Fiber to the Home (FTTH) Automation Planning,Its Impact on Customer Satisfaction & Cost-Effectiveness

Wireless Personal Communications - The use of automated network planning systems is crucial for reducing the deployment cost and planning time of passive optical telecommunication networks....     

A Combo Smart Model of Blockchain with the Internet of Things (IoT) for the Transformation of Agriculture Sector

Wireless Personal Communications - Nowadays traditional techniques of living and earning are being transformed to modern smart technologies, taking their inspiration from the emerging trends....     

A highly sensitive method for simultaneous determination of ultra trace levels of copper and cadmium in food and water samples with luminol as a chelating agent by adsorptive stripping voltammetry

In the present study a selective method is presented for the simultaneous determination of copper and cadmium in food samples by adsorptive stripping voltammetry. In preliminary studies, it has been proven that the copper and cadmium react with 3-aminophthalhydrazide (luminol), giving rise to the formation of these complexes. These complexes have adsorptive characteristics on hanging mercury drop electrode (HMDE) and can be reduced in a reduction step. In this study the optimum reaction parameters and conditions studies are investigated. The calibration graphs were linear in the concentration range of 0.5–105.0 and 0.8–70.0 ng/ml for copper and cadmium, respectively. The limit of detection of the method was 0.04 ng/ml for Cu²⁺ and 0.02 ng/ml for Cd²⁺. The interference of some common ions was studied and it was concluded that application of this method for the determination of copper (II) and cadmium in food and water samples led to satisfactory results.     

CFRP Prestressed High-Strength Concrete Prisms Subjected to Direct Tension

This paper describes the behavior of carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) prestressed high-strength concrete prisms under direct tension. Seven prestressed concrete prisms with different levels of prestressing were cast and tested. Prisms were 50×50?mm in cross section and their lengths varied between 1,400 and 2,000?mm. Concrete compressive strength was as high as 147?MPa. Tension stiffening, crack width, and crack spacing in prisms were investigated. Concrete properties, such as the stress–strain relationship under direct tension and bond strength, were also determined. Test results revealed that tension stiffening in CFRP prestressed high-strength concrete is significant when higher concrete strength and higher prestressing level are applied. Tension stiffening factors are proposed based on the postcracking behavior of concrete. Experimental results also showed that increasing the prestressing level increases the amount of tension stiffening and reduces the number of cracks, which delays their appearance. However, cracks widened at a faster rate in the prisms with higher prestressing levels. Experimental results were compared with Comite Euro-International du Beton and American Concrete Institute proposed equations. Modifications were suggested for the above-mentioned equations to account for use of CFRP bars in prestressed sections.     

Exact solution for thermoelastoplastic behavior of thick-walled functionally graded sphere under combined pressure and temperature gradient loading

Considering the combined uniform pressure and thermal loading condition, a closed form analytical thermoelastoplastic solution for thick-walled spheres made of functionally graded materials (FGMs) is presented in this article. Taking into account three different scenarios for the onset of yielding, the formulas to determine stress field in both elastic and plastic zones of FG sphere are generated and the radius of the plastic zone is obtained for combined loading. It is shown that the effective stress in the sphere subjected to combined loading decreases significantly when the FG materials are used. Moreover, the FG sphere is simulated entirely using ABAQUS/Explicit software. Based on the good agreement between the results from present theoretical analysis and those from finite element simulation, the accuracy of the present analysis is verified.     

A note on “Opposition versus randomness in soft computing techniques” [Appl. Soft Comput. 8 (2) (2008) 906–918]

In this note we clarify some issues with respect to the central opposition theorem as formulated in [1]. We slightly reformulate the theorem to more plausibly highlight its proof. As well, we provide some general remarks to better understand the scope of that theorem.     

The Influence of Crysnanoclay Addition on Mechanical and Thermal Properties of Thermoplastic Polyurethane Elastomeric with Polycarbonate Nanocomposites

A series of crysnanoclay-loaded thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) elastomer/polycarbonate (PC) nanocomposites have been prepared using twin screw extruders. The physicomechanical properties such as tensile behaviors, flexural properties and impact strength of the composites have been reported. Significant improvement in tensile modulus and flexural modulus were noticed for nanocomposites. The thermal characteristics of nanocomposites have been determined by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) techniques. Thermal degradation kinetic parameters such as energy of activation (E_a) have been calculated from TGA thermograms for the nanocomposites using three mathematical models namely; Coats–Redfern, Horowitz – Metzger and Broido's methods and the results are compared. The effect of crysnanoclay on the storage modulus (E′), loss modulus (E″), and damping factor (tan δ) as a function of temperature have been measured by dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA). The storage moduli of nanocomposites have been increased after incorporating crysnanoclay in polymer matrix.     

Determination of trace amounts of silver(I) in the presence of an activator with a kinetic method

A simple and sensitive kinetic-spectrophotometric method was developed for the determination of trace amounts of silver, based on its catalytic effect on the oxidation of azocarmine G by peroxydisulfate in sulfuric acid medium and at 30 °C in the presence of 1,10-phenantroline as activator. The absorbance was measured at 525 nm with the fixed-time method. The optimization of the operating conditions regarding concentrations of the reagents, temperature, ionic strength, and interferences was also investigated. The calibration curve is linear over the concentration range 0.3–50.0 ng ml-1of silver with good precision and accuracy, and the detection limit is down to0.125 ng ml-1. The relative standard deviation for a standard solution of 25.0 ng ml-1of silver is 1.36 %(n = 10).The proposed method proves to be highly sensitive,selective, and relatively rapid for the assay of silver at lowlevel range of 0.3–50.0 ng ml-1without any pre-concentration and separation step. The method was applied for the determination of silver in river water and white photographic film. The analytic results of the real samples are in excellent agreement with atomic absorption spectrometry analysis. The analytical results obtained are satisfactory.     

Parallel differential evolution with self-adapting control parameters and generalized opposition-based learning for solving high-dimensional optimization problems

Solving high-dimensional global optimization problems is a time-consuming task because of the high complexity of the problems. To reduce the computational time for high-dimensional problems, this paper presents a parallel differential evolution (DE) based on Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). The proposed approach is called GOjDE, which employs self-adapting control parameters and generalized opposition-based learning (GOBL). The adapting parameters strategy is helpful to avoid manually adjusting the control parameters, and GOBL is beneficial for improving the quality of candidate solutions. Simulation experiments are conducted on a set of recently proposed high-dimensional benchmark problems with dimensions of 100, 200, 500 and 1,000. Simulation results demonstrate that GjODE is better than, or at least comparable to, six other algorithms, and employing GPU can effectively reduce computational time. The obtained maximum speedup is up to 75.     

Determination of ultra trace levels of copper in food samples by a highly sensitive adsorptive stripping voltammetric method

A new method is presented, for the determination of copper, based on adsorptive stripping voltammetry of the complex of copper with thiosemicarbazide at a hanging mercury drop electrode (HMDE). The most suitable operating conditions and parameters, such as pH, accumulation potential, deposition time, ligand concentration and scan rate, were selected. The calibration graph for copper (II) was linear over the concentration range 0.01–90.0 ng/ml; the detection limit of the method was 0.007 ng/ml. The interferences of some common ions were studied and the method was found suitable for the determination of copper (II) in rice, tea, tomato, blood and water samples. Moreover, with the use of the proposed method, there is a considerable improvement in the detection limit, the linear dynamic range and the deposition time, compared with the methods other than adsorptive stripping voltammetry for the determination of copper.