A basis for the design of a multiattribute heuristic for single resource project scheduling

Two important characteristics of a project network are the network's topology and the amount of resources available. Most published project scheduling procedures take one or both of these two characteristics into account. Project scheduling procedures that are robust over variations of network characteristics are desirable. The degree of robustness is generally gauged by one or more measures of performance.

The objective of this paper is to compare a set of priority rules that are useful for a single resource project scheduling problem. The set of networks suggested by Patterson (1973) is used along with the set of performance measures proposed by Khattab and Choobineh 1991. The result of this comparison allows one to design a multiattribute heuristic for a single resource project scheduling problem.     

Quality of dried haskap berries (Lonicera caerulea L.) as affected by prior juice extraction,osmotic treatment,and drying conditions

The effect of juice extraction conditions on the quality of haskap berries (Lonicera caerulea L.) dried at different temperatures (60, 100, and 140°C) was investigated. The conventional juice extraction (process A) consisted of a two-press process, where thawed berries were pressed, and osmotic treatment was applied before pressing again. This was compared with a modified extraction (process B), which applied osmotic treatment during fruit thawing and only one press was used for extraction. The quality parameters investigated included moisture content, pressed berry yield, extraction loss, drying yield, total anthocyanin content (TAC), vitamin C content, and the rehydration characteristics of the final dried berries. Pressing the berries to 70% juice yield resulted in a higher pressed berry yield and better physicochemical quality in the pressed product. The yield was 26.39 and 28.92% in the conventional and modified extraction, with moisture contents of 70.32 and 77.75%, respectively. The TACs of pressed berries from extraction processes A and B were 24.62 and 33.03?mg C-3-G g^?1 DW and the vitamin C contents were 14.14 and 36.18?mg/100?g, respectively. Drying at 60°C until 25% moisture content was better than at higher temperatures, resulting in a better quality dried product. It revealed drying yields of 45.32 and 52.75%, TACs of 4.00 and 4.30?mg C-3-G g^?1 DW, vitamin C contents of 2.97 and 4.91?mg /100?g, and rehydration ratios of 2.22 and 2.37 from processes A and B, respectively. Process B with the one-step extraction is recommended for higher pressed berry yield, higher drying yield, and enhanced quality of the pressed and dried products. It is also a more efficient process, in terms of time, cost, and energy.     

Assessment of fuel conversion from HEU to LEU in the Syrian MNSR reactor using the MCNP code

Assessment of fuel conversion from high enriched uranium (HEU) to low enriched uranium (LEU) fuel in the Syrian MNSR reactor was conducted in this paper. Three 3-D neutronic models for the Syrian MNSR reactor using the MCNP-4C code were developed to assess the possibility of fuel conversion from 89.87% HEU fuel (UAl₄–Al) to 19.75% LEU fuel (UO₂). The first model showed that 347 fuel rods with HEU fuel were required to obtain a reactor core with 5.17 mk unadjusted excess reactivity. The second model showed that only 200 LEU fuel rods distributed in the reactor core like the David star figure were required to obtain a reactor core with 4.85 mk unadjusted excess reactivity. The control rod worth using the LEU fuel was enhanced. Finally, the third model showed that distribution of 200 LEU fuel rods isotropically in the 10 circles of the reactor core failed to convert the fuel since the calculated core unadjusted excess reactivity for this model was 10.45 mk. This value was far beyond the reactor operation limits and highly exceeded the current MNSR core unadjusted excess reactivity (5.17 mk).     

Nutritional quality of legume seeds as affected by some physical treatments, Part 1: Protein quality evaluation

The effect of water soaking, boiling, roasting, microwave cooking, autoclaving, fermentation and micronization on the nutritional quality of cowpea, pea and kidney bean was investigated. Pea seeds showed the highest crude fat, crude fiber and the lowest moisture contents while kidney bean had the lowest crude fat and the highest crude protein and ash contents. Glu and Asp were the main amino acids in all legumes while Cys and Met contents were the lowest. The protein efficiency ratio (PER), protein chemical score (CS) and the essential amino acid index (EAAI) of raw seeds ranged from 2.15 to 2.95, 39.07 to 68.30, and 55.49 to 62.84, respectively. Soaking, boiling, microwave cooking and autoclaving increased the total essential amino acids in all samples. Furthermore, raw and treated samples showed higher Lys content than the reference protein. Autoclaving was the most effective in improving protein quality followed by micronization, microwave cooking and fermentation. In addition, in vitro protein digestibility was improved after soaking, boiling, microwave cooking, autoclaving and fermentation but was reduced after roasting and micronization.     

Four energy group neutron flux distributions in the Syrian Miniature Neutron Source Reactor using the WIMSD4 and CITATION codes

A 3-D (R, θ, Z) neutronic model for the Miniature Neutron Source Reactor (MNSR) was developed earlier to conduct the reactor neutronic analysis. The group constants for all the reactor components were generated using the WIMSD4 code. The reactor excess reactivity and the four group neutron flux distributions were calculated using the CITATION code. This model is used in this paper to calculate the pointwise four energy group neutron flux distributions in the MNSR versus the radius, angle and reactor axial directions. Good agreement is noticed between the measured and the calculated thermal neutron flux in the inner and the outer irradiation sites with relative differences less than 7% and 5%, respectively.     

On the coexistence of a primary user with an energy harvesting secondary user: a case of cognitive cooperation

In this paper, we consider a cognitive scenario where an energy harvesting secondary user shares the spectrum with a primary user. The secondary source helps the primary source in delivering its undelivered packets during periods of silence of the primary source. The primary source has a queue for storing its data packets, whereas the secondary source has two data queues: a queue for storing its own packets and the other for storing the fraction of the undelivered primary packets accepted for relaying. The secondary source is assumed to be a battery‐based node, which harvests energy packets from the environment. In addition to its data queues, the secondary user has an energy queue to store the harvested energy packets. The secondary energy packets are used for primary packets decoding and data packets transmission. More specifically, if the secondary energy queue is empty, the secondary source can neither help the primary source nor transmit a packet from the data queues. The energy queue is modeled as a discrete‐time queue with Markov arrival and service processes. Because of the interaction of the queues, we provide inner and outer bounds on the stability region of the proposed system. We investigate the impact of the energy arrival rate on the stability region. Numerical results show the significant gain of cooperation.Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The case for SIMO random access in multi-antenna multi-hop wireless networks

In this paper, we demonstrate that multiple concurrent asynchronous and uncoordinated Single-Input Multiple-Output (SIMO) transmissions can successfully take place even though the respective receivers do not explicitly null out interfering signals. Hence, we propose simple modifications to the widely deployed IEEE 802.11 Medium Access Control (MAC) to enable multiple non-spatially-isolated SIMO sender-receiver pairs to share the medium. Namely, we propose to increase the physical carrier sense threshold, disable virtual carrier sensing, and enable message-in-message packet detection. We use experiments to show that while increasing the peak transmission rate, spatial multiplexing schemes such as those employed by the IEEE 802.11n are highly non-robust to asynchronous and uncoordinated interferers. In contrast, we show that the proposed multi-flow SIMO MAC scheme alleviates the severe unfairness resulting from uncoordinated transmissions in 802.11 multi-hop networks. We analytically compute the optimal carrier sense threshold based on different network performance objectives for a given node density and number of receive antennas.     

The effect of ammonium sulphate—decabromobiphenyl oxide on the flammability of polyester/cotton blend

A 87.5:12.5 polyester/cotton blended fabric was treated with various concentrations of ammonium sulphate and decabromobiphenyl oxide (DBBO) as well as mixtures of the two additives. The flammability of the resulting systems was determined by the limiting oxygen index (LOI) method and their thermal decomposition by thermogravimetry. Ammonium sulphate was particularly less effective as a flame retardant than the DBBO. Decabromobiphenyl oxide acts in the gas phase to retard the flammability of the polyester while the inorganic salt acts in the condensed phase to decrease that of the cotton. A mechanism for the interaction of ammonium sulphate with cotton was suggested. When a mixture of the two additives containing a high percentage of the bromo-compound was used a significant increase in the LOI values was observed compared to one having the same total loading but containing a higher percentage of ammonium sulphate. This may be attributed to the stabilizing effect of the released ammonia on the intermediate species formed after the liberation of the bromine radicals from the DBBO.     

Hepatocellular carcinoma in asymptomatic primary biliary cirrhosis

Hepatocellular carcinoma is an uncommon complication of primary biliary cirrhosis. Hepatocellular carcinoma occurs generally in the end stage of the disease. We report a case of asymptomatic primary biliary cirrhosis complicated by a hepatocellular carcinoma in a 66 year-old man.     

Synthesis and characterization of cellulose nanowhisker-reinforced-poly(ε-caprolactone) scaffold for tissue-engineering applications

Poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) is a bioresorbable and biocompatible polymer with assorted medical applications. However, remarkable hydrophobicity and nonosteoconductivity have stood as a barrier to limit its applications. The present study aims to modify the bulk characteristics of PCL to develop a polymeric scaffold with adequate structural and mechanical properties to support regenerated tissues. For this purpose, functionalized bacterial cellulose nanowhiskers (BCNW-g-βCD-PCL₂₀₀₀) are synthesized. Reinforcing PCL matrix with 4 wt % of the nanowhiskers resulted in a bionanocomposite with promoted bulk properties. Compared to neat PCL, the obtained bionanocomposite shows improvements of 115 and 51% in tensile strength and Young's modulus, respectively; 20% increase in hydrophilicity; 7% increase in degradation rate; and 6% decrease in crystallinity. Gas foaming/combined particulate leaching technique is used to develop highly porous structures of 86–95% porosity with interconnected macropores of mean pore diameters of 250–420 μm. Porous scaffolds showed compression modulus values of 5.3–9.1 MPa and would have promising applications in regenerative medicine. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2020 , 137, 48481.