Disaster recovery planning in an automated manufacturingenvironment

Disasters may strike at any moment in any location. When they do, no distinction is made about the type of firm that is being affected, whether it is a bank or a manufacturing plant. Most firms do not plan for possible disasters, and those that do have typically focused on computer and data contingency planning. In this paper, the focus is shifted to incorporate disaster recovery planning for manufacturing enterprises, especially those that are automated. Automated manufacturing enterprises have characteristics that put them at an increased risk to disasters. The methodological framework proposed in this paper will aid manufacturing organizations and their managers in reducing the risks associated with unanticipated disasters. The framework is termed the “Manufacturing Operations Recovery and Resumption” model. Recommended activities and tools for effective management of this methodology are identified     

Determination of impurities in uranium oxide by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICPMS) by the matrix matching method

An analytical procedure was developed to determine the concentration of some elements regarded as trace impurities in nuclear fuel using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICPMS) associated to the matrix matching method. The assessment of this approach was carried out using a set of certified reference materials produced by the New Brunswick Laboratory (NBL). Eighteen out of the twenty-four elements in the reference materials could be easily determined. It was found that the mean values for reproducibility and accuracy were 5.0% and 15.0%. The remaining six elements provided mean values of 11.0% and 37.0%, respectively. They could not be adequately determined due to the effects of analyte signal suppression and spectral interference.     

Enhanced ethanol sensing properties of WO3 modified TiO2 nanorods

Pristine and WO₃ decorated TiO₂ nanorods (NRs) were synthesised to investigate n-n-type heterojunction gas sensing properties. TiO₂ NRs were fabricated via hydrothermal method on fluorine-doped tin oxide coated glass (FTO) substrates. Then, tungsten was sputtered on the TiO₂ NRs and thermally oxidised to obtain WO₃ nanoparticles. The heterostructure was characterised by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy. Fabricated sensor devices were exposed to VOCs such as toluene, xylene, acetone and ethanol, and humidity at different operation temperatures. Experimental results demonstrated that the heterostructure has better sensor response toward ethanol at 200 °C. Enhanced sensing properties are attributed to the heterojunction formation by decorating TiO₂ NRs with WO₃.     

Flowerlike hybrid horseradish peroxidase nanobiocatalyst for the polymerization of guaiacol

In this study, the catalytic activity and stability of flowerlike hybrid horseradish peroxidase (HRP) nanobiocatalyst (HRP-Cu ²⁺ ) obtained from Cu ²⁺ ions and HRP enzyme in the polymerization reaction of guaiacol were analyzed. We demonstrated that HRP-Cu ²⁺ and hydrogen peroxide (H ₂ O ₂ ) initiator showed significantly increased catalytic activity and stability on the polymerization of guaiacol compared to that of free HRP enzyme. Poly(guaiacol) was observed with quite high yields (88%) and molecular weights (38,000 g/mol) under pH 7.4 phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) conditions at 60 °C with 5 weight% of HRP-Cu ²⁺ loading. HRP-Cu ²⁺ also shows very high thermal stability and works even at 70 °C reaction temperature; free HRP enzyme denatures at that temperature. Furthermore, HRP-Cu ²⁺ provided considerable repeated use and showed some degree of catalytic activity, even after the fourth recycle, in the polymerization of guaiacol.     

Chemical composition,antimicrobial, and lipase enzyme activity of essential oil and solvent extracts from Serapias orientalis subsp. orientalis

The volatile components of essential oil (EO), SPME, and SPME of solvent extracts ( n -hexane, methanol, and water) obtained from fresh Serapias orientalis subsp. orientalis ( Soo ) were analyzed by GC-FID/MS. EO of Soo gave 11 compounds in the percentage of 99.97%; capronaldehyde (37.01%), 2-( E )-hexenal (23.19%), and n -nonanal (19.05%) were found to be major constituents. SPME GC-FID/MS analyses of fresh plant and solvent extracts of Soo revealed 7, 12, 7, and 4 compounds within the range of 99.7% to 99.9%. Limonene (76.5%, 41.7%, and 61.3%) was the major compound in SPMEs of the n -hexane and methanol extracts. α -Methoxy- p -cresol (52.9%) was the main component in its water extract. The antimicrobial activity of EO and the solvent extracts of Soo were screened against 9microorganisms. EO showed the best activity against Mycobacterium smegmatis , with 79.5 µg/mL MIC value. The n -hexane, methanol, and water extracts were the most active against the Staphylococcus aureus within the range of 81.25–125.0 µg/mL (MIC). IC ₅₀ values for the lipase enzyme inhibitory activity of EO and solvent extracts ( n -hexane, methanol, and water) were determined to be 59.87 µg/mL, 64.03 µg/mL, 101.91 µg/mL, and 121.24 µg/mL, respectively.     

Diamond-Free Subsets in the Linear Lattices

Four distinct elements a, b, c, and d of a poset form a diamond if \(a< b and \(a . A subset of a poset is diamond-free if no four elements of the subset form a diamond. Even in the Boolean lattices, finding the size of the largest diamond-free subset remains an open problem. In this paper, we consider the linear lattices—poset of subspaces of a finite dimensional vector space over a finite field of order q—and extend the results of Griggs et al. (J. Combin. Theory Ser. A 119(2):310–322, 2012) on the Boolean lattices, to prove that the number of elements of a diamond-free subset of a linear lattice can be no larger than \(2+\frac {1}{q+1}\) times the width of the lattice, so that this fraction tends to 2 as \(q \longrightarrow \infty \) . In addition, using an algebraic technique, we introduce so-called diamond matchings, and prove that for linear lattices of dimensions up to 5, the size of a largest diamond-free subset is equal to the sum of the largest two rank numbers of the lattice.     

Content Adaptive Mesh Representation of Images Using Binary Space Partitions

The interest in content adaptive mesh generation of images has been arising lately due to its wide area of applications in image processing. The major issue is to represent an image with a low number of pixels while preserving its content. These pixels or the nonuniform samples are then used to generate a mesh that approximates the corresponding image. This work presents a novel method based on binary space partitions in combination with three clustering schemes to approximate an image with a mesh. The algorithm has the ability to simultaneously reduce the number of pixels and generate the mesh approximation. The idea is to assume each triangle of the mesh as a plane. Consequently, it will be possible to reconstruct the inlying pixels with planar equations defined from the three nodes of each triangle. If a triangle's equation does not have the ability to reconstruct the pixels lying within up to a predefined error, it is split into two new triangles. Tested on several real images, the proposed method leads to reduced size meshes in a fast manner while retaining the visual quality of the reconstructed images. In addition, it is parallelizable due to the property of binary space partitions which facilitates its application in real-time scenarios.     

Hartogs-Bochner type theorem in projective space

We prove the following Hartogs-Bochner type theorem: Let M be a connected C² hypersurface of P_n(C) (n≥2) which divides P_n(C) in two connected open sets Ω₁ and Ω₂. Suppose that M has at most one open CR orbit. Then there exists i∈{1,2} such that C¹ CR functions defined on M extends holomorphically to Ω _i . Supported by the TMR network.     

Void fraction measurement by X-ray absorption

An X-ray tube and scintillation detectors were mounted on test pipes containing static voids of air–water mixture. Due to fluctuations in the X-ray tube output, void fraction measurements were carried out by using two detectors, one as a reference and the other as a void monitor. The intensity of a narrow (30–100 kV) X-ray beam transmitted through test pipes of different I.D. was measured to obtain the void fraction. The uncertainty in measuring static void fraction, was found to decrease as the void fraction increases, and to increase as X-ray energy increases. It was found that for a certain test-section pipe diameter, there exist an optimum X-ray energy that gives a minimum uncertainty in void fraction measurement.     

Development of an HPLC method for determination of pentachloronitrobenzene, hexachlorobenzene and their possible metabolites

Background

Pentachloronitrobenzene (PCNB) and hexachlorobenzene (HCB) are highly toxic and widespread in every environmental compartment. Some of metabolic products such as amino/nitro containing chlorinated aromatic compounds can be determined by gas chromatography coupled with electron capture detector (GC-ECD). However, it is difficult to identify some of chlorophenolic and chloroquinolic intermediates produced from PCNB and HCB by the above mentioned technique. Therefore, for analysis of these compounds and their metabolites, we have developed a high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) based method.

Results

The extraction of PCNB and HCB from soil and minimal salt medium was carried out with ethyl acetate and hexane respectively with good recoveries (98% for PCNB and 97% for HCB). The validation of the proposed extraction and HPLC method was done by analysis of PCNB and HCB biodegradation and their metabolites identification from anaerobic enriched soil samples.

Conclusion

A rapid, sensitive and simple HPLC based analytical method was developed for the analysis of PCNB, HCB and their possible intermediates.