applied cuckoo‐search algorithm makes the CH role to rotate between different sensors round by round. Subsequently, we extend the CC‐TRT scheme to present two methods for constructing multi‐hop data aggregation routing trees, named “Cuckoo‐search Clustering with Multi‐Hop Routing Tree (CC‐MRT)” and “Cuckoo‐search Clustering with Weighted Multi‐hop Routing Tree (CC‐WMRT).” Both CC‐MRT and CC‐WMRT rely on a two‐level structure; they not only use an energy‐aware cuckoo‐search algorithm to fairly select the best CHs but also adopt a load‐balanced high‐level routing tree to route the aggregated data of CHs to the sink node. However, CC‐WMRT slightly has a better performance thanks to its low‐level routing strategy. As an advantage, the proposed schemes balance the energy consumption among different sensors. Numerical results show the efficiency of the CC‐TRT, CC‐MRT, and CC‐WMRT algorithms in terms of the number of transmissions, remaining energy, energy consumption variance, and network lifetime.     

Estimation of the molecular mass range of the tar from pyrolysis of casein by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, probe mass spectrometry and size exclusion chromatography with 1-methyl-2-pyrrolidinone as eluent

Casein has been pyrolysed to obtain a biochar (28.3% yield), with mostly meso- and macro-pore structure, and a liquid tar product of high yield (37.5%) with the balance as gas (20.9%) and water (13.3%). The elemental composition of the casein tar was: C 66.7%, H 8.3%, N 12.1% and O 12.9% (by difference). The tar sample has been characterised by mass spectrometry, gas chromatography (GC)/MS and heated-probe MS, to give molecular mass distributions for comparison with molecular mass ranges indicated by analytical-scale size-exclusion chromatography (SEC). The tar appeared to be completely soluble in 1-methyl-2-pyrrolidinone (NMP), the solvent used for SEC. It appeared to consist mostly of lower molecular mass fractions with elution times at 18-26 min. GC/MS analysis showed the presence of both aliphatic and aromatic nitrogen-containing components. Neither GC/MS nor heated-probe MS were able to detect more than about half the tar components.     

Same-single-cell analysis using the microfluidic biochip to reveal drug accumulation enhancement by an amphiphilic diblock copolymer drug formulation

Multidrug resistance (MDR) is one of the major obstacles in drug delivery, and it is usually responsible for unsuccessful cancer treatment. MDR may be overcome by using MDR inhibitors. Among different classes of these inhibitors that block drug efflux mediated by permeability-glycoprotein (P-gp), less toxic amphiphilic diblock copolymers composed of methoxypolyethyleneglycol-block-polycaprolactone (MePEG-b-PCL) have been studied extensively. The purpose of this work is to evaluate how these copolymer molecules can reduce the efflux, thereby enhancing the accumulation of P-gp substrates (e.g., daunorubicin or DNR) in MDR cells. Using conventional methods, it was found that the low-molecular-weight diblock copolymer, MePEG₁₇-b-PCL₅ (PCL5), enhanced drug accumulation in MDCKII-MDR1 cells, but the high-molecular-weight version, MePEG₁₁₄-b-PCL₂₀₀ (PCL200), did not. However, when PCL200 was mixed with PCL5 (and DNR) in order to encapsulate them to facilitate drug delivery, there was no drug enhancement effect attributable to PCL5, and the reason for this negative result was unclear. Since drug accumulation measured on different cell batches originated from single cells, we employed the same-single-cell analysis in the accumulation mode (SASCA-A) to find out the reason. A microfluidic biochip was used to select single MDR cells, and the accumulation of DNR was fluorescently measured in real time on these cells in the absence and presence of PCL5. The SASCA-A method allowed us to obtain drug accumulation information faster in comparison to conventional assays. The SASCA-A results, and subsequent curve-fitting analysis of the data, have confirmed that when PCL5 was encapsulated in PCL200 nanoparticles as soon as they were synthesized, the ability of PCL5 to enhance DNR accumulation was retained, thus suggesting PCL200 as a promising delivery system for encapsulating P-gp inhibitors, such as PCL5. Graphical Abstract

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Kinetic Isotope Effect as a Tool To Investigate the Oxygen Reduction Reaction on Pt-based Electrocatalysts – Part I: High-loading Pt/C and Pt Extended Surface

Kinetic isotope effect (KIE) was used to study the rate-determining step for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) on dispersed Pt/C electrocatalyst and polycrystalline Pt (Pt-poly). KIE is defined as the ratio of the kinetic current measured in protonated electrolyte versus deuterated electrolyte, with KIE values larger than one indicating proton participation in the rate-determining step. The effect of poisoning anions on the platinum rate determining step is investigated by assessing the KIE in perchloric (non-poisoning) and sulfuric acid-based electrolytes. The kinetics currents were calculated using the Koutechy-Levich and Tafel analysis. A KIE of 1 was observed for Pt/C (with a 40 wt.% Pt loading) and Pt-poly, thus indicating that, on 40 wt. % Pt/C and Pt-poly, the rate determining step is proton independent.