Functionalized oligopolysiloxanes by heterogeneously catalyzed equilibration polymerization reactions

Summary A new general procedure for preparation of functionalized oligopolysiloxanes of predetermined molecular weight is described. It utilizes heterogeneously catalyzed siloxane equilibration polymerization reactions which do not require troublesome and sometimes difficult post-preparative work-up procedures usually encountered with the well known homogeneously catalyzed corresponding reactions. The method is described using as example the preparation of , -telechelic vinyldimethylsiloxy-oligopolydimethylsiloxanes from octamethylcyclotetrasiloxane and 1,3-divinyltetramethyldisiloxane, but reference to the preparations of trimethylsiloxy-, dimethylsiloxy-and carboxypropyldimethylsiloxyoligopolydimethylsiloxanes, oligopolymethylhydridosiloxanes or their copolymers is also made.     

An e-Learning tool considering similarity measures for manufacturing cell formation

Manufacturing cell formation is the first step in the design of cellular manufacturing system. The primary objective of this step is to cluster machines into machine cells and parts into part families so that the minimum of intercell trips will be achieved. This paper will be focused on the configuration of machine cells considering three types of initial machine-part matrix: binary (zero-one) matrix, production volume matrix, and operation time matrix. The similarity measure uses only information from these types of matrix. A pure combinatorial programming formulation will be developed to maximize the sum of similarity coefficients between machine/part pairs. An e-Learning tool/application to help industrial students and engineers for enhancing their cell formation capability is proposed. This tool is designed to include a novel similarity coefficient-based heuristic algorithm for solving the cell formation problem. To determine the performance of the proposed tool, comparison is made with a well-known tool along a case study.     

Support vector regression methodology for prediction of input displacement of adaptive compliant robotic gripper

The prerequisite for new versatile grippers is the capability to locate and perceive protests in their surroundings. It is realized that automated controllers are profoundly nonlinear frameworks, and a faultless numerical model is hard to get, in this way making it troublesome to control utilizing tried and true procedure. Here, a design of an adaptive compliant gripper is presented. This design of the gripper has embedded sensors as part of its structure. The use of embedded sensors in a robot gripper gives the control system the ability to control input displacement of the gripper and to recognize specific shapes of the grasping objects. Since the conventional control strategy is a very challenging task, soft computing based controllers are considered as potential candidates for such an application. In this study, the polynomial and radial basis function (RBF) are applied as the kernel function of Support Vector Regression (SVR) to estimate and predict optimal inputs displacement of the gripper according to experimental tests and shapes of grasping objects. Instead of minimizing the observed training error, SVR _poly and SVR _rbf attempt to minimize the generalization error bound so as to achieve generalized performance. The experimental results show that an improvement in predictive accuracy and capability of generalization can be achieved by the SVR approach compared to other soft computing methodology.     

Electrochemical study of the chromium electrode behaviour in borate buffer solution

The electrochemical behaviour of the chromium electrode in borate buffer solution (pH 9.3) was studied by cyclic voltammetry and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. Chromium passivity was observed over a broad potential region, from –1.0 to 0.5 V vs SCE. The passivation process took place in two steps: formation of a chromium oxide monolayer and transition of chromium to a higher valence state. The anodic film exhibited the properties of a p-type semiconductor. Transpassive dissolution of chromium occurred at 0.5 V vs SCE, with two reaction intermediates present, Cr_Cr ^III and Cr_ad ⁴⁺.     

Polyesterification and isomerization of maleic anhydride and 1,6-hexane diol as studied by 1H and 13C n.m.r.

The polyesterification and isomerization reaction of 1,6-hexane diol and maleic anydride in a melt without catalyst was studied by ¹³C and ¹H n.m.r. spectroscopy. The structure and concentration of oligoester species during the polyesterification and isomerization were determined depending on the reaction temperature and time. According to the number and configuration of repeating units determined from ¹H n.m.r. spectra kinetics of both reactions were also considered. The degree of isomerization is continuously increasing in the investigated reaction range.     

Vapour liquid equilibrium with association in both phases: A model with the concentration-dependent liquid phase association constant applied to acetic acid—benzene, -toluene, -p- and -o-xylene

A model employing the correction factors of Marek and Standart, but using a concentration-dependent liquid phase association factor of Jenkins—Robinson, has been used to model vapour—liquid equilibrium data for mixtures of acetic acid with benzene, toluene, o-xylene and p-xylene. With the aim to use systems of acetic acid—benzene and acetic acid—toluene as the test mixtures for distillation columns, the examination of the systems of acetic acid—aromatic hydrocarbons was undertaken. The model promises to be useful in modelling isobaric and isothermal data of acetic acid—benzine, acetic acid—toluene, acetic acid-p-xylene and acetic acid-o-xylene systems. Deviation plots show that the isothermal and isobaric data are represented well.     

Optical and electrochemical study of underpotential deposition of bismuth on gold electrode

The underpotential deposition of Bi on Au has been investigated by specular reflectance spectroscopy and linear sweep voltammetry. The spectral dependance of ΔR/R caused by Bi adatoms has been determined and compared with the calculated spectrum. A satisfactory agreement between experimental and calculated spectra was found. ΔR/R values have been used to determine the surface concentration of Bi_ad which then has been used to calculate the electrosorption valence of Bi_ad. It has been found that γ_Bi = 2.6. The optical evidence of interaction of Bi ions with gold oxide has been obtained.     

An image watermarking based on the pdf modeling and quantization effects in the wavelet domain

An image watermarking technique based on the concept of JPEG2000 algorithm is proposed. Biorthogonal wavelet 9/7 transform is used to provide a set of coefficients suitable for watermark embedding. The statistical properties of different subbands are analyzed in order to choose the number of decomposition levels and position of subbands, which will assure the best compromise between the watermark transparency and robustness. The JPEG2000 quantization is applied to avoid insignificant wavelet coefficients, while the remaining ones are used for watermarking. The optimal and blind watermark detection is based on the nonlinear score function and appropriate model of coefficients distribution. The performance of the proposed procedure is tested on examples with various images, showing robustness under different attacks, while maintaining high image quality.     

meSAT: multiple encodings of CSP to SAT

One approach for solving Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSP) (and related Constraint Optimization Problems (COP)) involving integer and Boolean variables is reduction to propositional satisfiability problem (SAT). A number of encodings (e.g., direct, log, support, order) for this purpose exist as well as specific encodings for some constraints that are often encountered (e.g., cardinality constraints, global constraints). However, there is no single encoding that performs well on all classes of problems and there is a need for a system that supports multiple encodings. We present a system that translates specifications of finite linear CSP problems into SAT instances using several well-known encodings, and their combinations. We also present a methodology for selecting a suitable encoding based on simple syntactic features of the input CSP instance. Thorough evaluation has been performed on large publicly available corpora and our encoding selection method improves upon the efficiency of existing encodings and state-of-the-art tools used in comparison.