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Sample records for high-efficiency extraction problems

  1. The problems of high efficient extraction from the isochronous cyclotron

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Schwabe, J.

    1994-06-01

    The problem of high efficient extraction (η ≥ 50%) from isochronous cyclotrons (with the exception of the stripping method) is not completely solved up to this day. This problem is specifically important, because these cyclotrons are being also applied in the production of medical radioisotopes, labeled pharmaceuticals as well as in neutron therapy (oncology), machine industry, agriculture (plant mutagenesis), etc. The aim of the proposed topic is to solve this problem on the AIC-144 isochronous cyclotron in the INP (Institute of Nuclear Physics). Lately, a beam of 20 MeV deuterons with an efficiency of ca. 15% was extracted from this cyclotron. (author). 25 refs, 14 figs

  2. White LED with High Package Extraction Efficiency

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Yi Zheng; Stough, Matthew

    2008-01-01

    The goal of this project is to develop a high efficiency phosphor converting (white) Light Emitting Diode (pcLED) 1-Watt package through an increase in package extraction efficiency. A transparent/translucent monolithic phosphor is proposed to replace the powdered phosphor to reduce the scattering caused by phosphor particles. Additionally, a multi-layer thin film selectively reflecting filter is proposed between blue LED die and phosphor layer to recover inward yellow emission. At the end of the project we expect to recycle approximately 50% of the unrecovered backward light in current package construction, and develop a pcLED device with 80 lm/W e using our technology improvements and commercially available chip/package source. The success of the project will benefit luminous efficacy of white LEDs by increasing package extraction efficiency. In most phosphor-converting white LEDs, the white color is obtained by combining a blue LED die (or chip) with a powdered phosphor layer. The phosphor partially absorbs the blue light from the LED die and converts it into a broad green-yellow emission. The mixture of the transmitted blue light and green-yellow light emerging gives white light. There are two major drawbacks for current pcLEDs in terms of package extraction efficiency. The first is light scattering caused by phosphor particles. When the blue photons from the chip strike the phosphor particles, some blue light will be scattered by phosphor particles. Converted yellow emission photons are also scattered. A portion of scattered light is in the backward direction toward the die. The amount of this backward light varies and depends in part on the particle size of phosphors. The other drawback is that yellow emission from phosphor powders is isotropic. Although some backward light can be recovered by the reflector in current LED packages, there is still a portion of backward light that will be absorbed inside the package and further converted to heat. Heat generated

  3. Efficient authentication scheme based on near-ring root extraction problem

    Science.gov (United States)

    Muthukumaran, V.; Ezhilmaran, D.

    2017-11-01

    An authentication protocolis the type of computer communication protocol or cryptography protocol specifically designed for transfer of authentication data between two entities. We have planned a two new entity authentication scheme on the basis of root extraction problem near-ring in this article. We suggest that this problem is suitably difficult to serve as a cryptographic assumption over the platform of near-ring N. The security issues also discussed.

  4. Improving extraction efficiency of the third integer resonant extraction using higher order multipoles

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Brown, K. A. [Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States); Schoefer, V. [Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States); Tomizawa, M. [High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK), Tsukuba (Japan)

    2017-03-09

    The new accelerator complex at J-PARC will operate with both high energy and very high intensity proton beams. With a design slow extraction efficiency of greater than 99% this facility will still be depositing significant beam power onto accelerator components [2]. To achieve even higher efficiencies requires some new ideas. The design of the extraction system and the accelerator lattice structure leaves little room for improvement using conventional techniques. In this report we will present one method for improving the slow extraction efficiency at J-PARC by adding duodecapoles or octupoles to the slow extraction system. We will review the theory of resonant extraction, describe simulation methods, and present the results of detailed simulations. From our investigations we find that we can improve extraction efficiency and thereby reduce the level of residual activation in the accelerator components and surrounding shielding.

  5. High-efficient extraction of principal medicinal components from fresh Phellodendron bark (cortex phellodendri).

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xu, Keqin; He, Gongxiu; Qin, Jieming; Cheng, Xuexiang; He, Hanjie; Zhang, Dangquan; Peng, Wanxi

    2018-05-01

    There are three key medicinal components (phellodendrine, berberine and palmatine) in the extracts of Phellodendron bark, as one of the fundamental herbs of traditional Chinese medicine. Different extraction methods and solvent combinations were investigated to obtain the optimal technologies for high-efficient extraction of these medicinal components. The results showed that combined solvents have higher extracting effect of phellodendrine, berberine and palmatine than single solvent, and the effect of ultrasonic extraction is distinctly better than those of distillation and soxhlet extraction. The hydrochloric acid/methanol-ultrasonic extraction has the best effect for three medicinal components of fresh Phellodendron bark, providing an extraction yield of 103.12 mg/g berberine, 24.41 mg/g phellodendrine, 1.25 mg/g palmatine.

  6. High-efficient extraction of principal medicinal components from fresh Phellodendron bark (cortex phellodendri

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Keqin Xu

    2018-05-01

    Full Text Available There are three key medicinal components (phellodendrine, berberine and palmatine in the extracts of Phellodendron bark, as one of the fundamental herbs of traditional Chinese medicine. Different extraction methods and solvent combinations were investigated to obtain the optimal technologies for high-efficient extraction of these medicinal components. Results: The results showed that combined solvents have higher extracting effect of phellodendrine, berberine and palmatine than single solvent, and the effect of ultrasonic extraction is distinctly better than those of distillation and soxhlet extraction. Conclusion: The hydrochloric acid/methanol-ultrasonic extraction has the best effect for three medicinal components of fresh Phellodendron bark, providing an extraction yield of 103.12 mg/g berberine, 24.41 mg/g phellodendrine, 1.25 mg/g palmatine. Keywords: Phellodendron, Cortex phellodendri, Extraction methods, Medicinal components

  7. Highly Efficient Flexible Quantum Dot Solar Cells with Improved Electron Extraction Using MgZnO Nanocrystals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Xiaoliang; Santra, Pralay Kanti; Tian, Lei; Johansson, Malin B; Rensmo, Håkan; Johansson, Erik M J

    2017-08-22

    Colloidal quantum dot (CQD) solar cells have high potential for realizing an efficient and lightweight energy supply for flexible or wearable electronic devices. To achieve highly efficient and flexible CQD solar cells, the electron transport layer (ETL), extracting electrons from the CQD solid layer, needs to be processed at a low-temperature and should also suppress interfacial recombination. Herein, a highly stable MgZnO nanocrystal (MZO-NC) layer is reported for efficient flexible PbS CQD solar cells. Solar cells fabricated with MZO-NC ETL give a high power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 10.4% and 9.4%, on glass and flexible plastic substrates, respectively. The reported flexible CQD solar cell has the record efficiency to date of flexible CQD solar cells. Detailed theoretical simulations and extensive characterizations reveal that the MZO-NCs significantly enhance charge extraction from CQD solids and diminish the charge accumulation at the ETL/CQD interface, suppressing charge interfacial recombination. These important results suggest that the low-temperature processed MZO-NCs are very promising for use in efficient flexible solar cells or other flexible optoelectronic devices.

  8. Possibility of high efficient beam extraction from the CERN SPS with a bent crystal. Simulation results

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Scandale, W. [CERN, European Organization for Nuclear Research, CH-1211 Geneva 23 (Switzerland); Laboratoire de l' AccelerateurLineaire (LAL), Universite Paris SudOrsay, Orsay (France); INFN Sezione di Roma, Piazzale Aldo Moro 2, 00185 Rome (Italy); Kovalenko, A.D.; Taratin, A.M. [Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, 141980 Dubna, Moscow Region (Russian Federation)

    2017-03-11

    The extraction of the SPS beam of 270 GeV/c protons assisted by a bent crystal was studied by simulation. Two methods for delivering the SPS beam onto a crystal were considered: transverse diffusion and orbit bump of the beam. It was shown that the main condition for high efficient beam extraction with a bent crystal, which is a small divergence of the incident beam, can be fulfilled. Extraction efficiency up to 99% can be reached for both methods of the beam delivering. The irradiation of the electrostatic septum wires during the beam extraction can be considerably reduced.

  9. Highly efficient DNA extraction method from skeletal remains

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Irena Zupanič Pajnič

    2011-03-01

    Full Text Available Background: This paper precisely describes the method of DNA extraction developed to acquire high quality DNA from the Second World War skeletal remains. The same method is also used for molecular genetic identification of unknown decomposed bodies in routine forensic casework where only bones and teeth are suitable for DNA typing. We analysed 109 bones and two teeth from WWII mass graves in Slovenia. Methods: We cleaned the bones and teeth, removed surface contaminants and ground the bones into powder, using liquid nitrogen . Prior to isolating the DNA in parallel using the BioRobot EZ1 (Qiagen, the powder was decalcified for three days. The nuclear DNA of the samples were quantified by real-time PCR method. We acquired autosomal genetic profiles and Y-chromosome haplotypes of the bones and teeth with PCR amplification of microsatellites, and mtDNA haplotypes 99. For the purpose of traceability in the event of contamination, we prepared elimination data bases including genetic profiles of the nuclear and mtDNA of all persons who have been in touch with the skeletal remains in any way. Results: We extracted up to 55 ng DNA/g of the teeth, up to 100 ng DNA/g of the femurs, up to 30 ng DNA/g of the tibias and up to 0.5 ng DNA/g of the humerus. The typing of autosomal and YSTR loci was successful in all of the teeth, in 98 % dekalof the femurs, and in 75 % to 81 % of the tibias and humerus. The typing of mtDNA was successful in all of the teeth, and in 96 % to 98 % of the bones. Conclusions: We managed to obtain nuclear DNA for successful STR typing from skeletal remains that were over 60 years old . The method of DNA extraction described here has proved to be highly efficient. We obtained 0.8 to 100 ng DNA/g of teeth or bones and complete genetic profiles of autosomal DNA, Y-STR haplotypes, and mtDNA haplotypes from only 0.5g bone and teeth samples.

  10. A genetic algorithm applied to a PWR turbine extraction optimization to increase cycle efficiency

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Sacco, Wagner F.; Schirru, Roberto

    2002-01-01

    In nuclear power plants feedwater heaters are used to heat feedwater from its temperature leaving the condenser to final feedwater temperature using steam extracted from various stages of the turbines. The purpose of this process is to increase cycle efficiency. The determination of the optimal fraction of mass flow rate to be extracted from each stage of the turbines is a complex optimization problem. This kind of problem has been efficiently solved by means of evolutionary computation techniques, such as Genetic Algorithms (GAs). GAs, which are systems based upon principles from biological genetics, have been successfully applied to several combinatorial optimization problems in nuclear engineering, as the nuclear fuel reload optimization problem. We introduce the use of GAs in cycle efficiency optimization by finding an optimal combination of turbine extractions. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, we have chosen a typical PWR as case study. The secondary side of the PWR was simulated using PEPSE, which is a modeling tool used to perform integrated heat balances for power plants. The results indicate that the GA is a quite promising tool for cycle efficiency optimization. (author)

  11. A highly efficient approach to protein interactome mapping based on collaborative filtering framework.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Luo, Xin; You, Zhuhong; Zhou, Mengchu; Li, Shuai; Leung, Hareton; Xia, Yunni; Zhu, Qingsheng

    2015-01-09

    The comprehensive mapping of protein-protein interactions (PPIs) is highly desired for one to gain deep insights into both fundamental cell biology processes and the pathology of diseases. Finely-set small-scale experiments are not only very expensive but also inefficient to identify numerous interactomes despite their high accuracy. High-throughput screening techniques enable efficient identification of PPIs; yet the desire to further extract useful knowledge from these data leads to the problem of binary interactome mapping. Network topology-based approaches prove to be highly efficient in addressing this problem; however, their performance deteriorates significantly on sparse putative PPI networks. Motivated by the success of collaborative filtering (CF)-based approaches to the problem of personalized-recommendation on large, sparse rating matrices, this work aims at implementing a highly efficient CF-based approach to binary interactome mapping. To achieve this, we first propose a CF framework for it. Under this framework, we model the given data into an interactome weight matrix, where the feature-vectors of involved proteins are extracted. With them, we design the rescaled cosine coefficient to model the inter-neighborhood similarity among involved proteins, for taking the mapping process. Experimental results on three large, sparse datasets demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms several sophisticated topology-based approaches significantly.

  12. Extraction of semivolatile organic compounds from high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters by supercritical carbon dioxide

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Schilling, J.B.

    1997-09-01

    Supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) using unmodified carbon dioxide has been explored as an alternative method for the extraction of semivolatile organic compounds from high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters. HEPA filters provide the final stage of containment on many exhaust systems in US Department of Energy (DOE) facilities by preventing the escape of chemical and radioactive materials entrained in the exhausted air. The efficiency of the filters is tested by the manufacturer and DOE using dioctylphthalate (DOP), a substance regulated by the US Environmental Protection Agency under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. Therefore, the filters must be analyzed for semivolatile organics before disposal. Ninety-eight acid, base, and neutral semivolatile organics were spiked onto blank HEPA material and extracted using SFE, Soxhlet, automated Soxhlet, and sonication techniques. The SFE conditions were optimized using a Dionex SFE-703 instrument. Average recoveries for the 98 semivolatile compounds are 82.7% for Soxhlet, 74.0% for sonication, 70.2% for SFE, and 62.9% for Soxtec. Supercritical fluid extraction reduces the extraction solvent volume to 10--15 mL, a factor of 20--30 less than Soxhlet and more than 5 times less than Soxtec and sonication. Extraction times of 30--45 min are used compared to 16--18 h for Soxhlet extraction

  13. An efficient method for DNA extraction from Cladosporioid fungi.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Moslem, M A; Bahkali, A H; Abd-Elsalam, K A; Wit, P J G M

    2010-11-23

    We developed an efficient method for DNA extraction from Cladosporioid fungi, which are important fungal plant pathogens. The cell wall of Cladosporioid fungi is often melanized, which makes it difficult to extract DNA from their cells. In order to overcome this we grew these fungi for three days on agar plates and extracted DNA from mycelium mats after manual or electric homogenization. High-quality DNA was isolated, with an A(260)/A(280) ratio ranging between 1.6 and 2.0. Isolated genomic DNA was efficiently digested with restriction enzymes and produced distinct banding patterns on agarose gels for the different Cladosporium species. Clear DNA fragments from the isolated DNA were amplified by PCR using small and large subunit rDNA primers, demonstrating that this method provides DNA of sufficiently high quality for molecular analyses.

  14. Tripodal diglycol-amides as highly efficient extractants for f-elements

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Janczewski, D.; Reinhoudt, D. N.; Verboom, W. [Univ Twente, Mesa Res Inst Nanotechnol, Lab Supramol Chem and Technol, NL-7500 AE Enschede, (Netherlands); Janczewski, D. [Inst Mat Res and Engn, Singapore 117602, (Singapore); Verboom, W. [Univ Twente, Mesa Res Inst Nanotechnol, Lab Mol Nanofabricat, NL-7500 AE Enschede, (Netherlands); Hill, C.; Allignol, C.; Duchesne, M. T. [CEA Valrho, DRCP/SCPS/LCSE, F-30207 Bagnols Sur Ceze, (France)

    2008-07-01

    A series of new ligands bearing three diglycol-amide functions pre-organized at the C-pivot and tri-alkyl-phenyl platforms was synthesized. They are very efficient extractants for Am{sup 3+} and Eu{sup 3+} with an up to five times relative extraction ability for Eu{sup 3+}. The distribution coefficients are up to 1000 times increased upon alkylation or arylation of the N-position of the diglycol-amide moieties. The tripodal diglycol-amides show a 1: 1 metal to ligand stoichiometry as proven with three independent methods for the complexation of the 3-pentyl N-substituted diglycol-amide ligand with Eu{sup 3+} (K = 2.5 x 10{sup 5} M{sup -1} in acetonitrile-water). A cage-like cryptand, containing three diglycol-amide units, was prepared using a Eu{sup 3+} templated synthesis. However, it does not exhibit improved extraction properties. (authors)

  15. Determining efficient extraction procedure of phytochemicals from ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Determining efficient extraction procedure of phytochemicals from the fruit paste of Ziziphus abyssinica and Tamarindus indica . ... Methodology and results: The methods used included cold and soxhlet extraction using methanol as the solvent and hot extraction using distilled water. To determine the efficiency in which ...

  16. Novel high efficient speed sensorless controller for maximum power extraction from wind energy conversion systems

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Fathabadi, Hassan

    2016-01-01

    Highlights: • Novel sensorless MPPT technique without drawbacks of other sensor/sensorless methods. • Tracking the actual MPP of WECSs, no tracking the MPP of their wind turbines. • Actually extracting the highest output power from WECSs. • Novel MPPT technique having the MPPT efficiency more than 98.5% for WECSs. • Novel MPPT technique having short convergence time for WECSs. - Abstract: In this study, a novel high accurate sensorless maximum power point tracking (MPPT) method is proposed. The technique tracks the actual maximum power point of a wind energy conversion system (WECS) at which maximum output power is extracted from the system, not the maximum power point of its wind turbine at which maximum mechanical power is obtained from the turbine, so it actually extracts the highest output power from the system. The technique only uses input voltage and current of the converter used in the system, and neither needs any speed sensors (anemometer and tachometer) nor has the drawbacks of other sensor/sensorless based MPPT methods. The technique has been implemented as a MPPT controller by constructing a WECS. Theoretical results, the technique performance, and its advantages are validated by presenting real experimental results. The real static-dynamic response of the MPPT controller is experimentally obtained that verifies the proposed MPPT technique high accurately extracts the highest instant power from wind energy conversion systems with the MPPT efficiency of more than 98.5% and a short convergence time that is only 25 s for the constructed system having a total inertia and friction coefficient of 3.93 kg m 2 and 0.014 N m s, respectively.

  17. High intensity pulsed electric field as an innovative technique for extraction of bioactive compounds-A review.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yan, Liang-Gong; He, Lang; Xi, Jun

    2017-09-02

    How to extract bioactive compounds safely and efficiently is one of the problems for the food and pharmaceutical industry. In recent years, several novel extraction techniques have been proposed. To pursue a more efficient method for industrial production, high intensity pulsed electric field (HIPEF) extraction technique has been developed. HIPEF extraction technique, which is based on the conventional pulsed electric field (PEF), provided higher electric field intensity and a special continuous extraction system, and it has confirmed less extraction time, higher extraction yield, and mild processing temperature. So this innovative technique is promising for application of industrial production. This review was devoted to introducing the recent achievement of HIPEF extraction technique, including novel HIPEF continuous extraction system, principles and mechanisms; the critical process factors influencing its performance applications; and comparison of HIPEF extraction with other extraction techniques. In the end, the defects and future trends of HIPEF extraction were also discussed.

  18. An Optimal Control Method for Maximizing the Efficiency of Direct Drive Ocean Wave Energy Extraction System

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Zhongxian; Yu, Haitao; Wen, Cheng

    2014-01-01

    The goal of direct drive ocean wave energy extraction system is to convert ocean wave energy into electricity. The problem explored in this paper is the design and optimal control for the direct drive ocean wave energy extraction system. An optimal control method based on internal model proportion integration differentiation (IM-PID) is proposed in this paper though most of ocean wave energy extraction systems are optimized by the structure, weight, and material. With this control method, the heavy speed of outer heavy buoy of the energy extraction system is in resonance with incident wave, and the system efficiency is largely improved. Validity of the proposed optimal control method is verified in both regular and irregular ocean waves, and it is shown that IM-PID control method is optimal in that it maximizes the energy conversion efficiency. In addition, the anti-interference ability of IM-PID control method has been assessed, and the results show that the IM-PID control method has good robustness, high precision, and strong anti-interference ability. PMID:25152913

  19. An optimal control method for maximizing the efficiency of direct drive ocean wave energy extraction system.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Zhongxian; Yu, Haitao; Wen, Cheng

    2014-01-01

    The goal of direct drive ocean wave energy extraction system is to convert ocean wave energy into electricity. The problem explored in this paper is the design and optimal control for the direct drive ocean wave energy extraction system. An optimal control method based on internal model proportion integration differentiation (IM-PID) is proposed in this paper though most of ocean wave energy extraction systems are optimized by the structure, weight, and material. With this control method, the heavy speed of outer heavy buoy of the energy extraction system is in resonance with incident wave, and the system efficiency is largely improved. Validity of the proposed optimal control method is verified in both regular and irregular ocean waves, and it is shown that IM-PID control method is optimal in that it maximizes the energy conversion efficiency. In addition, the anti-interference ability of IM-PID control method has been assessed, and the results show that the IM-PID control method has good robustness, high precision, and strong anti-interference ability.

  20. New and highly efficient column chromatographic extraction and simple purification of camptothecin from Camptotheca acuminata and Nothapodytes pittosporoides.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zeng, Xue-Hua; Li, Yue-Hong; Wu, Shan-Shan; Hao, Rui-Lin; Li, Hui; Ni, He; Han, Han-Bing; Li, Hai-Hang

    2013-01-01

    Camptothecin, a widely used natural anti-cancer drug, is difficult to extract and purify effectively from plants. To develop new and highly efficient extraction and purification methods for analysis and production of camptothecin from leaves and fruits of Camptotheca acuminata and Nothapodytes pittosporoides roots. Dried materials were loaded in empty columns with fivefold 60% ethanol for leaves or 70% ethanol for fruits of C. acumnata, and sixfold 70% ethanol for N. pittosporoides roots. The columns were eluted with the same solvents at room temperature. Eluent was collected as extraction solution. Extraction solution from leaves and fruits of C. acuminata was vacuum-evaporated to remove ethanol, precipitated at pH 8.0 to remove alkaline insolubles and fractionated with chloroform at pH 3.0, which yields a crude product with 70% purity. Extraction solution from N. pittosporoides roots was concentrated to 1/10 volume and precipitated at pH 3.0, which yields a crude product with 60% purity. All crude products were purified by crystallisation. All steps were monitored by HPLC. Camptothecin was extracted from the three plant materials at a 98% rate with 15- or 18-fold solvent for content analysis, or at a 97% rate with five- or sixfold solvent for production. All crude products were purified to 98%. The overall recovery rates of camptothecin from plant materials to purified products reached 92% or higher. The new procedures are simple and highly efficient, and have multiple advantages for quantitative analysis and large production of camptothecin from plants. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  1. An efficient method for DNA extraction from Cladosporioid fungi

    OpenAIRE

    Moslem, M.A.; Bahkali, A.H.; Abd-Elsalam, K.A.; Wit, de, P.J.G.M.

    2010-01-01

    We developed an efficient method for DNA extraction from Cladosporioid fungi, which are important fungal plant pathogens. The cell wall of Cladosporioid fungi is often melanized, which makes it difficult to extract DNA from their cells. In order to overcome this we grew these fungi for three days on agar plates and extracted DNA from mycelium mats after manual or electric homogenization. High-quality DNA was isolated, with an A260/A280 ratio ranging between 1.6 and 2.0. Isolated genomic DNA w...

  2. Highly efficient micellar extraction of toxic picric acid into novel ionic liquid: Effect of parameters, solubilization isotherm, evaluation of thermodynamics and design parameters

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Bhatt, Darshak R.; Maheria, Kalpana C. [Applied Chemistry Department, Sardar Vallabhbhai National Institute of Technology, Surat 395007, Gujarat (India); Parikh, Jigisha K., E-mail: jk_parikh@yahoo.co.in [Chemical Engineering Department, Sardar Vallabhbhai National Institute of Technology, Surat 395007, Gujarat (India)

    2015-12-30

    Highlights: • Picric acid is a toxic compound. • DIL significantly improves CPE efficiency of PA. • Higher extraction efficiency obtained in both nearly neutral and acidic condition. • The extraction process – spontaneous and endothermic in nature. - Abstract: A simple and new approach in cloud point extraction (CPE) method was developed for removal of picric acid (PA) by the addition of N,N,N,N’,N’,N’-hexaethyl-ethane-1,2-diammonium dibromide ionic liquid (IL) in non-ionic surfactant Triton X-114 (TX-114). A significant increase in extraction efficiency was found upon the addition of dicationic ionic liquid (DIL) at both nearly neutral and high acidic pH. The effects of different operating parameters such as pH, temperature, time, concentration of surfactant, PA and DIL on extraction of PA were investigated and optimum conditions were established. The extraction mechanism was also proposed. A developed Langmuir isotherm was used to compute the feed surfactant concentration required for the removal of PA up to an extraction efficiency of 90%. The effects of temperature and concentration of surfactant on various thermodynamic parameters were examined. It was found that the values of ΔG° increased with temperature and decreased with surfactant concentration. The values of ΔH° and ΔS° increased with surfactant concentration. The developed approach for DIL mediated CPE has proved to be an efficient and green route for extraction of PA from water sample.

  3. Graded Heterojunction Engineering for Hole-Conductor-Free Perovskite Solar Cells with High Hole Extraction Efficiency and Conductivity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Bo; Zhang, Yanan; Zhang, Luyuan; Yin, Longwei

    2017-10-01

    Despite great progress in the photovoltaic conversion efficiency (PCE) of inorganic-organic hybrid perovskite solar cells (PSCs), the large-scale application of PSCs still faces serious challenges due to the poor-stability and high-cost of the spiro-OMeTAD hole transport layer (HTL). It is of great fundamental importance to rationally address the issues of hole extraction and transfer arising from HTL-free PSCs. Herein, a brand-new PSC architecture is designed by introducing multigraded-heterojunction (GHJ) inorganic perovskite CsPbBr x I 3- x layers as an efficient HTL. The grade adjustment can be achieved by precisely tuning the halide proportion and distribution in the CsPbBr x I 3- x film to reach an optimal energy alignment of the valance and conduction band between MAPbI 3 and CsPbBr x I 3- x . The CsPbBr x I 3- x GHJ as an efficient HTL can induce an electric field where a valance/conduction band edge is leveraged to bend at the heterojunction interface, boosting the interfacial electron-hole splitting and photoelectron extraction. The GHJ architecture enhances the hole extraction and conduction efficiency from the MAPbI 3 to the counter electrode, decreases the recombination loss during the hole transfer, and benefits in increasing the open-circuit voltage. The optimized HTL-free PCS based on the GHJ architecture demonstrates an outstanding thermal stability and a significantly improved PCE of 11.33%, nearly 40% increase compared with 8.16% for pure HTL-free devices. © 2017 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

  4. Stiffness-Independent Highly Efficient On-Chip Extraction of Cell-Laden Hydrogel Microcapsules from Oil Emulsion into Aqueous Solution by Dielectrophoresis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huang, Haishui; Sun, Mingrui; Heisler-Taylor, Tyler; Kiourti, Asimina; Volakis, John; Lafyatis, Gregory; He, Xiaoming

    2015-10-28

    A dielectrophoresis (DEP)-based method achieves highly efficient on-chip extraction of cell-laden microcapsules of any stiffness from oil into aqueous solution. The hydrogel microcapsules can be extracted into the aqueous solution by DEP and interfacial tension forces with no trapped oil, while the encapsulated cells are free from electrical damage due to the Faraday cage effect. © 2015 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

  5. High efficiency algorithm for 3D transient thermo-elasto-plastic contact problem in reactor pressure vessel sealing system

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Xu Mingyu; Lin Tengjiao; Li Runfang; Du Xuesong; Li Shuian; Yang Yu

    2005-01-01

    There are some complex operating cases such as high temperature and high pressure during the operating process of nuclear reactor pressure vessel. It is necessary to carry out mechanical analysis and experimental investigation for its sealing ability. On the basis of the self-developed program for 3-D transient sealing analysis for nuclear reactor pressure vessel, some specific measures are presented to enhance the calculation efficiency in several aspects such as the non-linear solution of elasto-plastic problem, the mixed solution algorithm for contact problem as well as contract heat transfer problem and linear equation set solver. The 3-D transient sealing analysis program is amended and complemented, with which the sealing analysis result of the pressure vessel model can be obtained. The calculation results have good regularity and the calculation efficiency is twice more than before. (authors)

  6. Short Communication An efficient method for simultaneous extraction of high-quality RNA and DNA from various plant tissues.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Oliveira, R R; Viana, A J C; Reátegui, A C E; Vincentz, M G A

    2015-12-29

    Determination of gene expression is an important tool to study biological processes and relies on the quality of the extracted RNA. Changes in gene expression profiles may be directly related to mutations in regulatory DNA sequences or alterations in DNA cytosine methylation, which is an epigenetic mark. Correlation of gene expression with DNA sequence or epigenetic mark polymorphism is often desirable; for this, a robust protocol to isolate high-quality RNA and DNA simultaneously from the same sample is required. Although commercial kits and protocols are available, they are mainly optimized for animal tissues and, in general, restricted to RNA or DNA extraction, not both. In the present study, we describe an efficient and accessible method to extract both RNA and DNA simultaneously from the same sample of various plant tissues, using small amounts of starting material. The protocol was efficient in the extraction of high-quality nucleic acids from several Arabidopsis thaliana tissues (e.g., leaf, inflorescence stem, flower, fruit, cotyledon, seedlings, root, and embryo) and from other tissues of non-model plants, such as Avicennia schaueriana (Acanthaceae), Theobroma cacao (Malvaceae), Paspalum notatum (Poaceae), and Sorghum bicolor (Poaceae). The obtained nucleic acids were used as templates for downstream analyses, such as mRNA sequencing, quantitative real time-polymerase chain reaction, bisulfite treatment, and others; the results were comparable to those obtained with commercial kits. We believe that this protocol could be applied to a broad range of plant species, help avoid technical and sampling biases, and facilitate several RNA- and DNA-dependent analyses.

  7. An Efficient Method for Mapping High-Resolution Global River Discharge Based on the Algorithms of Drainage Network Extraction

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jiaye Li

    2018-04-01

    Full Text Available River discharge, which represents the accumulation of surface water flowing into rivers and ultimately into the ocean or other water bodies, may have great impacts on water quality and the living organisms in rivers. However, the global knowledge of river discharge is still poor and worth exploring. This study proposes an efficient method for mapping high-resolution global river discharge based on the algorithms of drainage network extraction. Using the existing global runoff map and digital elevation model (DEM data as inputs, this method consists of three steps. First, the pixels of the runoff map and the DEM data are resampled into the same resolution (i.e., 0.01-degree. Second, the flow direction of each pixel of the DEM data (identified by the optimal flow path method used in drainage network extraction is determined and then applied to the corresponding pixel of the runoff map. Third, the river discharge of each pixel of the runoff map is calculated by summing the runoffs of all the pixels in the upstream of this pixel, similar to the upslope area accumulation step in drainage network extraction. Finally, a 0.01-degree global map of the mean annual river discharge is obtained. Moreover, a 0.5-degree global map of the mean annual river discharge is produced to display the results with a more intuitive perception. Compared against the existing global river discharge databases, the 0.01-degree map is of a generally high accuracy for the selected river basins, especially for the Amazon River basin with the lowest relative error (RE of 0.3% and the Yangtze River basin within the RE range of ±6.0%. However, it is noted that the results of the Congo and Zambezi River basins are not satisfactory, with RE values over 90%, and it is inferred that there may be some accuracy problems with the runoff map in these river basins.

  8. Rapid and efficient method to extract metagenomic DNA from estuarine sediments.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shamim, Kashif; Sharma, Jaya; Dubey, Santosh Kumar

    2017-07-01

    Metagenomic DNA from sediments of selective estuaries of Goa, India was extracted using a simple, fast, efficient and environment friendly method. The recovery of pure metagenomic DNA from our method was significantly high as compared to other well-known methods since the concentration of recovered metagenomic DNA ranged from 1185.1 to 4579.7 µg/g of sediment. The purity of metagenomic DNA was also considerably high as the ratio of absorbance at 260 and 280 nm ranged from 1.88 to 1.94. Therefore, the recovered metagenomic DNA was directly used to perform various molecular biology experiments viz. restriction digestion, PCR amplification, cloning and metagenomic library construction. This clearly proved that our protocol for metagenomic DNA extraction using silica gel efficiently removed the contaminants and prevented shearing of the metagenomic DNA. Thus, this modified method can be used to recover pure metagenomic DNA from various estuarine sediments in a rapid, efficient and eco-friendly manner.

  9. Research cooperation project on environmentally friendly technology for highly efficient mineral resources extraction and treatment. Detail design for pilot plant (Mechanical fabrication)

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    NONE

    1998-03-01

    The paper prepared plans of the mechanical equipment in the detailed design of a pilot plant in the joint research project on the environmental protection technology for highly efficient mineral resource extraction and treatment. (NEDO)

  10. Efficient Separation and Extraction of Vanadium and Chromium in High Chromium Vanadium Slag by Selective Two-Stage Roasting-Leaching

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wen, Jing; Jiang, Tao; Xu, Yingzhe; Liu, Jiayi; Xue, Xiangxin

    2018-04-01

    Vanadium and chromium are important rare metals, leading to a focus on high chromium vanadium slag (HCVS) as a potential raw material to extract vanadium and chromium in China. In this work, a novel method based on selective two-stage roasting-leaching was proposed to separate and extract vanadium and chromium efficiently in HCVS. XRD, FT-IR, and SEM were utilized to analyze the phase evolutions and microstructure during the whole process. Calcification roasting, which can calcify vanadium selectively using thermodynamics, was carried out in the first roasting stage to transfer vanadium into acid-soluble vanadate and leave chromium in the leaching residue as (Fe0.6Cr0.4)2O3 after H2SO4 leaching. When HCVS and CaO were mixed in the molar ratio CaO/V2O3 (n(CaO)/n(V2O3)) of 0.5 to 1.25, around 90 pct vanadium and less than 1 pct chromium were extracted in the first leaching liquid, thus achieving the separation of vanadium and chromium. In the second roasting stage, sodium salt, which combines with chromium easily, was added to the first leaching residue to extract chromium and 95.16 pct chromium was extracted under the optimal conditions. The total vanadium and chromium leaching rates were above 95 pct, achieving the efficient separation and extraction of vanadium and chromium. The established method provides a new technique to separate vanadium and chromium during roasting rather than in the liquid form, which is useful for the comprehensive application of HCVS.

  11. Efficient Separation and Extraction of Vanadium and Chromium in High Chromium Vanadium Slag by Selective Two-Stage Roasting-Leaching

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wen, Jing; Jiang, Tao; Xu, Yingzhe; Liu, Jiayi; Xue, Xiangxin

    2018-06-01

    Vanadium and chromium are important rare metals, leading to a focus on high chromium vanadium slag (HCVS) as a potential raw material to extract vanadium and chromium in China. In this work, a novel method based on selective two-stage roasting-leaching was proposed to separate and extract vanadium and chromium efficiently in HCVS. XRD, FT-IR, and SEM were utilized to analyze the phase evolutions and microstructure during the whole process. Calcification roasting, which can calcify vanadium selectively using thermodynamics, was carried out in the first roasting stage to transfer vanadium into acid-soluble vanadate and leave chromium in the leaching residue as (Fe0.6Cr0.4)2O3 after H2SO4 leaching. When HCVS and CaO were mixed in the molar ratio CaO/V2O3 (n(CaO)/n(V2O3)) of 0.5 to 1.25, around 90 pct vanadium and less than 1 pct chromium were extracted in the first leaching liquid, thus achieving the separation of vanadium and chromium. In the second roasting stage, sodium salt, which combines with chromium easily, was added to the first leaching residue to extract chromium and 95.16 pct chromium was extracted under the optimal conditions. The total vanadium and chromium leaching rates were above 95 pct, achieving the efficient separation and extraction of vanadium and chromium. The established method provides a new technique to separate vanadium and chromium during roasting rather than in the liquid form, which is useful for the comprehensive application of HCVS.

  12. Efficient discrimination and removal of phospholipids during electromembrane extraction from human plasma samples

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Vårdal, Linda; Gjelstad, Astrid; Huang, Chuixiu

    2017-01-01

    to be highly efficient for providing phospholipid-free extracts. CONCLUSION: Ultra-HPLC-MS/MS analysis of the donor solutions revealed that the phospholipids principally remained in the plasma samples. This proved that the phospholipids did not migrate in the electrical field and they were prevented from......AIM: For the first time, extracts obtained from human plasma samples by electromembrane extraction (EME) were investigated comprehensively with particular respect to phospholipids using ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS). Thhe purpose...

  13. Extraction efficiency of hydrophilic and lipophilic antioxidants from lyophilized foods using pressurized liquid extraction and manual extraction.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Watanabe, Jun; Oki, Tomoyuki; Takebayashi, Jun; Takano-Ishikawa, Yuko

    2014-09-01

    The efficient extraction of antioxidants from food samples is necessary in order to accurately measure their antioxidant capacities. α-Tocopherol and gallic acid were spiked into samples of 5 lyophilized and pulverized vegetables and fruits (onion, cabbage, Satsuma mandarin orange, pumpkin, and spinach). The lipophilic and hydrophilic antioxidants in the samples were sequentially extracted with a mixed solvent of n-hexane and dichloromethane, and then with acetic acid-acidified aqueous methanol. Duplicate samples were extracted: one set was extracted using an automated pressurized liquid extraction apparatus, and the other set was extracted manually. Spiked α-tocopherol and gallic acid were recovered almost quantitatively in the extracted lipophilic and hydrophilic fractions, respectively, especially when pressurized liquid extraction was used. The expected increase in lipophilic oxygen radical absorbance capacity (L-ORAC) due to spiking with α-tocopherol, and the expected increase in 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl radical scavenging activities and total polyphenol content due to spiking with gallic acid, were all recovered in high yield. Relatively low recoveries, as reflected in the hydrophilic ORAC (H-ORAC) value, were obtained following spiking with gallic acid, suggesting an interaction between gallic acid and endogenous antioxidants. The H-ORAC values of gallic acid-spiked samples were almost the same as those of postadded (spiked) samples. These results clearly indicate that lipophilic and hydrophilic antioxidants are effectively extracted from lyophilized food, especially when pressurized liquid extraction is used. © 2014 Institute of Food Technologists®

  14. Drainage network extraction from a high-resolution DEM using parallel programming in the .NET Framework

    Science.gov (United States)

    Du, Chao; Ye, Aizhong; Gan, Yanjun; You, Jinjun; Duan, Qinyun; Ma, Feng; Hou, Jingwen

    2017-12-01

    High-resolution Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) can be used to extract high-accuracy prerequisite drainage networks. A higher resolution represents a larger number of grids. With an increase in the number of grids, the flow direction determination will require substantial computer resources and computing time. Parallel computing is a feasible method with which to resolve this problem. In this paper, we proposed a parallel programming method within the .NET Framework with a C# Compiler in a Windows environment. The basin is divided into sub-basins, and subsequently the different sub-basins operate on multiple threads concurrently to calculate flow directions. The method was applied to calculate the flow direction of the Yellow River basin from 3 arc-second resolution SRTM DEM. Drainage networks were extracted and compared with HydroSHEDS river network to assess their accuracy. The results demonstrate that this method can calculate the flow direction from high-resolution DEMs efficiently and extract high-precision continuous drainage networks.

  15. Solving L-L Extraction Problems with Excel Spreadsheet

    Science.gov (United States)

    Teppaitoon, Wittaya

    2016-01-01

    This work aims to demonstrate the use of Excel spreadsheets for solving L-L extraction problems. The key to solving the problems successfully is to be able to determine a tie line on the ternary diagram where the calculation must be carried out. This enables the reader to analyze the extraction process starting with a simple operation, the…

  16. Highly indefinite multigrid for eigenvalue problems

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Borges, L.; Oliveira, S.

    1996-12-31

    Eigenvalue problems are extremely important in understanding dynamic processes such as vibrations and control systems. Large scale eigenvalue problems can be very difficult to solve, especially if a large number of eigenvalues and the corresponding eigenvectors need to be computed. For solving this problem a multigrid preconditioned algorithm is presented in {open_quotes}The Davidson Algorithm, preconditioning and misconvergence{close_quotes}. Another approach for solving eigenvalue problems is by developing efficient solutions for highly indefinite problems. In this paper we concentrate on the use of new highly indefinite multigrid algorithms for the eigenvalue problem.

  17. Extraction efficiency of water, ethanol and supereritical carbon dioxide for amide content from fruit of piper sarmentosum using colorimetry and high performance liquid chromatography

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Hussain, K.; Ismail, Z.; Ibrahim, P.

    2010-01-01

    Extraction is important for both natural product research and preparation of extracts to be used as raw materials for phytopharamaceuticals. Selection of a suitable solvent as well as type of extraction is prerequisite to prepare extracts enriched with particular type of compounds with peculiar activities. Therefore, the present study aimed to evaluate the extraction efficiency of water, ethanol and supercritical CO/sub 2/ for amides from fruit of Piper sarmentosum using colorimetry and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The pulverized fruit material was extracted by reflux using water and ethanol, and supercritical CO/sub 2/ at 60 degree c and operating pressure of 3000,4 000, 6000, 7000 and 8000 psi. The colorimetric analysis indicated that except the water extracts, total amide content in different extracts was not significantly different (P<0.05). Similarly, HPLC analysis using pellitorine, sarmentine and sarrnentosine as markers indicated that except water extracts, total content of the markers in different extracts was not significantly different (P<0.05). These results indicate that extraction efficiency of ethanol for amides is comparable to that of supercritical CO/sub 2/. Hence, ethanol may be used to prepare amide enriched extracts without using costly equipment and operating expertise. (author)

  18. A novel molybdenum disulfide nanosheet self-assembled flower-like monolithic sorbent for solid-phase extraction with high efficiency and long service life.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ran, Fanpeng; Liu, Hongmei; Wang, Xiaoqi; Guo, Yong

    2017-07-21

    A novel material consisting of molybdenum disulfide (MoS 2 ) nanosheet that self-assemble into flower-like microspheres which aggregate to form a monolithic matrix with a micro or nano-scaled mesopore structure was successfully synthesized and used as an efficient sorbent for solid-phase extraction (SPE) due to its large specific adsorption area and good stability. The extraction properties of the as-prepared sorbent were evaluated by high-performance liquid chromatography with variable wavelength detection (HPLC-VWD) by analyzing four flavonoids (apigenin, quercetin, luteolin, and kaempferol). Under optimal conditions, the LODs and LOQs were found to be in the ranges of 0.1-0.25 and 0.4-0.5μgL -1 , respectively, and wide linear ranges were obtained with correlation coefficients (R) ranging from 0.9991 to 0.9996. Compared with commercial C18 and Alumina-N sorbents, the as-prepared sorbent showed high extraction efficiency at different concentrations of flavonoids. After 100 uses, the extraction ability of the self-assembled MoS 2 nanosheet monolithic sorbent had no evident decline, denoting a long service life. Finally, the SPE-HPLC-VWD method using the as-prepared sorbent was applied to flavonoid analysis in beverage samples with satisfactory results. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  19. Improvement in light-extraction efficiency of light emitting diode ...

    Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

    The effect of various microlens parameters such as diameter and area fraction on light-extraction efficiency was systematically studied. Improvement of 4% in extraction efficiency was obtained by employing it on white light emitting diode. The area fraction of microlenses was increased up to 0.34 by reducing the spin speed.

  20. Research cooperation project on environmentally friendly technology for highly efficient mineral resources extraction and treatment. Detail design for pilot plant

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    NONE

    1999-03-01

    Photographs and drawings were edited into a book in relation with a joint project for environment preservation technologies in high-efficiency extraction and treatment of mineral resources, and detail design for a pilot plant. The book classified the related devices into fabricated devices, purchased devices and electrical devices, and contains detailed drawings and photographs thereof. (NEDO)

  1. Efficient topology optimisation of multiscale and multiphysics problems

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Alexandersen, Joe

    The aim of this Thesis is to present efficient methods for optimising high-resolution problems of a multiscale and multiphysics nature. The Thesis consists of two parts: one treating topology optimisation of microstructural details and the other treating topology optimisation of conjugate heat...

  2. Analysis of entropy extraction efficiencies in random number generation systems

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Chao; Wang, Shuang; Chen, Wei; Yin, Zhen-Qiang; Han, Zheng-Fu

    2016-05-01

    Random numbers (RNs) have applications in many areas: lottery games, gambling, computer simulation, and, most importantly, cryptography [N. Gisin et al., Rev. Mod. Phys. 74 (2002) 145]. In cryptography theory, the theoretical security of the system calls for high quality RNs. Therefore, developing methods for producing unpredictable RNs with adequate speed is an attractive topic. Early on, despite the lack of theoretical support, pseudo RNs generated by algorithmic methods performed well and satisfied reasonable statistical requirements. However, as implemented, those pseudorandom sequences were completely determined by mathematical formulas and initial seeds, which cannot introduce extra entropy or information. In these cases, “random” bits are generated that are not at all random. Physical random number generators (RNGs), which, in contrast to algorithmic methods, are based on unpredictable physical random phenomena, have attracted considerable research interest. However, the way that we extract random bits from those physical entropy sources has a large influence on the efficiency and performance of the system. In this manuscript, we will review and discuss several randomness extraction schemes that are based on radiation or photon arrival times. We analyze the robustness, post-processing requirements and, in particular, the extraction efficiency of those methods to aid in the construction of efficient, compact and robust physical RNG systems.

  3. Highly efficient extraction and lipase-catalyzed transesterification of triglycerides from Chlorella sp. KR-1 for production of biodiesel.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Ok Kyung; Kim, Young Hyun; Na, Jeong-Geol; Oh, You-Kwan; Lee, Eun Yeol

    2013-11-01

    We developed a method for the highly efficient lipid extraction and lipase-catalyzed transesterification of triglyceride from Chlorella sp. KR-1 using dimethyl carbonate (DMC). Almost all of the total lipids, approximately 38.9% (w/w) of microalgae dry weight, were extracted from the dried microalgae biomass using a DMC and methanol mixture (7:3 (v/v)). The extracted triglycerides were transesterified into fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs) using Novozyme 435 as the biocatalyst in DMC. Herein, DMC was used as the reaction medium and acyl acceptor. The reaction conditions were optimized and the FAMEs yield was 293.82 mg FAMEs/g biomass in 6 h of reaction time at 60 °C in the presence of 0.2% (v/v) water. Novozyme 435 was reused more than ten times while maintaining relative FAMEs conversion that was greater than 90% of the initial FAMEs conversion. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  4. Efficiency of management of sustainable development – challenges, problems, barriers

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zięba K.

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available This paper discusses such issues as the importance of efficiency management of sustainable development. In the authors’ opinion, this matter is currently topical subject due to, among others, on the still high costs of irrational management in the field. Dynamically changing environment forces to search for new solutions for efficiency management of sustainable development, and unfortunately, in many countries it is still a significant problem. For some countries, the efficiency management of sustainable development is difficult. It should be noted that the problem with the inaction of relevant activities of the countries in the field of development of efficiency management of sustainability development will grow, because globalization makes it necessary to generate new solutions emerging to date problems. Facing each country there are so many challenges in the field. However, some countries are aware of the seriousness of the problem and therefore take a number of measures in this regard, often regardless of the amount of costs. This has an impact on their competitiveness. Apparent is also increasing incorporation of new original solutions in the field of sustainable development management.

  5. Efficient Extraction of Light from a Nitrogen-Vacancy Center in a Diamond Parabolic Reflector.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wan, Noel H; Shields, Brendan J; Kim, Donggyu; Mouradian, Sara; Lienhard, Benjamin; Walsh, Michael; Bakhru, Hassaram; Schröder, Tim; Englund, Dirk

    2018-04-03

    Quantum emitters in solids are being developed for a range of quantum technologies, including quantum networks, computing, and sensing. However, a remaining challenge is the poor photon collection due to the high refractive index of most host materials. Here we overcome this limitation by introducing monolithic parabolic reflectors as an efficient geometry for broadband photon extraction from quantum emitter and experimentally demonstrate this device for the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond. Simulations indicate a photon collection efficiency exceeding 75% across the visible spectrum and experimental devices, fabricated using a high-throughput gray scale lithography process, demonstrating a photon extraction efficiency of (41 ± 5)%. This device enables a raw experimental detection efficiency of (12 ± 1)% with fluorescence detection rates as high as (4.114 ± 0.003) × 10 6 counts per second (cps) from a single NV center. Enabled by our deterministic emitter localization and fabrication process, we find a high number of exceptional devices with an average count rate of (3.1 ± 0.9) × 10 6 cps.

  6. Correction in the efficiency of uranium purification process by solvent extraction

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Franca Junior, J.M.

    1981-01-01

    An uranium solvent extraction, of high purification, with full advantage of absorbed uranium in the begining of process, is described. Including a pulsed column, called correction column, the efficiency of whole process is increased, dispensing the recycling of uranium losses from leaching column. With the correction column the uranium losses go in continuity, for reextraction column, increasing the efficiency of process. The purified uranium is removed in the reextraction column in aqueous phase. The correction process can be carried out with full efficiency using pulsed columns or chemical mixer-settlers. (M.C.K.) [pt

  7. Reevaluation of microplastics extraction efficiency with the aim of Munich Plastic Sediment Separator.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zobkov, Mikhail; Esiukova, Elena; Grave, Aleksei; Khatmullina, Liliya

    2017-04-01

    Invading of microplastics into marine environment is known as a global ecological threat. Specific density of microplastics can vary significantly depending on a polymer type, technological processes of its production, additives, weathering, and biofouling. Plastic particles can sink or float on the sea surface, but with time, most of drifting plastics become negatively buoyant and sink to the sea floor due to biofouling or adherence of denser particles. As a result, the seabed becomes the ultimate repository for microplastic particles and fibres. A study of microplastics content in aquatic sediments is an important source of information about ways of their migration, sink and accumulation zones. The Munich Plastic Sediment Separator (MPSS), proposed by Imhoff et al. (2012), is considered as the most effective tool for microplastic extraction. However, we observed that the numbers of marine microplastics extracted with this tool from different kinds of bottom sediments were significantly underestimated. We examined the extraction efficiency of the MPSS by adding artificial reference particles (ARPs) to marine sediment sample before the extraction procedure. Extraction was performed by two different methods: the modified NOAA method and using the MPSS. The separation solution with specific density 1.5 g/ml was used. Subsequent cleaning, drying and microscope detection procedures were identical. The microplastics content was determined in supernatant fraction, in the bulk of the extraction solution, in spoil dump fraction of MPSS and in instrument wash-out. While the extraction efficiency from natural sediments of ARPs by the MPSS was really high (100% in most cases), the extraction efficiency of marine microplastics was up to 10 times lower than that obtained with modified NOAA method for the same samples. Less than 40% of the total marine microplastics content has been successfully extracted with the MPSS. Large amounts of marine microplastics were found in the

  8. Effect of β-Glucuronidase on Extraction Efficiency of Silymarin from ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Erah

    ... (HPLC) method. Methods: The importance of β-glucuronidase was evaluated by comparing the extraction efficiency of ... Keywords: Silymarin, Silybin, Extraction Efficiency, β-glucuronidase, HPLC. Received: 24 May 2011 ... silydianin, and a few flavonoids, mainly taxifolin [4]. ... silymarin from plasma by quantification of its.

  9. Comparable efficiency of different extraction protocols for wheat and rye prolamins

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Peter Socha

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available The identification and quantification of cereal storage proteins is of interest of many researchers. Their structural or functional properties are usually affected by the way how they are extracted. The efficiency of extraction process depends on the cereal source and working conditions. Here, we described various commonly used extraction protocols differing in the extraction conditions (pre-extraction of albumins/globulins, sequential extraction of individual protein fractions or co-extraction of gluten proteins, heating or non-heating, reducing or non-reducing conditions. The total protein content of all fractions extracted from commercially available wheat and rye flours was measured by the Bradford method. Tris-Tricine SDS-PAGE was used to determine the molecular weights of wheat gliadins, rye secalins and high-molecular weight glutelins which are the main triggering factors causing celiac disease. Moreover, we were able to distinguish individual subunits (α/β-, γ-, ω-gliadins and 40k-γ-, 75k-γ-, ω-secalins of wheat/rye prolamins. Generally, modified extraction protocols against classical Osborne procedure were more effective and yields higher protein content in all protein fractions. Bradford measurement led into underestimation of results in three extraction procedures, while all protein fractions were clearly identified on SDS-PAGE gels. Co-extraction of gluten proteins resulted in appearance of both, low-molecular weight fractions (wheat gliadins and rye secalins as well as high-molecular weight glutelins which means that is not necessary to extract gluten proteins separately. The two of three extraction protocols showed high technical reproducibility with coefficient of variation less than 20%. Carefully optimized extraction protocol can be advantageous for further analyses of cereal prolamins.  Normal 0 21 false false false SK X-NONE X-NONE

  10. Extraction of three bioactive diterpenoids from Andrographis paniculata: effect of the extraction techniques on extract composition and quantification of three andrographolides using high-performance liquid chromatography.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kumar, Satyanshu; Dhanani, Tushar; Shah, Sonal

    2014-10-01

    Andrographis paniculata (Burm.f.) wall.ex Nees (Acanthaceae) or Kalmegh is an important medicinal plant finding uses in many Ayurvedic formulations. Diterpenoid compounds andrographolides (APs) are the main bioactive phytochemicals present in leaves and herbage of A. paniculata. The efficiency of supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) using carbon dioxide was compared with the solid-liquid extraction techniques such as solvent extraction, ultrasound-assisted solvent extraction and microwave-assisted solvent extraction with methanol, water and methanol-water as solvents. Also a rapid and validated reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography-diode array detection method was developed for the simultaneous determination of the three biologically active compounds, AP, neoandrographolide and andrograpanin, in the extracts of A. paniculata. Under the best SFE conditions tested for diterpenoids, which involved extraction at 60°C and 100 bar, the extractive efficiencies were 132 and 22 µg/g for AP and neoandrographolide, respectively. The modifier percentage significantly affected the extraction efficiency. © The Author [2013]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  11. Combination of counterpropagation artificial neural networks and antioxidant activities for comprehensive evaluation of associated-extraction efficiency of various cyclodextrins in the traditional Chinese formula Xue-Zhi-Ning.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sun, Lili; Yang, Jianwen; Wang, Meng; Zhang, Huijie; Liu, Yanan; Ren, Xiaoliang; Qi, Aidi

    2015-11-10

    Xue-Zhi-Ning (XZN) is a widely used traditional Chinese medicine formula to treat hyperlipidemia. Recently, cyclodextrins (CDs) have been extensively used to minimize problems relative to medicine bioavailability, such as low solubility and poor stability. The objective of this study was to determine the associated-extraction efficiency of various CDs in XZN. Three various type CDs were evaluated, including native CDs (α-CD, β-CD), hydrophilic CD derivatives (HP-β-CD and Me-β-CD), and ionic CD derivatives (SBE-β-CD and CM-β-CD). An ultra high-performance liquid chromatography (UHPLC) fingerprint was applied to determine the components in CD extracts and original aqueous extract (OAE). A counterpropagation artificial neural network (CP-ANN) was used to analyze the components in different extracts and compare the selective extraction of various CDs. Extraction efficiencies of the various CDs in terms of extracted components follow the ranking, ionic CD derivatives>hydrophilic CD derivatives>native CDs>OAE. Besides, different types of CDs have their own selective extraction and ionic CD derivatives present the strongest associated-extraction efficiency. Antioxidant potentials of various extracts were evaluated by determining the inhibition of spontaneous, H2O2-induced, CCl4-induced and Fe(2+)/ascorbic acid-induced lipid peroxidation (LPO) and analyzing the scavenging capacity for DPPH and hydroxyl radicals. The order of extraction efficiencies of the various CDs relative to antioxidant activities is as follows: SBE-β-CD>CM-β-CD>HP-β-CD>Me-β-CD>β-CD>α-CD. It can be demonstrated that all of the CDs studied increase the extraction efficiency and that ionic CD derivatives (SBE-β-CD and CM-β-CD) present the highest extraction capability in terms of amount extracted and antioxidant activities of extracts. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  12. Improved Light Extraction Efficiency by Photonic Crystal Arrays on Transparent Contact Layer Using Focused Ion Beams

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Wu, G.M.; Tsai, B.H.; Kung, S.F.; Wu, C.F.

    2011-01-01

    Nitride-based thin-film materials have become increasingly important for the high brightness light-emitting diode applications. The improvements in light extraction and lower power consumption are highly desired. Although the internal quantum efficiency of GaN-based LED has been relatively high, only a small fraction of light can be extracted. In this study, a new design of two-dimensional photonic crystal array has been prepared on the top transparent contact layer of indium-tin oxide film to improve the light extraction efficiency using focused ion beam. The acceleration voltage of the Ga dual-beam nanotechnology system SMI 3050 was 30 kV and the ion beam current was 100 pA. The cylindrical air holes had the diameter of 150 nm and depth of 100 nm. The micro photoluminescence analysis results showed that the light output intensity could be 1.5 times of that of the non-patterned control sample. In addition, the structural damage from the focused ion beam drilling of GaN step could be eliminated. The excellent I-V characteristics have been maintained, and the external light extraction efficiency would be still improved for the LED devices. (author)

  13. Efficient recovery of whole blood RNA - a comparison of commercial RNA extraction protocols for high-throughput applications in wildlife species

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Schwochow Doreen

    2012-06-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Since the emergence of next generation sequencing platforms, unprecedented opportunities have arisen in the study of natural vertebrate populations. In particular, insights into the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms of adaptation can be revealed through study of the expression profiles of genes. However, as a pre-requisite to expression profiling, care must be taken in RNA preparation as factors like DNA contamination, RNA integrity or transcript abundance can affect downstream applications. Here, we evaluated five commonly used RNA extraction methods using whole blood sampled under varying conditions from 20 wild carnivores. Results Despite the use of minute starting volumes, all methods produced quantifiable RNA extracts (1.4 – 18.4 μg with varying integrity (RIN 4.6 - 7.7, the latter being significantly affected by the storage and extraction method used. We observed a significant overall effect of the extraction method on DNA contamination. One particular extraction method, the LeukoLOCK™ filter system, yielded high RNA integrity along with low DNA contamination and efficient depletion of hemoglobin transcripts highly abundant in whole blood. In a proof of concept sequencing experiment, we found globin RNA transcripts to occupy up to ¼ of all sequencing reads if libraries were not depleted of hemoglobin prior to sequencing. Conclusion By carefully choosing the appropriate RNA extraction method, whole blood can become a valuable source for high-throughput applications like expression arrays or transcriptome sequencing from natural populations. Additionally, candidate genes showing signs of selection could subsequently be genotyped in large population samples using whole blood as a source for RNA without harming individuals from rare or endangered species.

  14. Efficiency of solvent extraction methods for the determination of methyl mercury in forest soils

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Qian, J. [Department of Forest Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umeaa (Sweden); Dept. of Analytical Chemistry, Umeaa Univ. (Sweden); Skyllberg, U. [Department of Forest Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umeaa (Sweden); Tu, Q.; Frech, W. [Dept. of Analytical Chemistry, Umeaa Univ. (Sweden); Bleam, W.F. [Dept. of Soil Science, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States)

    2000-07-01

    Methyl mercury was determined by gas chromatography, microwave induced plasma, atomic emission spectrometry (GC-MIP-AES) using two different methods. One was based on extraction of mercury species into toluene, pre-concentration by evaporation and butylation of methyl mercury with a Grignard reagent followed by determination. With the other, methyl mercury was extracted into dichloromethane and back extracted into water followed by in situ ethylation, collection of ethylated mercury species on Tenax and determination. The accuracy of the entire procedure based on butylation was validated for the individual steps involved in the method. Methyl mercury added to various types of soil samples showed an overall average recovery of 87.5%. Reduced recovery was only caused by losses of methyl mercury during extraction into toluene and during pre-concentration by evaporation. The extraction of methyl mercury added to the soil was therefore quantitative. Since it is not possible to directly determine the extraction efficiency of incipient methyl mercury, the extraction efficiency of total mercury with an acidified solution containing CuSO{sub 4} and KBr was compared with high-pressure microwave acid digestion. The solvent extraction efficiency was 93%. For the IAEA 356 sediment certified reference material, mercury was less efficiently extracted and determined methyl mercury concentrations were below the certified value. Incomplete extraction could be explained by the presence of a large part of inorganic sulfides, as determined by x-ray absorption near-edge structure spectroscopy (XANES). Analyses of sediment reference material CRM 580 gave results in agreement with the certified value. The butylation method gave a detection limit for methyl mercury of 0.1 ng g{sup -1}, calculated as three times the standard deviation for repeated analysis of soil samples. Lower values were obtained with the ethylation method. The precision, expressed as RSD for concentrations 20 times

  15. A simple and efficient total genomic DNA extraction method for individual zooplankton.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fazhan, Hanafiah; Waiho, Khor; Shahreza, Md Sheriff

    2016-01-01

    Molecular approaches are widely applied in species identification and taxonomic studies of minute zooplankton. One of the most focused zooplankton nowadays is from Subclass Copepoda. Accurate species identification of all life stages of the generally small sized copepods through molecular analysis is important, especially in taxonomic and systematic assessment of harpacticoid copepod populations and to understand their dynamics within the marine community. However, total genomic DNA (TGDNA) extraction from individual harpacticoid copepods can be problematic due to their small size and epibenthic behavior. In this research, six TGDNA extraction methods done on individual harpacticoid copepods were compared. The first new simple, feasible, efficient and consistent TGDNA extraction method was designed and compared with the commercial kit and modified available TGDNA extraction methods. The newly described TGDNA extraction method, "Incubation in PCR buffer" method, yielded good and consistent results based on the high success rate of PCR amplification (82%) compared to other methods. Coupled with its relatively consistent and economical method the "Incubation in PCR buffer" method is highly recommended in the TGDNA extraction of other minute zooplankton species.

  16. Efficiency evaluation of slow extraction from the synchrotron

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kazarinov, N.Yu.; Mikhajlov, V.A.

    1986-01-01

    Analytical calculation of slow extraction of the beam out of the JINR synchrotron is made. The formulae for evaluation of the sextupole amplitudes and phases, quadrupole lens gradient range are obtained, the connection with circulated and extracted beam parameters is shown. The formulae for calculating optimal position of the septum-magnet or electrostatic septum are presented. On this basis the formula for estimating the efficiency of beam slow extraction out of the synchrotron is obtained under assumption that in the septum region during the extraction a quasistationary distribution of the beam density occurs

  17. Efficient method of protein extraction from Theobroma cacao L. roots for two-dimensional gel electrophoresis and mass spectrometry analyses.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bertolde, F Z; Almeida, A-A F; Silva, F A C; Oliveira, T M; Pirovani, C P

    2014-07-04

    Theobroma cacao is a woody and recalcitrant plant with a very high level of interfering compounds. Standard protocols for protein extraction were proposed for various types of samples, but the presence of interfering compounds in many samples prevented the isolation of proteins suitable for two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2-DE). An efficient method to extract root proteins for 2-DE was established to overcome these problems. The main features of this protocol are: i) precipitation with trichloroacetic acid/acetone overnight to prepare the acetone dry powder (ADP), ii) several additional steps of sonication in the ADP preparation and extractions with dense sodium dodecyl sulfate and phenol, and iii) adding two stages of phenol extractions. Proteins were extracted from roots using this new protocol (Method B) and a protocol described in the literature for T. cacao leaves and meristems (Method A). Using these methods, we obtained a protein yield of about 0.7 and 2.5 mg per 1.0 g lyophilized root, and a total of 60 and 400 spots could be separated, respectively. Through Method B, it was possible to isolate high-quality protein and a high yield of roots from T. cacao for high-quality 2-DE gels. To demonstrate the quality of the extracted proteins from roots of T. cacao using Method B, several protein spots were cut from the 2-DE gels, analyzed by tandem mass spectrometry, and identified. Method B was further tested on Citrus roots, with a protein yield of about 2.7 mg per 1.0 g lyophilized root and 800 detected spots.

  18. Molecular design of highly efficient extractants for separation of lanthanides and actinides by computational chemistry

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Uezu, Kazuya; Yamagawa, Jun-ichiro; Goto, Masahiro

    2006-01-01

    Novel organophosphorus extractants, which have two functional moieties in the molecular structure, were developed for the recycle system of transuranium elements using liquid-liquid extraction. The synthesized extractants showed extremely high extractability to lanthanides elements compared to those of commercially available extractants. The results of extraction equilibrium suggested that the structural effect of extractants is one of the key factors to enhance the selectivity and extractability in lanthanides extractions. Furthermore, molecular modeling was carried out to evaluate the extraction properties for extraction of lanthanides by the synthesized extractants. Molecular modeling was shown to be very useful for designing new extractants. The new concept to connect some functional moieties with a spacer is very useful and is a promising method to develop novel extractants for treatment of nuclear fuel. (author)

  19. GA Based Optimal Feature Extraction Method for Functional Data Classification

    OpenAIRE

    Jun Wan; Zehua Chen; Yingwu Chen; Zhidong Bai

    2010-01-01

    Classification is an interesting problem in functional data analysis (FDA), because many science and application problems end up with classification problems, such as recognition, prediction, control, decision making, management, etc. As the high dimension and high correlation in functional data (FD), it is a key problem to extract features from FD whereas keeping its global characters, which relates to the classification efficiency and precision to heavens. In this paper...

  20. Efficient extraction of xylan from delignified corn stover using dimethyl sulfoxide

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Rowley, John; Decker, Stephen R.; Michener, William; Black, Stuart

    2013-09-13

    Xylan can be extracted from biomass using either alkali (KOH or NaOH) or dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO); however, DMSO extraction is the only method that produces a water-soluble xylan. In this study, DMSO extraction of corn stover was studied at different temperatures with the objective of finding a faster, more efficient extraction method. The temperature and time of extraction were compared followed by a basic structural analysis to ensure that no significant structural changes occurred under different temperatures. The resulting data showed that heating to 70 degrees C during extraction can give a yield comparable to room temperature extraction while reducing the extraction time by ~90 %. This method of heating was shown to be the most efficient method currently available and was shown to retain the important structural characteristics of xylan extracted with DMSO at room temperature.

  1. Enhancement of white light OLED efficiency by combining both internal and external light extraction structures

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kao, I.-Ling; Ku, Chun-Neng; Chen, Yi-Ping; Lin, Ding-Zheng

    2012-09-01

    We proposed an internal nanostructure with a high reflective index planarization layer to solve the optical loss due to the reflective index mismatch between ITO and glass substrate. In our experiments, we found the electrical property of OLED device was significantly influenced by the internal nanostructures without planarization layer. Moreover, the internal extraction structure (IES) is not necessarily beneficial for light extraction. Therefore, we proposed a new substrate combine both internal and external extraction structure (EES) to extract trapping light. We successfully developed a high refractive index (N 1.7) planarization material with flat surface (RMS roughness < 2 nm), and improved about 70% device efficiency compared to traditional glass substrate.

  2. Using the MCNP Taylor series perturbation feature (efficiently) for shielding problems

    Science.gov (United States)

    Favorite, Jeffrey

    2017-09-01

    The Taylor series or differential operator perturbation method, implemented in MCNP and invoked using the PERT card, can be used for efficient parameter studies in shielding problems. This paper shows how only two PERT cards are needed to generate an entire parameter study, including statistical uncertainty estimates (an additional three PERT cards can be used to give exact statistical uncertainties). One realistic example problem involves a detailed helium-3 neutron detector model and its efficiency as a function of the density of its high-density polyethylene moderator. The MCNP differential operator perturbation capability is extremely accurate for this problem. A second problem involves the density of the polyethylene reflector of the BeRP ball and is an example of first-order sensitivity analysis using the PERT capability. A third problem is an analytic verification of the PERT capability.

  3. Double-Grating Displacement Structure for Improving the Light Extraction Efficiency of LEDs

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zhibin Wang

    2012-01-01

    Full Text Available To improve the light extraction efficiency of light-emitting diodes (LEDs, grating patterns were etched on GaN and silver film surfaces. The grating-patterned surface etching enabled the establishment of an LED model with a double-grating displacement structure that is based on the surface plasmon resonance principle. A numerical simulation was conducted using the finite difference time domain method. The influence of different grating periods for GaN surface and silver film thickness on light extraction efficiency was analyzed. The light extraction efficiency of LEDs was highest when the grating period satisfied grating coupling conditions. The wavelength of the highest value was also close to the light wavelength of the medium. The plasmon resonance frequencies on both sides of the silver film were affected by silver film thickness. With increasing film thickness, plasmon resonance frequency tended toward the same value and light extraction efficiency reached its maximum. When the grating period for the GaN surface was 365 nm and the silver film thickness was 390 nm, light extraction efficiency reached a maximum of 55%.

  4. Sharp Efficiency for Vector Equilibrium Problems on Banach Spaces

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Si-Huan Li

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available The concept of sharp efficient solution for vector equilibrium problems on Banach spaces is proposed. Moreover, the Fermat rules for local efficient solutions of vector equilibrium problems are extended to the sharp efficient solutions by means of the Clarke generalized differentiation and the normal cone. As applications, some necessary optimality conditions and sufficient optimality conditions for local sharp efficient solutions of a vector optimization problem with an abstract constraint and a vector variational inequality are obtained, respectively.

  5. A Solution Processed Flexible Nanocomposite Electrode with Efficient Light Extraction for Organic Light Emitting Diodes

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Lu; Liang, Jiajie; Chou, Shu-Yu; Zhu, Xiaodan; Niu, Xiaofan; Zhibinyu; Pei, Qibing

    2014-03-01

    Highly efficient organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) based on multiple layers of vapor evaporated small molecules, indium tin oxide transparent electrode, and glass substrate have been extensively investigated and are being commercialized. The light extraction from the exciton radiative decay is limited to less than 30% due to plasmonic quenching on the metallic cathode and the waveguide in the multi-layer sandwich structure. Here we report a flexible nanocomposite electrode comprising single-walled carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires stacked and embedded in the surface of a polymer substrate. Nanoparticles of barium strontium titanate are dispersed within the substrate to enhance light extraction efficiency. Green polymer OLED (PLEDs) fabricated on the nanocomposite electrode exhibit a maximum current efficiency of 118 cd/A at 10,000 cd/m2 with the calculated external quantum efficiency being 38.9%. The efficiencies of white PLEDs are 46.7 cd/A and 30.5%, respectively. The devices can be bent to 3 mm radius repeatedly without significant loss of electroluminescent performance. The nanocomposite electrode could pave the way to high-efficiency flexible OLEDs with simplified device structure and low fabrication cost.

  6. Efficient point cloud data processing in shipbuilding: Reformative component extraction method and registration method

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jingyu Sun

    2014-07-01

    Full Text Available To survive in the current shipbuilding industry, it is of vital importance for shipyards to have the ship components’ accuracy evaluated efficiently during most of the manufacturing steps. Evaluating components’ accuracy by comparing each component’s point cloud data scanned by laser scanners and the ship’s design data formatted in CAD cannot be processed efficiently when (1 extract components from point cloud data include irregular obstacles endogenously, or when (2 registration of the two data sets have no clear direction setting. This paper presents reformative point cloud data processing methods to solve these problems. K-d tree construction of the point cloud data fastens a neighbor searching of each point. Region growing method performed on the neighbor points of the seed point extracts the continuous part of the component, while curved surface fitting and B-spline curved line fitting at the edge of the continuous part recognize the neighbor domains of the same component divided by obstacles’ shadows. The ICP (Iterative Closest Point algorithm conducts a registration of the two sets of data after the proper registration’s direction is decided by principal component analysis. By experiments conducted at the shipyard, 200 curved shell plates are extracted from the scanned point cloud data, and registrations are conducted between them and the designed CAD data using the proposed methods for an accuracy evaluation. Results show that the methods proposed in this paper support the accuracy evaluation targeted point cloud data processing efficiently in practice.

  7. Fabrication of Natural Sensitizer Extracted from Mixture of Purple Cabbage, Roselle, Wormwood and Seaweed with High Conversion Efficiency for DSSC.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chang, Ho; Lai, Xuan-Rong

    2016-02-01

    This study aims to deal with the influence of different solvent in extraction of natural sensitizer and different thickness of photoelectrode thin film on the photoelectric conversion efficiency and the electron transport properties for the prepared dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC). The natural dyes of anthocyanin and chlorophyll dyes are extracted from mixture of purple cabbage and roselle and mixture of wormwood and seaweed, respectively. The experimental results show the cocktail dye extracted with ethanol and rotating speed of spin coating at 1000 rpm can achieve the greatest photoelectric conversion efficiency up to 1.85%. Electrochemical impedance result shows that the effective diffusion coefficient for the prepared DSSC with the thickness of photoelectrode thin film at 21 microm are 5.23 x 10(-4) cm2/s.

  8. An efficient and not polluting bottom ash extraction system

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Carrea, A.

    1992-01-01

    This paper reports that boiler waste water effluent must meet more and more tighter requirements to comply with environmental regulations; sluice water resulting from bottom ash handling is one of the main problems in this context, and many utilities are under effort to maximize the reuse of the sluice water, and, if possible, to meet the aim of zero water discharge from bottom ash handling system. At the same time ash reuse efforts gain strength in order to minimize waste production. One solution to these problems can be found in an innovative Bottom Ash Extraction System (MAC System), marked by the peculiarity to be a continuous dry ash removal; the system has been developed in the last four years by MAGALDI INDUSTRIE SRL in collaboration with ANSALDO Ricerche, the R and D department of ANSALDO, the main Italian Boiler Manufacturer, and is now installed in six ENEL Boilers. The elimination of the water as separation element between the bottom part of the furnace and the outside atmosphere gives advantages mainly from the environmental view point, but a certain improvement in the boiler efficiency has also been demonstrated by the application of the system

  9. Versatile and efficient pore network extraction method using marker-based watershed segmentation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gostick, Jeff T.

    2017-08-01

    Obtaining structural information from tomographic images of porous materials is a critical component of porous media research. Extracting pore networks is particularly valuable since it enables pore network modeling simulations which can be useful for a host of tasks from predicting transport properties to simulating performance of entire devices. This work reports an efficient algorithm for extracting networks using only standard image analysis techniques. The algorithm was applied to several standard porous materials ranging from sandstone to fibrous mats, and in all cases agreed very well with established or known values for pore and throat sizes, capillary pressure curves, and permeability. In the case of sandstone, the present algorithm was compared to the network obtained using the current state-of-the-art algorithm, and very good agreement was achieved. Most importantly, the network extracted from an image of fibrous media correctly predicted the anisotropic permeability tensor, demonstrating the critical ability to detect key structural features. The highly efficient algorithm allows extraction on fairly large images of 5003 voxels in just over 200 s. The ability for one algorithm to match materials as varied as sandstone with 20% porosity and fibrous media with 75% porosity is a significant advancement. The source code for this algorithm is provided.

  10. Efficient ConvNet Feature Extraction with Multiple RoI Pooling for Landmark-Based Visual Localization of Autonomous Vehicles

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yi Hou

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available Efficient and robust visual localization is important for autonomous vehicles. By achieving impressive localization accuracy under conditions of significant changes, ConvNet landmark-based approach has attracted the attention of people in several research communities including autonomous vehicles. Such an approach relies heavily on the outstanding discrimination power of ConvNet features to match detected landmarks between images. However, a major challenge of this approach is how to extract discriminative ConvNet features efficiently. To address this challenging, inspired by the high efficiency of the region of interest (RoI pooling layer, we propose a Multiple RoI (MRoI pooling technique, an enhancement of RoI, and a simple yet efficient ConvNet feature extraction method. Our idea is to leverage MRoI pooling to exploit multilevel and multiresolution information from multiple convolutional layers and then fuse them to improve the discrimination capacity of the final ConvNet features. The main advantages of our method are (a high computational efficiency for real-time applications; (b GPU memory efficiency for mobile applications; and (c use of pretrained model without fine-tuning or retraining for easy implementation. Experimental results on four datasets have demonstrated not only the above advantages but also the high discriminating power of the extracted ConvNet features with state-of-the-art localization accuracy.

  11. Vibration extraction based on fast NCC algorithm and high-speed camera.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lei, Xiujun; Jin, Yi; Guo, Jie; Zhu, Chang'an

    2015-09-20

    In this study, a high-speed camera system is developed to complete the vibration measurement in real time and to overcome the mass introduced by conventional contact measurements. The proposed system consists of a notebook computer and a high-speed camera which can capture the images as many as 1000 frames per second. In order to process the captured images in the computer, the normalized cross-correlation (NCC) template tracking algorithm with subpixel accuracy is introduced. Additionally, a modified local search algorithm based on the NCC is proposed to reduce the computation time and to increase efficiency significantly. The modified algorithm can rapidly accomplish one displacement extraction 10 times faster than the traditional template matching without installing any target panel onto the structures. Two experiments were carried out under laboratory and outdoor conditions to validate the accuracy and efficiency of the system performance in practice. The results demonstrated the high accuracy and efficiency of the camera system in extracting vibrating signals.

  12. Batteries for efficient energy extraction from a water salinity difference.

    Science.gov (United States)

    La Mantia, Fabio; Pasta, Mauro; Deshazer, Heather D; Logan, Bruce E; Cui, Yi

    2011-04-13

    The salinity difference between seawater and river water is a renewable source of enormous entropic energy, but extracting it efficiently as a form of useful energy remains a challenge. Here we demonstrate a device called "mixing entropy battery", which can extract and store it as useful electrochemical energy. The battery, containing a Na(2-x)Mn(5)O(10) nanorod electrode, was shown to extract energy from real seawater and river water and can be applied to a variety of salt waters. We demonstrated energy extraction efficiencies of up to 74%. Considering the flow rate of river water into oceans as the limiting factor, the renewable energy production could potentially reach 2 TW, or ∼13% of the current world energy consumption. The mixing entropy battery is simple to fabricate and could contribute significantly to renewable energy in the future.

  13. Perovskite solar cells with CuSCN hole extraction layers yield stabilized efficiencies greater than 20%

    Science.gov (United States)

    Arora, Neha; Dar, M. Ibrahim; Hinderhofer, Alexander; Pellet, Norman; Schreiber, Frank; Zakeeruddin, Shaik Mohammed; Grätzel, Michael

    2017-11-01

    Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) with efficiencies greater than 20% have been realized only with expensive organic hole-transporting materials. We demonstrate PSCs that achieve stabilized efficiencies exceeding 20% with copper(I) thiocyanate (CuSCN) as the hole extraction layer. A fast solvent removal method enabled the creation of compact, highly conformal CuSCN layers that facilitate rapid carrier extraction and collection. The PSCs showed high thermal stability under long-term heating, although their operational stability was poor. This instability originated from potential-induced degradation of the CuSCN/Au contact. The addition of a conductive reduced graphene oxide spacer layer between CuSCN and gold allowed PSCs to retain >95% of their initial efficiency after aging at a maximum power point for 1000 hours under full solar intensity at 60°C. Under both continuous full-sun illumination and thermal stress, CuSCN-based devices surpassed the stability of spiro-OMeTAD-based PSCs.

  14. Photocurrent extraction efficiency in colloidal quantum dot photovoltaics

    KAUST Repository

    Kemp, K. W.; Wong, C. T. O.; Hoogland, S. H.; Sargent, E. H.

    2013-01-01

    The efficiency of photocurrent extraction was studied directly inside operating Colloidal Quantum Dot (CQD) photovoltaic devices. A model was derived from first principles for a thin film p-n junction with a linearly spatially dependent electric field. Using this model, we were able to clarify the origins of recent improvement in CQD solar cell performance. From current-voltage diode characteristics under 1 sun conditions, we extracted transport lengths ranging from 39 nm to 86 nm for these materials. Characterization of the intensity dependence of photocurrent extraction revealed that the dominant loss mechanism limiting the transport length is trap-mediated recombination. © 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.

  15. Batteries for Efficient Energy Extraction from a Water Salinity Difference

    KAUST Repository

    La Mantia, Fabio

    2011-04-13

    The salinity difference between seawater and river water is a renewable source of enormous entropic energy, but extracting it efficiently as a form of useful energy remains a challenge. Here we demonstrate a device called "mixing entropy battery", which can extract and store it as useful electrochemical energy. The battery, containing a Na2-xMn 5O10 nanorod electrode, was shown to extract energy from real seawater and river water and can be applied to a variety of salt waters. We demonstrated energy extraction efficiencies of up to 74%. Considering the flow rate of river water into oceans as the limiting factor, the renewable energy production could potentially reach 2 TW, or ∼13% of the current world energy consumption. The mixing entropy battery is simple to fabricate and could contribute significantly to renewable energy in the future. © 2011 American Chemical Society.

  16. Application of an efficient strategy based on liquid-liquid extraction, high-speed counter-current chromatography, and preparative HPLC for the rapid enrichment, separation, and purification of four anthraquinones from Rheum tanguticum.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Tao; Liu, Yongling; Zou, Denglang; Chen, Chen; You, Jinmao; Zhou, Guoying; Sun, Jing; Li, Yulin

    2014-01-01

    This study presents an efficient strategy based on liquid-liquid extraction, high-speed counter-current chromatography, and preparative HPLC for the rapid enrichment, separation, and purification of four anthraquinones from Rheum tanguticum. A new solvent system composed of petroleum ether/ethyl acetate/water (4:2:1, v/v/v) was developed for the liquid-liquid extraction of the crude extract from R. tanguticum. As a result, emodin, aloe-emodin, physcion, and chrysophanol were greatly enriched in the organic layer. In addition, an efficient method was successfully established to separate and purify the above anthraquinones by high-speed counter-current chromatography and preparative HPLC. This study supplies a new alternative method for the rapid enrichment, separation, and purification of emodin, aloe-emodin, physcione, and chrysophanol. © 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

  17. Study on Suitable Light Conditions and Efficient Lipid Extraction Technologies for Biodiesel Production Based on Microalgae

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Yao; Zhang, Qingtao; Sun, Yuan; Yang, Chengjia

    2018-01-01

    As a new generation biodiesel feedstock, microalgae have most potential to replace fossil fuel. However, the limited scale and high cost are two bottleneck problems. Efficient microwave-assisted lipid extraction technologies and suitable light conditions for Chlorella Sorokiniana need further study for lowering the cost. In this study, three photoperiod groups(24L:0D, 12L:12D, 0L:24D), three illumination intensity groups (1800 lux, 3600 lux, 5400 lux)and four light spectrum groups (Red, green, blue, and white) were used to culture Chlorella Sorokiniana to investigate those effects on algae growth rate and biomass accumulation. The suitable microwave treatment was also studied to achieve an optimizing quantum fracturing technology. 400 w, 750 w and 1000 w microwave power were set and 60 °C, 75 °C, 90 °C microwave conditions were investigated. The results showed that Chlorella Sorokiniana under 24L:0D photoperiod with 5400 lux white light can achieve better growth rate. The 90 °C / 1000w microwave treatment was identified as the most simple, easy, and effective way for lipid extraction from Chlorella Sorokiniana. As the raw material of biodiesel production, C18:1, C18:2 and C18:3 have accounted for important components of fatty acid in Chlorella Sorokiniana. Therefore, Chlorella Sorokiniana is a good raw material for the production of good quality biodiesel under suitable and efficient technologies.

  18. [Remediation efficiency of lead-contaminated soil at an industrial site by ultrasonic-assisted chemical extraction].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Xin-jie; Huang, Jin-lou; Liu, Zhi-qiang; Yue, Xi

    2013-09-01

    This research chose five lead-contaminated sites of a lead-acid battery factory to analyze the speciation distribution and concentration of lead. Under the same conditions (0.1 mol x L(-1) EDTA,30 min, 25 degrees C), the removal effect of heavy metal was compared between ultrasonic-assisted chemical extraction (UCE) and conventional chemical extraction ( CCE), and the variation of lead speciation was further explored. The results showed that the lead removal efficiency of UCE was significantly better than CCE. The lead removal efficiency of WS, A, B, C and BZ was 10.06%, 48.29%, 48.69%, 53.28% and 36.26% under CCE. While the removal efficiency of the UCE was 22.42%, 69.31%, 71.00%, 74.49% and 71.58%, with the average efficiency higher by 22%. By comparing the speciation distribution of the two washing methods, it was found that the acid extractable content maintained or decreased after UCE, whereas it showed an increasing trend after CCE. The reduction effect of the reducible was as high as 98% by UCE. UCE also showed a more efficient reduction effect of the organic matter-sulfite bounded form and the residual form. Hence, it is feasible to improve the washing efficiency of heavy metal contained in soil by conducting the cleaning process with the help of ultrasonic wave, which is a simple and fast mean to remove lead from contaminated sites.

  19. Comparison of two methods for extraction of volatiles from marine PL emulsions

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Lu, Henna Fung Sieng; Nielsen, Nina Skall; Jacobsen, Charlotte

    2013-01-01

    The dynamic headspace (DHS) thermal desorption principle using Tenax GR tube, as well as the solid phase micro‐extraction (SPME) tool with carboxen/polydimethylsiloxane 50/30 µm CAR/PDMS SPME fiber, both coupled to GC/MS were implemented for the isolation and identification of both lipid...... and Strecker derived volatiles in marine phospholipids (PL) emulsions. Comparison of volatile extraction efficiency was made between the methods. For marine PL emulsions with a highly complex composition of volatiles headspace, a fiber saturation problem was encountered when using CAR/PDMS‐SPME for volatiles...... analysis. However, the CAR/PDMS‐SPME technique was efficient for lipid oxidation analysis in emulsions of less complex headspace. The SPME method extracted volatiles of lower molecular weights more efficient than the DHS method. On the other hand, DHS Tenax GR appeared to be more efficient in extracting...

  20. Automated, simple, and efficient influenza RNA extraction from clinical respiratory swabs using TruTip and epMotion.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Griesemer, Sara B; Holmberg, Rebecca; Cooney, Christopher G; Thakore, Nitu; Gindlesperger, Alissa; Knickerbocker, Christopher; Chandler, Darrell P; St George, Kirsten

    2013-09-01

    Rapid, simple and efficient influenza RNA purification from clinical samples is essential for sensitive molecular detection of influenza infection. Automation of the TruTip extraction method can increase sample throughput while maintaining performance. To automate TruTip influenza RNA extraction using an Eppendorf epMotion robotic liquid handler, and to compare its performance to the bioMerieux easyMAG and Qiagen QIAcube instruments. Extraction efficacy and reproducibility of the automated TruTip/epMotion protocol was assessed from influenza-negative respiratory samples spiked with influenza A and B viruses. Clinical extraction performance from 170 influenza A and B-positive respiratory swabs was also evaluated and compared using influenza A and B real-time RT-PCR assays. TruTip/epMotion extraction efficacy was 100% in influenza virus-spiked samples with at least 745 influenza A and 370 influenza B input gene copies per extraction, and exhibited high reproducibility over four log10 concentrations of virus (extraction were also positive following TruTip extraction. Overall Ct value differences obtained between TruTip/epMotion and easyMAG/QIAcube clinical extracts ranged from 1.24 to 1.91. Pairwise comparisons of Ct values showed a high correlation of the TruTip/epMotion protocol to the other methods (R2>0.90). The automated TruTip/epMotion protocol is a simple and rapid extraction method that reproducibly purifies influenza RNA from respiratory swabs, with comparable efficacy and efficiency to both the easyMAG and QIAcube instruments. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  1. Data Extraction Based on Page Structure Analysis

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ren Yichao

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available The information we need has some confusing problems such as dispersion and different organizational structure. In addition, because of the existence of unstructured data like natural language and images, extracting local content pages is extremely difficult. In the light of of the problems above, this article will apply a method combined with page structure analysis algorithm and page data extraction algorithm to accomplish the gathering of network data. In this way, the problem that traditional complex extraction model behave poorly when dealing with large-scale data is perfectly solved and the page data extraction efficiency is also boosted to a new level. In the meantime, the article will also make a comparison about pages and content of different types between the methods of DOM structure based on the page and HTML regularities of distribution. After all of those, we may find a more efficient extract method.

  2. CMOS circuits for piezoelectric energy harvesters efficient power extraction, interface modeling and loss analysis

    CERN Document Server

    Hehn, Thorsten

    2014-01-01

    This book deals with the challenge of exploiting ambient vibrational energy which can be used to power small and low-power electronic devices, e.g. wireless sensor nodes. Generally, particularly for low voltage amplitudes, low-loss rectification is required to achieve high conversion efficiency. In the special case of piezoelectric energy harvesting, pulsed charge extraction has the potential to extract more power compared to a single rectifier. For this purpose, a fully autonomous CMOS integrated interface circuit for piezoelectric generators which fulfills these requirements is presented.Due

  3. Radiative heat transfer enhancement using geometric and spectral control for achieving high-efficiency solar-thermophotovoltaic systems

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kohiyama, Asaka; Shimizu, Makoto; Yugami, Hiroo

    2018-04-01

    We numerically investigate radiative heat transfer enhancement using spectral and geometric control of the absorber/emitter. A high extraction of the radiative heat transfer from the emitter as well as minimization of the optical losses from the absorber leads to high extraction and solar thermophotovoltaic (STPV) system efficiency. The important points for high-efficiency STPV design are discussed for the low and high area ratio of the absorber/emitter. The obtained general guideline will support the design of various types of STPV systems.

  4. High-efficiency wind turbine

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hein, L. A.; Myers, W. N.

    1980-01-01

    Vertical axis wind turbine incorporates several unique features to extract more energy from wind increasing efficiency 20% over conventional propeller driven units. System also features devices that utilize solar energy or chimney effluents during periods of no wind.

  5. Critical parameters in cost-effective alkaline extraction for high protein yield from leaves

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Zhang, C.; Sanders, J.P.M.; Bruins, M.E.

    2014-01-01

    Leaves are potential resources for feed or food, but their applications are limited due to a high proportion of insoluble protein and inefficient processing. To overcome these problems, parameters of alkaline extraction were evaluated using green tea residue (GTR). Protein extraction could be

  6. Comparison of Water Turbidity Removal Efficiencies of Moringa oleifera Seed Extract and Poly-aluminum Chloride

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Bijan Bina

    2007-03-01

    Full Text Available Coagulation and flocculation are essential processes in water treatment plants. Metal salts such as aluminum sulphate and ferric chloride are commonly used in the coagulation process in Iran. Poly-aluminum chloride (PAC has been used recently in Baba-Sheykhali Water Treatment Plant in Isfahan. Synthetic coagulants have health problems associated with them and are additionally uneconomical for use in developing countries. In this study, PAC and Moringa oleifera seed extract were compared for their efficiency as coagulants. Moringa oleifera, locally called “oil gaz” in Iran, grows in southern parts of Iran. One variety of this tree, Moringa progeria, is indigenous to Iran. For the purposes of this study, lab experiments were performed using distilled water containing synthetic caoline. Four turbidity levels of 10, 50, 500, and1000 (NTU and four pH levels of 5, 6, 7, and 8 were used for the jar test. It was found that oleifera seed extract was capable of removing 98, 97, 89, and 55% of the turbidity in the four experiments at optimum concentration levels of 10-30 (mg/l for all four pH levels of 6 to 8, respectively. PAC, in contrast, removed 99, 98, 95, and 89% of the turbidity at optimum concentrations of 20-30 (mg/l for a pH level of 8. The results indicate that Moringa oleifera seed extract has little effect on pH level and enjoys higher removal efficiency for higher turbidity levels. Reducing pH level decreased PAC turbidity removal efficiency.

  7. Microalgae based biorefinery: evaluation of oil extraction methods in terms of efficiency, costs, toxicity and energy in lab-scale

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ángel Darío González-Delgado

    2013-06-01

    Full Text Available Several alternatives of microalgal metabolites extraction and transformation are being studied for achieving the total utilization of this energy crop of great interest worldwide. Microalgae oil extraction is a key stage in microalgal biodiesel production chains and their efficiency affects significantly the global process efficiency. In this study, a comparison of five oil extraction methods in lab-scale was made taking as additional parameters, besides extraction efficiency, the costs of method performing, energy requirements, and toxicity of solvents used, in order to elucidate the convenience of their incorporation to a microalgae-based topology of biorefinery. Methods analyzed were Solvent extraction assisted with high speed homogenization (SHE, Continuous reflux solvent extraction (CSE, Hexane based extraction (HBE, Cyclohexane based extraction (CBE and Ethanol-hexane extraction (EHE, for this evaluation were used the microalgae strains Nannochloropsis sp., Guinardia sp., Closterium sp., Amphiprora sp. and Navicula sp., obtained from a Colombian microalgae bioprospecting. In addition, morphological response of strains to oil extraction methods was also evaluated by optic microscopy. Results shows that although there is not a unique oil extraction method which excels in all parameters evaluated, CSE, SHE and HBE appears as promising alternatives, while HBE method is shown as the more convenient for using in lab-scale and potentially scalable for implementation in a microalgae based biorefinery

  8. Innovative-Simplified Nuclear Power Plant Efficiency Evaluation with High-Efficiency Steam Injector System

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Shoji, Goto; Shuichi, Ohmori; Michitsugu, Mori

    2006-01-01

    It is possible to establish simplified system with reduced space and total equipment weight using high-efficiency Steam Injectors (SI) instead of low-pressure feedwater heaters in Nuclear Power Plant (NPP). The SI works as a heat exchanger through direct contact between feedwater from condensers and extracted steam from turbines. It can get higher pressure than supplied steam pressure. The maintenance and reliability are still higher than the feedwater ones because SI has no movable parts. This paper describes the analysis of the heat balance, plant efficiency and the operation of this Innovative-Simplified NPP with high-efficiency SI. The plant efficiency and operation are compared with the electric power of 1100 MWe-class BWR system and the Innovative-Simplified BWR system with SI. The SI model is adapted into the heat balance simulator with a simplified model. The results show that plant efficiencies of the Innovated-Simplified BWR system are almost equal to original BWR ones. The present research is one of the projects that are carried out by Tokyo Electric Power Company, Toshiba Corporation, and six Universities in Japan, funded from the Institute of Applied Energy (IAE) of Japan as the national public research-funded program. (authors)

  9. Tapering-induced enhancement of light extraction efficiency of nanowire deep ultraviolet LED by theoretical simulations

    KAUST Repository

    Lin, Ronghui

    2018-04-21

    A nanowire (NW) structure provides an alternative scheme for deep ultraviolet light emitting diodes (DUV-LEDs) that promises high material quality and better light extraction efficiency (LEE). In this report, we investigate the influence of the tapering angle of closely packed AlGaN NWs, which is found to exist naturally in molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) grown NW structures, on the LEE of NW DUV-LEDs. It is observed that, by having a small tapering angle, the vertical extraction is greatly enhanced for both transverse magnetic (TM) and transverse electric (TE) polarizations. Most notably, the vertical extraction of TM emission increased from 4.8% to 24.3%, which makes the LEE reasonably large to achieve high-performance DUV-LEDs. This is because the breaking of symmetry in the vertical direction changes the propagation of the light significantly to allow more coupling into radiation modes. Finally, we introduce errors to the NW positions to show the advantages of the tapered NW structures can be projected to random closely packed NW arrays. The results obtained in this paper can provide guidelines for designing efficient NW DUV-LEDs.

  10. Tapering-induced enhancement of light extraction efficiency of nanowire deep ultraviolet LED by theoretical simulations

    KAUST Repository

    Lin, Ronghui; Galan, Sergio Valdes; Sun, Haiding; Hu, Yangrui; Alias, Mohd Sharizal; Janjua, Bilal; Ng, Tien Khee; Ooi, Boon S.; Li, Xiaohang

    2018-01-01

    A nanowire (NW) structure provides an alternative scheme for deep ultraviolet light emitting diodes (DUV-LEDs) that promises high material quality and better light extraction efficiency (LEE). In this report, we investigate the influence of the tapering angle of closely packed AlGaN NWs, which is found to exist naturally in molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) grown NW structures, on the LEE of NW DUV-LEDs. It is observed that, by having a small tapering angle, the vertical extraction is greatly enhanced for both transverse magnetic (TM) and transverse electric (TE) polarizations. Most notably, the vertical extraction of TM emission increased from 4.8% to 24.3%, which makes the LEE reasonably large to achieve high-performance DUV-LEDs. This is because the breaking of symmetry in the vertical direction changes the propagation of the light significantly to allow more coupling into radiation modes. Finally, we introduce errors to the NW positions to show the advantages of the tapered NW structures can be projected to random closely packed NW arrays. The results obtained in this paper can provide guidelines for designing efficient NW DUV-LEDs.

  11. High-Resolution Remote Sensing Image Building Extraction Based on Markov Model

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhao, W.; Yan, L.; Chang, Y.; Gong, L.

    2018-04-01

    With the increase of resolution, remote sensing images have the characteristics of increased information load, increased noise, more complex feature geometry and texture information, which makes the extraction of building information more difficult. To solve this problem, this paper designs a high resolution remote sensing image building extraction method based on Markov model. This method introduces Contourlet domain map clustering and Markov model, captures and enhances the contour and texture information of high-resolution remote sensing image features in multiple directions, and further designs the spectral feature index that can characterize "pseudo-buildings" in the building area. Through the multi-scale segmentation and extraction of image features, the fine extraction from the building area to the building is realized. Experiments show that this method can restrain the noise of high-resolution remote sensing images, reduce the interference of non-target ground texture information, and remove the shadow, vegetation and other pseudo-building information, compared with the traditional pixel-level image information extraction, better performance in building extraction precision, accuracy and completeness.

  12. Selective and Efficient Solvent Extraction of Copper(II Ions from Chloride Solutions by Oxime Extractants

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zahra Kaboli Tanha

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available Oxime extractants 3-tert-butyl-2-hydroxy-5-methyl benzaldehyde oxime (HL1 and 3-tert-butyl-2-hydroxy-5-methoxy benzaldehyde oxime (HL2 were synthesized and characterized by conventional spectroscopic methods. Suitable lipophilic nature of the prepared extractants allowed examining the ability of these molecules for extraction-separation of copper from its mixture with normally associated metal ions by performing competitive extraction experiments of Cu(II, Co(II, Ni(II, Zn(II, Cd(II and Pb(II ions from chloride solutions. Both ligands transfer selectively the copper ions into dichloromethane by a cation exchange mechanism. Conventional log-log analysis and isotherm curves showed that Cu(II ions are extracted as the complexes with 1:2 metal to ligand ratio by both extractants. Verification of the effect of the organic diluent used in the extraction of copper ions by HL1 and HL2 demonstrated that the extraction efficiency varies as: dichloromethane ~ dichloroethane > toluene > xylene > ethylacetate. Time dependency investigation of the extraction processes revealed that the kinetics of the extraction of copper by HL2 is more rapid than that of HL1. The application of the ligands for extraction-separation of copper ions from leach solutions of cobalt and nickel-cadmium filter-cakes of a zinc production plants was evaluated.

  13. Efficiency of RNA extraction from selected bacteria in the context of biogas production and metatranscriptomics.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stark, Lucy; Giersch, Tina; Wünschiers, Röbbe

    2014-10-01

    Understanding the microbial population in anaerobic digestion is an essential task to increase efficient substrate use and process stability. The metabolic state, represented e.g. by the transcriptome, of a fermenting system can help to find markers for monitoring industrial biogas production to prevent failures or to model the whole process. Advances in next-generation sequencing make transcriptomes accessible for large-scale analyses. In order to analyze the metatranscriptome of a mixed-species sample, isolation of high-quality RNA is the first step. However, different extraction methods may yield different efficiencies in different species. Especially in mixed-species environmental samples, unbiased isolation of transcripts is important for meaningful conclusions. We applied five different RNA-extraction protocols to nine taxonomic diverse bacterial species. Chosen methods are based on various lysis and extraction principles. We found that the extraction efficiency of different methods depends strongly on the target organism. RNA isolation of gram-positive bacteria was characterized by low yield whilst from gram-negative species higher concentrations can be obtained. Transferring our results to mixed-species investigations, such as metatranscriptomics with biofilms or biogas plants, leads to the conclusion that particular microorganisms might be over- or underrepresented depending on the method applied. Special care must be taken when using such metatranscriptomics data for, e.g. process modeling. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  14. High-Efficient Low-Cost Photovoltaics Recent Developments

    CERN Document Server

    Petrova-Koch, Vesselinka; Goetzberger, Adolf

    2009-01-01

    A bird's-eye view of the development and problems of recent photovoltaic cells and systems and prospects for Si feedstock is presented. High-efficient low-cost PV modules, making use of novel efficient solar cells (based on c-Si or III-V materials), and low cost solar concentrators are in the focus of this book. Recent developments of organic photovoltaics, which is expected to overcome its difficulties and to enter the market soon, are also included.

  15. 3rd symposium on high-efficiency boiler technology: potential, performance, shortcomings of natural gas fuelled high-efficiency boilers

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    1993-01-01

    The brochure contains abstracts of the papers presented at the symposium. The potential, performance and marketing problems of natural gas high-efficiency boiler systems are outlined, and new ideas are presented for gas utilities, producers of appliances, fitters, and chimneysweeps. 13 papers are available as separate regards in this database. (HW) [de

  16. Enhanced Coagulation Efficiency of Moringa Oleifera Seeds Through Selective Oil Extraction

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Suleyman A. Muyibi

    2012-10-01

    Full Text Available In this laboratory based study, varying quantities of oil, corresponding to 20 % w/w, 25 % w/w and 30 % w/w kernel weight extracted from Moringa oleifera seeds ( S1, S2, S3 respectively  were applied in the coagulation of model turbid water (kaolin suspension and turbid river water samples from River Batang Kali and River Selangor in Malaysia to determine the percentage oil removed which gave the best coagulation efficiency. For model turbid water (kaolin suspension coagulation of low turbidity of 35 NTU, medium turbidity of 100 NTU and high turbidity of 300 NTU, sample S2  gave the best turbidity removal corresponding to 91.7%, 95.5% and 99% respectively. Application of sample S2 to River Batang Kali with low initial turbidity of 32 NTU and high initial turbidity of 502 NTU gave a highest turbidity removal of 69% and 99% respectively. Application to River Selangor with medium initial turbidity- of 87 NTU and high initial turbidity of 466 NTU gave a highest residual turbidity' of 94% and 98.9%,  respectively.Key words: Moringa oleifera seed, selective oil extraction, coagulation, model turbid water (kaolin suspension, river water, turbidity removal.

  17. Extraction Method for Earthquake-Collapsed Building Information Based on High-Resolution Remote Sensing

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Chen, Peng; Wu, Jian; Liu, Yaolin; Wang, Jing

    2014-01-01

    At present, the extraction of earthquake disaster information from remote sensing data relies on visual interpretation. However, this technique cannot effectively and quickly obtain precise and efficient information for earthquake relief and emergency management. Collapsed buildings in the town of Zipingpu after the Wenchuan earthquake were used as a case study to validate two kinds of rapid extraction methods for earthquake-collapsed building information based on pixel-oriented and object-oriented theories. The pixel-oriented method is based on multi-layer regional segments that embody the core layers and segments of the object-oriented method. The key idea is to mask layer by layer all image information, including that on the collapsed buildings. Compared with traditional techniques, the pixel-oriented method is innovative because it allows considerably rapid computer processing. As for the object-oriented method, a multi-scale segment algorithm was applied to build a three-layer hierarchy. By analyzing the spectrum, texture, shape, location, and context of individual object classes in different layers, the fuzzy determined rule system was established for the extraction of earthquake-collapsed building information. We compared the two sets of results using three variables: precision assessment, visual effect, and principle. Both methods can extract earthquake-collapsed building information quickly and accurately. The object-oriented method successfully overcomes the pepper salt noise caused by the spectral diversity of high-resolution remote sensing data and solves the problem of same object, different spectrums and that of same spectrum, different objects. With an overall accuracy of 90.38%, the method achieves more scientific and accurate results compared with the pixel-oriented method (76.84%). The object-oriented image analysis method can be extensively applied in the extraction of earthquake disaster information based on high-resolution remote sensing

  18. [Evaluation of the results of high-speed handpiece and minimally invasive extraction in impacted mandibular third molar extraction].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yang, Ying-yang; DU, Sheng-nan; Lv, Zong-kai

    2015-08-01

    To compare the results of high-speed handpiece and minimally invasive extraction in impacted mandibular third molar extraction. From May 2011 to May 2014, 83 patients undergoing impacted mandibular third molar extraction were enrolled into the study and randomly divided into 2 groups: 42 patients in group A (experimental group) and 41 patients in group B (control group). Group B underwent extraction with traditional method and group A underwent high-speed handpiece and minimally invasive extraction of the impacted mandibular third molar. The occurrences of the root fracture, gingival laceration, tooth mobility, lingual bone plate fracture, jaw fracture and dislocation of temporomandibular joint during operation and lower lip numbness, dry socket, facial swelling and limitation of mouth opening after operation were observed and compared between 2 groups. The operation time, integrity of extraction sockets, VAS pain score and satisfaction from patients were collected and compared. SPSS 19.0 software package was used for statistical analysis. The occurrences of root fracture, gingival laceration, tooth mobility, lingual bone plate fracture, jaw fracture, and dislocation of temporomandibular joint during operation in group A significantly decreased compared with group B (Pextraction sockets, VAS pain scores and satisfaction scores in group A improved significantly compared with group B (Phandpiece and minimally invasive extraction should be widely used in impacted mandibular third molar extraction, due to the advantages of simple operation, high efficiency, minimal trauma, and few perioperative complications.

  19. Efficient inclusion body processing using chemical extraction and high gradient magnetic fishing

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Heebøll-Nielsen, Anders; Choe, W.S.; Middelberg, A.P.J.

    2003-01-01

    of the product-loaded supports with the aid of high gradient magnetic fields. The manufacture and testing of two types of micron-sized nonporous superparamagnetic metal chelator particles derivatized with iminodiacetic acid is described. In small-scale adsorption studies conducted with a hexahistidine tagged...... at a 60-fold increased scale using the high gradient magnetic fishing (HGMF) system to collect loaded Cu2+-chelator particles following batch adsorption of L1. Over 70% of the initial Ll present was recovered within the HGMF rig in a highly clarified form in two batch elution cycles with an overall......In this study we introduce a radical new approach for the recovery of proteins expressed in the form of inclusion bodies, involving W chemical extraction from the host cells, (ii) adsorptive capture of the target protein onto small magnetic adsorbents, and (iii) subsequent rapid collection...

  20. Improving IUE High Dispersion Extraction

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lawton, Patricia J.; VanSteenberg, M. E.; Massa, D.

    2007-01-01

    We present a different method to extract high dispersion International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) spectra from the New Spectral Image Processing System (NEWSIPS) geometrically and photometrically corrected (SI HI) images of the echellogram. The new algorithm corrects many of the deficiencies that exist in the NEWSIPS high dispersion (SIHI) spectra . Specifically, it does a much better job of accounting for the overlap of the higher echelle orders, it eliminates a significant time dependency in the extracted spectra (which can be traced to the background model used in the NEWSIPS extractions), and it can extract spectra from echellogram images that are more highly distorted than the NEWSIPS extraction routines can handle. Together, these improvements yield a set of IUE high dispersion spectra whose scientific integrity is sign ificantly better than the NEWSIPS products. This work has been supported by NASA ADP grants.

  1. Evaluation of the fermentation of high gravity thick sugar beet juice worts for efficient bioethanol production

    Science.gov (United States)

    2013-01-01

    Background Sugar beet and intermediates of sugar beet processing are considered to be very attractive feedstock for ethanol production due to their content of fermentable sugars. In particular, the processing of the intermediates into ethanol is considerably facilitated because it does not require pretreatment or enzymatic treatment in contrast to production from starch raw materials. Moreover, the advantage of thick juice is high solid substance and saccharose content which eliminates problems with the storability of this feedstock. Results The objective of this study were to investigate bioethanol production from thick juice worts and the effects of their concentration, the type of mineral supplement, as well as the dose of yeast inoculum on fermentation dynamics and ethanol yield. The obtained results show that to ensure efficient ethanolic fermentation of high gravity thick juice worts, one needs to use a yeast strain with high ethanol tolerance and a large amount of inoculum. The highest ethanol yield (94.9 ± 2.8% of the theoretical yield) and sugars intake of 96.5 ± 2.9% were obtained after the fermentation of wort with an extract content of 250 g/kg supplemented with diammonium hydrogen phosphate (0.3 g/L of wort) and inoculated with 2 g of Ethanol Red dry yeast per L of wort. An increase in extract content in the fermentation medium from 250 g/L to 280 g/kg resulted in decreased efficiency of the process. Also the distillates originating from worts with an extract content of 250 g/kg were characterized by lower acetaldehyde concentration than those obtained from worts with an extract content of 280 g/kg. Conclusions Under the favorable conditions determined in our experiments, 38.9 ± 1.2 L of 100% (v/v) ethyl alcohol can be produced from 100 kg of thick juice. The obtained results show that the selection of process conditions and the yeast for the fermentation of worts with a higher sugar content can improve the economic performance of the

  2. Metasurface integrated high energy efficient and high linearly polarized InGaN/GaN light emitting diode.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Miao; Xu, Fuyang; Lin, Yu; Cao, Bing; Chen, Linghua; Wang, Chinhua; Wang, Jianfeng; Xu, Ke

    2017-07-06

    We proposed and demonstrated an integrated high energy efficient and high linearly polarized InGaN/GaN green LED grown on (0001) oriented sapphire with combined metasurface polarizing converter and polarizer system. It is different from those conventional polarized light emissions generated with plasmonic metallic grating in which at least 50% high energy loss occurs inherently due to high reflection of the transverse electric (TE) component of an electric field. A reflecting metasurface, with a two dimensional elliptic metal cylinder array (EMCA) that functions as a half-wave plate, was integrated at the bottom of a LED such that the back-reflected TE component, that is otherwise lost by a dielectric/metal bi-layered wire grids (DMBiWG) polarizer on the top emitting surface of the LED, can be converted to desired transverse magnetic (TM) polarized emission after reflecting from the metasurface. This significantly enhances the polarized light emission efficiency. Experimental results show that extraction efficiency of the polarized emission can be increased by 40% on average in a wide angle of ±60° compared to that with the naked bottom of sapphire substrate, or 20% compared to reflecting Al film on the bottom of a sapphire substrate. An extinction ratio (ER) of average value 20 dB within an angle of ±60° can be simultaneously obtained directly from an InGaN/GaN LED. Our results show the possibility of simultaneously achieving a high degree of polarization and high polarization extraction efficiency at the integrated device level. This advances the field of GaN LED toward energy efficiency, multi-functional applications in illumination, display, medicine, and light manipulation.

  3. High-capacity conductive nanocellulose paper sheets for electrochemically controlled extraction of DNA oligomers.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Aamir Razaq

    Full Text Available Highly porous polypyrrole (PPy-nanocellulose paper sheets have been evaluated as inexpensive and disposable electrochemically controlled three-dimensional solid phase extraction materials. The composites, which had a total anion exchange capacity of about 1.1 mol kg(-1, were used for extraction and subsequent release of negatively charged fluorophore tagged DNA oligomers via galvanostatic oxidation and reduction of a 30-50 nm conformal PPy layer on the cellulose substrate. The ion exchange capacity, which was, at least, two orders of magnitude higher than those previously reached in electrochemically controlled extraction, originated from the high surface area (i.e. 80 m(2 g(-1 of the porous composites and the thin PPy layer which ensured excellent access to the ion exchange material. This enabled the extractions to be carried out faster and with better control of the PPy charge than with previously employed approaches. Experiments in equimolar mixtures of (dT(6, (dT(20, and (dT(40 DNA oligomers showed that all oligomers could be extracted, and that the smallest oligomer was preferentially released with an efficiency of up to 40% during the reduction of the PPy layer. These results indicate that the present material is very promising for the development of inexpensive and efficient electrochemically controlled ion-exchange membranes for batch-wise extraction of biomolecules.

  4. EVALUATION OF THE FLOCCULATION EFFICIENCY OF Chlorella vulgaris MEDIATED BY Moringa oleifera SEED UNDER DIFFERENT FORMS: FLOUR, SEED CAKE AND EXTRACTS OF FLOUR AND CAKE

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    C. M. L. Lapa Teixeira

    Full Text Available Abstract Flocculation as a pre-separation method can help make production of biodiesel from microalgae economically feasible. In a previous study, Moringa oleifera seed flour (1 g.L-1 was shown to be a very efficient flocculant for Chlorella vulgaris, a microalga with high potential for biodiesel production. In this study, several aspects of C vulgaris flocculation mediated by Moringa were investigated in order to optimize the separation of this biomass. Flocculation efficiency was the same with seeds from different origins and lots. The stationary growth stage was best for harvesting C vulgaris cells to carry out flocculation efficiently (93%. The use of flour extracts and cake extracts generated the best cost-benefit ratio (flocculation efficiency from 78 to 97% with a saving in mass of seed of 75%. The highest efficiency was reached with extracts prepared with seawater and NaCl solutions which have high salt concentration. Reasonable stability of the extract allows its use for up to two weeks, provided it is kept at low temperature (4 ºC.

  5. Sequential high pressure extractions applied to recover piceatannol and scirpusin B from passion fruit bagasse.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Viganó, Juliane; Aguiar, Ana C; Moraes, Damila R; Jara, José L P; Eberlin, Marcos N; Cazarin, Cinthia B B; Maróstica, Mário R; Martínez, Julian

    2016-07-01

    Passion fruit seeds are currently discarded on the pulp processing but are known for their high piceatannol and scirpusin B contents. Using pressurized liquid extraction (PLE), these highly valuable phenolic compounds were efficiently extracted from defatted passion fruit bagasse (DPFB). PLE was performed using mixtures of ethanol and water (50 to 100% ethanol, w/w) as solvent, temperatures from 50 to 70°C and pressure at 10MPa. The extraction methods were compared in terms of the global yield, total phenolic content (TPC), piceatannol content and the antioxidant capacity of the extracts. The DPFB extracts were also compared with those from non-defatted passion fruit bagasse (nDPFB). Identification and quantification of piceatannol were performed using UHPLC-MS/MS. The results showed that high TPC and piceatannol content were achieved for the extracts obtained from DPFB through PLE at 70°C and using 50 and 75% ethanol as the solvent. The best PLE conditions for TPC (70°C, 75% ethanol) resulted in 55.237mgGAE/g dried and defatted bagasse, whereas PLE at 70°C and 50% ethanol achieved 18.590mg of piceatannol/g dried and defatted bagasse, and such yields were significantly higher than those obtained using conventional extraction techniques. The antioxidant capacity assays showed high correlation with the TPC (r>0.886) and piceatannol (r>0.772). The passion fruit bagasse has therefore proved to be a rich source of piceatannol and PLE showed high efficiency to recover phenolic compounds from defatted passion fruit bagasse. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  6. STUDY ON BUILDING EXTRACTION FROM HIGH-RESOLUTION IMAGES USING MBI

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Z. Ding

    2018-04-01

    Full Text Available Building extraction from high resolution remote sensing images is a hot research topic in the field of photogrammetry and remote sensing. However, the diversity and complexity of buildings make building extraction methods still face challenges in terms of accuracy, efficiency, and so on. In this study, a new building extraction framework based on MBI and combined with image segmentation techniques, spectral constraint, shadow constraint, and shape constraint is proposed. In order to verify the proposed method, worldview-2, GF-2, GF-1 remote sensing images covered Xiamen Software Park were used for building extraction experiments. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method improve the original MBI significantly, and the correct rate is over 86 %. Furthermore, the proposed framework reduces the false alarms by 42 % on average compared to the performance of the original MBI.

  7. A high-throughput platform for low-volume high-temperature/pressure sealed vessel solvent extractions

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Damm, Markus [Christian Doppler Laboratory for Microwave Chemistry (CDLMC) and Institute of Chemistry, Karl-Franzens-University Graz, Heinrichstrasse 28, A-8010 Graz (Austria); Kappe, C. Oliver, E-mail: oliver.kappe@uni-graz.at [Christian Doppler Laboratory for Microwave Chemistry (CDLMC) and Institute of Chemistry, Karl-Franzens-University Graz, Heinrichstrasse 28, A-8010 Graz (Austria)

    2011-11-30

    Highlights: Black-Right-Pointing-Pointer Parallel low-volume coffee extractions in sealed-vessel HPLC/GC vials. Black-Right-Pointing-Pointer Extractions are performed at high temperatures and pressures (200 Degree-Sign C/20 bar). Black-Right-Pointing-Pointer Rapid caffeine determination from the liquid phase. Black-Right-Pointing-Pointer Headspace analysis of volatiles using solid-phase microextraction (SPME). - Abstract: A high-throughput platform for performing parallel solvent extractions in sealed HPLC/GC vials inside a microwave reactor is described. The system consist of a strongly microwave-absorbing silicon carbide plate with 20 cylindrical wells of appropriate dimensions to be fitted with standard HPLC/GC autosampler vials serving as extraction vessels. Due to the possibility of heating up to four heating platforms simultaneously (80 vials), efficient parallel analytical-scale solvent extractions can be performed using volumes of 0.5-1.5 mL at a maximum temperature/pressure limit of 200 Degree-Sign C/20 bar. Since the extraction and subsequent analysis by either gas chromatography or liquid chromatography coupled with mass detection (GC-MS or LC-MS) is performed directly from the autosampler vial, errors caused by sample transfer can be minimized. The platform was evaluated for the extraction and quantification of caffeine from commercial coffee powders assessing different solvent types, extraction temperatures and times. For example, 141 {+-} 11 {mu}g caffeine (5 mg coffee powder) were extracted during a single extraction cycle using methanol as extraction solvent, whereas only 90 {+-} 11 were obtained performing the extraction in methylene chloride, applying the same reaction conditions (90 Degree-Sign C, 10 min). In multiple extraction experiments a total of {approx}150 {mu}g caffeine was extracted from 5 mg commercial coffee powder. In addition to the quantitative caffeine determination, a comparative qualitative analysis of the liquid phase coffee

  8. A high-throughput platform for low-volume high-temperature/pressure sealed vessel solvent extractions

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Damm, Markus; Kappe, C. Oliver

    2011-01-01

    Highlights: ► Parallel low-volume coffee extractions in sealed-vessel HPLC/GC vials. ► Extractions are performed at high temperatures and pressures (200 °C/20 bar). ► Rapid caffeine determination from the liquid phase. ► Headspace analysis of volatiles using solid-phase microextraction (SPME). - Abstract: A high-throughput platform for performing parallel solvent extractions in sealed HPLC/GC vials inside a microwave reactor is described. The system consist of a strongly microwave-absorbing silicon carbide plate with 20 cylindrical wells of appropriate dimensions to be fitted with standard HPLC/GC autosampler vials serving as extraction vessels. Due to the possibility of heating up to four heating platforms simultaneously (80 vials), efficient parallel analytical-scale solvent extractions can be performed using volumes of 0.5–1.5 mL at a maximum temperature/pressure limit of 200 °C/20 bar. Since the extraction and subsequent analysis by either gas chromatography or liquid chromatography coupled with mass detection (GC–MS or LC–MS) is performed directly from the autosampler vial, errors caused by sample transfer can be minimized. The platform was evaluated for the extraction and quantification of caffeine from commercial coffee powders assessing different solvent types, extraction temperatures and times. For example, 141 ± 11 μg caffeine (5 mg coffee powder) were extracted during a single extraction cycle using methanol as extraction solvent, whereas only 90 ± 11 were obtained performing the extraction in methylene chloride, applying the same reaction conditions (90 °C, 10 min). In multiple extraction experiments a total of ∼150 μg caffeine was extracted from 5 mg commercial coffee powder. In addition to the quantitative caffeine determination, a comparative qualitative analysis of the liquid phase coffee extracts and the headspace volatiles was performed, placing special emphasis on headspace analysis using solid-phase microextraction (SPME

  9. Assessment of impact of borehole heat exchanger design on heat extraction/rejection efficiency

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gornov V.F.

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available The article considers the impact of design of borehole heat exchanger (BHE as one of the main elements of a geothermal heat pump system on its efficiency in the ground heat extraction/rejection. Four BHE modifications are considered: coaxial with metal and polyethylene outside tube as well as single and double U-shaped structures of polyethylene tubes. Numerical modeling resulted to data on the efficiency of these BHE modifications for rejection heat into ground (heat pump system in cooling mode, and ground heat extraction (heat pump system in heating mode. Numerical values were obtained and BHEs were ranked according to their efficiency in both operation modes. Besides, additional calculations were made for the most common modification - double U-shaped design - in the ground heat extraction mode for various tube sizes with various wall thicknesses.

  10. Effect of β-Glucuronidase on Extraction Efficiency of Silymarin from ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Erah

    HPLC) method. Methods: The importance of β-glucuronidase was evaluated by comparing the extraction efficiency of silymarin in ... INTRODUCTION. Silymarin, an .... vortex mixed of 1 min and centrifuged at. 3000 rpm ..... A Concise Overview for.

  11. Tunable light extraction efficiency of GaN light emitting diodes by ZnO nanorod arrays

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Chao, C H; Lin, W H; Lin, C F; Chen, C H; Changjean, C H

    2009-01-01

    We report the influence of ZnO nanorod arrays (NRAs) on the light extraction efficiency of GaN light emitting diodes (LEDs). Our investigation indicates that the output light intensity of the device exhibits a periodic oscillation as a function of the rod length. The variation of light extraction efficiency is caused by the Fabry–Perot resonance of the film composed of the nanorods. The theoretical analysis shows a good agreement with the measurement results. Our study reveals a method to control the output light extraction efficiency of GaN LEDs via a simple solution-based synthesized ZnO NRAs

  12. Mind the gap. Quantifying principal-agent problems in energy efficiency

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    NONE

    2007-10-15

    Energy efficiency presents a unique opportunity to address three energy-related challenges in IEA member countries: energy security, climate change, and economic development. Yet an energy-efficiency gap exists between actual and optimal energy use. That is, significant cost-effective energy efficiency potential is wasted because market barriers prevent countries from achieving optimal levels. Market barriers take many forms, from inadequate access to capital, isolation from price signals, information asymmetry, and split-incentives. Though many studies have reported the existence of such market barriers, none so far have attempted to quantify the magnitude of their effect on energy use and efficiency. This publication is an unprecedented attempt to quantify the size of one of the most pervasive barriers to energy efficiency - principal-agent problems, or in common parlance, variations on the 'landlord-tenant' problem. In doing so, the book provides energy analysts and economists with unique insights into the amount of energy affected by principal-agent problems. Using an innovative methodology applied to eight case studies (covering commercial and residential sectors, and end-use appliances) from five different IEA countries, the analysis identifies over 3,800 PJ/year of affected energy use - that is, around 85% of the annual energy use of a country the size of Spain. The book builds on these findings to suggest a range of possible policy solutions that can reduce the impact of principal-agent problems and help policy makers mind the energy efficiency gap.

  13. Efficient decomposition and linearization methods for the stochastic transportation problem

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Holmberg, K.

    1993-01-01

    The stochastic transportation problem can be formulated as a convex transportation problem with nonlinear objective function and linear constraints. We compare several different methods based on decomposition techniques and linearization techniques for this problem, trying to find the most efficient method or combination of methods. We discuss and test a separable programming approach, the Frank-Wolfe method with and without modifications, the new technique of mean value cross decomposition and the more well known Lagrangian relaxation with subgradient optimization, as well as combinations of these approaches. Computational tests are presented, indicating that some new combination methods are quite efficient for large scale problems. (authors) (27 refs.)

  14. Study of PWR reactor efficiency as a function of turbine steam extractions

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Rocha, Janine Gandolpho da; Alvim, Antonio Carlos Marques; Martinez, Aquilino Senra

    2002-01-01

    The objective of this work is to optimize the extractions of the low-pressure turbine of a PWR nuclear reactor, in order to obtain the best thermodynamic cycle efficiency. We have analyzed typical data of a 1300 MW PWR reactor, operating at 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% capacities, respectively. The first stage of this study consists of generating a mathematical model capable of describing the reactor behavior and efficiency at any power level. The second stage of this study consists of to combine the generated mathematical model in an optimization computer program that optimize the extractions flow of the low-pressure turbine until it finds the optimal system efficiency. This work does not alter the nuclear facility project in any way. (author)

  15. Comparative efficiency of different methods of gluten extraction in indigenous varieties of wheat.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Imran, Samra; Hussain, Zaib; Ghafoor, Farkhanda; Nagra, Saeedahmad; Ziai, Naheeda Ashbeal

    2013-06-01

    The present study investigated six varieties of locally grown wheat (Lasani, Sehar, Miraj-08, Chakwal-50, Faisalabad-08 and Inqlab) procured from Punjab Seed Corporation, Lahore, Pakistan for their proximate contents. On the basis of protein content and ready availability, Faisalabad-08 (FD-08) was selected to be used for the assessment of comparative efficiency of various methods used for gluten extraction. Three methods, mechanical, chemical and microbiological were used for the extraction of gluten from FD-08. Each method was carried out under ambient conditions using a drying temperature of 55 degrees C. Mechanical method utilized four different processes viz:- dough process, dough batter process, batter process and ethanol washing process using standard 150 mesh. The starch thus obtained was analyzed for its proximate contents. Dough batter process proved to be the most efficient mechanical method and was further investigated using 200 and 300 mesh. Gluten content was determined using sandwich omega-gliadin enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA).The results of dough batter process using 200 mesh indicated a starch product with gluten content of 678 ppm. Chemical method indicated high gluten content of more than 5000 ppm and the microbiological method reduced the gluten content from 2500 ppm to 398 ppm. From the results it was observed that no gluten extraction method is viable to produce starch which can fulfill the criteria of a gluten free product (20 ppm).

  16. Enhancement of TE polarized light extraction efficiency in nanoscale (AlN)m /(GaN)n (m>n) superlattice substitution for Al-rich AlGaN disorder alloy: ultra-thin GaN layer modulation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Jiang, Xin-he; Shi, Jun-jie; Zhong, Hong-xia; Huang, Pu; Ding, Yi-min; Yu, Tong-jun; Shen, Bo; Lu, Jing; Zhang, Min; Wang, Xihua

    2014-01-01

    The problem of achieving high light extraction efficiency in Al-rich Al x Ga 1−x N is of paramount importance for the realization of AlGaN-based deep ultraviolet (DUV) optoelectronic devices. To solve this problem, we investigate the microscopic mechanism of valence band inversion and light polarization, a crucial factor for enhancing light extraction efficiency, in Al-rich Al x Ga 1−x N alloy using the Heyd–Scuseria–Ernzerhof hybrid functional, local-density approximation with 1/2 occupation, and the Perdew–Burke–Ernzerhof functional, in which the spin–orbit coupling effect is included. We find that the microscopic Ga-atom distribution can effectively modulate the valence band structure of Al-rich Al x Ga 1−x N. Moreover, we prove that the valence band arrangement in the decreasing order of heavy hole, light hole, and crystal-field split-off hole can be realized by using nanoscale (AlN) m /(GaN) n (m>n) superlattice (SL) substituting for Al-rich Al x Ga 1−x N disorder alloy as the active layer of optoelectronic devices due to the ultra-thin GaN layer modulation. The valence band maximum, i.e., the heavy hole band, has p x - and p y -like characteristics and is highly localized in the SL structure, which leads to the desired transverse electric (TE) polarized (E⊥c) light emission with improved light extraction efficiency in the DUV spectral region. Some important band-structure parameters and electron/hole effective masses are also given. The physical origin for the valence band inversion and TE polarization in (AlN) m /(GaN) n SL is analyzed in depth. (paper)

  17. Batteries for Efficient Energy Extraction from a Water Salinity Difference

    KAUST Repository

    La Mantia, Fabio; Pasta, Mauro; Deshazer, Heather D.; Logan, Bruce E.; Cui, Yi

    2011-01-01

    The salinity difference between seawater and river water is a renewable source of enormous entropic energy, but extracting it efficiently as a form of useful energy remains a challenge. Here we demonstrate a device called "mixing entropy battery

  18. Increasing the extraction efficiency of algal lipid for biodiesel ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Various studies have been conducted recently using microalgal system for the production of algal lipid for biodiesel production. This study aimed at increasing the extraction efficiency of algal lipid from Chlorella sp. by the application of Chlorella viruses. The calorific value of lipid from Chlorella sp. has been reported to be ...

  19. Efficiency Optimization Methods in Low-Power High-Frequency Digitally Controlled SMPS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Aleksandar Prodić

    2010-06-01

    Full Text Available This paper gives a review of several power efficiency optimization techniques that are utilizing advantages of emerging digital control in high frequency switch-mode power supplies (SMPS, processing power from a fraction of watt to several hundreds of watts. Loss mechanisms in semiconductor components are briefly reviewed and the related principles of online efficiency optimization through power stage segmentation and gate voltage variation presented. Practical implementations of such methods utilizing load prediction or data extraction from a digital control loop are shown. The benefits of the presented efficiency methods are verified through experimental results, showing efficiency improvements, ranging from 2% to 30%,depending on the load conditions.

  20. Enhancing the photon-extraction efficiency of site-controlled quantum dots by deterministically fabricated microlenses

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kaganskiy, Arsenty; Fischbach, Sarah; Strittmatter, André; Rodt, Sven; Heindel, Tobias; Reitzenstein, Stephan

    2018-04-01

    We report on the realization of scalable single-photon sources (SPSs) based on single site-controlled quantum dots (SCQDs) and deterministically fabricated microlenses. The fabrication process comprises the buried-stressor growth technique complemented with low-temperature in-situ electron-beam lithography for the integration of SCQDs into microlens structures with high yield and high alignment accuracy. The microlens-approach leads to a broadband enhancement of the photon-extraction efficiency of up to (21 ± 2)% and a high suppression of multi-photon events with g (2)(τ = 0) SPSs which, can be applied in photonic quantum circuits and advanced quantum computation schemes.

  1. Quantification of total and water extractable essential elements in medicinal plants used for stomach problems

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Sahito, S.R.; Kazi, T.G.; Shar, G.Q.; Mangrio, A.M; Shaikh, M.S.

    2004-01-01

    The role of elements particularly trace elements in health and disease is well known. Present study has been undertaken in our laboratories to quantify the commonly occurring elements in three medicinal plans. Peganum harmala Linn, Phyllanthus emblica Linn, Tamarix dioca used for stomach problems using atomic absorption spectrophotometer. Wet digestion method has been used to extract the acid extractable metals. Samples were boiled in water to obtain water extractable metals. The validation of the method was checked with the NBS-1570 (Spinach) as Standard Reference Material. Levels of essential elements were found high as compared to concentration of toxic elements. The considerable amounts of essential such as calcium, magnesium, potassium, zinc and iron were found in all these plant samples. (author)

  2. Extraction of surface plasmons in organic light-emitting diodes via high-index coupling.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Scholz, Bert J; Frischeisen, Jörg; Jaeger, Arndt; Setz, Daniel S; Reusch, Thilo C G; Brütting, Wolfgang

    2012-03-12

    The efficiency of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) is still limited by poor light outcoupling. In particular, the excitation of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) at metal-organic interfaces represents a major loss channel. By combining optical simulations and experiments on simplified luminescent thin-film structures we elaborate the conditions for the extraction of SPPs via coupling to high-index media. As a proof-of-concept, we demonstrate the possibility to extract light from wave-guided modes and surface plasmons in a top-emitting white OLED by a high-index prism.

  3. Improving ELM-Based Service Quality Prediction by Concise Feature Extraction

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yuhai Zhao

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available Web services often run on highly dynamic and changing environments, which generate huge volumes of data. Thus, it is impractical to monitor the change of every QoS parameter for the timely trigger precaution due to high computational costs associated with the process. To address the problem, this paper proposes an active service quality prediction method based on extreme learning machine. First, we extract web service trace logs and QoS information from the service log and convert them into feature vectors. Second, by the proposed EC rules, we are enabled to trigger the precaution of QoS as soon as possible with high confidence. An efficient prefix tree based mining algorithm together with some effective pruning rules is developed to mine such rules. Finally, we study how to extract a set of diversified features as the representative of all mined results. The problem is proved to be NP-hard. A greedy algorithm is presented to approximate the optimal solution. Experimental results show that ELM trained by the selected feature subsets can efficiently improve the reliability and the earliness of service quality prediction.

  4. Highly efficient extraction and selective separation of uranium (VI) from transition metals using new class of undiluted ionic liquids based on H-phosphonate anions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zarrougui, Ramzi; Mdimagh, Raouf; Raouafi, Nourreddine

    2018-01-15

    In this paper, we report the development of an environmental friendly process to decontaminate uranium-containing ores and nuclear wastes by using non-fluorinated ionic liquids (ILs). The main advantages of this extraction process are the absence of any organic diluent and extra extraction agents added to the organic phase. Moreover, the process is cost-effective and maybe applied as a sustainable hydrometallurgical method to recover uranium. The distribution ratio (D U ) and the extraction efficiency (%E) of uranium(VI) (UO 2 2+ ) were found to be dependent on the acidity of the aqueous phase, the extraction time, the alkyl chain length in the ILs, the concentration of the aqueous feed and molar quantity of ILs. The D U value is higher than 600 and the %E is equal to 98.6% when [HNO 3 ]=7M. The extraction reactions follows a neutral partition or ionic exchange mechanism depending on nitric acid concentration. The nature of bonding in the extracted complexes was investigated by spectroscopic techniques. The potential use of Mor 1-8 -OP for the separation of UO 2 2+ from a mixture containing transition metal ions M n+ was also examined. The UO 2 2+ ions were separated and extracted efficiently. These ILs are promising candidates for the recovery and separation of uranium. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  5. Alternative and Efficient Extraction Methods for Marine-Derived Compounds

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Clara Grosso

    2015-05-01

    Full Text Available Marine ecosystems cover more than 70% of the globe’s surface. These habitats are occupied by a great diversity of marine organisms that produce highly structural diverse metabolites as a defense mechanism. In the last decades, these metabolites have been extracted and isolated in order to test them in different bioassays and assess their potential to fight human diseases. Since traditional extraction techniques are both solvent- and time-consuming, this review emphasizes alternative extraction techniques, such as supercritical fluid extraction, pressurized solvent extraction, microwave-assisted extraction, ultrasound-assisted extraction, pulsed electric field-assisted extraction, enzyme-assisted extraction, and extraction with switchable solvents and ionic liquids, applied in the search for marine compounds. Only studies published in the 21st century are considered.

  6. High-efficiency concentrator silicon solar cells

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Sinton, R.A.; Cuevas, A.; King, R.R.; Swanson, R.M. (Stanford Univ., CA (USA). Solid-State Electronics Lab.)

    1990-11-01

    This report presents results from extensive process development in high-efficiency Si solar cells. An advanced design for a 1.56-cm{sup 2} cell with front grids achieved 26% efficiency at 90 suns. This is especially significant since this cell does not require a prismatic cover glass. New designs for simplified backside-contact solar cells were advanced from a status of near-nonfunctionality to demonstrated 21--22% for one-sun cells in sizes up to 37.5 cm{sup 2}. An efficiency of 26% was achieved for similar 0.64-cm{sup 2} concentrator cells at 150 suns. More fundamental work on dopant-diffused regions is also presented here. The recombination vs. various process and physical parameters was studied in detail for boron and phosphorous diffusions. Emitter-design studies based solidly upon these new data indicate the performance vs design parameters for a variety of the cases of most interest to solar cell designers. Extractions of p-type bandgap narrowing and the surface recombination for p- and n-type regions from these studies have a generality that extends beyond solar cells into basic device modeling. 68 refs., 50 figs.

  7. In-tube electro-membrane extraction with a sub-microliter organic solvent consumption as an efficient technique for synthetic food dyes determination in foodstuff samples.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bazregar, Mohammad; Rajabi, Maryam; Yamini, Yadollah; Asghari, Alireza; Abdossalami asl, Yousef

    2015-09-04

    A simple and efficient extraction technique with a sub-microliter organic solvent consumption termed as in-tube electro-membrane extraction (IEME) is introduced. This method is based upon the electro-kinetic migration of ionized compounds by the application of an electrical potential difference. For this purpose, a thin polypropylene (PP) sheet placed inside a tube acts as a support for the membrane solvent, and 30μL of an aqueous acceptor solution is separated by this solvent from 1.2mL of an aqueous donor solution. This method yielded high extraction recoveries (63-81%), and the consumption of the organic solvent used was only 0.5μL. By performing this method, the purification is high, and the utilization of the organic solvent, used as a mediator, is very simple and repeatable. The proposed method was evaluated by extraction of four synthetic food dyes (Amaranth, Ponceau 4R, Allura Red, and Carmoisine) as the model analytes. Optimization of variables affecting the method was carried out in order to achieve the best extraction efficiency. These variables were the type of membrane solvent, applied extraction voltage, extraction time, pH range, and concentration of salt added. Under the optimized conditions, IEME-HPLC-UV provided a good linearity in the range of 1.00-800ngmL(-1), low limits of detection (0.3-1ngmL(-1)), and good extraction repeatabilities (RSDs below 5.2%, n=5). It seems that this design is a proper one for the automation of the method. Also the consumption of the organic solvent in a sub-microliter scale, and its simplicity, high efficiency, and high purification can help one getting closer to the objectives of the green chemistry. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  8. A highly simplified 3D BWR benchmark problem

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Douglass, Steven; Rahnema, Farzad

    2010-01-01

    The resurgent interest in reactor development associated with the nuclear renaissance has paralleled significant advancements in computer technology, and allowed for unprecedented computational power to be applied to the numerical solution of neutron transport problems. The current generation of core-level solvers relies on a variety of approximate methods (e.g. nodal diffusion theory, spatial homogenization) to efficiently solve reactor problems with limited computer power; however, in recent years, the increased availability of high-performance computer systems has created an interest in the development of new methods and codes (deterministic and Monte Carlo) to directly solve whole-core reactor problems with full heterogeneity (lattice and core level). This paper presents the development of a highly simplified heterogeneous 3D benchmark problem with physics characteristic of boiling water reactors. The aim of this work is to provide a problem for developers to use to validate new whole-core methods and codes which take advantage of the advanced computational capabilities that are now available. Additionally, eigenvalues and an overview of the pin fission density distribution are provided for the benefit of the reader. (author)

  9. High temperature solvent extraction of oil shale and bituminous coal using binary solvent mixtures

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Goetz, G.K.E. [Lehrstuhl fuer Geologie, Geochemie und Lagerstaetten des Erdoels und der Kohle, RWTH Aachen (Germany)

    1997-12-31

    A high volatile bituminous coal from the Saar Basin and an oil shale from the Messel deposit, both Germany, were extracted with binary solvent mixtures using the Advanced Solvent Extraction method (ASE). Extraction temperature and pressure were kept at 100 C, respectively 150 C, and 20,7 MPa. After the heating phase (5 min) static extractions were performed with mixtures (v:v, 1:3) of methanol with toluene, respectively trichloromethane, for further 5 min. Extract yields were the same or on a higher level compared to those from classical soxhlet extractions (3 days) using the same solvents at 60 C. Comparing the results from ASE with those from supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) the extract yields were similar. Increasing the temperature in ASE releases more soluble organic matter from geological samples, because compounds with higher molecular weight and especially more polar substances were solubilized. But also an enhanced extraction efficiency resulted for aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons which are used as biomarkers in Organic Geochemistry. Application of thermochemolysis with tetraethylammonium hydroxide (TEAH) using pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (Py-GC-MS) on the extraction residues shows clearly that at higher extraction temperatures minor amounts of free fatty acids or their methyl esters (original or produced by ASE) were trapped inside the pore systems of the oil shale or the bituminous coal. ASE offers a rapid and very efficient extraction method for geological samples reducing analysis time and costs for solvents. (orig.)

  10. Highly efficient extraction and oxidative desulfurization system using Na7H2LaW10O36⋅32 H2O in [bmim]BF4 at room temperature.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xu, Junhua; Zhao, Shen; Chen, Wei; Wang, Miao; Song, Yu-Fei

    2012-04-10

    Highly efficient, deep desulfurization of model oil containing dibenzothiophene (DBT), benzothiophene (BT), or 4,6-dimethyldibenzothiophene (4,6-DMDBT) has been achieved under mild conditions by using an extraction and catalytic oxidative desulfurization system (ECODS) in which a lanthanide-containing polyoxometalate Na(7)H(2)LnW(10)O(36)⋅32 H(2)O (LnW(10); Ln = Eu, La) acts as catalyst, [bmim]BF(4) (bmim = 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium) as extractant, and H(2)O(2) as oxidant. Sulfur removal follows the order DBT>4,6-DMDBT>BT at 30 °C. DBT can be completely oxidized to the corresponding sulfone in 25 min under mild conditions, and the LaW(10)/[bmim]BF(4) system could be recycled for ten times with only slight decrease in activity. Thus, LaW(10) in [bmim]BF(4) is one of the most efficient systems for desulfurization using ionic liquids as extractant reported so far. Copyright © 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

  11. Partitioning of Minor Actinides from High Active Raffinates using Bis-Diglycol-amides (BisDGA) as new efficient Extractants

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Modolo, G.; Vijgen, H. [Forschungszentrum Juelich GmbH, Institute for Energy Research, Safety Research and Reactor Technology, 52425 Juelich (Germany); Espartero, A.G. [Centro de Investigaciones Energeticas, Medioambientales y Tecnologicas (CIEMAT), Avda. Complutense 22, 28040-Madrid (Spain); Prados, P. [Departamento de Quimica Organica, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid - UAM, carretera de Colmenar Viejo km 15.3, 28049-Madrid (Spain); Mendoza, J. de [Departamento de Quimica Organica, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid - UAM, carretera de Colmenar Viejo km 15.3, 28049-Madrid (Spain); Institut Catala d' Investigacio Quimica (ICIQ) Av. Paisos Catalans 16, 43007-Tarragona (Spain)

    2008-07-01

    Two new polyamide extractants has been selected, namely UAM-069 and UAM-081, both synthesized at the University of Madrid (UAM), to develop a new separation process. These two ligands are bis-diglycol-amides, consisting of two diglycol-amides moieties grafted on an aromatic platform (UAM-069) or on an aliphatic linker (UAM-081), respectively. The extraction of actinides and fission products was studied from synthetic PUREX raffinate. Actinides(III) and lanthanides(III) are highly extracted from acidities > 1 mol/L HNO{sub 3}. The extraction of Zr, Mo and Pd could be suppressed with complexing agents such as oxalic acid and HEDTA. In the present paper the results of the batch extraction results are presented which serve for the development of a new continuous counter current process to be tested in centrifugal contactors. (authors)

  12. Pressurized liquid extraction of ginger (Zingiber officinale Roscoe) with bioethanol: an efficient and sustainable approach.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hu, Jiajin; Guo, Zheng; Glasius, Marianne; Kristensen, Kasper; Xiao, Langtao; Xu, Xuebing

    2011-08-26

    To develop an efficient green extraction approach for recovery of bioactive compounds from natural plants, we examined the potential of pressurized liquid extraction (PLE) of ginger (Zingiber officinale Roscoe) with bioethanol/water as solvents. The advantages of PLE over other extraction approaches, in addition to reduced time/solvent cost, the extract of PLE showed a distinct constituent profile from that of Soxhlet extraction, with significantly improved recovery of diarylheptanoids, etc. Among the pure solvents tested for PLE, bioethanol yield the highest efficiency for recovering most constituents of gingerol-related compounds; while for a broad concentration spectrum of ethanol aqueous solutions, 70% ethanol gave the best performance in terms of yield of total extract, complete constituent profile and recovery of most gingerol-related components. PLE with 70% bioethanol operated at 1500 psi and 100 °C for 20 min (static extraction time: 5 min) is recommended as optimized extraction conditions, achieving 106.8%, 109.3% and 108.0% yield of [6]-, [8]- and [10]-gingerol relative to the yield of corresponding constituent obtained by 8h Soxhlet extraction (absolute ethanol as extraction solvent). Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  13. Efficient heuristics for the Rural Postman Problem

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    GW Groves

    2005-06-01

    Full Text Available A local search framework for the (undirected Rural Postman Problem (RPP is presented in this paper. The framework allows local search approaches that have been applied successfully to the well–known Travelling Salesman Problem also to be applied to the RPP. New heuristics for the RPP, based on this framework, are introduced and these are capable of solving significantly larger instances of the RPP than have been reported in the literature. Test results are presented for a number of benchmark RPP instances in a bid to compare efficiency and solution quality against known methods.

  14. Efficient high-precision matrix algebra on parallel architectures for nonlinear combinatorial optimization

    KAUST Repository

    Gunnels, John; Lee, Jon; Margulies, Susan

    2010-01-01

    We provide a first demonstration of the idea that matrix-based algorithms for nonlinear combinatorial optimization problems can be efficiently implemented. Such algorithms were mainly conceived by theoretical computer scientists for proving efficiency. We are able to demonstrate the practicality of our approach by developing an implementation on a massively parallel architecture, and exploiting scalable and efficient parallel implementations of algorithms for ultra high-precision linear algebra. Additionally, we have delineated and implemented the necessary algorithmic and coding changes required in order to address problems several orders of magnitude larger, dealing with the limits of scalability from memory footprint, computational efficiency, reliability, and interconnect perspectives. © Springer and Mathematical Programming Society 2010.

  15. Efficient high-precision matrix algebra on parallel architectures for nonlinear combinatorial optimization

    KAUST Repository

    Gunnels, John

    2010-06-01

    We provide a first demonstration of the idea that matrix-based algorithms for nonlinear combinatorial optimization problems can be efficiently implemented. Such algorithms were mainly conceived by theoretical computer scientists for proving efficiency. We are able to demonstrate the practicality of our approach by developing an implementation on a massively parallel architecture, and exploiting scalable and efficient parallel implementations of algorithms for ultra high-precision linear algebra. Additionally, we have delineated and implemented the necessary algorithmic and coding changes required in order to address problems several orders of magnitude larger, dealing with the limits of scalability from memory footprint, computational efficiency, reliability, and interconnect perspectives. © Springer and Mathematical Programming Society 2010.

  16. Effects of milling on the extraction efficiency of incurred pesticides in cereals

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Herrmann, Susan Strange; Hajeb, Parvaneh; Andersen, Gitte

    2017-01-01

    This study investigated the effects of particle size and milling temperature on the extraction efficiencies of pesticide residues from cereal flour. Samples of cereal grains (barley, oat, rye and wheat) were milled using a centrifugal mill with four different sieves (0.2, 1.0, 3.0 and 5.0 mm......) or a knife mill both at room temperature and after freezing of the grain at –80°C overnight. The incurred pesticides in the test materials were extracted by the QuEChERS method and analysed by LC-MS/MS and GC-MS/MS. The particle size distribution for the milled samples was determined using a vibratory sieve...... shaker. Based on the pesticide levels recovered from each of the different millings and the corresponding particle size distributions, it was confirmed that smaller average particle sizes increase the extraction efficiency up to 31%, with all other factors equal. The cereals milled at room temperature...

  17. Efficiency Problems of Child Protection in Lithuania

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ilona Tamutienė

    2018-05-01

    Full Text Available This article identifies the main problems which have negative impact on efficiency of child protection. The article is based on case analysis of 203 families at social risk carried out in 2015–2016 and on qualitative interviews of 23 children growing in families at social risk which were conducted in 2016–2017. The content and context analysis are performed of the basis of this data. The protection procedures starting with reports to the Department of Child Rights’ Protection, case investigations, application of relevant interventions and finally evaluation of help efficiency are reconstructed. The principles of effective child protection distinguished by Eileen Munro has been chosen as the basis of the evaluation and identification of the main barrier to the efficient child protection. It has been identified that the process of practical protection is not centred on the child’s problems and needs, but it only focuses on the parents’ problems. Children are not sufficiently enabled to participate in their own protection process. Majority of the neglected and abused children are not helped because they are not listened to and their experiences are ignored, although 5 institutional professionals are “working” with the family. The fragments of social work with child has been found only among the experiences of the children attending Children’s Care Day Centres. It can be certainly stated that there is clear lack of services for children. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the Children’s Day Care Centres, to find possibilities to finance social workers and psychologists to work with children, since only family (adults centred protection is not effective. It is recommended to improve the training of child care specialists and raise the professional level of those in practice.

  18. Effects of different nitrogen levels and plant density on flower, essential oils and extract production and nitrogen use efficiency of Marigold (Calendula officinalis.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    ali akbar ameri

    2009-06-01

    Full Text Available Efficient use of nitrogen for medicinal plants production, might increase flower dry matter, essential oil and extract yield and reduce cost of yield production. A two year (2005 and 2006 field study was conducted in Torogh region(36,10° N,59.33° E and 1300 m altitude of Mashhad, Iran, to observe the effects of different nitrogen and densities on flower dry matter, essential oil and extract production and nitrogen use efficiency (NUE in a multi-harvested Marigold (Calendula officinalis. The levels of Nitrogen fertilizer (N were 0, 50, 100 and 150 kg ha-1 and levels of density were 20, 40, 60 and 80 plant m-2. The combined analysis results revealed significant effects of N and density levels on flower dry matter, essential oil and extract production and NUE of Marigold. The highest dry flower production obtained by 150 kg ha-1 N and 80 plant m-2 plant population (102.86 g m-2. The higher flower dry matter production caused more essential oil and extract production in high nitrogen and density levels. Agronomic N-use efficiency (kg flower dry matter yield per kg N applied, physiological efficiency (kg flower dry matter yield per kg N absorbed and fertilizer N-recovery efficiency (kg N absorbed per kg N applied, expressed as % for marigold across treatments ranged from 6.8 to14.9, 12.3 to 33.6 and 55.5 to 77.6, respectively and all were greater for N application at 50 compared with150 kg N ha-1, and under high density than low density. The amount of essential oil and extract per 100g flower dry matter decreased during the flower harvesting period. The higher amount of essential oil and extract obtained at early flowering season. The essential oil and extract ranged from 0.22 to 0.12 (ml. per 100g flower dry matter and 2.74 to 2.13 (g per 100g flower dry matter respectively.

  19. Mitigation of the voltage fluctuations using an efficient disturbance extraction technique

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Elnady, Amr; Salama, M.M.A. [University of Waterloo, Electrical and Computer Engineering, 200 University Ave. West, Waterloo, Ont. (Canada N2L3G1)

    2007-03-15

    This paper introduces an efficient technique for extracting the disturbance signal of the voltage flicker. The proposed technique depends on the supervised state estimation that is controlled by the Widrow-Hoff delta rule. The extracted disturbance signal is employed for mitigating the cyclic voltage flicker by using series and parallel mitigating devices. The speed and accuracy of the proposed technique are verified by simulation results with EMTDC/PSCAD. In addition, experimental results are presented to prove the validity of the proposed algorithm. (author)

  20. Combining Position Weight Matrices and Document-Term Matrix for Efficient Extraction of Associations of Methylated Genes and Diseases from Free Text

    KAUST Repository

    Bin Raies, Arwa

    2013-10-16

    Background:In a number of diseases, certain genes are reported to be strongly methylated and thus can serve as diagnostic markers in many cases. Scientific literature in digital form is an important source of information about methylated genes implicated in particular diseases. The large volume of the electronic text makes it difficult and impractical to search for this information manually.Methodology:We developed a novel text mining methodology based on a new concept of position weight matrices (PWMs) for text representation and feature generation. We applied PWMs in conjunction with the document-term matrix to extract with high accuracy associations between methylated genes and diseases from free text. The performance results are based on large manually-classified data. Additionally, we developed a web-tool, DEMGD, which automates extraction of these associations from free text. DEMGD presents the extracted associations in summary tables and full reports in addition to evidence tagging of text with respect to genes, diseases and methylation words. The methodology we developed in this study can be applied to similar association extraction problems from free text.Conclusion:The new methodology developed in this study allows for efficient identification of associations between concepts. Our method applied to methylated genes in different diseases is implemented as a Web-tool, DEMGD, which is freely available at http://www.cbrc.kaust.edu.sa/demgd/. The data is available for online browsing and download. © 2013 Bin Raies et al.

  1. Combining position weight matrices and document-term matrix for efficient extraction of associations of methylated genes and diseases from free text.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Arwa Bin Raies

    Full Text Available BACKGROUND: In a number of diseases, certain genes are reported to be strongly methylated and thus can serve as diagnostic markers in many cases. Scientific literature in digital form is an important source of information about methylated genes implicated in particular diseases. The large volume of the electronic text makes it difficult and impractical to search for this information manually. METHODOLOGY: We developed a novel text mining methodology based on a new concept of position weight matrices (PWMs for text representation and feature generation. We applied PWMs in conjunction with the document-term matrix to extract with high accuracy associations between methylated genes and diseases from free text. The performance results are based on large manually-classified data. Additionally, we developed a web-tool, DEMGD, which automates extraction of these associations from free text. DEMGD presents the extracted associations in summary tables and full reports in addition to evidence tagging of text with respect to genes, diseases and methylation words. The methodology we developed in this study can be applied to similar association extraction problems from free text. CONCLUSION: The new methodology developed in this study allows for efficient identification of associations between concepts. Our method applied to methylated genes in different diseases is implemented as a Web-tool, DEMGD, which is freely available at http://www.cbrc.kaust.edu.sa/demgd/. The data is available for online browsing and download.

  2. The algorithm of fast image stitching based on multi-feature extraction

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yang, Chunde; Wu, Ge; Shi, Jing

    2018-05-01

    This paper proposed an improved image registration method combining Hu-based invariant moment contour information and feature points detection, aiming to solve the problems in traditional image stitching algorithm, such as time-consuming feature points extraction process, redundant invalid information overload and inefficiency. First, use the neighborhood of pixels to extract the contour information, employing the Hu invariant moment as similarity measure to extract SIFT feature points in those similar regions. Then replace the Euclidean distance with Hellinger kernel function to improve the initial matching efficiency and get less mismatching points, further, estimate affine transformation matrix between the images. Finally, local color mapping method is adopted to solve uneven exposure, using the improved multiresolution fusion algorithm to fuse the mosaic images and realize seamless stitching. Experimental results confirm high accuracy and efficiency of method proposed in this paper.

  3. Extraction Compression and Acceleration of High Line Charge Density Ion Beams

    CERN Document Server

    Henestroza, Enrique; Grote, D P; Peters, Craig; Yu, Simon

    2005-01-01

    HEDP applications require high line charge density ion beams. An efficient method to obtain this type of beams is to extract a long pulse, high current beam from a gun at high energy, and let the beam pass through a decelerating field to compress it. The low energy beam bunch is loaded into a solenoid and matched to a Brillouin flow. The Brillouin equilibrium is independent of the energy if the relationship between the beam size (a), solenoid magnetic field strength (B) and line charge density is such that (Ba)2

  4. Effect of β-Glucuronidase on Extraction Efficiency of Silymarin from ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Methods: The importance of β-glucuronidase was evaluated by comparing the extraction efficiency of silymarin in β-glucuronidase-treated and untreated plasma samples. Isocratic ... The mobile phase, consisting of methanol and 20 mM potassium dihydrogen phosphate buffer (50:50 v/v pH 2.8), was pumped at 1 ml/min.

  5. Very high efficiency phosphorescent organic light-emitting devices by using rough indium tin oxide

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Zhang, Yingjie; Aziz, Hany, E-mail: h2aziz@uwaterloo.ca [Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1 (Canada)

    2014-07-07

    The efficiency of organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) is shown to significantly depend on the roughness of the indium tin oxide (ITO) anode. By using rougher ITO, light trapped in the ITO/organic wave-guided mode can be efficiently extracted, and a light outcoupling enhancement as high as 40% is achieved. Moreover, contrary to expectations, the lifetime of OLEDs is not affected by ITO roughness. Finally, an OLED employing rough ITO anode that exhibits a current efficiency of 56 cd/A at the remarkably high brightness of 10{sup 5} cd/m{sup 2} is obtained. This represents the highest current efficiency at such high brightness to date for an OLED utilizing an ITO anode, without any external light outcoupling techniques. The results demonstrate the significant efficiency benefits of using ITO with higher roughness in OLEDs.

  6. Very high efficiency phosphorescent organic light-emitting devices by using rough indium tin oxide

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Zhang, Yingjie; Aziz, Hany

    2014-01-01

    The efficiency of organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) is shown to significantly depend on the roughness of the indium tin oxide (ITO) anode. By using rougher ITO, light trapped in the ITO/organic wave-guided mode can be efficiently extracted, and a light outcoupling enhancement as high as 40% is achieved. Moreover, contrary to expectations, the lifetime of OLEDs is not affected by ITO roughness. Finally, an OLED employing rough ITO anode that exhibits a current efficiency of 56 cd/A at the remarkably high brightness of 10 5  cd/m 2 is obtained. This represents the highest current efficiency at such high brightness to date for an OLED utilizing an ITO anode, without any external light outcoupling techniques. The results demonstrate the significant efficiency benefits of using ITO with higher roughness in OLEDs.

  7. Caesium extraction from acidic high level liquid wastes with functionalized calixarenes

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Simon, N.; Eymard, S.; Tournois, B.; Dozol, J.F.

    2000-01-01

    In the framework of French law programme, studies are under way to selectively remove caesium from acidic high activity wastes. Calix[4]arene crown derivatives exhibit outstanding efficiency and selectivity for caesium. An optimisation of the formulation of a selective extractant system for Cs based on crown calixarenes and usable in a process which use liquid-liquid extraction is presented. A system involving a monoamide as a modifier is proposed. Besides these improvements, a reference solvent based on a standard 1,3-di-(n-octyl-oxy)2,4-calix(4)arene crown is studied. Flow-sheets related to this system are calculated and easily transferable to the optimised new system. (authors)

  8. Improved in-tube electro-membrane extraction followed by high-performance liquid chromatography for simple and selective determination of ionic compounds: Optimization by central composite design.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bazregar, Mohammad; Rajabi, Maryam; Yamini, Yadollah; Asghari, Alireza

    2017-07-01

    In this work, an efficient sample clean-up method, named in-tube electro-membrane extraction, is modified to resolve the formation of bubbles in the extraction process. This modified method is applied for the extraction of two model analytes including tartrazine and sunset yellow from food samples. The method is based on the electro-kinetic migration of ionized compounds by the application of an electrical potential difference, and on this basis the analytes under investigation, as anionic compounds, simply migrate from the donor phase and concentrate in the acceptor phase. A thin polypropylene sheet placed in the tube acts as a support for the membrane solvent, and it separates 30 μL of the aqueous acceptor from 1.2 mL of the aqueous donor. This setup can be used to solve the problem of extracting highly hydrophilic analytes. Response surface methodology is used for optimization of the experimental parameters so that under the optimized conditions, the method provides a good linearity in the range of 50-1000 ng/mL, low limits of detection (15-25 ng/mL), good extraction repeatabilities (relative standard deviations below 8.1%, n = 5), and high extraction recoveries (54-76%). © 2017 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

  9. Efficient exact optimization of multi-objective redundancy allocation problems in series-parallel systems

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Cao, Dingzhou; Murat, Alper; Chinnam, Ratna Babu

    2013-01-01

    This paper proposes a decomposition-based approach to exactly solve the multi-objective Redundancy Allocation Problem for series-parallel systems. Redundancy allocation problem is a form of reliability optimization and has been the subject of many prior studies. The majority of these earlier studies treat redundancy allocation problem as a single objective problem maximizing the system reliability or minimizing the cost given certain constraints. The few studies that treated redundancy allocation problem as a multi-objective optimization problem relied on meta-heuristic solution approaches. However, meta-heuristic approaches have significant limitations: they do not guarantee that Pareto points are optimal and, more importantly, they may not identify all the Pareto-optimal points. In this paper, we treat redundancy allocation problem as a multi-objective problem, as is typical in practice. We decompose the original problem into several multi-objective sub-problems, efficiently and exactly solve sub-problems, and then systematically combine the solutions. The decomposition-based approach can efficiently generate all the Pareto-optimal solutions for redundancy allocation problems. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method over meta-heuristic methods on a numerical example taken from the literature.

  10. High-Throughput” Evaluation of Polymer-Supported Triazolic Appendages for Metallic Cations Extraction

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Riadh Slimi

    2015-03-01

    Full Text Available The aim of this work was to find and use a low-cost high-throughput method for a quick primary evaluation of several metal extraction by substituted piperazines appendages as chelatants grafted onto Merrifield polymer using click-chemistry by the copper (I-catalyzed Huisgen’s reaction (CuAAC The polymers were tested for their efficiency to remove various metal ions from neutral aqueous solutions (13 cations studied: Li+, Na+, K+, Mn2+, Fe3+, Co2+, Ni2+, Cu2+, Cd2+, Ba2+, Ce3+, Hg+ and Pb2+ using the simple conductimetric measurement method. The polymers were found to extract all metals with low efficiencies ≤40%, except for Fe3+ and Hg+, and sometimes Pb2+. Some polymers exhibited a selectively for K+, Cd2+ and Ba2+, with good efficiencies. The values obtained here using less polymer, and a faster method, are in fair correspondence (average difference ±16% with another published evaluation by atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS.

  11. Efficient generalized Golub-Kahan based methods for dynamic inverse problems

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chung, Julianne; Saibaba, Arvind K.; Brown, Matthew; Westman, Erik

    2018-02-01

    We consider efficient methods for computing solutions to and estimating uncertainties in dynamic inverse problems, where the parameters of interest may change during the measurement procedure. Compared to static inverse problems, incorporating prior information in both space and time in a Bayesian framework can become computationally intensive, in part, due to the large number of unknown parameters. In these problems, explicit computation of the square root and/or inverse of the prior covariance matrix is not possible, so we consider efficient, iterative, matrix-free methods based on the generalized Golub-Kahan bidiagonalization that allow automatic regularization parameter and variance estimation. We demonstrate that these methods for dynamic inversion can be more flexible than standard methods and develop efficient implementations that can exploit structure in the prior, as well as possible structure in the forward model. Numerical examples from photoacoustic tomography, space-time deblurring, and passive seismic tomography demonstrate the range of applicability and effectiveness of the described approaches. Specifically, in passive seismic tomography, we demonstrate our approach on both synthetic and real data. To demonstrate the scalability of our algorithm, we solve a dynamic inverse problem with approximately 43 000 measurements and 7.8 million unknowns in under 40 s on a standard desktop.

  12. RF extraction issues in the relativistic klystron amplifiers

    Science.gov (United States)

    Serlin, Victor; Friedman, Moshe; Lampe, Martin; Hubbard, Richard F.

    1994-05-01

    Relativistic klystron amplifiers (RKAs) were successfully operated at NRL in several frequency regimes and power levels. In particular, an L-band RKA was optimized for high- power rf extraction into the atmosphere and an S-band RKA was operated, both in a two-beam and a single-beam configuration. At L-band the rf extraction at maximum power levels (>= 15 GW) was hindered by pulse shortening and poor repeatability. Preliminary investigation showed electron emission in the radiating horn, due to very high voltages associated with the multi-gigawatt rf power levels. This electron current constituted an electric load in parallel with the radiating antenna, and precipitated the rf pulse collapse. At S-band the peak extracted power reached 1.7 GW with power efficiency approximately 50%. However, pulse shortening limited the duration to approximately 50 nanoseconds. The new triaxial RKA promises to solve many of the existing problems.

  13. Optimization of a high efficiency FEL amplifier

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Schneidmiller, E.A.; Yurkov, M.V.

    2014-10-01

    The problem of an efficiency increase of an FEL amplifier is now of great practical importance. Technique of undulator tapering in the post-saturation regime is used at the existing X-ray FELs LCLS and SACLA, and is planned for use at the European XFEL, Swiss FEL, and PAL XFEL. There are also discussions on the future of high peak and average power FELs for scientific and industrial applications. In this paper we perform detailed analysis of the tapering strategies for high power seeded FEL amplifiers. Application of similarity techniques allows us to derive universal law of the undulator tapering.

  14. Impact of industrial hammer mill rotor speed on extraction efficiency and quality of extra virgin olive oil.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Polari, Juan J; Garcí-Aguirre, David; Olmo-García, Lucía; Carrasco-Pancorbo, Alegría; Wang, Selina C

    2018-03-01

    Crushing is a key step during olive oil extraction. Among commercial crushers, the hammer mill is the most widely used due to its robustness and high throughput. In the present work, the impact of hammer mill rotor speed on extraction yield and overall quality of super-high-density Arbosana olive oils were assessed in an industrial facility. Our results show that increasing the rotor speed from 2400rpm to 3600rpm led to a rise in oil yield of 1.2%, while conserving quality parameters. Sensory analysis showed more pungency with increased rotation speed, while others attributes were unaffected. Volatile compounds showed little variation with the differences in crusher speed; however, total phenols content, two relevant secoiridoids, and triterpenoids levels increased with rotor speed. Hammer mill rotor speed is a processing variable that can be tuned to increase the extraction efficiency and modulate the chemical composition of extra virgin olive oil. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  15. Solion ion source for high-efficiency, high-throughput solar cell manufacturing

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Koo, John, E-mail: john-koo@amat.com; Binns, Brant; Miller, Timothy; Krause, Stephen; Skinner, Wesley; Mullin, James [Applied Materials, Inc., Varian Semiconductor Equipment Business Unit, 35 Dory Road, Gloucester, Massachusetts 01930 (United States)

    2014-02-15

    In this paper, we introduce the Solion ion source for high-throughput solar cell doping. As the source power is increased to enable higher throughput, negative effects degrade the lifetime of the plasma chamber and the extraction electrodes. In order to improve efficiency, we have explored a wide range of electron energies and determined the conditions which best suit production. To extend the lifetime of the source we have developed an in situ cleaning method using only existing hardware. With these combinations, source life-times of >200 h for phosphorous and >100 h for boron ion beams have been achieved while maintaining 1100 cell-per-hour production.

  16. SPMK AND GRABCUT BASED TARGET EXTRACTION FROM HIGH RESOLUTION REMOTE SENSING IMAGES

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    W. Cui

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available Target detection and extraction from high resolution remote sensing images is a basic and wide needed application. In this paper, to improve the efficiency of image interpretation, we propose a detection and segmentation combined method to realize semi-automatic target extraction. We introduce the dense transform color scale invariant feature transform (TC-SIFT descriptor and the histogram of oriented gradients (HOG & HSV descriptor to characterize the spatial structure and color information of the targets. With the k-means cluster method, we get the bag of visual words, and then, we adopt three levels’ spatial pyramid (SP to represent the target patch. After gathering lots of different kinds of target image patches from many high resolution UAV images, and using the TC-SIFT-SP and the multi-scale HOG & HSV feature, we constructed the SVM classifier to detect the target. In this paper, we take buildings as the targets. Experiment results show that the target detection accuracy of buildings can reach to above 90%. Based on the detection results which are a series of rectangle regions of the targets. We select the rectangle regions as candidates for foreground and adopt the GrabCut based and boundary regularized semi-auto interactive segmentation algorithm to get the accurate boundary of the target. Experiment results show its accuracy and efficiency. It can be an effective way for some special targets extraction.

  17. Spmk and Grabcut Based Target Extraction from High Resolution Remote Sensing Images

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cui, Weihong; Wang, Guofeng; Feng, Chenyi; Zheng, Yiwei; Li, Jonathan; Zhang, Yi

    2016-06-01

    Target detection and extraction from high resolution remote sensing images is a basic and wide needed application. In this paper, to improve the efficiency of image interpretation, we propose a detection and segmentation combined method to realize semi-automatic target extraction. We introduce the dense transform color scale invariant feature transform (TC-SIFT) descriptor and the histogram of oriented gradients (HOG) & HSV descriptor to characterize the spatial structure and color information of the targets. With the k-means cluster method, we get the bag of visual words, and then, we adopt three levels' spatial pyramid (SP) to represent the target patch. After gathering lots of different kinds of target image patches from many high resolution UAV images, and using the TC-SIFT-SP and the multi-scale HOG & HSV feature, we constructed the SVM classifier to detect the target. In this paper, we take buildings as the targets. Experiment results show that the target detection accuracy of buildings can reach to above 90%. Based on the detection results which are a series of rectangle regions of the targets. We select the rectangle regions as candidates for foreground and adopt the GrabCut based and boundary regularized semi-auto interactive segmentation algorithm to get the accurate boundary of the target. Experiment results show its accuracy and efficiency. It can be an effective way for some special targets extraction.

  18. Determining an Efficient Solvent Extraction Parameters for Re-Refining of Waste Lubricating Oils

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hassan Ali Durrani

    2012-04-01

    Full Text Available Re-refining of vehicle waste lubricating oil by solvent extraction is one of the efficient and cheapest methods. Three extracting solvents MEK (Methyl-Ethyl-Ketone, 1-butanol, 2-propanol were determined experimentally for their performance based on the parameters i.e. solvent type, solvent oil ratio and extraction temperature. From the experimental results it was observed the MEK performance was highest based on the lowest oil percent losses and highest sludge removal. Further, when temperature of extraction increased the oil losses percent also decreased. This is due to the solvent ability that dissolves the base oil in waste lubricating oil and determines the best SOR (Solvent Oil Ratio and extraction temperatures.

  19. Efficient Algorithms for a Family of Matroid Intersection Problems

    National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

    Gabow, Harold N; Tarjan, Robert E

    1982-01-01

    .... its efficiency is demonstrated by implementations on specific matroids. In all cases but one, the running time matches the best-known algorithm for the problem without the red element constraint...

  20. Use of an external source (60Co) for 32P detection efficiency determination by the Cerenkov effect, in soil extracts

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Nascimento Filho, V.F. do.

    1975-03-01

    The detection of 32 P in aqueous extracts is usually made with the aid of a Geiger-Muller detector, with thin window and sample on a planchet. Presently the technique is being developed of detection of high energy beta particles emitters ( 32 P, 42 K, 86 Rb) through the Cerenkov effect, using a commercial liquid scintillation system. This technique, despite being approximately 30 times more sensitive, has the inconvenience of varying the detection efficiency, mainly for color samples (soil extracts, for instance). From this stems the need for determining the detection efficiency for each sample. The internal standardization and channels ratio methods show a series of drawbacks, mainly the non-reutilization of the samples (1st method) and statistical uncertainty for low activity samples (2nd method). The elimination of these dreawbacks can be achieved through the utilization of the external standardization method. A 60 Co source with 1,4 μCi activity has been adapted to the sample elevator of the detector system, and a comparison was made with the channels ratio method to evaluate the efficiency of 32 P detection in soil extracts (P extraction and fractionation). The external standardization method showed to be more accurate, besides being influenced to a lesser degree by high voltage variation, sample volume and vial types. In the case of large samples, it is advisable to carry out detection in vials filled up to their full capacity; in the case of small samples, the whole volume should be transferred to the vials and completed up to 9 ml for nylon vials,10 ml for glass vials and 11 to 14 ml for polyethilene vials. On the other hand, plastic vials showed higher detection efficiency than ones. As to background radiation, the lowest rates were given by nylon vials and the highest by Beckman glass vials [pt

  1. Water extraction from high moisture lignite by means of efficient integration of waste heat and water recovery technologies with flue gas pre-drying system

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Han, Xiaoqu; Yan, Junjie; Karellas, Sotirios; Liu, Ming; Kakaras, Emmanuel; Xiao, Feng

    2017-01-01

    Highlights: • Energy-saving potential of FPLPS in different cold-ends and lignite types is evaluated. • Water-saving of FPLPS is realized through recovery of water extracted from lignite. • Integrations of low pressure economizer and spray tower with FPLPS are proposed. • Thermodynamic and economic performances of different schemes are investigated. - Abstract: The flue gas pre-dried lignite-fired power system (FPLPS) integrates the fan mill flue gas dryer with an open pulverizing system and yields an increase of the boiler efficiency. Particularly, the dryer exhaust gas contains a large amount of vapor removed from high moisture lignite, which exhibits great potential for waste heat and water recovery. Two available options are considered to realize the extraction of water from lignite: the low pressure economizer (LPE) for water-cooled units and the spray tower (SPT) integrated with heat pump for air-cooled units. This paper aims at evaluating the energy saving and water recovery potentials of the FPLPS integrated with both schemes. Results showed that the plant efficiency improvement of the FPLPS at base case varied from 1.14% to 1.47% depending on the moisture content of raw lignite. The water recovery ratio and plant efficiency improvement in the optimal LPE scheme were 39.4% and 0.20%, respectively. In contrast, 83.3% of water recover ratio and 110.6 MW_t_h heat supply were achieved in the SPT system. Both schemes were economically feasible with discounted payback periods of around 3 years. Moreover, parametric analysis was conducted to examine the economic viability of both schemes with different lignite types and market factors.

  2. High-Efficiency Nitride-Based Solid-State Lighting

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Paul T. Fini; Shuji Nakamura

    2005-07-30

    In this final technical progress report we summarize research accomplished during Department of Energy contract DE-FC26-01NT41203, entitled ''High-Efficiency Nitride-Based Solid-State Lighting''. Two teams, from the University of California at Santa Barbara (Principle Investigator: Dr. Shuji Nakamura) and the Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (led by Dr. N. Narendran), pursued the goals of this contract from thin film growth, characterization, and packaging/luminaire design standpoints. The UCSB team initially pursued the development of blue gallium nitride (GaN)-based vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers, as well as ultraviolet GaN-based light emitting diodes (LEDs). In Year 2, the emphasis shifted to resonant-cavity light emitting diodes, also known as micro-cavity LEDs when extremely thin device cavities are fabricated. These devices have very directional emission and higher light extraction efficiency than conventional LEDs. Via the optimization of thin-film growth and refinement of device processing, we decreased the total cavity thickness to less than 1 {micro}m, such that micro-cavity effects were clearly observed and a light extraction efficiency of over 10% was reached. We also began the development of photonic crystals for increased light extraction, in particular for so-called ''guided modes'' which would otherwise propagate laterally in the device and be re-absorbed. Finally, we pursued the growth of smooth, high-quality nonpolar a-plane and m-plane GaN films, as well as blue light emitting diodes on these novel films. Initial nonpolar LEDs showed the expected behavior of negligible peak wavelength shift with increasing drive current. M-plane LEDs in particular show promise, as unpackaged devices had unsaturated optical output power of {approx} 3 mW at 200 mA drive current. The LRC's tasks were aimed at developing the subcomponents necessary for packaging UCSB's light

  3. Studying the Efficiency of XAD-7HP Anionic Resin in the Extraction of Humic Acid from Surface Water

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hassan Hashemi

    2017-09-01

    Results: The average extraction efficiency for XAD-7HP was 77% and HA concentration determined in all seasons ranges from 0.15 to 0.29 mg/L in raw water. Conclusions: From the findings of this study, it can be concluded that the use of XAD-7HP is a proper and effective method for the extraction of HS and its extraction efficiency is more influenced by pH and turbidity than other parameters. It can also be deduced from this study that XAD-7HP resin was most efficient at a pH of 2 and an increase in turbidity resulted in a corresponding decrease in the efficiency of resin.

  4. An investigation of sugar extraction methods and the use of microwave power for date syrup processing: efficiency and color related considerations.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fennir, M A; Landry, J A; Ramaswamy, H S; Raghavan, V G S

    2003-01-01

    This study investigates the effect of extraction methods on the color of date syrup and the potential use of microwave power for syrup processing. Sugar solutions were extracted from dates by boiling, soaking and blending. Color and sugar content of the extracted solutions were measured, and the percentage of sugar extracted form the total fruit sugar determined. Boiling was found to be the most efficient method of extraction whereby 74% of total samples sugar was extracted. In contrast, only 54.2% of fruit sugar was extracted by blending and 42% by soaking. In addition, solutions extracted by soaking and blending had a foaming problem in the subsequent concentration process. The extraction method had no effect on the product final color. The extracted solution was concentrated using two heating methods: conventional and microwave heating at a 600 W capacity and a frequency of 2450 MHz applied at three power levels: 10, 7, and 6. In the heating process, 180 minutes were needed to achieve a 77% degrees Brix using convective heating, while it took 81, 138, and 166 minutes of microwave heating at power level 10, 7, and 6, respectively to achieve the same concentration. Water activity of the syrup was measured within a sugar content range of 50 to 80% degrees Brix and the sugar concentration at which the product is shelf stable was determined at 76%.

  5. Alpha efficiency determination for OSL of quartz extracted from Chinese loess

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Lai Zhongping; Zoeller, Ludwig; Fuchs, Markus; Brueckner, Helmut

    2008-01-01

    We report here the estimates of alpha efficiency for fine grain quartz extracted from Chinese loess using the SAR protocol. For the seven samples, the α-values range from 0.028 to 0.038 with an average of 0.035±0.001. The annealed quartz (450 deg. C, 45 min) has an α-value of 0.030±0.001 which is similar to the α-value of 0.029±0.001 for the non-annealed quartz extracts, suggesting that the α-value is independent of the quartz's thermal history for this sample. We suggest that an α-value of 0.035±0.003 can be adopted for quartz extracted from Chinese loess when calculating the environmental dose rate

  6. New method for the rapid extraction of natural products: efficient isolation of shikimic acid from star anise.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Just, Jeremy; Deans, Bianca J; Olivier, Wesley J; Paull, Brett; Bissember, Alex C; Smith, Jason A

    2015-05-15

    A new, practical, rapid, and high-yielding process for the pressurized hot water extraction (PHWE) of multigram quantities of shikimic acid from star anise (Illicium verum) using an unmodified household espresso machine has been developed. This operationally simple and inexpensive method enables the efficient and straightforward isolation of shikimic acid and the facile preparation of a range of its synthetic derivatives.

  7. Efficient Foreground Extraction From HEVC Compressed Video for Application to Real-Time Analysis of Surveillance 'Big' Data.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dey, Bhaskar; Kundu, Malay K

    2015-11-01

    While surveillance video is the biggest source of unstructured Big Data today, the emergence of high-efficiency video coding (HEVC) standard is poised to have a huge role in lowering the costs associated with transmission and storage. Among the benefits of HEVC over the legacy MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding (AVC), is a staggering 40 percent or more bitrate reduction at the same visual quality. Given the bandwidth limitations, video data are compressed essentially by removing spatial and temporal correlations that exist in its uncompressed form. This causes compressed data, which are already de-correlated, to serve as a vital resource for machine learning with significantly fewer samples for training. In this paper, an efficient approach to foreground extraction/segmentation is proposed using novel spatio-temporal de-correlated block features extracted directly from the HEVC compressed video. Most related techniques, in contrast, work on uncompressed images claiming significant storage and computational resources not only for the decoding process prior to initialization but also for the feature selection/extraction and background modeling stage following it. The proposed approach has been qualitatively and quantitatively evaluated against several other state-of-the-art methods.

  8. Green and efficient extraction strategy to lithium isotope separation with double ionic liquids as the medium and ionic associated agent

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Xu Jingjing; Li Zaijun; Gu Zhiguo; Wang Guangli; Liu Junkang

    2013-01-01

    The paper reported a green and efficient extraction strategy to lithium isotope separation. A 4-methyl-10-hydroxybenzoquinoline (ROH), hydrophobic ionic liquid-1,3-di(isooctyl)imidazolium hexafluorophosphate ([D(i-C 8 )IM][PF 6 ]), and hydrophilic ionic liquid-1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride (ILCl) were used as the chelating agent, extraction medium and ionic associated agent. Lithium ion (Li + ) first reacted with ROH in strong alkali solution to produce a lithium complex anion. It then associated with IL + to form the Li(RO) 2 IL complex, which was rapidly extracted into the organic phase. Factors for effect on the lithium isotope separation were examined. To obtain high extraction efficiency, a saturated ROH in the [D(i-C 8 )IM][PF 6 ] (0.3 mol l -1 ), mixed aqueous solution containing 0.3 mol l -1 lithium chloride, 1.6 mol l -1 sodium hydroxide and 0.8 mol l -1 ILCl and 3:1 were selected as the organic phase, aqueous phase and phase ratio (o/a). Under optimized conditions, the single-stage extraction efficiency was found to be 52 %. The saturated lithium concentration in the organic phase was up to 0.15 mol l -1 . The free energy change (ΔG), enthalpy change (ΔH) and entropy change (ΔS) of the extraction process were -0.097 J mol -1 , -14.70 J mol K -1 and -48.17 J mol -1 K -1 , indicating a exothermic process. The partition coefficients of lithium will enhance with decrease of the temperature. Thus, a 25 deg C of operating temperature was employed for total lithium isotope separation process. Lithium in Li(RO) 2 IL was stripped by the sodium chloride of 5 mol l -1 with a phase ratio (o/a) of 4. The lithium isotope exchange reaction in the interface between organic phase and aqueous phase reached the equilibrium within 1 min. The single-stage isotope separation factor of 7 Li- 6 Li was up to 1.023 ± 0.002, indicating that 7 Li was concentrated in organic phase and 6 Li was concentrated in aqueous phase. All chemical reagents used can be well recycled

  9. High efficiency and long life of a three-phase power conditioner via interleave control

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kenji Amei

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available This study describes the high efficiency and long life of three-phase power conditioners of a photovoltaic (PV system. The current PV system, which is widely spread, has two problems. The first problem is the lifetime of a power conditioner, whereas the other problem is the drop in the efficiency of the conversion because of the characteristics of the solar cell. For those problems, the solar panel and boost chopper circuit were divided into a plurality to configure a power conditioner, and an electrolytic capacitor-less driver with interleave control was realized. The drop in the current generated by the solar cell was suppressed, and an improvement in power generation efficiency was expected. The configuration and principle of a proposed circuit were explained, and results of simulation and experiment were reported.

  10. Complete hierarchies of efficient approximations to problems in entanglement theory

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Eisert, Jens; Hyllus, Philipp; Guehne, Otfried; Curty, Marcos

    2004-01-01

    We investigate several problems in entanglement theory from the perspective of convex optimization. This list of problems comprises (A) the decision whether a state is multiparty entangled, (B) the minimization of expectation values of entanglement witnesses with respect to pure product states, (C) the closely related evaluation of the geometric measure of entanglement to quantify pure multiparty entanglement, (D) the test whether states are multiparty entangled on the basis of witnesses based on second moments and on the basis of linear entropic criteria, and (E) the evaluation of instances of maximal output purities of quantum channels. We show that these problems can be formulated as certain optimization problems: as polynomially constrained problems employing polynomials of degree 3 or less. We then apply very recently established known methods from the theory of semidefinite relaxations to the formulated optimization problems. By this construction we arrive at a hierarchy of efficiently solvable approximations to the solution, approximating the exact solution as closely as desired, in a way that is asymptotically complete. For example, this results in a hierarchy of efficiently decidable sufficient criteria for multiparticle entanglement, such that every entangled state will necessarily be detected in some step of the hierarchy. Finally, we present numerical examples to demonstrate the practical accessibility of this approach

  11. High Efficiency Colloidal Quantum Dot Phosphors

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Kahen, Keith

    2013-12-31

    The project showed that non-Cd containing, InP-based nanocrystals (semiconductor materials with dimensions of ~6 nm) have high potential for enabling next-generation, nanocrystal-based, on chip phosphors for solid state lighting. Typical nanocrystals fall short of the requirements for on chip phosphors due to their loss of quantum efficiency under the operating conditions of LEDs, such as, high temperature (up to 150 °C) and high optical flux (up to 200 W/cm2). The InP-based nanocrystals invented during this project maintain high quantum efficiency (>80%) in polymer-based films under these operating conditions for emission wavelengths ranging from ~530 to 620 nm. These nanocrystals also show other desirable attributes, such as, lack of blinking (a common problem with nanocrystals which limits their performance) and no increase in the emission spectral width from room to 150 °C (emitters with narrower spectral widths enable higher efficiency LEDs). Prior to these nanocrystals, no nanocrystal system (regardless of nanocrystal type) showed this collection of properties; in fact, other nanocrystal systems are typically limited to showing only one desirable trait (such as high temperature stability) but being deficient in other properties (such as high flux stability). The project showed that one can reproducibly obtain these properties by generating a novel compositional structure inside of the nanomaterials; in addition, the project formulated an initial theoretical framework linking the compositional structure to the list of high performance optical properties. Over the course of the project, the synthetic methodology for producing the novel composition was evolved to enable the synthesis of these nanomaterials at a cost approximately equal to that required for forming typical conventional nanocrystals. Given the above results, the last major remaining step prior to scale up of the nanomaterials is to limit the oxidation of these materials during the tens of

  12. High efficiency spectro graphs for the EUV and soft x-rays

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Cash, W.

    1983-01-01

    A basic need of modern UV and x-ray astronomy is the capability to perform high resolution spectroscopy of faint stars. The use of modern grazing incidence optics can be coupled to high blaze angle reflection gratings used in the conical diffraction mount to offer a versatile, efficient approach to the design problem. The authors discuss two designs of interest: an echelle spectrograph for use longward of 100 A, and an Objective Reflection Grating Spectrograph for use in the soft x-rays. General design considerations and measurements of grating efficiencies are also presented

  13. Highway extraction from high resolution aerial photography using a geometric active contour model

    Science.gov (United States)

    Niu, Xutong

    Highway extraction and vehicle detection are two of the most important steps in traffic-flow analysis from multi-frame aerial photographs. The traditional method of deriving traffic flow trajectories relies on manual vehicle counting from a sequence of aerial photographs, which is tedious and time-consuming. This research presents a new framework for semi-automatic highway extraction. The basis of the new framework is an improved geometric active contour (GAC) model. This novel model seeks to minimize an objective function that transforms a problem of propagation of regular curves into an optimization problem. The implementation of curve propagation is based on level set theory. By using an implicit representation of a two-dimensional curve, a level set approach can be used to deal with topological changes naturally, and the output is unaffected by different initial positions of the curve. However, the original GAC model, on which the new model is based, only incorporates boundary information into the curve propagation process. An error-producing phenomenon called leakage is inevitable wherever there is an uncertain weak edge. In this research, region-based information is added as a constraint into the original GAC model, thereby, giving this proposed method the ability of integrating both boundary and region-based information during the curve propagation. Adding the region-based constraint eliminates the leakage problem. This dissertation applies the proposed augmented GAC model to the problem of highway extraction from high-resolution aerial photography. First, an optimized stopping criterion is designed and used in the implementation of the GAC model. It effectively saves processing time and computations. Second, a seed point propagation framework is designed and implemented. This framework incorporates highway extraction, tracking, and linking into one procedure. A seed point is usually placed at an end node of highway segments close to the boundary of the

  14. Larger groups of passerines are more efficient problem solvers in the wild

    Science.gov (United States)

    Morand-Ferron, Julie; Quinn, John L.

    2011-01-01

    Group living commonly helps organisms face challenging environmental conditions. Although a known phenomenon in humans, recent findings suggest that a benefit of group living in animals generally might be increased innovative problem-solving efficiency. This benefit has never been demonstrated in a natural context, however, and the mechanisms underlying improved efficiency are largely unknown. We examined the problem-solving performance of great and blue tits at automated devices and found that efficiency increased with flock size. This relationship held when restricting the analysis to naive individuals, demonstrating that larger groups increased innovation efficiency. In addition to this effect of naive flock size, the presence of at least one experienced bird increased the frequency of solving, and larger flocks were more likely to contain experienced birds. These findings provide empirical evidence for the “pool of competence” hypothesis in nonhuman animals. The probability of success also differed consistently between individuals, a necessary condition for the pool of competence hypothesis. Solvers had a higher probability of success when foraging with a larger number of companions and when using devices located near rather than further from protective tree cover, suggesting a role for reduced predation risk on problem-solving efficiency. In contrast to traditional group living theory, individuals joining larger flocks benefited from a higher seed intake, suggesting that group living facilitated exploitation of a novel food source through improved problem-solving efficiency. Together our results suggest that both ecological and social factors, through reduced predation risk and increased pool of competence, mediate innovation in natural populations. PMID:21930936

  15. Antioxidant and antibacterial effects of laurus nobilis aqueous extract again Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    B. Azimzadeh

    2017-05-01

    Full Text Available Some medical plants which are rich in phenolic compounds (flavnoieds, tannis and anthocyanin have drawn increasing attention as the most important naturanal antioxidant source by many developed countries. Laurus nobilis is one of the medical plants that grows in various regions of Iran. This plants is known to have many benefits and medical properties such as diuretics and mosaics. Also, this plant is used in treatment of gastrointestinal problems, especialy and it is effectieve in elimination of stomach gas. In this experiment, we studied antioxidant and antibacterial effects of Laurus nobilis plant. To this purpose, the efficiency of aqueous solvent extract, phenolic compounds, DPPH radical scavenging and ferric-reducing power and ABTS free radical scavenging were examined. Antibacterial characteristics of aqueous extract was evaluated on Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichiacoli. The result shows that the aqueous extract of Lauros nobilis has 14/8% extraction efficiency with high rate of phenolic (99/9±9/95 and the lowest IC50 in DPPH test (2/813 and the high rate of ferric reducing power (22/15±2/10 and ABTS free radical scavenging (22/87±2/03. The result of antibacterial test also indicates that aqueous extract has high antibacterial effect on Staphylococcus aureus (18±0 and E. Coli (18±0 mm.These facts show high antioxidant and antibacterial activity of laurel’s extract.

  16. Development of Houttuynia cordata Extract-Loaded Solid Lipid Nanoparticles for Oral Delivery: High Drug Loading Efficiency and Controlled Release

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ju-Heon Kim

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available Houttuynia cordata (H. cordata has been used for diuresis and detoxification in folk medicine as well as a herbal medicine with antiviral and antibacterial activities. H. cordata extract-loaded solid lipid nanoparticles (H-SLNs were prepared with various concentration of poloxamer 188 or poloxamer 407 by a hot homogenization and ultrasonication method. H-SLNs dispersion was freeze-dried with or without trehalose as a cryoprotectant. The physicochemical characteristics of H-SLNs were evaluated by dynamic laser scattering (DLS, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM. Additionally, the in vitro release and in vitro cytotoxicity of H-SLNs were measured. Encapsulation efficiencies of H-SLNs (as quercitrin were 92.9–95.9%. The SEM images of H-SLNs showed that H-SLNs have a spherical morphology. DSC and FT-IR showed that there were no interactions between ingredients. The increased extent of particle size of freeze-dried H-SLNs with trehalose was significantly lower than that of H-SLNs without trehalose. H-SLNs provided sustained release of quercitrin from H. cordata extracts. Cell viability of Caco-2 cells was over 70% according to the concentration of various formulation. Therefore, it was suggested that SLNs could be good carrier for administering H. cordata extracts.

  17. Study on the possibility of supercritical fluid extraction for reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from high temperature gas-cooled reactor

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Duan Wuhua; Zhu Liyang; Zhu Yongjun; Xu Jingming

    2011-01-01

    International interest in high temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) has been increasing in recent years. It is important to study on reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from HTGR for recovery of nuclear resource and reduction of nuclear waste. Treatment of UO 2 pellets for preparing fuel elements of the 10 MW high temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTR-10) using supercritical fluid extraction was investigated. UO 2 pellets are difficult to be directly dissolved and extracted with TBP-HNO 3 complex in supercritical CO 2 (SC-CO 2 ), and the extraction efficiency is only about 7% under experimental conditions. UO 2 pellets are also difficult to be converted completely into nitrate with N 2 O 4 . When UO 2 pellets break spontaneously into U 3 O 8 powders with particle size below 100 μm under O 2 flow and 600degc, the extraction efficiency of U 3 O 8 powders with TBP-HNO 3 complex in SC-CO 2 can reach more than 98%. U 3 O 8 powders are easy to be completely converted into nitrate with N 2 O 4 . The extraction efficiency of the nitrate product with TBP in SC-CO 2 can reach more than 99%. So it has a potential prospect that application of supercritical fluid extraction in reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from HTGR. (author)

  18. Synthetic acceleration methods for linear transport problems with highly anisotropic scattering

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Khattab, K.M.; Larsen, E.W.

    1992-01-01

    The diffusion synthetic acceleration (DSA) algorithm effectively accelerates the iterative solution of transport problems with isotropic or mildly anisotropic scattering. However, DSA loses its effectiveness for transport problems that have strongly anisotropic scattering. Two generalizations of DSA are proposed, which, for highly anisotropic scattering problems, converge at least an order of magnitude (clock time) faster than the DSA method. These two methods are developed, the results of Fourier analysis that theoretically predict their efficiency are described, and numerical results that verify the theoretical predictions are presented. (author). 10 refs., 7 figs., 5 tabs

  19. Synthetic acceleration methods for linear transport problems with highly anisotropic scattering

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Khattab, K.M.; Larsen, E.W.

    1991-01-01

    This paper reports on the diffusion synthetic acceleration (DSA) algorithm that effectively accelerates the iterative solution of transport problems with isotropic or mildly anisotropic scattering. However, DSA loses its effectiveness for transport problems that have strongly anisotropic scattering. Two generalizations of DSA are proposed, which, for highly anisotropic scattering problems, converge at least an order of magnitude (clock time) faster than the DSA method. These two methods are developed, the results of Fourier analyses that theoretically predict their efficiency are described, and numerical results that verify the theoretical predictions are presented

  20. An efficient chaos embedded hybrid approach for hydro-thermal unit commitment problem

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Yuan, Xiaohui; Ji, Bin; Yuan, Yanbin; Ikram, Rana M.; Zhang, Xiaopan; Huang, Yuehua

    2015-01-01

    Highlights: • Thermal unit commitment is considered in hydrothermal generation scheduling (SHTGS). • Two newly proposed promising optimization algorithms are combined to solving SHTGS. • The proposed method is enhanced by integrating a chaotic local search strategy. • Heuristic search strategies are applied to handle the constraints of the SHTGS. • The results verify the proposed method is feasible and efficient for handling SHTGS. - Abstract: This paper establishes a model to deal with the short-term hydrothermal generation scheduling (SHTGS) problem. The problem is composed of three interconnected parts: short-term hydrothermal coordination, thermal unit commitment and economic load dispatch. An efficient hybrid method composed of chaotic backtracking search optimization algorithm and binary charged system search algorithm (CBSA–BCSS) is proposed to solve this problem. In order to analyze the effect of the chaotic map on the performance of the method, three different chaotic maps are adopted to integrate into the proposed method and the corresponding consequences are achieved. Furthermore, efficient heuristic search strategies are adopted to handle with the complicated constraints of the SHTGS system. Finally, a hydrothermal unit commitment system is utilized to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method. The results demonstrate the efficiency of the hybrid optimization method and the appropriation of the constraint handling strategies. The comparison of the solutions achieved by different methods shows that the proposed method has higher efficiency in terms of solving SHTGS problem

  1. A fractional optimal control problem for maximizing advertising efficiency

    OpenAIRE

    Igor Bykadorov; Andrea Ellero; Stefania Funari; Elena Moretti

    2007-01-01

    We propose an optimal control problem to model the dynamics of the communication activity of a firm with the aim of maximizing its efficiency. We assume that the advertising effort undertaken by the firm contributes to increase the firm's goodwill and that the goodwill affects the firm's sales. The aim is to find the advertising policies in order to maximize the firm's efficiency index which is computed as the ratio between "outputs" and "inputs" properly weighted; the outputs are represented...

  2. Support the Design of Improved IUE NEWSIPS High Dispersion Extraction Algorithms: Improved IUE High Dispersion Extraction Algorithms

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lawton, Pat

    2004-01-01

    The objective of this work was to support the design of improved IUE NEWSIPS high dispersion extraction algorithms. The purpose of this work was to evaluate use of the Linearized Image (LIHI) file versus the Re-Sampled Image (SIHI) file, evaluate various extraction, and design algorithms for evaluation of IUE High Dispersion spectra. It was concluded the use of the Re-Sampled Image (SIHI) file was acceptable. Since the Gaussian profile worked well for the core and the Lorentzian profile worked well for the wings, the Voigt profile was chosen for use in the extraction algorithm. It was found that the gamma and sigma parameters varied significantly across the detector, so gamma and sigma masks for the SWP detector were developed. Extraction code was written.

  3. Ionic-liquid-based ultrasound-assisted extraction of isoflavones from Belamcanda chinensis and subsequent screening and isolation of potential α-glucosidase inhibitors by ultrafiltration and semipreparative high-performance liquid chromatography.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Senlin; Li, Sainan; Huang, Yu; Liu, Chunming; Chen, Lina; Zhang, Yuchi

    2017-06-01

    The separation of a compound of interest from its structurally similar homologues to produce high-purity natural products is a challenging problem. This work proposes a novel method for the separation of iristectorigenin A from its structurally similar homologues by ionic-liquid-based ultrasound-assisted extraction and the subsequent screening and isolation of potential α-glucosidase inhibitors via ultrafiltration and semipreparative high-performance liquid chromatography. Ionic-liquid-based ultrasound-assisted extraction was successfully applied to the extraction of tectorigenin, iristectorigenin A, irigenin, and irisflorentin from Belamcanda chinensis. The optimum conditions for the efficient extraction of isoflavones were determined as 1.0 M 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate with extraction time of 30 min and a solvent to solid ratio of 30 mL/g. Ultrafiltration with liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry was applied to screen and identify α-glucosidase inhibitors from B. chinensis, followed by the application of semipreparative high-performance liquid chromatography to separate and isolate the active constituents. Four major compounds including tectorigenin, iristectorigenin A, irigenin, and irisflorentin were screened and identified as α-glucosidase inhibitors, and then the four active compounds abovementioned were subsequently isolated by semipreparative high-performance liquid chromatography (99.89, 88.97, 99.79, and 99.97% purity, respectively). The results demonstrate that ionic liquid extraction can be successfully applied to the extraction of isoflavones from B. chinensis. © 2017 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

  4. Selection of mRNA 5'-untranslated region sequence with high translation efficiency through ribosome display

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Mie, Masayasu; Shimizu, Shun; Takahashi, Fumio; Kobatake, Eiry

    2008-01-01

    The 5'-untranslated region (5'-UTR) of mRNAs functions as a translation enhancer, promoting translation efficiency. Many in vitro translation systems exhibit a reduced efficiency in protein translation due to decreased translation initiation. The use of a 5'-UTR sequence with high translation efficiency greatly enhances protein production in these systems. In this study, we have developed an in vitro selection system that favors 5'-UTRs with high translation efficiency using a ribosome display technique. A 5'-UTR random library, comprised of 5'-UTRs tagged with a His-tag and Renilla luciferase (R-luc) fusion, were in vitro translated in rabbit reticulocytes. By limiting the translation period, only mRNAs with high translation efficiency were translated. During translation, mRNA, ribosome and translated R-luc with His-tag formed ternary complexes. They were collected with translated His-tag using Ni-particles. Extracted mRNA from ternary complex was amplified using RT-PCR and sequenced. Finally, 5'-UTR with high translation efficiency was obtained from random 5'-UTR library

  5. FASTREACT – An efficient numerical framework for the solution of reactive transport problems

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Trinchero, Paolo; Molinero, Jorge; Román-Ross, Gabriela; Berglund, Sten; Selroos, Jan-Olof

    2014-01-01

    Highlights: • We present a tool for the efficient solution of reactive transport problems. • The tool is used to simulate radionuclide transport in a two-dimensional medium. • The results are successfully compared with those obtained using an Eulerian approach. • A large-scale application example is also solved. • The results show that the proposed tool can efficiently solve large-scale models. - Abstract: In the framework of safety assessment studies for geological disposal, large scale reactive transport models are powerful inter-disciplinary tools aiming at supporting regulatory decision making as well as providing input to repository engineering activities. Important aspects of these kinds of models are their often very large temporal and spatial modelling scales and the need to integrate different non-linear processes (e.g., mineral dissolution and precipitation, adsorption and desorption, microbial reactions and redox transformations). It turns out that these types of models may be computationally highly demanding. In this work, we present a Lagrangian-based framework, denoted as FASTREACT, that aims at solving multi-component-reactive transport problems with a computationally efficient approach allowing complex modelling problems to be solved in large spatial and temporal scales. The tool has been applied to simulate radionuclide migration in a synthetic heterogeneous transmissivity field and the results have been successfully compared with those obtained using a standard Eulerian approach. Finally, the same geochemical model has been coupled to an ensemble of realistic three-dimensional transport pathways to simulate the migration of a set of radionuclides from a hypothetical repository for spent nuclear fuel to the surface. The results of this modelling exercise, which includes key processes such as the exchange of mass between the conductive fractures and the matrix, show that FASTREACT can efficiently solve large-scale reactive transport models

  6. Comparative efficiency of different methods of gluten extraction in indigenous varieties of wheat

    OpenAIRE

    Imran, Samra; Hussain, Zaib; Ghafoor, Farkhanda; Ahmad Nagra, Saeed; Ashbeal Ziai, Naheeda

    2013-01-01

    The present study investigated six varieties of locally grown wheat (Lasani, Sehar, Miraj-08, Chakwal-50, Faisalabad-08 and Inqlab) procured from Punjab Seed Corporation, Lahore, Pakistan for their proximate contents. On the basis of protein content and ready availability, Faisalabad-08 (FD-08) was selected to be used for the assessment of comparative efficiency of various methods used for gluten extraction. Three methods, mechanical, chemical and microbiological were used for the extraction ...

  7. Efficient numerical methods for the large-scale, parallel solution of elastoplastic contact problems

    KAUST Repository

    Frohne, Jö rg; Heister, Timo; Bangerth, Wolfgang

    2015-01-01

    © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Quasi-static elastoplastic contact problems are ubiquitous in many industrial processes and other contexts, and their numerical simulation is consequently of great interest in accurately describing and optimizing production processes. The key component in these simulations is the solution of a single load step of a time iteration. From a mathematical perspective, the problems to be solved in each time step are characterized by the difficulties of variational inequalities for both the plastic behavior and the contact problem. Computationally, they also often lead to very large problems. In this paper, we present and evaluate a complete set of methods that are (1) designed to work well together and (2) allow for the efficient solution of such problems. In particular, we use adaptive finite element meshes with linear and quadratic elements, a Newton linearization of the plasticity, active set methods for the contact problem, and multigrid-preconditioned linear solvers. Through a sequence of numerical experiments, we show the performance of these methods. This includes highly accurate solutions of a three-dimensional benchmark problem and scaling our methods in parallel to 1024 cores and more than a billion unknowns.

  8. Efficient numerical methods for the large-scale, parallel solution of elastoplastic contact problems

    KAUST Repository

    Frohne, Jörg

    2015-08-06

    © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Quasi-static elastoplastic contact problems are ubiquitous in many industrial processes and other contexts, and their numerical simulation is consequently of great interest in accurately describing and optimizing production processes. The key component in these simulations is the solution of a single load step of a time iteration. From a mathematical perspective, the problems to be solved in each time step are characterized by the difficulties of variational inequalities for both the plastic behavior and the contact problem. Computationally, they also often lead to very large problems. In this paper, we present and evaluate a complete set of methods that are (1) designed to work well together and (2) allow for the efficient solution of such problems. In particular, we use adaptive finite element meshes with linear and quadratic elements, a Newton linearization of the plasticity, active set methods for the contact problem, and multigrid-preconditioned linear solvers. Through a sequence of numerical experiments, we show the performance of these methods. This includes highly accurate solutions of a three-dimensional benchmark problem and scaling our methods in parallel to 1024 cores and more than a billion unknowns.

  9. High Quality RNA Isolation from Leaf, Shell, Root Tissues and Callus of Hazelnut (Corylus avellana L.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hossein Khosravi

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available Extraction of high quality RNA is a critical step in molecular genetics studies. Hazelnut is one of the most important nuts plants in the world. The presence of the taxol and other taxanes in hazelnut plant necessitates explaining their biosynthesis pathway and identifying the candidate genes. Therefore, an easy and practical method is necessary for RNA extraction from hazelnuts. Hazelnut has high levels of phenolic compounds. High amounts of polyphenolic and polysaccharide compounds in plants could be causing problems in RNA extraction procedures.  To avoid these problems, a simple and efficient method can be used based on cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB extraction buffer and lithium chloride for extraction of high quality RNA from different parts of hazelnut plant. Using this method, a high-quality RNA sample (light absorbed in the A260/A280 was 2.04

  10. An Efficient Meta Heuristic Algorithm to Solve Economic Load Dispatch Problems

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    R Subramanian

    2013-12-01

    Full Text Available The Economic Load Dispatch (ELD problems in power generation systems are to reduce the fuel cost by reducing the total cost for the generation of electric power. This paper presents an efficient Modified Firefly Algorithm (MFA, for solving ELD Problem. The main objective of the problems is to minimize the total fuel cost of the generating units having quadratic cost functions subjected to limits on generator true power output and transmission losses. The MFA is a stochastic, Meta heuristic approach based on the idealized behaviour of the flashing characteristics of fireflies. This paper presents an application of MFA to ELD for six generator test case system. MFA is applied to ELD problem and compared its solution quality and computation efficiency to Genetic algorithm (GA, Differential Evolution (DE, Particle swarm optimization (PSO, Artificial Bee Colony optimization (ABC, Biogeography-Based Optimization (BBO, Bacterial Foraging optimization (BFO, Firefly Algorithm (FA techniques. The simulation result shows that the proposed algorithm outperforms previous optimization methods.

  11. Joint classification and contour extraction of large 3D point clouds

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hackel, Timo; Wegner, Jan D.; Schindler, Konrad

    2017-08-01

    We present an effective and efficient method for point-wise semantic classification and extraction of object contours of large-scale 3D point clouds. What makes point cloud interpretation challenging is the sheer size of several millions of points per scan and the non-grid, sparse, and uneven distribution of points. Standard image processing tools like texture filters, for example, cannot handle such data efficiently, which calls for dedicated point cloud labeling methods. It turns out that one of the major drivers for efficient computation and handling of strong variations in point density, is a careful formulation of per-point neighborhoods at multiple scales. This allows, both, to define an expressive feature set and to extract topologically meaningful object contours. Semantic classification and contour extraction are interlaced problems. Point-wise semantic classification enables extracting a meaningful candidate set of contour points while contours help generating a rich feature representation that benefits point-wise classification. These methods are tailored to have fast run time and small memory footprint for processing large-scale, unstructured, and inhomogeneous point clouds, while still achieving high classification accuracy. We evaluate our methods on the semantic3d.net benchmark for terrestrial laser scans with >109 points.

  12. Highly efficient red OLEDs using DCJTB as the dopant and delayed fluorescent exciplex as the host.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhao, Bo; Zhang, Tianyou; Chu, Bei; Li, Wenlian; Su, Zisheng; Wu, Hairuo; Yan, Xingwu; Jin, Fangming; Gao, Yuan; Liu, Chengyuan

    2015-05-29

    In this manuscript, we demonstrated a highly efficient DCJTB emission with delayed fluorescent exciplex TCTA:3P-T2T as the host. For the 1.0% DCJTB doped concentration, a maximum luminance, current efficiency, power efficiency and EQE of 22,767 cd m(-2), 22.7 cd A(-1), 21.5 lm W(-1) and 10.15% were achieved, respectively. The device performance is the best compared to either red OLEDs with traditional fluorescent emitter or traditional red phosphor of Ir(piq)3 doped into CBP host. The extraction of so high efficiency can be explained as the efficient triplet excitons up-conversion of TCTA:3P-T2T and the energy transfer from exciplex host singlet state to DCJTB singlet state.

  13. Charge reversible gold nanoparticles for high efficient absorption and desorption of DNA

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Wang Can; Zhuang Jiaqi; Jiang Shan; Li Jun; Yang Wensheng, E-mail: wsyang@jlu.edu.cn [Jilin University, State Key Laboratory of Supramolecular Structure and Materials, College of Chemistry (China)

    2012-10-15

    Mercaptoundecylamine and mercaptoundecanoic acid co-modified Au nanoparticles were prepared by two-step ligand exchange of 6-mercaptohexanoic acid modified gold nanoparticles. Such particles terminated by appropriate ratios of the amine and carboxyl groups (R{sub N/C}) were identified to show reversible charge on their surface, which were switchable by pH of the solution. The isoelectric point (IEP) of the particles is tunable by changing the ratios of the amine and carboxyl groups on the particle surfaces. The particles can absorb DNA effectively at pH lower than the IEP driven by the direct electrostatic interactions between DNA and the particle surface. When pH of the solutions was elevated to be higher than the IEP, the absorbed DNA can be released almost completely due to the electrostatic repulsion between the particle surface and DNA. With appropriate R{sub N/C} ratios of 0.8, the absorption and desorption efficiencies of DNA were 97 and 98%, respectively, corresponding an extraction efficiency of 95 %. Such particles with reversible surface charges allow the high efficient extraction of DNA by simply changing pH instead of by changing salt concentration in the conventional salt bridge method.Graphical Abstract.

  14. The design of the extraction window of high power electron accelerator used in flue gas desulfurization

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    He Tongqi; Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai; Hu Wei; Sun Guangkui; Shi Weiguo; Li Minxi; Zhang Yutian; Pu Gengqiang

    2007-01-01

    Recently, the pollution caused by industrial exhaust gas, especially, the air pollution and acid rain resulting from the sulfur of exhaust gas, is increasingly drawing people's attention. The flue gas desulfurization by electron beam produced by high-power electron accelerator has the characteristics of high efficiency and non-secondary contamination. As one of the most pivotal part of accelerator, the service lifetime of this extraction window directly effects the stable operation of the device. In this paper, a brief review is given to summarize the advantages, material selecting, structure, replacing, maintaining of the extraction window of high-power electron accelerator developed by SINAP. (authors)

  15. Deep Eutectic Solvents as Efficient Media for the Extraction and Recovery of Cynaropicrin from Cynara cardunculus L. Leaves.

    Science.gov (United States)

    de Faria, Emanuelle L P; do Carmo, Rafael S; Cláudio, Ana Filipa M; Freire, Carmen S R; Freire, Mara G; Silvestre, Armando J D

    2017-10-30

    In recent years a high demand for natural ingredients with nutraceutical properties has been witnessed, for which the development of more environmentally-friendly and cost-efficient extraction solvents and methods play a primary role. In this perspective, in this work, the application of deep eutectic solvents (DES), composed of quaternary ammonium salts and organic acids, as alternative solvents for the extraction of cynaropicrin from Cynara cardunculus L. leaves was studied. After selecting the most promising DES, their aqueous solutions were investigated, allowing to obtain a maximum cynaropicrin extraction yield of 6.20 wt %, using 70 wt % of water. The sustainability of the extraction process was further optimized by carrying out several extraction cycles, reusing either the biomass or the aqueous solutions of DES. A maximum cynaropicrin extraction yield of 7.76 wt % by reusing the solvent, and of 8.96 wt % by reusing the biomass, have been obtained. Taking advantage of the cynaropicrin solubility limit in aqueous solutions, water was added as an anti-solvent, allowing to recover 73.6 wt % of the extracted cynaropicrin. This work demonstrates the potential of aqueous solutions of DES for the extraction of value-added compounds from biomass and the possible recovery of both the target compounds and solvents.

  16. "High Quantum Efficiency of Band-Edge Emission from ZnO Nanowires"

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    GARGAS, DANIEL; GAO, HANWEI; WANG, HUNGTA; PEIDONG, YANG

    2010-12-01

    External quantum efficiency (EQE) of photoluminescence as high as 20 percent from isolated ZnO nanowires were measured at room temperature. The EQE was found to be highly dependent on photoexcitation density, which underscores the importance of uniform optical excitation during the EQE measurement. An integrating sphere coupled to a microscopic imaging system was used in this work, which enabled the EQE measurement on isolated ZnO nanowires. The EQE values obtained here are significantly higher than those reported for ZnO materials in forms of bulk, thin films or powders. Additional insight on the radiative extraction factor of one-dimensional nanostructures was gained by measuring the internal quantum efficiency of individual nanowires. Such quantitative EQE measurements provide a sensitive, noninvasive method to characterize the optical properties of low-dimensional nanostructures and allow tuning of synthesis parameters for optimization of nanoscale materials.

  17. A comparison of two efficient nonlinear heat conduction methodologies using a two-dimensional time-dependent benchmark problem

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Wilson, G.L.; Rydin, R.A.; Orivuori, S.

    1988-01-01

    Two highly efficient nonlinear time-dependent heat conduction methodologies, the nonlinear time-dependent nodal integral technique (NTDNT) and IVOHEAT are compared using one- and two-dimensional time-dependent benchmark problems. The NTDNT is completely based on newly developed time-dependent nodal integral methods, whereas IVOHEAT is based on finite elements in space and Crank-Nicholson finite differences in time. IVOHEAT contains the geometric flexibility of the finite element approach, whereas the nodal integral method is constrained at present to Cartesian geometry. For test problems where both methods are equally applicable, the nodal integral method is approximately six times more efficient per dimension than IVOHEAT when a comparable overall accuracy is chosen. This translates to a factor of 200 for a three-dimensional problem having relatively homogeneous regions, and to a smaller advantage as the degree of heterogeneity increases

  18. Problems of Development and Increase of Economic Efficiency of Sugar Beet Production

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tomashevska Olga A.

    2017-06-01

    Full Text Available The aim of the article is the studying of the trends of development and economic efficiency of sugar beet production (using the example of agricultural enterprises of Rokytne district of Kyiv region and an attempt to outline the directions for improvement of the situation in the sugar beet industry. As a result of the research, the dynamics of development and economic efficiency of sugar beet production at farms of Rokytne district of Kyiv region is analyzed, and the break-even volume of sugar beet production by agrarian enterprises of Kiev region and an individual enterprise of Rokytne district is determined. Particular attention is paid to the dynamics of profitability of sugar beet production in the period from 2011 to 2015. The main problems hindering the development of sugar beet production are identified, namely, the lack of sales channels and high production costs. Prospects for further research in this area are to increase the economic efficiency of sugar beet production and find ways to develop this sector, provided that the production is properly organized, the manufacturing process is followed, the fertilizers are properly used, the seeds are chosen correctly, advanced technologies and high-performance equipment are applied, etc.

  19. Microwave-assisted extraction of scutellarin from Erigeron breviscapus Hand-Mazz and its determination by high-performance liquid chromatography

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Gao Min; Huang Wei; RoyChowdhury, Moytri; Liu Chunzhao

    2007-01-01

    An efficient microwave-assisted extraction (MAE) technique has been developed to extract scutellarin from Erigeron breviscapus for rapid determination by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The maximum yield of scutellarin reached 1.02% in 40 min under the optimal MAE conditions with 80 deg. C of extraction temperature and 1:10 (w/v) of the solid/liquid ratio. The MAE showed obvious advantages in terms of short duration and high efficiency to extract scutellarin in comparison with heat-flux extraction. The mechanism of the enhanced extraction by microwave assistance was discussed by detecting particle size and specific surface area of plant materials and observing cell destruction of plant material by light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. The results showed that the plant materials were significantly destroyed due to the cell rupture after MAE treatment. Afterward, the method validation for HPLC-UV analysis was developed. Calibration range was 0.1-100 μg mL -1 for scutellarin, and correlation coefficient R was 0.9993. Limit of detection was less than 0.01 μg mL -1 . The intra- and inter-day relative standard deviation (R.S.D.) of scutellarin detection ranged from 1.58% to 2.96% and from 3.32% to 4.19%, respectively. The recovery of the method for scutellarin ranged from 96.7% to 101.9%

  20. The Design of High Efficiency Crossflow Hydro Turbines: A Review and Extension

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ram Adhikari

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available Efficiency is a critical consideration in the design of hydro turbines. The crossflow turbine is the cheapest and easiest hydro turbine to manufacture and so is commonly used in remote power systems for developing countries. A longstanding problem for practical crossflow turbines is their lower maximum efficiency compared to their more advanced counterparts, such as Pelton and Francis turbines. This paper reviews the experimental and computational studies relevant to the design of high efficiency crossflow turbines. We concentrate on the studies that have contributed to designs with efficiencies in the range of 88–90%. Many recent studies have been conducted on turbines of low maximum efficiency, which we believe is due to misunderstanding of design principles for achieving high efficiencies. We synthesize the key results of experimental and computational fluid dynamics studies to highlight the key fundamental design principles for achieving efficiencies of about 90%, as well as future research and development areas to further improve the maximum efficiency. The main finding of this review is that the total conversion of head into kinetic energy in the nozzle and the matching of nozzle and runner designs are the two main design requirements for the design of high efficiency turbines.

  1. Indoor radon problem in energy efficient multi-storey buildings.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yarmoshenko, I V; Vasilyev, A V; Onishchenko, A D; Kiselev, S M; Zhukovsky, M V

    2014-07-01

    Modern energy-efficient architectural solutions and building construction technologies such as monolithic concrete structures in combination with effective insulation reduce air permeability of building envelope. As a result, air exchange rate is significantly reduced and conditions for increased radon accumulation in indoor air are created. Based on radon survey in Ekaterinburg, Russia, remarkable increase in indoor radon concentration level in energy-efficient multi-storey buildings was found in comparison with similar buildings constructed before the-energy-saving era. To investigate the problem of indoor radon in energy-efficient multi-storey buildings, the measurements of radon concentration have been performed in seven modern buildings using radon monitoring method. Values of air exchange rate and other parameters of indoor climate in energy-efficient buildings have been estimated. © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  2. Efficient synthesis of highly fluorescent nitrogen-doped carbon dots for cell imaging using unripe fruit extract of Prunus mume

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Atchudan, Raji; Edison, Thomas Nesakumar Jebakumar Immanuel; Sethuraman, Mathur Gopalakrishnan; Lee, Yong Rok

    2016-01-01

    Graphical abstract: The green synthesis of highly fluorescent N-CDs was achieved using the extract of unripe P. mume fruit as a carbon precursor by a one-pot simple hydrothermal-carbonization method. The resulting N-CDs were used as a staining agent for the fluorescence imaging of MDA-MB-231 cells. Display Omitted - Highlights: • The green synthesis of highly fluorescent N-CDs using the extract of unripe P. mume. • The N-CDs were synthesized by one-pot hydrothermal-carbonization method. • This method of synthesis is a simple, cost effective and eco-friendly route. • N-CDs will be a good alternative for fluorescent dyes and SQDs for bio-applications. - Abstract: Highly fluorescent nitrogen-doped carbon dots (N-CDs) were synthesized using the extract of unripe Prunus mume (P. mume) fruit by a simple one step hydrothermal-carbonization method. The N-CDs were synthesized at different pH ranges, 2.3, 5, 7, and 9. The pH of the P. mume extract was adjusted using an aqueous ammonia solution (25%). The optical properties of N-CDs were examined by UV–vis and fluorescence spectroscopy. The N-CDs synthesized at pH 9 emitted high fluorescence intensity compared to other obtained N-CDs. The N-CDs synthesized at pH 9 was further characterized by high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and Fourier transform-infra red (FT-IR) spectroscopy. HR-TEM showed that the average size of the synthesized N-CDs was approximately 9 nm and the interlayer distance was 0.21 nm, which was validated by XRD. The graphitic nature of the synthesized N-CDs were confirmed by Raman spectroscopy. XPS and FT-IR spectroscopy confirmed the doping of the nitrogen moiety over the synthesized CDs. The synthesized nitrogen doped CDs (N-CDs) were low toxicity and were used as a staining probe for fluorescence cell imaging.

  3. Efficient synthesis of highly fluorescent nitrogen-doped carbon dots for cell imaging using unripe fruit extract of Prunus mume

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Atchudan, Raji; Edison, Thomas Nesakumar Jebakumar Immanuel [School of Chemical Engineering, Yeungnam University, Gyeongsan 38541 (Korea, Republic of); Sethuraman, Mathur Gopalakrishnan, E-mail: mgsethu@gmail.com [Department of Chemistry, Gandhigram Rural Institute-Deemed University, Gandhigram 624 302, Tamilnadu (India); Lee, Yong Rok, E-mail: yrlee@yu.ac.kr [School of Chemical Engineering, Yeungnam University, Gyeongsan 38541 (Korea, Republic of)

    2016-10-30

    Graphical abstract: The green synthesis of highly fluorescent N-CDs was achieved using the extract of unripe P. mume fruit as a carbon precursor by a one-pot simple hydrothermal-carbonization method. The resulting N-CDs were used as a staining agent for the fluorescence imaging of MDA-MB-231 cells. Display Omitted - Highlights: • The green synthesis of highly fluorescent N-CDs using the extract of unripe P. mume. • The N-CDs were synthesized by one-pot hydrothermal-carbonization method. • This method of synthesis is a simple, cost effective and eco-friendly route. • N-CDs will be a good alternative for fluorescent dyes and SQDs for bio-applications. - Abstract: Highly fluorescent nitrogen-doped carbon dots (N-CDs) were synthesized using the extract of unripe Prunus mume (P. mume) fruit by a simple one step hydrothermal-carbonization method. The N-CDs were synthesized at different pH ranges, 2.3, 5, 7, and 9. The pH of the P. mume extract was adjusted using an aqueous ammonia solution (25%). The optical properties of N-CDs were examined by UV–vis and fluorescence spectroscopy. The N-CDs synthesized at pH 9 emitted high fluorescence intensity compared to other obtained N-CDs. The N-CDs synthesized at pH 9 was further characterized by high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and Fourier transform-infra red (FT-IR) spectroscopy. HR-TEM showed that the average size of the synthesized N-CDs was approximately 9 nm and the interlayer distance was 0.21 nm, which was validated by XRD. The graphitic nature of the synthesized N-CDs were confirmed by Raman spectroscopy. XPS and FT-IR spectroscopy confirmed the doping of the nitrogen moiety over the synthesized CDs. The synthesized nitrogen doped CDs (N-CDs) were low toxicity and were used as a staining probe for fluorescence cell imaging.

  4. Novel bitter melon extracts highly yielded from supercritical extraction reduce the adiposity through the enhanced lipid metabolism in mice fed a high fat diet

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Li Xu

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available Bitter melon (Momordica charantia is a species of edible plant known for its medicinal value towards diabetes and obesity. Due to the various compositions of bitter melon extracts (BME, the comprehensive knowledge concerning their anti-obesity effects was insufficient. Here we first introduced supercritical extraction to BME's preparation, (supercritical extraction is a relatively advanced extraction method with a better efficiency and selectivity and expected to be extensively used in future applications and the resultants were subjected to HPLC analysis, validating the presence of 42.60% of conjugated linolenic acid (CLnA, cis9, trans11, trans13-18:3 and 13.17% of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA, cis9, trans11-18:2. The BMSO (bitter melon seed oil was then administered to the HFD mice, an obesity model established by feeding C57BL/6J mice a high fat diet. Consequently, due to the BMSO's supplementation, the HFD mice showed a significantly decreased body-weight, Lee's index, fat index and adipose size, whereas the liver weight stayed unchanged. Meanwhile, the serum FFA (free fatty acids levels returned to normal at the dosage of 10 g/kg, and the elevated serum leptin levels were also recovered by BMSO's supplementation with moderate and high dose. These findings suggested that BMSO restored the balance between lipid intake and metabolism, which was probably mediated by leptin's variation. In summary, a detailed anti-obesity effect was described with regard to a potent CFA's (conjugated fatty acid combination offered by BME. A potential mechanism underlying BME's beneficial effects was proposed, paving the way for the better use of BME's pharmaceutical function to serve the obesity's treatment.

  5. Selective extraction of high-value phenolic compounds from distillation wastewater of basil (Ocimum basilicum L.) by pressurized liquid extraction.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pagano, Imma; Sánchez-Camargo, Andrea Del Pilar; Mendiola, Jose Antonio; Campone, Luca; Cifuentes, Alejandro; Rastrelli, Luca; Ibañez, Elena

    2018-01-31

    During the essential oil steam distillation from aromatic herbs, huge amounts of distillation wastewaters (DWWs) are generated. These by-products represent an exceptionally rich source of phenolic compounds such as rosmarinic acid (RA) and caffeic acid (CA). Herein, the alternative use of dried basil DWWs (dDWWs) to perform a selective extraction of RA and CA by pressurized liquid extraction (PLE) employing bio-based solvent was studied. To select the most suitable solvent for PLE, the theoretical modelling of Hansen solubility parameters (HSP) was carried out. This approach allows reducing the list of candidate to two solvents: ethanol and ethyl lactate. Due to the composition of the sample, mixtures of water with those solvents were also tested. An enriched PLE extract in RA (23.90 ± 2.06 mg/g extract) with an extraction efficiency of 75.89 ± 16.03% employing a water-ethanol mixture 25:75 (% v/v) at 50°C was obtained. In the case of CA, a PLE extract with 2.42 ± 0.04 mg/g extract, having an extraction efficiency of 13.86 ± 4.96% using ethanol absolute at 50°C was achieved. DWWs are proposed as new promising sources of natural additives and/or functional ingredients for cosmetic, nutraceutical, and food applications. © 2018 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

  6. High-efficiency free-electron laser results

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Boyer, K.; Baru, C.A.; Newnam, B.E.; Stein, W.E.; Warren, R.W.; Winston, J.G.; Young, L.M.

    1983-01-01

    Results obtained with a tapered-wiggler free-electron laser demonstrate the concepts proposed by Morton for enhanced efficiency and show deceleration of electrons by as much as 7%, and extraction of more than 3% of the total electron-beam energy as laser energy when the laser is operated as an amplifier. The experiment is presently being reconfigured to examine its performance as a laser oscillator

  7. Synthesis of microcapsules containing different extractant agents.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Alcázar, Ángela; Carmona, Manuel; Borreguero, Ana M; de Lucas, Antonio; Rodríguez, Juan F

    2015-01-01

    Mercury is one of the most toxic pollutants, with high capacity of accumulation in living organism, causing important human health problems. Therefore, the mercury removal from water is an important research goal. In a previous work, an extractant agent [di(2-ethylhexyl)phosphoric acid] was microencapsulated in poly(styrene-co-divinylbenzene) by means of suspension polymerisation using toluene as diluent. In this study, this recipe has been modified changing the toluene by heptane and extended to four additional extractants (trioctylamine, trioctylmethylammonium chloride [TOMAC], tributyl phosphate and trioctylphosphine oxide). The polluting potential of the waste liquid from the process was measured by total organic carbon and chemical oxygen demand analyses. The morphology, particle size and distribution were studied by scanning electron microscopy and low angle laser light scattering. The amount of extractant agent into the microcapsules and the microencapsulation efficiency were determined by thermogravimetric analysis and the mercury removal capacity by equilibrium studies. Microcapsules containing TOMAC demonstrated to be the best material for the mercury removal and retention.

  8. The Technological Input-output Efficiency of High-technology Enterprises in China Based on the DEA method

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lu Jing

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available High-technology enterprises play the leader role in the regional economic progress, but nowadays technological resources have many problems such as division, separation and dispersing. It’s an urgent problem to be solved that how to evaluate input-output productivity of technological resources towards industries and regions scientifically and efficiently. Firstly the article analyzes the input-output efficiency status of technological resources at home and abroad. Then high-technology enterprises in 29 provinces, as the subject of evaluation, are analyzed for their operation efficiency by DEA. The article states the suggestions like balanced development among regions and reasonable structure of input and output by comparing the differences among regions. And the article estimates the technological resources configuration efficiency of 5 leader industries and explains the developmental characteristics and direction among industries. And on these bases the article conducts hypothesis testing for inner elements which might have an influence on the operational efficiency by Tobit model. Finally, the paper proposes many suggestions to the benefits of promoting the productivity of high-technology enterprise according to the comprehensive analysis.

  9. High-performance polymeric photovoltaic cells with a gold chloride-treated polyacrylonitrile hole extraction interlayer

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jeong, Ji-Ho; Noh, Yong-Jin; Kim, Seok-Soon; Kwon, Sung-Nam; Na, Seok-In

    2018-03-01

    We introduce a high efficiency polymeric photovoltaic cell (PPV) to be obtained by polyacrylonitrile (PAN) hole extraction layer (HEL) modification with gold chloride (AuCl3). The role of PAN HELs with AuCl3 and their effects on solar cell performances were studied with ultraviolet photoemission spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy, internal resistances in PPVs, and current-voltage power curves. The resultant PPVs with AuCl3-treated PAN HELs showed improved cell efficiency compared to PSCs with no interlayer and PAN without AuCl3. Furthermore, with AuCl3-treated PAN, we finally achieved a high efficiency of 6.91%, and a desirable PPV-stability in poly[[4,8-bis[(2-ethylhexyl)oxy]benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b‧]dithiophe-ne-2,6-diyl][3-fluoro-2-[(2-thylhexyl)carbonyl]-thieno[3,4-b]thiophenediyl

  10. The advantages of hydraulic packing extraction

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Baker, R.S.

    1991-01-01

    Today's competitive environment, coupled with industry's desire to improve the efficiency of plant maintenance and operations, has management continually seeking ways to save time, money, and, at nuclear plants, radiation exposure. One area where a tremendous improvement in efficiency can be realized is valve packing removal. For example, industry experience indicates that up to 70% of the time it takes to repack a valve can be spent just removing the old packing. In some case, the bonnets of small valves are removed to facilitate packing removal and prevent stem and stuffing box damage that can occur when using packing removal picks. In other cases, small valves are simply removed and discarded because it costs less to replace the valves than to remove the packing using conventional methods. Hydraulic packing extraction greatly reduces packing removal time and will not damage the stem nor stuffing box, thus eliminating the need for bonnet removal or valve replacement. This paper will review some of the more common problems associated with manual packing extraction techniques. It will explain how hydraulic packing extraction eliminates or greatly reduces the impact of each of the problem areas. A discussion will be provided of some actual industry operating experiences related to success stories using hydraulic packing extraction. The paper will also briefly describe the operating parameters associated with hydraulic packing extraction tools. Throughout the paper, actual operating experiences from the nuclear power, fossil power, petrochemical, and refinery industries will be used to support the conclusion that hydraulic packing extraction is an alternative that can save time, money, and exposure

  11. Comparison of extraction buffers for the detection of fumonisin B(1) in corn by immunoassay and high-performance liquid chromatography.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kulisek, E S; Hazebroek, J P

    2000-01-01

    The Associatian of Official Analytical Chemists approved method for quantification of fumonisin B(1) (FB(1)) in corn meal or corn-based food products includes extraction into methanol (MeOH)/water (3:1, v/v). Disposal of the extraction medium can pose safety and environmental problems. To secure a rapid and inexpensive screen for FB(1) contamination, a sensitive competitive ELISA using a rabbit polyclonal antibody was developed. This assay was used in a comparative study measuring the extraction efficiency of FB(1) in aqueous or organic solvent buffers using 16 field corn samples. An aqueous phosphate buffer was found to be suitable for extracting FB(1), thus eliminating the need for organic solvents. HPLC and ELISA determinations compared well in fortified samples at known concentrations between 1 and 50 microg/mL of extract. Overestimation at levels >50 microg/mL were common. The characteristics and application of the ELISA for screening purposes are discussed.

  12. Study on Corrosion Inhibition Efficiency of Stem Alkaloid Extract of Different Varieties of Holy Basil on Aluminium in HCl Solution

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Kumpawat, Nutan; Chaturvedi, Alok; Upadhyay, R. K. [Synthetic and Surface Science Laboratory, Ajmer (India)

    2012-08-15

    Corrosion inhibition efficiencies of holy basil on Al in HCl solution were studied by weight loss and thermometric methods in presence and in absence of stem extract of three different varieties of holy basil viz. ocimum basilicum (E{sub B}), ocimum canum (E{sub C}) and ocimum sanctum (E{sub S}). Inhibition efficiency increases with the increasing concentration of stem extract and decreases with increases in acid strength. Results show that all varieties under study are good corrosion inhibitors, among which, E{sub B} is most effective. Maximum inhibition efficiency was found 97.09% in 0.5N HCl solution with 0.6% stem extract. The Langmuir adsorption isotherm indicates that surface coverage also increases with increasing in the concentration of extract of stem in HCl solution.

  13. Study on Corrosion Inhibition Efficiency of Stem Alkaloid Extract of Different Varieties of Holy Basil on Aluminium in HCl Solution

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kumpawat, Nutan; Chaturvedi, Alok; Upadhyay, R. K.

    2012-01-01

    Corrosion inhibition efficiencies of holy basil on Al in HCl solution were studied by weight loss and thermometric methods in presence and in absence of stem extract of three different varieties of holy basil viz. ocimum basilicum (E B ), ocimum canum (E C ) and ocimum sanctum (E S ). Inhibition efficiency increases with the increasing concentration of stem extract and decreases with increases in acid strength. Results show that all varieties under study are good corrosion inhibitors, among which, E B is most effective. Maximum inhibition efficiency was found 97.09% in 0.5N HCl solution with 0.6% stem extract. The Langmuir adsorption isotherm indicates that surface coverage also increases with increasing in the concentration of extract of stem in HCl solution

  14. Efficient Wide Range Converters (EWiRaC): A new family of high efficient AC-DC Converters

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Petersen, Lars; Andersen, Michael Andreas E.

    2006-01-01

    The performance in terms of efficiency of the existing power supplies used for PFC is very dependent on the input voltage range. The boost converter is the most commonly used PFC converter because of its simplicity and high efficiency. But, the boost converter as well as other known converters...... suffers a major penalty in efficiency when used at the low end of the voltage range (90VAC) in a universal voltage range application (90-270VAC). This paper addresses this problem by suggesting a new family of converters that effectively reduces the apparent voltage range with a factor of 2 by changing...... the converter topology according to the input voltage. This new converter type has been named: efficient wide range converter (EWiRaC). The performance of the EWiRaC is experimental verified in a universal input range (90-270VAC) application with an output voltage of 185VDC capable of 500W output power. The EWi...

  15. Efficient Statistical Extraction of the Per-Unit-Length Capacitance and Inductance Matrices of Cables with Random Parameters

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    P. Manfredi

    2015-05-01

    Full Text Available Cable bundles often exhibit random parameter variations due to uncertain or uncontrollable physical properties and wire positioning. Efficient tools, based on the so-called polynomial chaos, exist to rapidly assess the impact of such variations on the per-unit-length capacitance and inductance matrices, and on the pertinent cable response. Nevertheless, the state-of-the-art method for the statistical extraction of the per-unit-length capacitance and inductance matrices of cables suffers from several inefficiencies that hinder its applicability to large problems, in terms of number of random parameters and/or conductors. This paper presents an improved methodology that overcomes the aforementioned limitations by exploiting a recently-published, alternative approach to generate the pertinent polynomial chaos system of equations. A sparse and decoupled system is obtained that provides remarkable benefits in terms of speed, memory consumption and problem size that can be dealt with. The technique is thoroughly validated through the statistical analysis of two canonical structures, i.e. a ribbon cable and a shielded cable with random geometry and position.

  16. High-speed web attack detection through extracting exemplars from HTTP traffic

    KAUST Repository

    Wang, Wei

    2011-01-01

    In this work, we propose an effective method for high-speed web attack detection by extracting exemplars from HTTP traffic before the detection model is built. The smaller set of exemplars keeps valuable information of the original traffic while it significantly reduces the size of the traffic so that the detection remains effective and improves the detection efficiency. The Affinity Propagation (AP) is employed to extract the exemplars from the HTTP traffic. K-Nearest Neighbor(K-NN) and one class Support Vector Machine (SVM) are used for anomaly detection. To facilitate comparison, we also employ information gain to select key attributes (a.k.a. features) from the HTTP traffic for web attack detection. Two large real HTTP traffic are used to validate our methods. The extensive test results show that the AP based exemplar extraction significantly improves the real-time performance of the detection compared to using all the HTTP traffic and achieves a more robust detection performance than information gain based attribute selection for web attack detection. © 2011 ACM.

  17. The Efficiency of Random Forest Method for Shoreline Extraction from LANDSAT-8 and GOKTURK-2 Imageries

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bayram, B.; Erdem, F.; Akpinar, B.; Ince, A. K.; Bozkurt, S.; Catal Reis, H.; Seker, D. Z.

    2017-11-01

    Coastal monitoring plays a vital role in environmental planning and hazard management related issues. Since shorelines are fundamental data for environment management, disaster management, coastal erosion studies, modelling of sediment transport and coastal morphodynamics, various techniques have been developed to extract shorelines. Random Forest is one of these techniques which is used in this study for shoreline extraction.. This algorithm is a machine learning method based on decision trees. Decision trees analyse classes of training data creates rules for classification. In this study, Terkos region has been chosen for the proposed method within the scope of "TUBITAK Project (Project No: 115Y718) titled "Integration of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Sustainable Coastal Zone Monitoring Model - Three-Dimensional Automatic Coastline Extraction and Analysis: Istanbul-Terkos Example". Random Forest algorithm has been implemented to extract the shoreline of the Black Sea where near the lake from LANDSAT-8 and GOKTURK-2 satellite imageries taken in 2015. The MATLAB environment was used for classification. To obtain land and water-body classes, the Random Forest method has been applied to NIR bands of LANDSAT-8 (5th band) and GOKTURK-2 (4th band) imageries. Each image has been digitized manually and shorelines obtained for accuracy assessment. According to accuracy assessment results, Random Forest method is efficient for both medium and high resolution images for shoreline extraction studies.

  18. THE EFFICIENCY OF RANDOM FOREST METHOD FOR SHORELINE EXTRACTION FROM LANDSAT-8 AND GOKTURK-2 IMAGERIES

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    B. Bayram

    2017-11-01

    Full Text Available Coastal monitoring plays a vital role in environmental planning and hazard management related issues. Since shorelines are fundamental data for environment management, disaster management, coastal erosion studies, modelling of sediment transport and coastal morphodynamics, various techniques have been developed to extract shorelines. Random Forest is one of these techniques which is used in this study for shoreline extraction.. This algorithm is a machine learning method based on decision trees. Decision trees analyse classes of training data creates rules for classification. In this study, Terkos region has been chosen for the proposed method within the scope of "TUBITAK Project (Project No: 115Y718 titled "Integration of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Sustainable Coastal Zone Monitoring Model – Three-Dimensional Automatic Coastline Extraction and Analysis: Istanbul-Terkos Example". Random Forest algorithm has been implemented to extract the shoreline of the Black Sea where near the lake from LANDSAT-8 and GOKTURK-2 satellite imageries taken in 2015. The MATLAB environment was used for classification. To obtain land and water-body classes, the Random Forest method has been applied to NIR bands of LANDSAT-8 (5th band and GOKTURK-2 (4th band imageries. Each image has been digitized manually and shorelines obtained for accuracy assessment. According to accuracy assessment results, Random Forest method is efficient for both medium and high resolution images for shoreline extraction studies.

  19. A novel superparamagnetic surface molecularly imprinted nanoparticle adopting dummy template: an efficient solid-phase extraction adsorbent for bisphenol A.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lin, Zhenkun; Cheng, Wenjing; Li, Yanyan; Liu, Zhiren; Chen, Xiangping; Huang, Changjiang

    2012-03-30

    Leakage of the residual template molecules is one of the biggest challenges for application of molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) in solid-phase extraction (SPE). In this study, bisphenol F (BPF) was adopted as a dummy template to prepare MIP of bisphenol A (BPA) with a superparamagnetic core-shell nanoparticle as the supporter, aiming to avoid residual template leakage and to increase the efficiency of SPE. Characterization and test of the obtained products (called mag-DMIP beads) revealed that these novel nanoparticles not only had excellent magnetic property but also displayed high selectivity to the target molecule BPA. As mag-DMIP beads were adopted as the adsorbents of solid-phase extraction for detecting BPA in real water samples, the recoveries of spiked samples ranged from 84.7% to 93.8% with the limit of detection of 2.50 pg mL(-1), revealing that mag-DMIP beads were efficient SPE adsorbents. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  20. High-Efficiency On-Line Solid-Phase Extraction Coupling to 15-150 um I.D. Column Liquid Chromatography for Proteomic Analysis

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Shen, Yufeng; Moore, Ronald J.; Zhao, Rui; Blonder, Josip; Auberry, Deanna L.; Masselon, Christophe D.; Pasa Tolic, Ljiljana; Hixson, Kim K.; Auberry, Kenneth J.; Smith, Richard D.

    2003-01-01

    Flexible manipulation of various properties of proteomic samples is important for proteomic analyses, but it has been little explored for newly developed approaches based on liquid chromatography (LC) in combination with mass spectrometry (MS). With miniaturization of the LC column inner diameter dimensions (required for improving the analysis sensitivity), this issue becomes more challenging due to the small flow rates and the increasing effects of extra column volume on the separation quality and its use for resolving complex proteomic mixtures. In this study, we used commercial switching valves (150-mm channels) to implement the on-line coupling of capillary LC columns with relatively large solid phase extraction (SPE) columns operated at 10,000 psi. With optimized column connections, switching modes, and SPE column dimensions, high-efficiency on-line SPE-capillary and nanoscale LC separations were obtained with peak capacities of ∼1000 for capillaries having inner diameters between 15 to 150 mm. The on-line coupled SPE columns increased the sample processing capabilities by ∼400-fold for sample solution volume and ∼10-fold for sample mass. The proteomic applications of this on-line SPE-capillary LC system were evaluated for analysis of both soluble and membrane protein tryptic digests. Used with an ion trap tandem MS we could typically identify 1100-1500 peptides for analyses in a single 5-hour run. Peptides extracted on the SPE column and eluted from the LC column covered a hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity range that include an estimated ∼98% of all the tryptic peptides. The present implementation also facilitates automation and enables use of both disposable SPE columns and electrospray emitters, providing a robust basis for routine proteomic analyses.

  1. Overview of Ecological Agriculture with High Efficiency

    OpenAIRE

    Huang, Guo-qin; Zhao, Qi-guo; Gong, Shao-lin; Shi, Qing-hua

    2012-01-01

    From the presentation, connotation, characteristics, principles, pattern, and technologies of ecological agriculture with high efficiency, we conduct comprehensive and systematic analysis and discussion of the theoretical and practical progress of ecological agriculture with high efficiency. (i) Ecological agriculture with high efficiency was first advanced in China in 1991. (ii) Ecological agriculture with high efficiency highlights "high efficiency", "ecology", and "combination". (iii) Ecol...

  2. FAST LABEL: Easy and efficient solution of joint multi-label and estimation problems

    KAUST Repository

    Sundaramoorthi, Ganesh

    2014-06-01

    We derive an easy-to-implement and efficient algorithm for solving multi-label image partitioning problems in the form of the problem addressed by Region Competition. These problems jointly determine a parameter for each of the regions in the partition. Given an estimate of the parameters, a fast approximate solution to the multi-label sub-problem is derived by a global update that uses smoothing and thresholding. The method is empirically validated to be robust to fine details of the image that plague local solutions. Further, in comparison to global methods for the multi-label problem, the method is more efficient and it is easy for a non-specialist to implement. We give sample Matlab code for the multi-label Chan-Vese problem in this paper! Experimental comparison to the state-of-the-art in multi-label solutions to Region Competition shows that our method achieves equal or better accuracy, with the main advantage being speed and ease of implementation.

  3. Effective Subcritical Butane Extraction of Bifenthrin Residue in Black Tea

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yating Zhang

    2017-03-01

    Full Text Available As a natural and healthy beverage, tea is widely enjoyed; however, the pesticide residues in tea leaves affect the quality and food safety. To develop a highly selective and efficient method for the facile removal of pesticide residues, the subcritical butane extraction (SBE technique was employed, and three variables involving temperature, time and extraction cycles were studied. The optimum SBE conditions were found to be as follows: extraction temperature 45 °C, extraction time 30 min, number of extraction cycles 1, and in such a condition that the extraction efficiency reached as high as 92%. Further, the catechins, theanine, caffeine and aroma components, which determine the quality of the tea, fluctuated after SBE treatment. Compared with the uncrushed leaves, pesticide residues can more easily be removed from crushed leaves, and the practical extraction efficiency was 97%. These results indicate that SBE is a useful method to efficiently remove the bifenthrin, and as appearance is not relevant in the production process, tea leaves should first be crushed and then extracted in order that residual pesticides are thoroughly removed.

  4. Effective Subcritical Butane Extraction of Bifenthrin Residue in Black Tea.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Yating; Gu, Lingbiao; Wang, Fei; Kong, Lingjun; Qin, Guangyong

    2017-03-30

    As a natural and healthy beverage, tea is widely enjoyed; however, the pesticide residues in tea leaves affect the quality and food safety. To develop a highly selective and efficient method for the facile removal of pesticide residues, the subcritical butane extraction (SBE) technique was employed, and three variables involving temperature, time and extraction cycles were studied. The optimum SBE conditions were found to be as follows: extraction temperature 45 °C, extraction time 30 min, number of extraction cycles 1, and in such a condition that the extraction efficiency reached as high as 92%. Further, the catechins, theanine, caffeine and aroma components, which determine the quality of the tea, fluctuated after SBE treatment. Compared with the uncrushed leaves, pesticide residues can more easily be removed from crushed leaves, and the practical extraction efficiency was 97%. These results indicate that SBE is a useful method to efficiently remove the bifenthrin, and as appearance is not relevant in the production process, tea leaves should first be crushed and then extracted in order that residual pesticides are thoroughly removed.

  5. High efficiency x-ray nanofocusing by the blazed stacking of binary zone plates

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mohacsi, I.; Karvinen, P.; Vartiainen, I.; Diaz, A.; Somogyi, A.; Kewish, C. M.; Mercere, P.; David, C.

    2013-09-01

    The focusing efficiency of binary Fresnel zone plate lenses is fundamentally limited and higher efficiency requires a multi step lens profile. To overcome the manufacturing problems of high resolution and high efficiency multistep zone plates, we investigate the concept of stacking two different binary zone plates in each other's optical near-field. We use a coarse zone plate with π phase shift and a double density fine zone plate with π/2 phase shift to produce an effective 4- step profile. Using a compact experimental setup with piezo actuators for alignment, we demonstrated 47.1% focusing efficiency at 6.5 keV using a pair of 500 μm diameter and 200 nm smallest zone width. Furthermore, we present a spatially resolved characterization method using multiple diffraction orders to identify manufacturing errors, alignment errors and pattern distortions and their effect on diffraction efficiency.

  6. Validation of a Microscale Extraction and High Throughput UHPLC-QTOF-MS Analysis Method for Huperzine A in Huperzia

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cuthbertson, Daniel; Piljac-Žegarac, Jasenka; Lange, Bernd Markus

    2011-01-01

    Herein we report on an improved method for the microscale extraction of huperzine A (HupA), an acetylcholinesterase-inhibiting alkaloid, from as little as 3 mg of tissue homogenate from the clubmoss Huperzia squarrosa (G. Forst.) Trevis with 99.95 % recovery. We also validated a novel UHPLC-QTOF-MS method for the high-throughput analysis of H. squarrosa extracts in only 6 min, which, in combination with the very low limit of detection (20 pg on column) and the wide linear range for quantification (20 to 10,000 pg on column), allow for a highly efficient screening of extracts containing varying amounts of HupA. Utilization of this methodology has the potential to conserve valuable plant resources. PMID:22275140

  7. Extraction of High Quality RNA from Cannabis sativa Bast Fibres: A Vademecum for Molecular Biologists

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gea Guerriero

    2016-07-01

    Full Text Available In plants there is no universal protocol for RNA extraction, since optimizations are required depending on the species, tissues and developmental stages. Some plants/tissues are rich in secondary metabolites or synthesize thick cell walls, which hinder an efficient RNA extraction. One such example is bast fibres, long extraxylary cells characterized by a thick cellulosic cell wall. Given the economic importance of bast fibres, which are used in the textile sector, as well as in biocomposites as green substitutes of glass fibres, it is desirable to better understand their development from a molecular point of view. This knowledge favours the development of biotechnological strategies aimed at improving specific properties of bast fibres. To be able to perform high-throughput analyses, such as, for instance, transcriptomics of bast fibres, RNA extraction is a crucial and limiting step. We here detail a protocol enabling the rapid extraction of high quality RNA from the bast fibres of textile hemp, Cannabis sativa L., a multi-purpose fibre crop standing in the spotlight of research.

  8. OFFER SOLUTIONS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF PROJECTS OF ENERGY-EFFICIENT HIGH-RISE BUILDINGS IN UKRAINE

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    DYACHENKO L. Yu.

    2016-04-01

    Full Text Available Raising of problem. Today, the question of ecology is in the first place all over the world. Our homes are not just destroying nature, but also need a lot of energy. 40% of the world's energy goes to lighting, air conditioning, heating, etc. Ukraine is a country, in which there are many cities with large industrial zones. By introducing a number of innovations for increasing energy efficiency we can improve the ecological situation in the country. The purpose of the article is offer solutions for the development of projects of energy-efficient high-rise buildings in Ukraine. Conclusion. Proposed solutions for the development of projects of energy-efficient high-rise buildings in Ukraine will allow to solve the problems: ecology, energy saving, saving of natural resources in the country in the near future.

  9. A note on the estimation of the Pareto efficient set for multiobjective matrix permutation problems.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brusco, Michael J; Steinley, Douglas

    2012-02-01

    There are a number of important problems in quantitative psychology that require the identification of a permutation of the n rows and columns of an n × n proximity matrix. These problems encompass applications such as unidimensional scaling, paired-comparison ranking, and anti-Robinson forms. The importance of simultaneously incorporating multiple objective criteria in matrix permutation applications is well recognized in the literature; however, to date, there has been a reliance on weighted-sum approaches that transform the multiobjective problem into a single-objective optimization problem. Although exact solutions to these single-objective problems produce supported Pareto efficient solutions to the multiobjective problem, many interesting unsupported Pareto efficient solutions may be missed. We illustrate the limitation of the weighted-sum approach with an example from the psychological literature and devise an effective heuristic algorithm for estimating both the supported and unsupported solutions of the Pareto efficient set. © 2011 The British Psychological Society.

  10. An efficient method for solving fractional Sturm-Liouville problems

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Al-Mdallal, Qasem M.

    2009-01-01

    The numerical approximation of the eigenvalues and the eigenfunctions of the fractional Sturm-Liouville problems, in which the second order derivative is replaced by a fractional derivative, is considered. The present results can be implemented on the numerical solution of the fractional diffusion-wave equation. The results show the simplicity and efficiency of the numerical method.

  11. High-Quality and -Quantity DNA Extraction from Frozen Archival Blood Clots for Genotyping of Single-Nucleotide Polymorphisms

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Bank, Steffen; Nexø, Bjørn Andersen; Andersen, Vibeke

    2013-01-01

    the efficiency of commercial purification kits for extracting DNA from long-term frozen clotted blood. Methods: Serum tubes with clotted blood were stored at −20°C for 1 to 2.5 years before DNA extraction. DNA was extracted from 10 blood clot samples using PureGene (Qiagen) with and without glycogen, the QIAamp...... with a median of 0.65 μg (range 0.5–2.6 μg) pr 300 μL total blood. Conclusion: The yield obtained by the different commercial kits varied considerably. Our work demonstrates that high-quality and -quantity DNA can be extracted with the Maxwell 16 Blood purification kit (Promega) from cryopreserved blood clots...

  12. Porphyrin-based magnetic nanocomposites for efficient extraction of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from water samples.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yu, Jing; Zhu, Shukui; Pang, Liling; Chen, Pin; Zhu, Gang-Tian

    2018-03-09

    Stable and reusable porphyrin-based magnetic nanocomposites were successfully synthesized for efficient extraction of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from environmental water samples. Meso-Tetra (4-carboxyphenyl) porphyrin (TCPP), a kind of porphyrin, can connect the copolymer after amidation and was linked to Fe 3 O 4 @SiO 2 magnetic nanospheres via cross-coupling. Several characteristic techniques such as field emission scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectrometry, vibrating sample magnetometry and a tensiometer were used to characterize the as-synthesized materials. The structure of the copolymer was similar to that of graphene, possessing sp 2 -conjugated carbon rings, but with an appropriate amount of delocalized π-electrons giving rise to the higher extraction efficiency for heavy PAHs without sacrificing the performance in the extraction of light PAHs. Six extraction parameters, including the TCPP:Fe 3 O 4 @SiO 2 (m:m) ratio, the amount of adsorbents, the type of desorption solvent, the desorption solvent volume, the adsorption time and the desorption time, were investigated. After the optimization of extraction conditions, a comparison of the extraction efficiency of Fe 3 O 4 @SiO 2 -TCPP and Fe 3 O 4 @SiO 2 @GO was carried out. The adsorption mechanism of TCPP to PAHs was studied by first-principles density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Combining experimental and calculated results, it was shown that the π-π stacking interaction was the main adsorption mechanism of TCPP for PAHs and that the amount of delocalized π-electrons plays an important role in the elution process. Under the optimal conditions, Fe 3 O 4 @SiO 2 -porphyrin showed good precision in intra-day (<8.9%) and inter-day (<13.0%) detection, low method detection limits (2-10 ng L -1 ), and wide linearity (10-10000 ng L -1 ). The method was applied to simultaneous analysis of 15 PAHs with

  13. Detection and Extraction of Roads from High Resolution Satellites Images with Dynamic Programming

    Science.gov (United States)

    Benzouai, Siham; Smara, Youcef

    2010-12-01

    The advent of satellite images allows now a regular and a fast digitizing and update of geographic data, especially roads which are very useful for Geographic Information Systems (GIS) applications such as transportation, urban pollution, geomarketing, etc. For this, several studies have been conducted to automate roads extraction in order to minimize the manual processes [4]. In this work, we are interested in roads extraction from satellite imagery with high spatial resolution (at best equal to 10 m). The method is semi automatic and follows a linear approach where road is considered as a linear object. As roads extraction is a pattern recognition problem, it is useful, above all, to characterize roads. After, we realize a pre-processing by applying an Infinite Size Edge Filter -ISEF- and processing method based on dynamic programming concept, in particular, Fishler algorithm designed by F*.

  14. Numerical analysis of light extraction enhancement of GaN-based thin-film flip-chip light-emitting diodes with high-refractive-index buckling nanostructures

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yue, Qing-Yang; Yang, Yang; Cheng, Zhen-Jia; Guo, Cheng-Shan

    2018-06-01

    In this work, the light extraction efficiency enhancement of GaN-based thin-film flip-chip (TFFC) light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with high-refractive-index (TiO2) buckling nanostructures was studied using the three-dimensional finite difference time domain method. Compared with 2-D photonic crystals, the buckling structures have the advantages of a random directionality and a broad distribution in periodicity, which can effectively extract the guided light propagating in all azimuthal directions over a wide spectrum. Numerical studies revealed that the light extraction efficiency of buckling-structured LEDs reaches 1.1 times that of triangular lattice photonic crystals. The effects of the buckling structure feature sizes and the thickness of the N-GaN layer on the light extraction efficiency for TFFC LEDs were also investigated systematically. With optimized structural parameters, a significant light extraction enhancement of about 2.6 times was achieved for TiO2 buckling-structured TFFC LEDs compared with planar LEDs.

  15. Ultrasound-assisted extraction of rare-earth elements from carbonatite rocks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Diehl, Lisarb O; Gatiboni, Thais L; Mello, Paola A; Muller, Edson I; Duarte, Fabio A; Flores, Erico M M

    2018-01-01

    In view of the increasing demand for rare-earth elements (REE) in many areas of high technology, alternative methods for the extraction of these elements have been developed. In this work, a process based on the use of ultrasound for the extraction of REE from carbonatite (an igneous rock) is proposed to avoid the use of concentrated reagents, high temperature and excessive extraction time. In this pioneer work for REE extraction from carbonatite rocks in a preliminary investigation, ultrasonic baths, cup horn systems or ultrasound probes operating at different frequencies and power were evaluated. In addition, the power released to the extraction medium and the ultrasound amplitude were also investigated and the temperature and carbonatite mass/volume of extraction solution ratio were optimized to 70°C and 20mg/mL, respectively. Better extraction efficiencies (82%) were obtained employing an ultrasound probe operating at 20kHz for 15min, ultrasound amplitude of 40% (692Wdm -3 ) and using a diluted extraction solution (3% v/v HNO 3 +2% v/v HCl). It is important to mention that high extraction efficiency was obtained even using a diluted acid mixture and relatively low temperature in comparison to conventional extraction methods for REE. A comparison of results with those obtained by mechanical stirring (500rpm) using the same conditions (time, temperature and extraction solution) was carried out, showing that the use of ultrasound increased the extraction efficiency up to 35%. Therefore, the proposed ultrasound-assisted procedure can be considered as a suitable alternative for high efficiency extraction of REE from carbonatite rocks. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  16. Preliminary field evaluation of high efficiency steel filters

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Bergman, W.; Larsen, G.; Lopez, R. [Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, CA (United States)] [and others

    1995-02-01

    We have conducted an evaluation of two high efficiency steel filters in the exhaust of an uranium oxide grit blaster at the Y-12 Plant in Oak Ridge Tennessee. The filters were installed in a specially designed filter housing with a reverse air-pulse cleaning system for automatically cleaning the filters in-place. Previous tests conducted on the same filters and housing at LLNL under controlled conditions using Arizona road dust showed good cleanability with reverse air pulses. Two high efficiency steel filters, containing 64 pleated cartridge elements housed in the standard 2` x 2` x 1` HEPA frame, were evaluated in the filter test housing using a 1,000 cfm slip stream containing a high concentration of depleted uranium oxide dust. One filter had the pleated cartridges manufactured to our specifications by the Pall Corporation and the other by Memtec Corporation. Test results showed both filters had a rapid increase in pressure drop with time, and reverse air pulses could not decrease the pressure drop. We suspected moisture accumulation in the filters was the problem since there were heavy rains during the evaluations, and the pressure drop of the Memtec filter decreased dramatically after passing clean, dry air through the filter and after the filter sat idle for one week. Subsequent laboratory tests on a single filter cartridge confirmed that water accumulation in the filter was responsible for the increase in filter pressure drop and the inability to lower the pressure drop by reverse air pulses. No effort was made to identify the source of the water accumulation and correct the problem because the available funds were exhausted.

  17. An Efficient Heuristic Approach for Irregular Cutting Stock Problem in Ship Building Industry

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yan-xin Xu

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper presents an efficient approach for solving a real two-dimensional irregular cutting stock problem in ship building industry. Cutting stock problem is a common cutting and packing problem that arises in a variety of industrial applications. A modification of selection heuristic Exact Fit is applied in our research. In the case referring to irregular shapes, a placement heuristics is more important to construct a complete solution. A placement heuristic relating to bottom-left-fill is presented. We evaluate the proposed approach using generated instance only with convex shapes in literatures and some instances with nonconvex shapes based on real problem from ship building industry. The results demonstrate that the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach are significantly better than some conventional heuristics.

  18. Batch extractive distillation for high purity methanol

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Zhang Weijiang; Ma Sisi

    2006-01-01

    In this paper, the application in chemical industry and microelectronic industry, market status and the present situation of production of high purity methanol at home and abroad were introduced firstly. Purification of industrial methanol for high purity methanol is feasible in china. Batch extractive distillation is the best separation technique for purification of industrial methanol. Dimethyl sulfoxide was better as an extractant. (authors)

  19. Graphene oxide membrane as an efficient extraction and ionization substrate for spray-mass spectrometric analysis of malachite green and its metabolite in fish samples.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wei, Shih-Chun; Fan, Shen; Lien, Chia-Wen; Unnikrishnan, Binesh; Wang, Yi-Sheng; Chu, Han-Wei; Huang, Chih-Ching; Hsu, Pang-Hung; Chang, Huan-Tsung

    2018-03-20

    A graphene oxide (GO) nanosheet-modified N + -nylon membrane (GOM) has been prepared and used as an extraction and spray-ionization substrate for robust mass spectrometric detection of malachite green (MG), a highly toxic disinfectant in liquid samples and fish meat. The GOM is prepared by self-deposition of GO thin film onto an N + -nylon membrane, which has been used for efficient extraction of MG in aquaculture water samples or homogenized fish meat samples. Having a dissociation constant of 2.17 × 10 -9  M -1 , the GOM allows extraction of approximately 98% of 100 nM MG. Coupling of the GOM-spray with an ion-trap mass spectrometer allows quantitation of MG in aquaculture freshwater and seawater samples down to nanomolar levels. Furthermore, the system possesses high selectivity and sensitivity for the quantitation of MG and its metabolite (leucomalachite green) in fish meat samples. With easy extraction and efficient spray ionization properties of GOM, this membrane spray-mass spectrometry technique is relatively simple and fast in comparison to the traditional LC-MS/MS methods for the quantitation of MG and its metabolite in aquaculture products. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  20. FDTD analysis of the light extraction efficiency of OLEDs with a random scattering layer.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, Jun-Whee; Jang, Ji-Hyang; Oh, Min-Cheol; Shin, Jin-Wook; Cho, Doo-Hee; Moon, Jae-Hyun; Lee, Jeong-Ik

    2014-01-13

    The light extraction efficiency of OLEDs with a nano-sized random scattering layer (RSL-OLEDs) was analyzed using the Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) method. In contrast to periodic diffraction patterns, the presence of an RSL suppresses the spectral shift with respect to the viewing angle. For FDTD simulation of RSL-OLEDs, a planar light source with a certain spatial and temporal coherence was incorporated, and the light extraction efficiency with respect to the fill factor of the RSL and the absorption coefficient of the material was investigated. The design results were compared to the experimental results of the RSL-OLEDs in order to confirm the usefulness of FDTD in predicting experimental results. According to our FDTD simulations, the light confined within the ITO-organic waveguide was quickly absorbed, and the absorption coefficients of ITO and RSL materials should be reduced in order to obtain significant improvement in the external quantum efficiency (EQE). When the extinction coefficient of ITO was 0.01, the EQE in the RSL-OLED was simulated to be enhanced by a factor of 1.8.

  1. Hydrogen extraction from Pb-17Li: results with a 800 mm high packed column

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Alpy, N.; Terlain, A.; Lorentz, V.

    2000-01-01

    Within the framework of the studies carried out for the development of a gas-liquid alloy contactor for the extraction of hydrogen from Pb-17Li, the behaviour of a 800 mm high packed column has been investigated on the Melodie loop. The previous contactor technology, a structured packing supplied by the Sulzer Company, has been retained since it had shown satisfying efficiency, likely due to the beneficial effect, on the mass transfer, of the liquid flow division that it involves. The best results of the present study have been achieved via a reduction of the liquid load on the packing: an efficiency of up to 30% was reached at 673 K for an inlet hydrogen pressure in Pb-17Li of 1000 Pa. The impact of the hydrogen pressure in the inlet Pb-17Li flow and on the extraction efficiency has been experimentally assessed: this study allowed us to evaluate the potential of the process in terms of packing height. Finally, a future experimental facility, which should allow us to observe the hydraulic behaviour of liquid mercury (simulating Pb-17Li) on the packing is presented

  2. Solvent extraction

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Coombs, D.M.; Latimer, E.G.

    1988-01-05

    It is an object of this invention to provide for the demetallization and general upgrading of heavy oil via a solvent extracton process, and to improve the efficiency of solvent extraction operations. The yield and demetallization of product oil form heavy high-metal content oil is maximized by solvent extractions which employ either or all of the following techniques: premixing of a minor amount of the solvent with feed and using countercurrent flow for the remaining solvent; use of certain solvent/free ratios; use of segmental baffle tray extraction column internals and the proper extraction column residence time. The solvent premix/countercurrent flow feature of the invention substantially improves extractions where temperatures and pressures above the critical point of the solvent are used. By using this technique, a greater yield of extract oil can be obtained at the same metals content or a lower metals-containing extract oil product can be obtained at the same yield. Furthermore, the premixing of part of the solvent with the feed before countercurrent extraction gives high extract oil yields and high quality demetallization. The solvent/feed ratio features of the invention substanially lower the captial and operating costs for such processes while not suffering a loss in selectivity for metals rejection. The column internals and rsidence time features of the invention further improve the extractor metals rejection at a constant yield or allow for an increase in extract oil yield at a constant extract oil metals content. 13 figs., 3 tabs.

  3. Extracting rate coefficients from single-molecule photon trajectories and FRET efficiency histograms for a fast-folding protein.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chung, Hoi Sung; Gopich, Irina V; McHale, Kevin; Cellmer, Troy; Louis, John M; Eaton, William A

    2011-04-28

    Recently developed statistical methods by Gopich and Szabo were used to extract folding and unfolding rate coefficients from single-molecule Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) data for proteins with kinetics too fast to measure waiting time distributions. Two types of experiments and two different analyses were performed. In one experiment bursts of photons were collected from donor and acceptor fluorophores attached to a 73-residue protein, α(3)D, freely diffusing through the illuminated volume of a confocal microscope system. In the second, the protein was immobilized by linkage to a surface, and photons were collected until one of the fluorophores bleached. Folding and unfolding rate coefficients and mean FRET efficiencies for the folded and unfolded subpopulations were obtained from a photon by photon analysis of the trajectories using a maximum likelihood method. The ability of the method to describe the data in terms of a two-state model was checked by recoloring the photon trajectories with the extracted parameters and comparing the calculated FRET efficiency histograms with the measured histograms. The sum of the rate coefficients for the two-state model agreed to within 30% with the relaxation rate obtained from the decay of the donor-acceptor cross-correlation function, confirming the high accuracy of the method. Interestingly, apparently reliable rate coefficients could be extracted using the maximum likelihood method, even at low (rate coefficients and mean FRET efficiencies were also obtained in an approximate procedure by simply fitting the FRET efficiency histograms, calculated by binning the donor and acceptor photons, with a sum of three-Gaussian functions. The kinetics are exposed in these histograms by the growth of a FRET efficiency peak at values intermediate between the folded and unfolded peaks as the bin size increases, a phenomenon with similarities to NMR exchange broadening. When comparable populations of folded and unfolded

  4. Enhanced conductive loss in nickel–cobalt sulfide nanostructures for highly efficient microwave absorption and shielding

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Wanrong; Zhou, Min; Lu, Fei; Liu, Hongfei; Zhou, Yuxue; Zhu, Jun; Zeng, Xianghua

    2018-06-01

    Microwave-absorbing materials with light weight and high efficiency are desirable in addressing electromagnetic interference (EMI) problems. Herein, a nickel–cobalt sulfide (NCS) nanostructure was employed as a robust microwave absorber, which displayed an optimized reflection loss of  ‑49.1 dB in the gigahertz range with a loading of only 20 wt% in an NCS/paraffin wax composite. High electrical conductivity was found to contribute prominent conductive loss in NCS, leading to intense dielectric loss within a relatively low mass loading. Furthermore, owing to its high electrical conductivity and remarkable dielectric loss to microwaves, the prepared NCS exhibited excellent performance in EMI shielding. The EMI shielding efficiency of the 50 wt% NCS/paraffin composite exceeded 55 dB at the X-band, demonstrating NCS is a versatile candidate for solving EMI problems.

  5. A Method of Road Extraction from High-resolution Remote Sensing Images Based on Shape Features

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    LEI Xiaoqi

    2016-02-01

    Full Text Available Road extraction from high-resolution remote sensing image is an important and difficult task.Since remote sensing images include complicated information,the methods that extract roads by spectral,texture and linear features have certain limitations.Also,many methods need human-intervention to get the road seeds(semi-automatic extraction,which have the great human-dependence and low efficiency.The road-extraction method,which uses the image segmentation based on principle of local gray consistency and integration shape features,is proposed in this paper.Firstly,the image is segmented,and then the linear and curve roads are obtained by using several object shape features,so the method that just only extract linear roads are rectified.Secondly,the step of road extraction is carried out based on the region growth,the road seeds are automatic selected and the road network is extracted.Finally,the extracted roads are regulated by combining the edge information.In experiments,the images that including the better gray uniform of road and the worse illuminated of road surface were chosen,and the results prove that the method of this study is promising.

  6. Comparison of Water Turbidity Removal Efficiencies of Descurainia Sophia Seed Extract and Ferric chloride

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mazyar Peyda

    2016-03-01

    Full Text Available Background Turbidity removal using inorganic coagulants such as iron and aluminum salts in water treatment processes causes environmental and human health concern. Historically, the use of natural coagulant to purify turbid water has been practiced for a long time. Recent research indicates that Descurainia Sophia seed can be effectively used as a natural coagulant to remove water turbidity. Method: In this work, turbidity removal efficiency of Descurainia Sophia seed extract was compared with Ferric chloride. Experiments were performed in laboratory scale. The coagulation experiments were done with kaolin as a model soil to produce turbidity in distilled water. The turbidity removal efficiency of Descurainia Sophia seed extract and Ferric chloride were conducted with jar test apparatus. In all experiments, initial turbidity was kept constant 100(NTU. Optimum combination of independent variables was used to compare two different types of coagulants. Result: The obtained results showed that Ferric chloride could remove 89.75% of the initial turbidity, while in case of Descurainia Sophia this value was 43.13%. The total organic carbon (TOC analysis of the treated water using seed extract showed an increased concentration of TOC equal to 0.99 mg/L. Conclusions: This research has shown that Descurainia Sophia seed extract has an acceptable potential in the coagulation/flocculation process to treat turbid water.

  7. Efficient parallel algorithms for string editing and related problems

    Science.gov (United States)

    Apostolico, Alberto; Atallah, Mikhail J.; Larmore, Lawrence; Mcfaddin, H. S.

    1988-01-01

    The string editing problem for input strings x and y consists of transforming x into y by performing a series of weighted edit operations on x of overall minimum cost. An edit operation on x can be the deletion of a symbol from x, the insertion of a symbol in x or the substitution of a symbol x with another symbol. This problem has a well known O((absolute value of x)(absolute value of y)) time sequential solution (25). The efficient Program Requirements Analysis Methods (PRAM) parallel algorithms for the string editing problem are given. If m = ((absolute value of x),(absolute value of y)) and n = max((absolute value of x),(absolute value of y)), then the CREW bound is O (log m log n) time with O (mn/log m) processors. In all algorithms, space is O (mn).

  8. DOE/OER-sponsored basic research in high-efficiency photovoltaics

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Deb, S.K.; Benner, J.P. [National Renewable Energy Lab., Golden, CO (United States)

    1996-05-01

    A high-efficiency photovoltaic project involving many of the national laboratories and several universities has been initiated under the umbrella of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Center of Excellence for the Synthesis and Processing of Advanced Materials. The objectives of this project are to generate advances in fundamental scientific understanding that will impact the efficiency, cost and reliability of thin-film photovoltaic cells. The project is focused on two areas. (1) Silicon-Based Thin Films, in which key scientific and technological problems involving amorphous and polycrystalline silicon thin films will be addressed, and (2) Next-Generation Thin-Film Photovoltaics, which will be concerned with the possibilities of new advances and breakthroughs in the materials and physics of photovoltaics using non-silicon-based materials.

  9. An efficient method for generalized linear multiplicative programming problem with multiplicative constraints.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhao, Yingfeng; Liu, Sanyang

    2016-01-01

    We present a practical branch and bound algorithm for globally solving generalized linear multiplicative programming problem with multiplicative constraints. To solve the problem, a relaxation programming problem which is equivalent to a linear programming is proposed by utilizing a new two-phase relaxation technique. In the algorithm, lower and upper bounds are simultaneously obtained by solving some linear relaxation programming problems. Global convergence has been proved and results of some sample examples and a small random experiment show that the proposed algorithm is feasible and efficient.

  10. INTERACTION’S EFFECT OF ORGANIC MATERIAL AND AGGREGATION ON EXTRACTION EFFICIENCY OF TPHS FROM PETROLEUM CONTAMINATED SOILS WITH MAE

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    H. Ganjidoust and Gh. Naghizadeh

    2005-10-01

    Full Text Available Microwave-Assisted Extraction (MAE is a type of low-temperature thermal desorption process that its numerous advantages have caused a wide spread use of it. Microwave heating is a potentially attractive technique as it provides volumetric heating process to improve heating efficiencies as compared with conventional techniques. The ability to rapidly heat the sample solvent mixture is inherent to MAE and the main advantage of this technique. Presently MAE has been shown to be one of the best technologies for removing environmental pollutants specially PAHs, phenols and PCBs from soils and sediments. Five different mixtures and types of aggregation (Sand, Top soil, Kaolinite besides three concentrations of crude oil as a contaminant (1000, 5000 and 10000 mg/L were considered. The results indicated that regardless of aggregation, the presence of humus component in soil reduces the efficiency. Minimum and maximum efficiencies were for sandy soil (containing organic components and kaolinite (without any organic content, respectively. According to the results of this research when some amount of humus and organic materials are available in the matrix, it causes the extraction efficiency to perform as a function of just humus materials but not aggregation. Increasing the concentration of crude oil reduced the efficiency with a sharp steep for higher concentration (5000-10000 mg/L and less steeper for lower concentration (1000-5000 mg/L. The concentration of the contaminant, works just as an independent function with extraction time and aggregation factors. The extraction period of 10 min. can be suggested as an optimum extraction time in FMAE for PAHs contaminated soils.

  11. Scalable Light Module for Low-Cost, High-Efficiency Light- Emitting Diode Luminaires

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Tarsa, Eric [Cree, Inc., Goleta, CA (United States)

    2015-08-31

    During this two-year program Cree developed a scalable, modular optical architecture for low-cost, high-efficacy light emitting diode (LED) luminaires. Stated simply, the goal of this architecture was to efficiently and cost-effectively convey light from LEDs (point sources) to broad luminaire surfaces (area sources). By simultaneously developing warm-white LED components and low-cost, scalable optical elements, a high system optical efficiency resulted. To meet program goals, Cree evaluated novel approaches to improve LED component efficacy at high color quality while not sacrificing LED optical efficiency relative to conventional packages. Meanwhile, efficiently coupling light from LEDs into modular optical elements, followed by optimally distributing and extracting this light, were challenges that were addressed via novel optical design coupled with frequent experimental evaluations. Minimizing luminaire bill of materials and assembly costs were two guiding principles for all design work, in the effort to achieve luminaires with significantly lower normalized cost ($/klm) than existing LED fixtures. Chief project accomplishments included the achievement of >150 lm/W warm-white LEDs having primary optics compatible with low-cost modular optical elements. In addition, a prototype Light Module optical efficiency of over 90% was measured, demonstrating the potential of this scalable architecture for ultra-high-efficacy LED luminaires. Since the project ended, Cree has continued to evaluate optical element fabrication and assembly methods in an effort to rapidly transfer this scalable, cost-effective technology to Cree production development groups. The Light Module concept is likely to make a strong contribution to the development of new cost-effective, high-efficacy luminaries, thereby accelerating widespread adoption of energy-saving SSL in the U.S.

  12. A Penalized Semialgebraic Deflation ICA Algorithm for the Efficient Extraction of Interictal Epileptic Signals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Becker, Hanna; Albera, Laurent; Comon, Pierre; Kachenoura, Amar; Merlet, Isabelle

    2017-01-01

    As a noninvasive technique, electroencephalography (EEG) is commonly used to monitor the brain signals of patients with epilepsy such as the interictal epileptic spikes. However, the recorded data are often corrupted by artifacts originating, for example, from muscle activities, which may have much higher amplitudes than the interictal epileptic signals of interest. To remove these artifacts, a number of independent component analysis (ICA) techniques were successfully applied. In this paper, we propose a new deflation ICA algorithm, called penalized semialgebraic unitary deflation (P-SAUD) algorithm, that improves upon classical ICA methods by leading to a considerably reduced computational complexity at equivalent performance. This is achieved by employing a penalized semialgebraic extraction scheme, which permits us to identify the epileptic components of interest (interictal spikes) first and obviates the need of extracting subsequent components. The proposed method is evaluated on physiologically plausible simulated EEG data and actual measurements of three patients. The results are compared to those of several popular ICA algorithms as well as second-order blind source separation methods, demonstrating that P-SAUD extracts the epileptic spikes with the same accuracy as the best ICA methods, but reduces the computational complexity by a factor of 10 for 32-channel recordings. This superior computational efficiency is of particular interest considering the increasing use of high-resolution EEG recordings, whose analysis requires algorithms with low computational cost.

  13. Understanding and arresting degradation in highly efficient blue emitting BaMgAl{sub 10}O{sub 17}:Eu{sup 2+} phosphor—A longstanding technological problem

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Shanker, Ravi; Khan, A.F.; Kumar, Raj; Chander, H.; Shanker, V.; Chawla, Santa, E-mail: santa@mail.nplindia.ernet.in

    2013-11-15

    Blue emitting BaMgAl{sub 10}O{sub 17}:Eu{sup 2+} (BAM) phosphor is indispensable for Plasma Display panel and lighting because of high luminescence efficiency. However, thermal degradation (annealing in air at 500–600 °C) of BAM (upto ∼30%) remains an intriguing problem for display industry worldwide. In the present study, a systematic approach is pursued to develop highly efficient BAM phosphor that exhibits least degradation, understand the role of Eu{sup 2+} site occupancy in such BAM phosphor and encapsulate individual phosphor grains with a shell of silica nanoparticles. The approaches lead to highly efficient BAM:Eu{sup 2+} phosphor that showed no degradation against thermal baking (annealing at 500 °C in air) for both UV and VUV radiation under UV and VUV excitation. An optimum solid state chemical route including precursor phases, dopant concentration, and thermal regimes has been evolved to develop BAM. Emission from Eu{sup 2+} occupying three different sites is identified with energetically stable anti Beevers Ross as the dominant contributor. Coating by nano sized amorphous silica sol with subsequent sintering lead to uniform silica shell. This nano silica layer also helps to enhance the luminescence from phosphor grains. -- Highlights: • Synthesis process optimization done to obtain BAM:Eu{sup 2+} phosphor of high QE (95%). • Site occupancy of Eu{sup 2+} ions in BAM lattice and its relation to stability analyzed. • Individual phosphor grains coated by layer of silica nanoparticles. • Preferred Eu{sup 2+} site occupancy and inert silica layer arrested thermal degradation in BAM. • Developed BAM:Eu{sup 2+} phosphor with high QE is completely thermal degradation resistant.

  14. Comparative study of the efficiency of complex formation and extraction of thorium by solutions of certain alkylaromatic α-hydroxy acids in heptanol

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Charykov, A.K.; Aleksandrova, E.A.; Vasil'eva, O.N.

    1986-01-01

    The constants for the extraction of thorium by solutions of alkylaromatic α-hydroxy acids in heptanol occur in the order log K/sub ex/ (hydroxydiphenylacetic acid) > log K/sub ex/ (phenoxyacetic acid) > log K/sub ex/ (hydroxyphenylacetic acid). For the example of extraction equilibria involving the participation of thorium carboxylate complexes an extraction efficiency parameter is introduced which enables the efficiency of extraction to be predicted on the basis of information on the formation constants of the neutral complexes and the dissociation constants of the extractant acids in the aqueous phase

  15. DART: A Functional-Level Reconfigurable Architecture for High Energy Efficiency

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    David Raphaël

    2008-01-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Flexibility becomes a major concern for the development of multimedia and mobile communication systems, as well as classical high-performance and low-energy consumption constraints. The use of general-purpose processors solves flexibility problems but fails to cope with the increasing demand for energy efficiency. This paper presents the DART architecture based on the functional-level reconfiguration paradigm which allows a significant improvement in energy efficiency. DART is built around a hierarchical interconnection network allowing high flexibility while keeping the power overhead low. To enable specific optimizations, DART supports two modes of reconfiguration. The compilation framework is built using compilation and high-level synthesis techniques. A 3G mobile communication application has been implemented as a proof of concept. The energy distribution within the architecture and the physical implementation are also discussed. Finally, the VLSI design of a 0.13  m CMOS SoC implementing a specialized DART cluster is presented.

  16. DART: A Functional-Level Reconfigurable Architecture for High Energy Efficiency

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sébastien Pillement

    2007-12-01

    Full Text Available Flexibility becomes a major concern for the development of multimedia and mobile communication systems, as well as classical high-performance and low-energy consumption constraints. The use of general-purpose processors solves flexibility problems but fails to cope with the increasing demand for energy efficiency. This paper presents the DART architecture based on the functional-level reconfiguration paradigm which allows a significant improvement in energy efficiency. DART is built around a hierarchical interconnection network allowing high flexibility while keeping the power overhead low. To enable specific optimizations, DART supports two modes of reconfiguration. The compilation framework is built using compilation and high-level synthesis techniques. A 3G mobile communication application has been implemented as a proof of concept. The energy distribution within the architecture and the physical implementation are also discussed. Finally, the VLSI design of a 0.13 μm CMOS SoC implementing a specialized DART cluster is presented.

  17. A new efficient method for the calculation of interior eigenpairs and its application to vibrational structure problems

    Science.gov (United States)

    Petrenko, Taras; Rauhut, Guntram

    2017-03-01

    Vibrational configuration interaction theory is a common method for calculating vibrational levels and associated IR and Raman spectra of small and medium-sized molecules. When combined with appropriate configuration selection procedures, the method allows the treatment of configuration spaces with up to 1010 configurations. In general, this approach pursues the construction of the eigenstates with significant contributions of physically relevant configurations. The corresponding eigenfunctions are evaluated in the subspace of selected configurations. However, it can easily reach the dimension which is not tractable for conventional eigenvalue solvers. Although Davidson and Lanczos methods are the methods of choice for calculating exterior eigenvalues, they usually fall into stagnation when applied to interior states. The latter are commonly treated by the Jacobi-Davidson method. This approach in conjunction with matrix factorization for solving the correction equation (CE) is prohibitive for larger problems, and it has limited efficiency if the solution of the CE is based on Krylov's subspace algorithms. We propose an iterative subspace method that targets the eigenvectors with significant contributions to a given reference vector and is based on the optimality condition for the residual norm corresponding to the error in the solution vector. The subspace extraction and expansion are modified according to these principles which allow very efficient calculation of interior vibrational states with a strong multireference character in different vibrational structure problems. The convergence behavior of the method and its performance in comparison with the aforementioned algorithms are investigated in a set of benchmark calculations.

  18. Extracting Hot spots of Topics from Time Stamped Documents

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Wei; Chundi, Parvathi

    2011-01-01

    Identifying time periods with a burst of activities related to a topic has been an important problem in analyzing time-stamped documents. In this paper, we propose an approach to extract a hot spot of a given topic in a time-stamped document set. Topics can be basic, containing a simple list of keywords, or complex. Logical relationships such as and, or, and not are used to build complex topics from basic topics. A concept of presence measure of a topic based on fuzzy set theory is introduced to compute the amount of information related to the topic in the document set. Each interval in the time period of the document set is associated with a numeric value which we call the discrepancy score. A high discrepancy score indicates that the documents in the time interval are more focused on the topic than those outside of the time interval. A hot spot of a given topic is defined as a time interval with the highest discrepancy score. We first describe a naive implementation for extracting hot spots. We then construct an algorithm called EHE (Efficient Hot Spot Extraction) using several efficient strategies to improve performance. We also introduce the notion of a topic DAG to facilitate an efficient computation of presence measures of complex topics. The proposed approach is illustrated by several experiments on a subset of the TDT-Pilot Corpus and DBLP conference data set. The experiments show that the proposed EHE algorithm significantly outperforms the naive one, and the extracted hot spots of given topics are meaningful. PMID:21765568

  19. High precision efficiency calibration of a HPGe detector

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Nica, N.; Hardy, J.C.; Iacob, V.E.; Helmer, R.G.

    2003-01-01

    Many experiments involving measurements of γ rays require a very precise efficiency calibration. Since γ-ray detection and identification also requires good energy resolution, the most commonly used detectors are of the coaxial HPGe type. We have calibrated our 70% HPGe to ∼ 0.2% precision, motivated by the measurement of precise branching ratios (BR) in superallowed 0 + → 0 + β decays. These BRs are essential ingredients in extracting ft-values needed to test the Standard Model via the unitarity of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix, a test that it currently fails by more than two standard deviations. To achieve the required high precision in our efficiency calibration, we measured 17 radioactive sources at a source-detector distance of 15 cm. Some of these were commercial 'standard' sources but we achieved the highest relative precision with 'home-made' sources selected because they have simple decay schemes with negligible side feeding, thus providing exactly matched γ-ray intensities. These latter sources were produced by us at Texas A and M by n-activation or by nuclear reactions. Another critical source among the 17 was a 60 Co source produced by Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, Braunschweig, Germany: its absolute activity was quoted to better than 0.06%. We used it to establish our absolute efficiency, while all the other sources were used to determine relative efficiencies, extending our calibration over a large energy range (40-3500 keV). Efficiencies were also determined with Monte Carlo calculations performed with the CYLTRAN code. The physical parameters of the Ge crystal were independently determined and only two (unmeasurable) dead-layers were adjusted, within physically reasonable limits, to achieve precise absolute agreement with our measured efficiencies. The combination of measured efficiencies at more than 60 individual energies and Monte Carlo calculations to interpolate between them allows us to quote the efficiency of our

  20. Sensitivity analysis of efficient solution in vector MINMAX boolean programming problem

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vladimir A. Emelichev

    2002-11-01

    Full Text Available We consider a multiple criterion Boolean programming problem with MINMAX partial criteria. The extreme level of independent perturbations of partial criteria parameters such that efficient (Pareto optimal solution preserves optimality was obtained.

  1. Efficient solution of a multi objective fuzzy transportation problem

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vidhya, V.; Ganesan, K.

    2018-04-01

    In this paper we present a methodology for the solution of multi-objective fuzzy transportation problem when all the cost and time coefficients are trapezoidal fuzzy numbers and the supply and demand are crisp numbers. Using a new fuzzy arithmetic on parametric form of trapezoidal fuzzy numbers and a new ranking method all efficient solutions are obtained. The proposed method is illustrated with an example.

  2. Continuous extraction of phenolic compounds from pomegranate peel using high voltage electrical discharge.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xi, Jun; He, Lang; Yan, Liang-Gong

    2017-09-01

    Pomegranate peel, a waste generated from fruit processing industry, is a potential source of phenolic compounds that are known for their anti-oxidative properties. In this study, a continuous high voltage electrical discharge (HVED) extraction system was for the first time designed and optimized for phenolic compounds from pomegranate peel. The optimal conditions for HVED were: flow rate of materials 12mL/min, electrodes gap distance 3.1mm (corresponding to 29kV/cm of electric field intensity) and liquid to solid ratio 35mL/g. Under these conditions, the experimental yield of phenolic compounds was 196.7±6.4mg/g, which closely agreed with the predicted value (199.83mg/g). Compared with the warm water maceration, HVED method possessed higher efficiency for the extraction of phenolic compounds. The results demonstrated that HVED technique could be a very effective method for continuous extraction of natural compounds. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  3. An efficient explicit numerical scheme for diffusion-type equations with a highly inhomogeneous and highly anisotropic diffusion tensor

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Larroche, O.

    2007-01-01

    A locally split-step explicit (LSSE) algorithm was developed for efficiently solving a multi-dimensional advection-diffusion type equation involving a highly inhomogeneous and highly anisotropic diffusion tensor, which makes the problem very ill-conditioned for standard implicit methods involving the iterative solution of large linear systems. The need for such an optimized algorithm arises, in particular, in the frame of thermonuclear fusion applications, for the purpose of simulating fast charged-particle slowing-down with an ion Fokker-Planck code. The LSSE algorithm is presented in this paper along with the results of a model slowing-down problem to which it has been applied

  4. High-efficiency target-ion sources for RIB generation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Alton, G.D.

    1993-01-01

    A brief review is given of high-efficiency ion sources which have been developed or are under development at ISOL facilities which show particular promise for use at existing, future, or radioactive ion beam (RIB) facilities now under construction. Emphasis will be placed on those sources which have demonstrated high ionization efficiency, species versatility, and operational reliability and which have been carefully designed for safe handling in the high level radioactivity radiation fields incumbent at such facilities. Brief discussions will also be made of the fundamental processes which affect the realizable beam intensities in target-ion sources. Among the sources which will be reviewed will be selected examples of state-of-the-art electron-beam plasma-type ion sources, thermal-ionization, surface-ionization, ECR, and selectively chosen ion source concepts which show promise for radioactive ion beam generation. A few advanced, chemically selective target-ion sources will be described, such as sources based on the use of laser-resonance ionization, which, in principle, offer a more satisfactory solution to isobaric contamination problems than conventional electromagnetic techniques. Particular attention will be given to the sources which have been selected for initial or future use at the Holifield Radioactive Ion Beam Facility now under construction at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory

  5. Progress of OLED devices with high efficiency at high luminance

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nguyen, Carmen; Ingram, Grayson; Lu, Zhenghong

    2014-03-01

    Organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) have progressed significantly over the last two decades. For years, OLEDs have been promoted as the next generation technology for flat panel displays and solid-state lighting due to their potential for high energy efficiency and dynamic range of colors. Although high efficiency can readily be obtained at low brightness levels, a significant decline at high brightness is commonly observed. In this report, we will review various strategies for achieving highly efficient phosphorescent OLED devices at high luminance. Specifically, we will provide details regarding the performance and general working principles behind each strategy. We will conclude by looking at how some of these strategies can be combined to produce high efficiency white OLEDs at high brightness.

  6. The World of Combinatorial Fuzzy Problems and the Efficiency of Fuzzy Approximation Algorithms

    OpenAIRE

    Yamakami, Tomoyuki

    2015-01-01

    We re-examine a practical aspect of combinatorial fuzzy problems of various types, including search, counting, optimization, and decision problems. We are focused only on those fuzzy problems that take series of fuzzy input objects and produce fuzzy values. To solve such problems efficiently, we design fast fuzzy algorithms, which are modeled by polynomial-time deterministic fuzzy Turing machines equipped with read-only auxiliary tapes and write-only output tapes and also modeled by polynomia...

  7. High-power, high-efficiency FELs

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Sessler, A.M.

    1989-04-01

    High power, high efficiency FELs require tapering, as the particles loose energy, so as to maintain resonance between the electromagnetic wave and the particles. They also require focusing of the particles (usually done with curved pole faces) and focusing of the electromagnetic wave (i.e. optical guiding). In addition, one must avoid transverse beam instabilities (primarily resistive wall) and longitudinal instabilities (i.e sidebands). 18 refs., 7 figs., 3 tabs

  8. Perovskite Solar Cells for High-Efficiency Tandems

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    McGehee, Michael [Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States); Buonassisi, Tonio [Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)

    2017-09-30

    The first monolithic perovskite/silicon tandem was made with a diffused silicon p-n junction, a tunnel junction made of n++ hydrogenated amorphous silicon, a titania electron transport layer, a methylammonium lead iodide absorber, and a Spiro-OMeTAD hole transport layer (HTL). The power conversion efficiency (PCE) was only 13.7% due to excessive parasitic absorption of light in the HTL, limiting the matched current density to 11.5 mA/cm2. Werner et al.15 raised the PCE to a record 21.2% by switching to a silicon heterojunction bottom cell and carefully tuning layer thicknesses to achieve lower optical loss and a higher current density of 15.9 mA/cm2. It is clear from these reports that minimizing parasitic absorption in the window layers is crucial to achieving higher current densities and efficiencies in monolithic tandems. To this end, the window layers through which light first passes before entering the perovskite and silicon absorber materials must be highly transparent. The front electrode must also be conductive to carry current laterally across the top of the device. Indium tin oxide (ITO) is widely utilized as a transparent electrode in optoelectronic devices such as flat-panel displays, smart windows, organic light-emitting diodes, and solar cells due to its high conductivity and broadband transparency. ITO is typically deposited through magnetron sputtering; however, the high kinetic energy of sputtered particles can damage underlying layers. In perovskite solar cells, a sputter buffer layer is required to protect the perovskite and organic carrier extraction layers from damage during sputter deposition. The ideal buffer layer should also be energetically well aligned so as to act as a carrier-selective contact, have a wide bandgap to enable high optical transmission, and have no reaction with the halides in the perovskite. Additionally, this buffer layer should act as a diffusion barrier layer to prevent both

  9. High efficiency, multiterawatt x-ray free electron lasers

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    C. Emma

    2016-02-01

    Full Text Available In this paper we present undulator magnet tapering methods for obtaining high efficiency and multiterawatt peak powers in x-ray free electron lasers (XFELs, a key requirement for enabling 3D atomic resolution single molecule imaging and nonlinear x-ray science. The peak power and efficiency of tapered XFELs is sensitive to time dependent effects, like synchrotron sideband growth. To analyze this dependence in detail we perform a comparative numerical optimization for the undulator magnetic field tapering profile including and intentionally disabling these effects. We show that the solution for the magnetic field taper profile obtained from time independent optimization does not yield the highest extraction efficiency when time dependent effects are included. Our comparative optimization is performed for a novel undulator designed specifically to obtain TW power x-ray pulses in the shortest distance: superconducting, helical, with short period and built-in strong focusing. This design reduces the length of the breaks between modules, decreasing diffraction effects, and allows using a stronger transverse electron focusing. Both effects reduce the gain length and the overall undulator length. We determine that after a fully time dependent optimization of a 100 m long Linac coherent light source-like XFEL we can obtain a maximum efficiency of 7%, corresponding to 3.7 TW peak radiation power. Possible methods to suppress the synchrotron sidebands, and further enhance the FEL peak power, up to about 6 TW by increasing the seed power and reducing the electron beam energy spread, are also discussed.

  10. An Efficient Implementation of Generalized Delayed Signal Cancellation PLL

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Golestan, Saeed; Fernandez, Francisco Daniel Freijedo; Vidal, Ana

    2016-01-01

    voltage quantities, an efficient and low-cost implementation of the GDSCPLL is suggested in this paper. The proposed structure, which is called the enhanced GDSC-PLL (EGDSC-PLL), uses a nonadaptive GDSC operator as its prefiltering stage, and compensates the phase-shift and amplitude scaling caused...... stability under all circumstances; 2) adapting the GDSC to grid frequency variations increases the implementation complexity and computational effort, particularly when the interpolation techniques are used for this purpose. To avoid these problems while maintaining high accuracy in the extraction of grid...

  11. Mechanical algal disruption for efficient biodiesel extraction

    Science.gov (United States)

    Krehbiel, Joel David

    Biodiesel from algae provides several benefits over current biodiesel feedstocks, but the energy requirements of processing algae into a useable fuel are currently so high as to be prohibitive. One route to improving this is via disruption of the cells prior to lipid extraction, which can significantly increase energy recovery. Unfortunately, several obvious disruption techniques require more energy than can be gained. This dissertation examines the use of microbubbles to improve mechanical disruption of algal cells using experimental, theoretical, and computational methods. New laboratory experiments show that effective ultrasonic disruption of algae is achieved by adding microbubbles to an algal solution. The configuration studied flows the solution through a tube and insonifies a small section with a high-pressure ultrasound wave. Previous biomedical research has shown effective cell membrane damage on animal cells with similar methods, but the present research is the first to extend such study to algal cells. Results indicate that disruption increases with peak negative pressure between 1.90 and 3.07 MPa and with microbubble concentration up to 12.5 x 107 bubbles/ml. Energy estimates of this process suggest that it requires only one-fourth the currently most-efficient laboratory-scale disruption process. Estimates of the radius near each bubble that causes disruption (i.e. the disruption radius) suggest that it increases with peak negative pressure and is near 9--20 microm for all cases tested. It is anticipated that these procedures can be designed for better efficiency and efficacy, which will be facilitated by identifying the root mechanisms of the bubble-induced disruption. We therefore examine whether bubble expansion alone creates sufficient cell deformation for cell rupture. The spherically-symmetric Marmottant model for bubble dynamics allows estimation of the flow regime under experimental conditions. Bubble expansion is modeled as a point source of

  12. FAST LABEL: Easy and efficient solution of joint multi-label and estimation problems

    KAUST Repository

    Sundaramoorthi, Ganesh; Hong, Byungwoo

    2014-01-01

    that plague local solutions. Further, in comparison to global methods for the multi-label problem, the method is more efficient and it is easy for a non-specialist to implement. We give sample Matlab code for the multi-label Chan-Vese problem in this paper

  13. Light ion source studies with a magnetically insulated extraction diode

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Struckman, C.K.

    1992-01-01

    Light ion sources are currently being studied to assess their ability to drive an inertial confinement fusion reactor. The author has produced a high purity, 1MV, 300A/cm 2 lithium beam using a 200cm 2 extraction geometry, magnetically insulated ion diode. The lithium source was an AC glow discharge cleaned, LiF/Al film active anode. The active anode plasma was formed after 50KA of current was shunted through the anode film for 20ns. The stoichiometry of the resulting ion beam was 65% Li + , 20% Al +2 , and 15% H + . Without the glow discharge cleaning, the ion beam was over 55% hydrogen and only 20% Li + . At the time of the diode's design, extraction diodes were producing poor ion beams: their current efficiency was only 60-70%, and their extracted ion current was radially nonuniform. This diode was the first high efficiency extraction diode, and produced over 200KA of ions with 80-90% ion current efficiency. In addition, by varying the tilt of the applied magnetic field, it was possible to show that the ion current density could be made independent of radius. Since the author was unable to make a Li + beam with a passive anode, he installed an active anode that used an external current to vaporize a thin metal film on the anode surface. Poor beam purity was the most serious problem with active anodes. In order to remove impurities, especially the hydrogen contamination, the author cleaned the anodes with a glow discharge. Al film anodes were cleaned with a 110mA, 33W DC glow discharge, and the LiF/Al film anodes were cleaned with an equivalent AC discharge. The results obtained and a model for the mechanism behind the cleaning process are throughly discussed

  14. A high efficiency photovoltaic module integrated converter with the asymmetrical half-bridge flyback converter

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Kim, Heeje; Kim, Jongrak; Shin, Dongsul [Department of Electrical Engineering, Pusan National University, Jangjeon, Geumjeong, Busan 609-735 (Korea); Kim, Hosung; Lee, Kyungjun [Department of Electrical Engineering, Pusan National University, Jangjeon, Geumjeong, Busan 609-735 (Korea); New and Renewable Energy System Research Center, Korea Electro-technology Research Institute, 28-1, Sungju-dong Changwon-si, Kyungsannam-do, 641-120 (Korea); Kim, Jonghyun; Yoo, Dongwook [New and Renewable Energy System Research Center, Korea Electro-technology Research Institute, 28-1, Sungju-dong Changwon-si, Kyungsannam-do, 641-120 (Korea)

    2010-08-15

    A module integrated converter (MIC) for a photovoltaic (PV) cell is important part of power conditioning system (PCS). It performs maximum power point tracking of a PV cell to generate the power as much as possible from solar energy. There are several methods for connection between the PV modules and the MICs. In order to avoid partial shading effects, converter-per-module approach was proposed. The MIC that performs maximum power point tracking (MPPT), if it is low efficiency, is no use. The MIC whose output is connected to the output of PV module was proposed for high efficiency. However, there are some problems. In this study, an asymmetrical half-bridge flyback converter is proposed instead of the original flyback converter with same method to solve the problems. The proposed MIC was built to verify the performance. The new topology using soft switching technique showed good performance for the efficiency. At the higher power, the efficiency of the proposed converter is higher than existing converter. (author)

  15. Efficient algorithm for bifurcation problems of variational inequalities

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Mittelmann, H.D.

    1983-01-01

    For a class of variational inequalities on a Hilbert space H bifurcating solutions exist and may be characterized as critical points of a functional with respect to the intersection of the level surfaces of another functional and a closed convex subset K of H. In a recent paper [13] we have used a gradient-projection type algorithm to obtain the solutions for discretizations of the variational inequalities. A related but Newton-based method is given here. Global and asymptotically quadratic convergence is proved. Numerical results show that it may be used very efficiently in following the bifurcating branches and that is compares favorably with several other algorithms. The method is also attractive for a class of nonlinear eigenvalue problems (K = H) for which it reduces to a generalized Rayleigh-quotient interaction. So some results are included for the path following in turning-point problems

  16. Development of functional nano-particle layer for highly efficient OLED

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Jae-Hyun; Kim, Min-Hoi; Choi, Haechul; Choi, Yoonseuk

    2015-12-01

    Organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) are now widely commercialized in market due to many advantages such as possibility of making thin or flexible devices. Nevertheless there are still several things to obtain the high quality flexible OLEDs, one of the most important issues is the light extraction of the device. It is known that OLEDs have the typical light loss such as the waveguide loss, plasmon absorption loss and internal total reflection. In this paper, we demonstrate the one-step processed light scattering films with aluminum oxide nano-particles and polystyrene matrix composite to achieve highly efficient OLEDs. Optical characteristics and surface roughness of light scattering film was optimized by changing the mixing concentration of Al2O3 nano-particles and investigated with the atomic force microscopy and hazemeter, respectively.

  17. Extracting the emitter orientation in organic light-emitting diodes from external quantum efficiency measurements

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Schmidt, Tobias D., E-mail: Tobias.Schmidt@physik.uni-augsburg.de; Reichardt, Lukas J.; Wehrmeister, Sebastian; Scholz, Bert J.; Mayr, Christian; Brütting, Wolfgang, E-mail: Wolfgang.Bruetting@physik.uni-augsburg.de [Institute of Physics, University of Augsburg, 86135 Augsburg (Germany); Rausch, Andreas F.; Wehlus, Thomas; Reusch, Thilo C. G. [OSRAM OLED GmbH, Wernerwerkstrasse 2, 93049 Regensburg (Germany); Ciarnáin, Rossá Mac; Danz, Norbert [Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering, 07745 Jena (Germany)

    2014-07-28

    Emitter orientation will play a major role in future applications of organic light-emitting diodes due to its strong impact on the efficiency of the devices. Up to now, determining the orientation of transition dipole moments required elaborate angular-dependent measurements of the light emission pattern. In this paper, we present a simplified and straightforward method to extract the emitter orientation from external quantum efficiency measurements. We demonstrate the validity of the method on three different dye-doped emitting systems.

  18. INVESTIGATION OF METHODS OF DNA EXTRACTION FROM PLANT ORIGIN OBJECTS AND FOODS BASED ON THEM

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    L. S. Dyshlyuk

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available For the last decades modern and highly efficient methods of determining the quality and safety of food products, based on the application of the latest scientific achievements were developed in the world. A special place is given to the methods based on achievements of molecular biology and genetics. At the present stage of development in the field of assessing the quality of raw materials and processed food products much attention is given to highly accurate, sensitive and specific research methods, the method of polymerase chain reaction (PCR occupying a leading place among them. PCR is a sophisticated method that simulates the natural DNA replication and allows to detect a single specific DNA molecule in the presence of millions of other molecules. The key point in the preparation of material for PCR is the extraction of nucleic acids. The low content of DNA in plant material and the high concentration of secondary metabolites complicate the process of extraction. The key solution to this problem is highly effective method of extraction, which allows to obtain the DNA of adequate quality and purity. Comparative analysis of methods for the extraction of nucleic acids from fruit raw materials and products based on them was carried out in the study. General analysis of the experimental data allowed us to determine the most efficient method for DNA extracting. In the comparative analysis it was found out that to extract DNA from plant raw materials and food products prepared on their basis it is the most suitable to use "Sorb-GMO-A" reactants kit (set. The approach described gives us a brilliant opportunity to obtain deoxyribonucleic acid proper quality and purity.

  19. Polypyrrole/magnetic nanoparticles composite as an efficient sorbent for dispersive micro-solid-phase extraction of antidepressant drugs from biological fluids.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Asgharinezhad, Ali Akbar; Karami, Sara; Ebrahimzadeh, Homeira; Shekari, Nafiseh; Jalilian, Niloofar

    2015-10-15

    In this study, polypyrrole/magnetic nanoparticles composites in the presence of two different dopants were synthesized with the aid of chemical oxidative polymerization process for dispersive-μ-solid phase extraction (D-μ-SPE). The synthesized magnetic sorbents were characterized by various techniques. The results exhibited that the nanocomposite modified by polypyrrole with sodium perchlorate as a dopant demonstrated higher extraction efficiency for citalopram (CIT) and sertraline (STR) as the model compounds. This nanosorbent in combination with high performance liquid chromatography-UV detection was applied for extraction, preconcentration and determination of CIT and STR in urine and plasma samples. The effect of various parameters on the extraction efficiency including: sample pH, amount of sorbent, sorption time, eluent and its volume, salt content, and elution time were investigated and optimized. The opted conditions were: sample pH, 9.0; sorbent dosage, 10mg; sorption time, 7 min; elution solvent and its volume, 0.06 mol L(-1) HCl in methanol, 120 μL; elution time, 2 min and without addition of salt to the sample. The calibration curves were linear in the concentration range of 1-800 μg L(-1). The limits of detection (LODs) were obtained in the range of 0.2-1.0 μg L(-1) for CIT and 0.3-0.7 μg L(-1) for STR, respectively. The percent of extraction recoveries and relative standard deviations (n=5) were in the range of 93.4-99, 4.8-8.4 for CIT and 94-98.4, 4.3-9.2 for STR, respectively. Finally, the applicability of the method was successfully confirmed by the extraction and determination of CIT and STR in human urine and plasma samples. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  20. Optimization of ultrasound-assisted extraction to obtain mycosterols from Agaricus bisporus L. by response surface methodology and comparison with conventional Soxhlet extraction.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Heleno, Sandrina A; Diz, Patrícia; Prieto, M A; Barros, Lillian; Rodrigues, Alírio; Barreiro, Maria Filomena; Ferreira, Isabel C F R

    2016-04-15

    Ergosterol, a molecule with high commercial value, is the most abundant mycosterol in Agaricus bisporus L. To replace common conventional extraction techniques (e.g. Soxhlet), the present study reports the optimal ultrasound-assisted extraction conditions for ergosterol. After preliminary tests, the results showed that solvents, time and ultrasound power altered the extraction efficiency. Using response surface methodology, models were developed to investigate the favourable experimental conditions that maximize the extraction efficiency. All statistical criteria demonstrated the validity of the proposed models. Overall, ultrasound-assisted extraction with ethanol at 375 W during 15 min proved to be as efficient as the Soxhlet extraction, yielding 671.5 ± 0.5mg ergosterol/100 g dw. However, with n-hexane extracts with higher purity (mg ergosterol/g extract) were obtained. Finally, it was proposed for the removal of the saponification step, which simplifies the extraction process and makes it more feasible for its industrial transference. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  1. Numerical multistep methods for the efficient solution of quantum mechanics and related problems

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Anastassi, Z.A.; Simos, T.E.

    2009-01-01

    In this paper we present the recent development in the numerical integration of the Schroedinger equation and related systems of ordinary differential equations with oscillatory solutions, such as the N-body problem. We examine several types of multistep methods (explicit, implicit, predictor-corrector, hybrid) and several properties (P-stability, trigonometric fitting of various orders, phase fitting, high phase-lag order, algebraic order). We analyze the local truncation error and the stability of the methods. The error for the Schroedinger equation is also presented, which reveals the relation of the error to the energy. The efficiency of the methods is evaluated through the integration of five problems. Figures are presented and analyzed and some general conclusions are made. Code written in Maple is given for the development of all methods analyzed in this paper. Also the subroutines written in Matlab, that concern the integration of the methods, are presented.

  2. Efficient Numerical Solution of Coupled Radial Differential Equations in Multichannel Scattering Problems

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Houfek, Karel

    2008-01-01

    Numerical solution of coupled radial differential equations which are encountered in multichannel scattering problems is presented. Numerical approach is based on the combination of the exterior complex scaling method and the finite-elements method with the discrete variable representation. This method can be used not only to solve multichannel scattering problem but also to find bound states and resonance positions and widths directly by diagonalization of the corresponding complex scaled Hamiltonian. Efficiency and accuracy of this method is demonstrated on an analytically solvable two-channel problem.

  3. Highly efficient separation materials created by computational approach. For the separation of lanthanides and actinides

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Goto, Masahiro; Uezu, Kazuya; Aoshima, Atsushi; Koma, Yoshikazu

    2002-05-01

    In this study, efficient separation materials have been created by the computational approach. Based on the computational calculation, novel organophosphorus extractants, which have two functional moieties in the molecular structure, were developed for the recycle system of transuranium elements using liquid-liquid extraction. Furthermore, molecularly imprinted resins were prepared by the surface-imprint polymerization technique. Thorough this research project, we obtained two principal results: 1) design of novel extractants by computational approach, and 2) preparation of highly selective resins by the molecular imprinting technique. The synthesized extractants showed extremely high extractability to rare earth metals compared to those of commercially available extractants. The results of extraction equilibrium suggested that the structural effect of extractants is one of the key factors to enhance the selectivity and extractability in rare earth extractions. Furthermore, a computational analysis was carried out to evaluate the extraction properties for the extraction of rare earth metals by the synthesized extractants. The computer simulation was shown to be very useful for designing new extractants. The new concept to connect some functional moieties with a spacer is very useful and is a promising method to develop novel extractants for the treatment of nuclear fuel. In the second part, we proposed a novel molecular imprinting technique (surface template polymerization) for the separation of lanthanides and actinides. A surface-templated resin is prepared by an emulsion polymerization using an ion-binding (host) monomer, a resin matrix-forming monomer and the target Nd(III) metal ion. A host monomer which has amphiphilic nature forms a complex with a metal ion at the interface, and the complex remains as it is. After the matrix is polymerized, the coordination structure is 'imprinted' at the resin interface. Adsorption of Nd(III) and La(III) ions onto the

  4. Varying Interpretations of Technology as a Problem in Markets for Customised High-Tech Products

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Vendelø, Morten Thanning; Constantiou, Ioanna

    2012-01-01

    satisfaction and create problems in the efficiency of technology use within the firm. This study investigates the potential of the inquiring dialogue approach for improving information sharing about technology interpretations held by the different parties. An empirical case study of a customised high...

  5. Equilibrium and kinetics of co-extraction of U(VI) and HNO3 using tri-n-butyl phosphate and tri-iso-amyl phosphate in paraffin

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Das, Diptendu; Juvekar, V.A.; Biswas, Sujoy; Roy, S.B.; Bhattacharya, R.

    2014-01-01

    Tri-n-butyl phosphate (TBP) is versatile solvent for recovery of actinides as it is cheaper and the extracted actinides can be stripped from the loaded organic phase using plain water. However there are inherent problems associated TBP such as i) formation of the third phase ii) high solubility in aqueous phase iii) radiolytic hydrolysis at high radiation environment and iv) high propensity for extraction of mineral acids. The last mentioned property makes it less suitable for liquid emulsion membrane (LEM) extraction where acid transport to the strip phase drastically reduces extraction efficiency. Therefore there is need to replace TBP with an extractant which has lesser propensity for acid extraction. Many researcher reported Tri-iso-amyl phosphate (TiAP) as an alternative extractant which can sustain high radiation environment without chemical/radiative degradation. However there are no studies available on co-extraction of U(VI) and mineral acids by TiAP. In this research paper equilibrium and kinetics of co-extraction of U(VI) and HNO 3 from nitric acid medium into a hydrocarbon phase (paraffin) using Tri n- butyl phosphate (TBP), Tri-iso-amyl phosphate (TiAP) has been studied. Relative rates of extraction of uranium(VI) and HNO 3 by TiAP and TBP were measured simultaneously using bulk-liquid membrane (BLM) system. Study reveals although TiAP is less efficient in extracting U(IV), than TBP, it transfers lesser quantity of nitric acid to organic phase. Hence TiAP is more suitable as a carrier for LEM extraction than TBP

  6. High-efficiency airfoil rudders applied to submarines

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    ZHOU Yimei

    2017-03-01

    Full Text Available Modern submarine design puts forward higher and higher requirements for control surfaces, and this creates a requirement for designers to constantly innovate new types of rudder so as to improve the efficiency of control surfaces. Adopting the high-efficiency airfoil rudder is one of the most effective measures for improving the efficiency of control surfaces. In this paper, we put forward an optimization method for a high-efficiency airfoil rudder on the basis of a comparative analysis of the various strengths and weaknesses of the airfoil, and the numerical calculation method is adopted to analyze the influence rule of the hydrodynamic characteristics and wake field by using the high-efficiency airfoil rudder and the conventional NACA rudder comparatively; at the same time, a model load test in a towing tank was carried out, and the test results and simulation calculation obtained good consistency:the error between them was less than 10%. The experimental results show that the steerage of a high-efficiency airfoil rudder is increased by more than 40% when compared with the conventional rudder, but the total resistance is close:the error is no more than 4%. Adopting a high-efficiency airfoil rudder brings much greater lifting efficiency than the total resistance of the boat. The results show that high-efficiency airfoil rudder has obvious advantages for improving the efficiency of control, giving it good application prospects.

  7. Enhancement of Twins Fetal ECG Signal Extraction Based on Hybrid Blind Extraction Techniques

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ahmed Kareem Abdullah

    2017-07-01

    Full Text Available ECG machines are noninvasive system used to measure the heartbeat signal. It’s very important to monitor the fetus ECG signals during pregnancy to check the heat activity and to detect any problem early before born, therefore the monitoring of ECG signals have clinical significance and importance. For multi-fetal pregnancy case the classical filtering algorithms are not sufficient to separate the ECG signals between mother and fetal. In this paper the mixture consists of mixing from three ECG signals, the first signal is the mother ECG (M-ECG signal, second signal the Fetal-1 ECG (F1-ECG, and third signal is the Fetal-2 ECG (F2-ECG, these signals are extracted based on modified blind source extraction (BSE techniques. The proposed work based on hybridization between two BSE techniques to ensure that the extracted signals separated well. The results demonstrate that the proposed work very efficiently to extract the useful ECG signals

  8. Simultaneous determination of phenolic compounds in Equisetum palustre L. by ultra high performance liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry combined with matrix solid-phase dispersion extraction.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wei, Zuofu; Pan, Youzhi; Li, Lu; Huang, Yuyang; Qi, Xiaolin; Luo, Meng; Zu, Yuangang; Fu, Yujie

    2014-11-01

    A method based on matrix solid-phase dispersion extraction followed by ultra high performance liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry is presented for the extraction and determination of phenolic compounds in Equisetum palustre. This method combines the high efficiency of matrix solid-phase dispersion extraction and the rapidity, sensitivity, and accuracy of ultra high performance liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry. The influential parameters of the matrix solid-phase dispersion extraction were investigated and optimized. The optimized conditions were as follows: silica gel was selected as dispersing sorbent, the ratio of silica gel to sample was selected to be 2:1 (400/200 mg), and 8 mL of 80% methanol was used as elution solvent. Furthermore, a fast and sensitive ultra high performance liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry method was developed for the determination of nine phenolic compounds in E. palustre. This method was carried out within <6 min, and exhibited satisfactory linearity, precision, and recovery. Compared with ultrasound-assisted extraction, the proposed matrix solid-phase dispersion procedure possessed higher extraction efficiency, and was more convenient and time saving with reduced requirements on sample and solvent amounts. All these results suggest that the developed method represents an excellent alternative for the extraction and determination of active components in plant matrices. © 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

  9. Determination of Np, Pu and Am in high level radioactive waste with extraction-liquid scintillation counting

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Yang Dazhu; Zhu Yongjun; Jiao Rongzhou

    1994-01-01

    A new method for the determination of transuranium elements, Np, Pu and Am with extraction-liquid scintillation counting has been studied systematically. Procedures for the separation of Pu and Am by HDEHP-TRPO extraction and for the separation of Np by TTA-TiOA extraction have been developed, by which the recovery of Np, Pu and Am is 97%, 99% and 99%, respectively, and the decontamination factors for the major fission products ( 90 Sr, 137 Cs etc.) are 10 4 -10 6 . Pulse shape discrimination (PSD) technique has been introduced to liquid scintillation counting, by which the counting efficiency of α-activity is >99% and the rejection of β-counts is >99.95%. This new method, combining extraction and pulse shape discrimination with liquid scintillation technique, has been successfully applied to the assay of Np, Pu and Am in high level radioactive waste. (author) 7 refs.; 7 figs.; 4 tabs

  10. An EPR and antioxidant efficiency study of the pinebark phenolic extracts pycnogenol (R) and endogenol

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Cheah, I.; Langford, S.J.

    2004-01-01

    Full text: Pycnogenol (R) is a phenolic extract of French Maritime Pine bark: the name was invented by Jack Masquelier, a noted researcher into phenolic antioxidant activity, but is now owned by the Company Horphag. Endogenol is a New Zealand phenolic extract of Pinus Radiata bark: both products are sold as dietary supplements. EPR and antioxidant efficiency measurements were made on both. The EPR signal from Endogenol was stronger than that from Pycnogenol (R), but the antioxidant efficiencies were almost the same, at slightly more than 50% that of vitamin C as measured by the technique used, already described by these same authors in: I. Cheah et al, ( 2003), AIM- digest 12,(l) 14-15. It is not only useful, but necessary to check such dietary supplements for their claimed contents and actions. Samples were kindly supplied by the manufacturers

  11. Energy Efficiency and Capacity Tradeoff in Cloud Radio Access Network of High-Speed Railways

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Shichao Li

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available To meet the increasing demand of high-data-rate services of high-speed railway (HSR passengers, cloud radio access network (C-RAN is proposed. This paper investigates the tradeoff between energy efficiency (EE performance and capacity in C-RAN of HSR. Considering that the train location can be predicted, we propose a predictable path loss based time domain power allocation method (PPTPA to improve EE performance of HSR communication system. First, we consider that the communication system of HSR only bears the passenger information services (PISs. The energy-efficient power allocation problem with delay constraint is studied. The formulated problem is nonconvex. To deal with it, an equivalent convex problem is reformulated. Based on PPTPA, we propose an iterative algorithm to improve the EE performance. Second, we consider that the PISs and the train control services (TCSs are all bore. A capacity optimization problem with joint EE and services transmission delay constraints is formulated. Based on PPTPA, we propose a hybrid power allocation scheme to improve the capacity of the system. Finally, we analyze the effect of small-scale fading on EE performance. The effectiveness of the proposed power allocation algorithm is validated by HSR channel measurement trace based emulation results and extensive simulation results.

  12. Simple, rapid and cost-effective method for high quality nucleic acids extraction from different strains of Botryococcus braunii.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Byung-Hyuk Kim

    Full Text Available This study deals with an effective nucleic acids extraction method from various strains of Botryococcus braunii which possesses an extensive extracellular matrix. A method combining freeze/thaw and bead-beating with heterogeneous diameter of silica/zirconia beads was optimized to isolate DNA and RNA from microalgae, especially from B. braunii. Eukaryotic Microalgal Nucleic Acids Extraction (EMNE method developed in this study showed at least 300 times higher DNA yield in all strains of B. braunii with high integrity and 50 times reduced working volume compared to commercially available DNA extraction kits. High quality RNA was also extracted using this method and more than two times the yield compared to existing methods. Real-time experiments confirmed the quality and quantity of the input DNA and RNA extracted using EMNE method. The method was also applied to other eukaryotic microalgae, such as diatoms, Chlamydomonas sp., Chlorella sp., and Scenedesmus sp. resulting in higher efficiencies. Cost-effectiveness analysis of DNA extraction by various methods revealed that EMNE method was superior to commercial kits and other reported methods by >15%. This method would immensely contribute to area of microalgal genomics.

  13. Efficient charge-carrier extraction from Ag₂S quantum dots prepared by the SILAR method for utilization of multiple exciton generation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Xiaoliang; Liu, Jianhua; Johansson, Erik M J

    2015-01-28

    The utilization of electron-hole pairs (EHPs) generated from multiple excitons in quantum dots (QDs) is of great interest toward efficient photovoltaic devices and other optoelectronic devices; however, extraction of charge carriers remains difficult. Herein, we extract photocharges from Ag2S QDs and investigate the dependence of the electric field on the extraction of charges from multiple exciton generation (MEG). Low toxic Ag2S QDs are directly grown on TiO2 mesoporous substrates by employing the successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction (SILAR) method. The contact between QDs is important for the initial charge separation after MEG and for the carrier transport, and the space between neighbor QDs decreases with more SILAR cycles, resulting in better charge extraction. At the optimal electric field for extraction of photocharges, the results suggest that the threshold energy (hνth) for MEG is 2.41Eg. The results reveal that Ag2S QD is a promising material for efficient extraction of charges from MEG and that QDs prepared by SILAR have an advantageous electrical contact facilitating charge separation and extraction.

  14. High-Efficiency Nitride-Based Solid-State Lighting. Final Technical Progress Report

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Paul T. Fini; Shuji Nakamura

    2005-01-01

    In this final technical progress report we summarize research accomplished during Department of Energy contract DE-FC26-01NT41203, entitled ''High-Efficiency Nitride-Based Solid-State Lighting''. Two teams, from the University of California at Santa Barbara (Principle Investigator: Dr. Shuji Nakamura) and the Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (led by Dr. N. Narendran), pursued the goals of this contract from thin film growth, characterization, and packaging/luminaire design standpoints. The UCSB team initially pursued the development of blue gallium nitride (GaN)-based vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers, as well as ultraviolet GaN-based light emitting diodes (LEDs). In Year 2, the emphasis shifted to resonant-cavity light emitting diodes, also known as micro-cavity LEDs when extremely thin device cavities are fabricated. These devices have very directional emission and higher light extraction efficiency than conventional LEDs. Via the optimization of thin-film growth and refinement of device processing, we decreased the total cavity thickness to less than 1 (micro)m, such that micro-cavity effects were clearly observed and a light extraction efficiency of over 10% was reached. We also began the development of photonic crystals for increased light extraction, in particular for so-called ''guided modes'' which would otherwise propagate laterally in the device and be re-absorbed. Finally, we pursued the growth of smooth, high-quality nonpolar a-plane and m-plane GaN films, as well as blue light emitting diodes on these novel films. Initial nonpolar LEDs showed the expected behavior of negligible peak wavelength shift with increasing drive current. M-plane LEDs in particular show promise, as unpackaged devices had unsaturated optical output power of ∼ 3 mW at 200 mA drive current. The LRC's tasks were aimed at developing the subcomponents necessary for packaging UCSB's light emitting diodes, and packaging them to produce a white light

  15. Online extraction-high performance liquid chromatography-diode array detector-quadrupole time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometry for rapid flavonoid profiling of Fructus aurantii immaturus.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tong, Runna; Peng, Mijun; Tong, Chaoying; Guo, Keke; Shi, Shuyun

    2018-03-01

    Chemical profiling of natural products by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was critical for understanding of their clinical bioactivities, and sample pretreatment steps have been considered as a bottleneck for analysis. Currently, concerted efforts have been made to develop sample pretreatment methods with high efficiency, low solvent and time consumptions. Here, a simple and efficient online extraction (OLE) strategy coupled with HPLC-diode array detector-quadrupole time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-DAD-QTOF-MS/MS) was developed for rapid chemical profiling. For OLE strategy, guard column inserted with ground sample (2 mg) instead of sample loop was connected with manual injection valve, in which components were directly extracted and transferred to HPLC-DAD-QTOF-MS/MS system only by mobile phase without any extra time, solvent, instrument and operation. By comparison with offline heat-reflux extraction for Fructus aurantii immaturus (Zhishi), OLE strategy presented higher extraction efficiency perhaps because of the high pressure and gradient elution mode. A total of eighteen flavonoids were detected according to their retention times, UV spectra, exact mass, and fragmentation ions in MS/MS spectra, and compound 9, natsudaidain-3-O-glucoside, was discovered in Zhishi for the first time. It is concluded that the developed OLE-HPLC-DAD-QTOF-MS/MS system offers new perspectives for rapid chemical profiling of natural products. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier B.V.

  16. Lightweight, Mesoporous, and Highly Absorptive All-Nanofiber Aerogel for Efficient Solar Steam Generation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jiang, Feng; Liu, He; Li, Yiju; Kuang, Yudi; Xu, Xu; Chen, Chaoji; Huang, Hao; Jia, Chao; Zhao, Xinpeng; Hitz, Emily; Zhou, Yubing; Yang, Ronggui; Cui, Lifeng; Hu, Liangbing

    2018-01-10

    The global fresh water shortage has driven enormous endeavors in seawater desalination and wastewater purification; among these, solar steam generation is effective in extracting fresh water by efficient utilization of naturally abundant solar energy. For solar steam generation, the primary focus is to design new materials that are biodegradable, sustainable, of low cost, and have high solar steam generation efficiency. Here, we designed a bilayer aerogel structure employing naturally abundant cellulose nanofibrils (CNFs) as basic building blocks to achieve sustainability and biodegradability as well as employing a carbon nanotube (CNT) layer for efficient solar utilization with over 97.5% of light absorbance from 300 to 1200 nm wavelength. The ultralow density (0.0096 g/cm 3 ) of the aerogel ensures that minimal material is required, reducing the production cost while at the same time satisfying the water transport and thermal-insulation requirements due to its highly porous structure (99.4% porosity). Owing to its rationally designed structure and thermal-regulation performance, the bilayer CNF-CNT aerogel exhibits a high solar-energy conversion efficiency of 76.3% and 1.11 kg m -2 h -1 at 1 kW m -2 (1 Sun) solar irradiation, comparable or even higher than most of the reported solar steam generation devices. Therefore, the all-nanofiber aerogel presents a new route for designing biodegradable, sustainable, and scalable solar steam generation devices with superb performance.

  17. A laboratory method to estimate the efficiency of plant extract to neutralize soil acidity

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Marcelo E. Cassiolato

    2002-06-01

    Full Text Available Water-soluble plant organic compounds have been proposed to be efficient in alleviating soil acidity. Laboratory methods were evaluated to estimate the efficiency of plant extracts to neutralize soil acidity. Plant samples were dried at 65ºC for 48 h and ground to pass 1 mm sieve. Plant extraction procedure was: transfer 3.0 g of plant sample to a becker, add 150 ml of deionized water, shake for 8 h at 175 rpm and filter. Three laboratory methods were evaluated: sigma (Ca+Mg+K of the plant extracts; electrical conductivity of the plant extracts and titration of plant extracts with NaOH solution between pH 3 to 7. These methods were compared with the effect of the plant extracts on acid soil chemistry. All laboratory methods were related with soil reaction. Increasing sigma (Ca+Mg+K, electrical conductivity and the volume of NaOH solution spent to neutralize H+ ion of the plant extracts were correlated with the effect of plant extract on increasing soil pH and exchangeable Ca and decreasing exchangeable Al. It is proposed the electrical conductivity method for estimating the efficiency of plant extract to neutralize soil acidity because it is easily adapted for routine analysis and uses simple instrumentations and materials.Tem sido proposto que os compostos orgânicos de plantas solúveis em água são eficientes na amenização da acidez do solo. Foram avaliados métodos de laboratório para estimar a eficiência dos extratos de plantas na neutralização da acidez do solo. Os materiais de plantas foram secos a 65º C por 48 horas, moídos e passados em peneira de 1mm. Utilizou-se o seguinte procedimento para obtenção do extrato de plantas: transferir 3.0 g da amostra de planta para um becker, adicionar 150 ml de água deionizada, agitar por 8h a 175 rpm e filtrar. Avaliaram-se três métodos de laboratório: sigma (Ca + Mg + K do extrato de planta, condutividade elétrica (CE do extrato de planta e titulação do extrato de planta com solu

  18. Fast and comprehensive analysis of secondary metabolites in cocoa products using ultra high-performance liquid chromatography directly after pressurized liquid extraction.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Damm, Irina; Enger, Eileen; Chrubasik-Hausmann, Sigrun; Schieber, Andreas; Zimmermann, Benno F

    2016-08-01

    Fast methods for the extraction and analysis of various secondary metabolites from cocoa products were developed and optimized regarding speed and separation efficiency. Extraction by pressurized liquid extraction is automated and the extracts are analyzed by rapid reversed-phase ultra high-performance liquid chromatography and normal-phase high-performance liquid chromatography methods. After extraction, no further sample treatment is required before chromatographic analysis. The analytes comprise monomeric and oligomeric flavanols, flavonols, methylxanthins, N-phenylpropenoyl amino acids, and phenolic acids. Polyphenols and N-phenylpropenoyl amino acids are separated in a single run of 33 min, procyanidins are analyzed by normal-phase high-performance liquid chromatography within 16 min, and methylxanthins require only 6 min total run time. A fourth method is suitable for phenolic acids, but only protocatechuic acid was found in relevant quantities. The optimized methods were validated and applied to 27 dark chocolates, one milk chocolate, two cocoa powders and two food supplements based on cocoa extract. © 2016 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

  19. Effect of root extracts of Brachiaria humidicola on fertilizer nitrogen use efficiency in rice and wheat crops

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Meena, H.M.; Sachdev, M.S.; Sachdev, Pamila

    2010-01-01

    A pot experiment was conducted in 2009-2010 to study the effect of root extracts of Brachiaria humidicola on fertilizer nitrogen use efficiency in rice and wheat crops. The experiment was conducted with rice (var. Pusa Sugandh-5) as the test crop in kharif season and in rabi season wheat (var. HD-2894) was grown as the test crop with seven treatments. Three level of nitrogen were applied as 30, 60 and 90 mg N kg -1 soil through '1 5 N labelled (NH 4 ) 2 SO 4 as source of N. Recommended dose of P (30 mg P 2 O 5 kg -1 soil) and K (30 mg K 2 O kg -1 soil) through KH 2 PO 4 and KCI were applied. Nitrogen levels and inhibitors had significant effect on rice grain yield. It was maximum 20.37 g pot -1 in case of T 4 (buffer solution extract) and low 13.10 g pot -1 in T 7 (control). Nitrogen uptake in rice straw was found more in BNI treatments as compared to plant based (neem oil coating) and standard nitrification inhibitors. Nitrogen use efficiency in rice plant was highest in case of T 1 (70 % alcohol extract) 41.90 followed by T 4 (buffer solution extract) 41.30. Among the treatments T 5 (neem oil coating) performed better in wheat yield as compared to other treatments. Nitrogen uptake and NUE were maximum in T 3 (salt solution extract) followed by T 5 (neem oil coating) in wheat crop. The maximum nitrogen use efficiency was observed at 60 mg N kg -1 soil as compared to other levels. (author)

  20. Chemical coagulants and Moringa oleifera seed extract for treating concrete wastewater

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Heber Martins de Paula

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Wastewater from concrete plants has a high pH and a high concentration of suspended solids, necessitating treatment before reuse or discharge into the environment. The objective of this study is to evaluate the efficiency of two chemical coagulants, aluminum sulfate (Al2(SO43 and iron chloride (FeCl3, and a natural coagulant, Moringa oleifera (MO, all in their soluble forms, in the treatment of wastewater from concrete plants. To this end, the efficiencies of the three coagulants, in combinations with different proportions, were tested. The quality parameters of the wastewater obtained after the treatments were compared to the limit values for non-potable water. The use of coagulants in their soluble form potentiates their effect, especially when preparing the MO extract, i.e., greater amounts of the protein responsible for the coagulation is extracted. A mixture with MO and Al2(SO43 in a 20:80 proportion showed the best results, with 97.5% of the turbidity removed at 60 min. of sedimentation, allowing the treated water to be used for washing vehicles and flushing toilets. The FeCl3 treatment produced a high concentration of chlorides, which could cause corrosion problems, and is therefore not recommended for concrete wastewater treatment.

  1. High-throughput screening and mechanism-based evaluation of estrogenic botanical extracts

    Science.gov (United States)

    Overk, Cassia R.; Yao, Ping; Chen, Shaonong; Deng, Shixing; Imai, Ayano; Main, Matthew; Schinkovitz, Andreas; Farnsworth, Norman R.; Pauli, Guido F.; Bolton, Judy L.

    2009-01-01

    Symptoms associated with menopause can greatly affect the quality of life for women. Botanical dietary supplements have been viewed by the public as safe and effective despite a lack of evidence indicating a urgent necessity to standardize these supplements chemically and biologically. Seventeen plants were evaluated for estrogenic biological activity using standard assays: competitive estrogen receptor (ER) binding assay for both alpha and beta subtypes, transient transfection of the estrogen response element luciferase plasmid into MCF-7 cells expressing either ER alpha or ER beta, and the Ishikawa alkaline phosphatase induction assay for both estrogenic and antiestrogenic activities. Based on the combination of data pooled from these assays, the following was determined: a) a high rate of false positive activity for the competitive binding assays, b) some extracts had estrogenic activity despite a lack of ability to bind the ER, c) one extract exhibited selective estrogen receptor modulator (SERM) activity, and d) several extracts show additive/synergistic activity. Taken together, these data indicate a need to reprioritize the order in which the bioassays are performed for maximal efficiency of programs involving bioassay-guided fractionation. In addition, possible explanations for the conflicts in the literature over the estrogenicity of Cimicifuga racemosa (black cohosh) are suggested. PMID:18473738

  2. An Efficient Algorithm for Partitioning and Authenticating Problem-Solutions of eLeaming Contents

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dewan, Jahangir; Chowdhury, Morshed; Batten, Lynn

    2013-01-01

    Content authenticity and correctness is one of the important challenges in eLearning as there can be many solutions to one specific problem in cyber space. Therefore, the authors feel it is necessary to map problems to solutions using graph partition and weighted bipartite matching. This article proposes an efficient algorithm to partition…

  3. [Characteristics of phosphorus uptake and use efficiency of rice with high yield and high phosphorus use efficiency].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Li; Zhang, Xi-Zhou; Li, Tinx-Xuan; Yu, Hai-Ying; Ji, Lin; Chen, Guang-Deng

    2014-07-01

    A total of twenty seven middle maturing rice varieties as parent materials were divided into four types based on P use efficiency for grain yield in 2011 by field experiment with normal phosphorus (P) application. The rice variety with high yield and high P efficiency was identified by pot experiment with normal and low P applications, and the contribution rates of various P efficiencies to yield were investigated in 2012. There were significant genotype differences in yield and P efficiency of the test materials. GRLu17/AiTTP//Lu17_2 (QR20) was identified as a variety with high yield and high P efficiency, and its yields at the low and normal rates of P application were 1.96 and 1.92 times of that of Yuxiang B, respectively. The contribution rate of P accumulation to yield was greater than that of P grain production efficiency and P harvest index across field and pot experiments. The contribution rates of P accumulation and P grain production efficiency to yield were not significantly different under the normal P condition, whereas obvious differences were observed under the low P condition (66.5% and 26.6%). The minimal contribution to yield was P harvest index (11.8%). Under the normal P condition, the contribution rates of P accumulation to yield and P harvest index were the highest at the jointing-heading stage, which were 93.4% and 85.7%, respectively. In addition, the contribution rate of P accumulation to grain production efficiency was 41.8%. Under the low P condition, the maximal contribution rates of P accumulation to yield and grain production efficiency were observed at the tillering-jointing stage, which were 56.9% and 20.1% respectively. Furthermore, the contribution rate of P accumulation to P harvest index was 16.0%. The yield, P accumulation, and P harvest index of QR20 significantly increased under the normal P condition by 20.6%, 18.1% and 18.2% respectively compared with that in the low P condition. The rank of the contribution rates of P

  4. High-Temperature High-Efficiency Solar Thermoelectric Generators

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Baranowski, LL; Warren, EL; Toberer, ES

    2014-03-01

    Inspired by recent high-efficiency thermoelectric modules, we consider thermoelectrics for terrestrial applications in concentrated solar thermoelectric generators (STEGs). The STEG is modeled as two subsystems: a TEG, and a solar absorber that efficiently captures the concentrated sunlight and limits radiative losses from the system. The TEG subsystem is modeled using thermoelectric compatibility theory; this model does not constrain the material properties to be constant with temperature. Considering a three-stage TEG based on current record modules, this model suggests that 18% efficiency could be experimentally expected with a temperature gradient of 1000A degrees C to 100A degrees C. Achieving 15% overall STEG efficiency thus requires an absorber efficiency above 85%, and we consider two methods to achieve this: solar-selective absorbers and thermally insulating cavities. When the TEG and absorber subsystem models are combined, we expect that the STEG modeled here could achieve 15% efficiency with optical concentration between 250 and 300 suns.

  5. DNA extraction from sea anemone (Cnidaria: Actiniaria tissues for molecular analyses

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Pinto S.M.

    2000-01-01

    Full Text Available A specific DNA extraction method for sea anemones is described in which extraction of total DNA from eight species of sea anemones and one species of corallimorpharian was achieved by changing the standard extraction protocols. DNA extraction from sea anemone tissue is made more difficult both by the tissue consistency and the presence of symbiotic zooxanthellae. The technique described here is an efficient way to avoid problems of DNA contamination and obtain large amounts of purified and integral DNA which can be used in different kinds of molecular analyses.

  6. Highly efficient inverted polymer solar cells based on a cross-linkable water-/alcohol-soluble conjugated polymer interlayer.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Kai; Zhong, Chengmei; Liu, Shengjian; Mu, Cheng; Li, Zhengke; Yan, He; Huang, Fei; Cao, Yong

    2014-07-09

    A cross-linkable water/alcohol soluble conjugated polymer (WSCP) material poly[9,9-bis(6'-(N,N-diethylamino)propyl)-fluorene-alt-9,9-bis(3-ethyl(oxetane-3-ethyloxy)-hexyl) fluorene] (PFN-OX) was designed. The cross-linkable nature of PFN-OX is good for fabricating inverted polymer solar cells (PSCs) with well-defined interface and investigating the detailed working mechanism of high-efficiency inverted PSCs based on poly[4,8-bis(2-ethylhexyloxyl)benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b']dithio-phene-2,6-diyl-alt-ethylhexyl-3-fluorothithieno[3,4-b]thiophene-2-carboxylate-4,6-diyl] (PTB7) and (6,6)-phenyl-C71-butyric acid methyl ester (PC71BM) blend active layer. The detailed working mechanism of WSCP materials in high-efficiency PSCs were studied and can be summarized into the following three effects: a) PFN-OX tunes cathode work function to enhance open-circuit voltage (Voc); b) PFN-OX dopes PC71BM at interface to facilitate electron extraction; and c) PFN-OX extracts electrons and blocks holes to enhance fill factor (FF). On the basis of this understanding, the hole-blocking function of the PFN-OX interlayer was further improved with addition of a ZnO layer between ITO and PFN-OX, which led to inverted PSCs with a power conversion efficiency of 9.28% and fill factor high up to 74.4%.

  7. Uranium refining by solvent extraction

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kraikaew, J.

    1996-01-01

    The yellow cake refining was studied in both laboratory and semi-pilot scales. The process units mainly consist of dissolution and filtration, solvent extraction, and precipitation and filtration. Effect of flow ratio (organic flow rate/ aqueous flow rate) on working efficiencies of solvent extraction process was studied. Detailed studies were carried out on extraction, scrubbing and stripping processes. Purity of yellow cake product obtained is high as 90.32% U 3 O 8

  8. Extract of mangosteen increases high density lipoprotein levels in rats fed high lipid

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Dwi Laksono Adiputro

    2013-04-01

    Full Text Available Background In cardiovascular medicine, Garcinia mangostana has been used as an antioxidant to inhibit oxidation of low density lipoproteins and as an antiobesity agent. The effect of Garcinia mangostana on hyperlipidemia is unknown. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of an ethanolic extract of Garcinia mangostana pericarp on lipid profile in rats fed a high lipid diet. Methods A total of 40 rats were divided into five groups control, high lipid diet, and high lipid diet + ethanolic extract of Garcinia mangostana pericarp at dosages of 200, 400, and 800 mg/kg body weight. The control group received a standard diet for 60 days. The high lipid diet group received standard diet plus egg yolk, goat fat, cholic acid, and pig fat for 60 days with or without ethanolic extract of Garcinia mangostana pericarp by the oral route. After 60 days, rats were anesthesized with ether for collection of blood by cardiac puncture. Analysis of blood lipid profile comprised colorimetric determination of cholesterol, triglyceride, low density lipoprotein (LDL, and high density lipoprotein (HDL. Results From the results of one-way ANOVA it was concluded that there were significant between-group differences in cholesterol, trygliceride, LDL, and HDL levels (p=0.000. Ethanolic extract of Garcinia mangostana pericarp significantly decreased cholesterol, trygliceride, and LDL levels, starting at 400 mg/kg body weight (p=0.000. Ethanolic extract of Garcinia mangostana pericarp significantly increased HDL level starting at 200 mg/kg body weight (p=0.000. Conclusion Ethanolic extract of Garcinia mangostana pericarp has a beneficial effect on lipid profile in rats on a high lipid diet.

  9. Extract of mangosteen increases high density lipoprotein levels in rats fed high lipid

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Dwi Laksono Adiputro

    2015-12-01

    Full Text Available BACKGROUND In cardiovascular medicine, Garcinia mangostana has been used as an antioxidant to inhibit oxidation of low density lipoproteins and as an antiobesity agent. The effect of Garcinia mangostana on hyperlipidemia is unknown. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of an ethanolic extract of Garcinia mangostana pericarp on lipid profile in rats fed a high lipid diet. METHODS A total of 40 rats were divided into five groups control, high lipid diet, and high lipid diet + ethanolic extract of Garcinia mangostana pericarp at dosages of 200, 400, and 800 mg/kg body weight. The control group received a standard diet for 60 days. The high lipid diet group received standard diet plus egg yolk, goat fat, cholic acid, and pig fat for 60 days with or without ethanolic extract of Garcinia mangostana pericarp by the oral route. After 60 days, rats were anesthesized with ether for collection of blood by cardiac puncture. Analysis of blood lipid profile comprised colorimetric determination of cholesterol, triglyceride, low density lipoprotein (LDL, and high density lipoprotein (HDL. RESULTS From the results of one-way ANOVA it was concluded that there were significant between-group differences in cholesterol, trygliceride, LDL, and HDL levels (p=0.000. Ethanolic extract of Garcinia mangostana pericarp significantly decreased cholesterol, trygliceride, and LDL levels, starting at 400 mg/kg body weight (p=0.000. Ethanolic extract of Garcinia mangostana pericarp significantly increased HDL level starting at 200 mg/kg body weight (p=0.000. CONCLUSION Ethanolic extract of Garcinia mangostana pericarp has a beneficial effect on lipid profile in rats on a high lipid diet.

  10. A High-Speed Vision-Based Sensor for Dynamic Vibration Analysis Using Fast Motion Extraction Algorithms

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Dashan Zhang

    2016-04-01

    Full Text Available The development of image sensor and optics enables the application of vision-based techniques to the non-contact dynamic vibration analysis of large-scale structures. As an emerging technology, a vision-based approach allows for remote measuring and does not bring any additional mass to the measuring object compared with traditional contact measurements. In this study, a high-speed vision-based sensor system is developed to extract structure vibration signals in real time. A fast motion extraction algorithm is required for this system because the maximum sampling frequency of the charge-coupled device (CCD sensor can reach up to 1000 Hz. Two efficient subpixel level motion extraction algorithms, namely the modified Taylor approximation refinement algorithm and the localization refinement algorithm, are integrated into the proposed vision sensor. Quantitative analysis shows that both of the two modified algorithms are at least five times faster than conventional upsampled cross-correlation approaches and achieve satisfactory error performance. The practicability of the developed sensor is evaluated by an experiment in a laboratory environment and a field test. Experimental results indicate that the developed high-speed vision-based sensor system can extract accurate dynamic structure vibration signals by tracking either artificial targets or natural features.

  11. High-Efficiency Food Production in a Renewable Energy Based Micro-Grid

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bubenheim, David L.

    2017-01-01

    Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) systems can be used to produce high-quality, desirable food year round, and the fresh produce can positively contribute to the health and well being of residents in communities with difficult supply logistics. While CEA has many positive outcomes for a remote community, the associated high electric demands have prohibited widespread implementation in what is typically already a fully subscribed power generation and distribution system. Recent advances in CEA technologies as well as renewable power generation, storage, and micro-grid management are increasing system efficiency and expanding the possibilities for enhancing community supporting infrastructure without increasing demands for outside supplied fuels. We will present examples of how new lighting, nutrient delivery, and energy management and control systems can enable significant increases in food production efficiency while maintaining high yields in CEA.Examples from Alaskan communities where initial incorporation of renewable power generation, energy storage and grid management techniques have already reduced diesel fuel consumption for electric generation by more than 40 and expanded grid capacity will be presented. We will discuss how renewable power generation, efficient grid management to extract maximum community service per kW, and novel energy storage approaches can expand the food production, water supply, waste treatment, sanitation and other community support services without traditional increases of consumable fuels supplied from outside the community. These capabilities offer communities with a range of choices to enhance their communities. The examples represent a synergy of technology advancement efforts to develop sustainable community support systems for future space-based human habitats and practical implementation of infrastructure components to increase efficiency and enhance health and well-being in remote communities today and tomorrow.

  12. Highly efficient solutions for smart and bulk power transmission of 'green energy'

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Breuer, Wilfried; Retzmann, Dietmar; Uecker, Karl

    2010-09-15

    Environmental constraints, loss minimization and CO2 reduction will play an increasingly more important role in future. Security and sustainability of power supply as well as economic efficiency needs application of advanced technologies. Innovative solutions with HVDC (High Voltage Direct Current) and FACTS (Flexible AC Transmission Systems) have the potential to cope with these challenges. They provide the features which are necessary to avoid technical problems in power systems, they increase the transmission capacity and system stability very efficiently and help prevent cascading outages. Furthermore, they are essential for Grid Access of Renewable Energy Sources such as Hydro, Wind and Solar-Energy.

  13. Series-Tuned High Efficiency RF-Power Amplifiers

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Vidkjær, Jens

    2008-01-01

    An approach to high efficiency RF-power amplifier design is presented. It addresses simultaneously efficiency optimization and peak voltage limitations when transistors are pushed towards their power limits.......An approach to high efficiency RF-power amplifier design is presented. It addresses simultaneously efficiency optimization and peak voltage limitations when transistors are pushed towards their power limits....

  14. High-efficiency green phosphorescent organic light-emitting diodes with double-emission layer and thick N-doped electron transport layer

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Nobuki, Shunichiro, E-mail: shunichiro.nobuki.nb@hitachi.com [Hitachi Research Laboratory, Hitachi Ltd., 7-1-1 Omika-cho, Hitachi-city, Ibaraki 319-1292 (Japan); Wakana, Hironori; Ishihara, Shingo [Hitachi Research Laboratory, Hitachi Ltd., 7-1-1 Omika-cho, Hitachi-city, Ibaraki 319-1292 (Japan); Mikami, Akiyoshi [Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Kanazawa Institute of Technology, 7-1 Ohgigaoka, Nonoichimachi, Ishikawa 921-8501 (Japan)

    2014-03-03

    We have developed green phosphorescent organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) with high external quantum efficiency of 59.7% and power efficiency of 243 lm/W at 2.73 V at 0.053 mA/cm{sup 2}. A double emission layer and a thick n-doped electron transport layer were adopted to improve the exciton recombination factor. A high refractive index hemispherical lens was attached to a high refractive index substrate for extracting light trapped inside the substrate and the multiple-layers of OLEDs to air. Additionally, we analyzed an energy loss mechanism to clarify room for the improvement of our OLEDs including the charge balance factor. - Highlights: • We developed high efficiency green phosphorescent organic light-emitting diode (OLED). • Our OLED had external quantum efficiency of 59.7% and power efficiency of 243 lm/W. • A double emission layer and thick n-doped electron transport layer were adopted. • High refractive index media (hemispherical lens and substrate) were also used. • We analyzed an energy loss mechanism to clarify the charge balance factor of our OLED.

  15. Improved motion contrast and processing efficiency in OCT angiography using complex-correlation algorithm

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Guo, Li; Li, Pei; Pan, Cong; Cheng, Yuxuan; Ding, Zhihua; Li, Peng; Liao, Rujia; Hu, Weiwei; Chen, Zhong

    2016-01-01

    The complex-based OCT angiography (Angio-OCT) offers high motion contrast by combining both the intensity and phase information. However, due to involuntary bulk tissue motions, complex-valued OCT raw data are processed sequentially with different algorithms for correcting bulk image shifts (BISs), compensating global phase fluctuations (GPFs) and extracting flow signals. Such a complicated procedure results in massive computational load. To mitigate such a problem, in this work, we present an inter-frame complex-correlation (CC) algorithm. The CC algorithm is suitable for parallel processing of both flow signal extraction and BIS correction, and it does not need GPF compensation. This method provides high processing efficiency and shows superiority in motion contrast. The feasibility and performance of the proposed CC algorithm is demonstrated using both flow phantom and live animal experiments. (paper)

  16. Air extraction in gas turbines burning coal-derived gas

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Yang, Tah-teh; Agrawal, A.K.; Kapat, J.S.

    1993-11-01

    In the first phase of this contracted research, a comprehensive investigation was performed. Principally, the effort was directed to identify the technical barriers which might exist in integrating the air-blown coal gasification process with a hot gas cleanup scheme and the state-of-the-art, US made, heavy-frame gas turbine. The guiding rule of the integration is to keep the compressor and the expander unchanged if possible. Because of the low-heat content of coal gas and of the need to accommodate air extraction, the combustor and perhaps, the flow region between the compressor exit and the expander inlet might need to be modified. In selecting a compressed air extraction scheme, one must consider how the scheme affects the air supply to the hot section of the turbine and the total pressure loss in the flow region. Air extraction must preserve effective cooling of the hot components, such as the transition pieces. It must also ensure proper air/fuel mixing in the combustor, hence the combustor exit pattern factor. The overall thermal efficiency of the power plant can be increased by minimizing the total pressure loss in the diffusers associated with the air extraction. Therefore, a study of airflow in the pre- and dump-diffusers with and without air extraction would provide information crucial to attaining high-thermal efficiency and to preventing hot spots. The research group at Clemson University suggested using a Griffith diffuser for the prediffuser and extracting air from the diffuser inlet. The present research establishes that the analytically identified problems in the impingement cooling flow are factual. This phase of the contracted research substantiates experimentally the advantage of using the Griffith diffuser with air extraction at the diffuser inlet.

  17. Efficient solution of three-body quantum collision problems: Application to the Temkin-Poet model

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Jones, S.; Stelbovics, Andris T.

    2002-01-01

    We have developed a variable-spacing finite-difference algorithm that rapidly propagates the general solution of Schroedinger's equation to large distances (whereupon it can be matched to asymptotic solutions, including the ionization channel, to extract the desired scattering quantities). The present algorithm, when compared to Poet's corresponding fixed-spacing algorithm [R. Poet, J. Phys. B 13, 2995 (1980); S. Jones and A. T. Stelbovics, Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 1878 (2000)], reduces storage by 98% and computation time by 99.98%. The method is applied to the Temkin-Poet electron-hydrogen model collision problem. Complete results (elastic, inelastic, and ionization) are obtained for low (17.6 eV), intermediate (27.2, 40.8, and 54.4 eV), and high (150 eV) impact energies

  18. Extraction of drainage networks from large terrain datasets using high throughput computing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gong, Jianya; Xie, Jibo

    2009-02-01

    Advanced digital photogrammetry and remote sensing technology produces large terrain datasets (LTD). How to process and use these LTD has become a big challenge for GIS users. Extracting drainage networks, which are basic for hydrological applications, from LTD is one of the typical applications of digital terrain analysis (DTA) in geographical information applications. Existing serial drainage algorithms cannot deal with large data volumes in a timely fashion, and few GIS platforms can process LTD beyond the GB size. High throughput computing (HTC), a distributed parallel computing mode, is proposed to improve the efficiency of drainage networks extraction from LTD. Drainage network extraction using HTC involves two key issues: (1) how to decompose the large DEM datasets into independent computing units and (2) how to merge the separate outputs into a final result. A new decomposition method is presented in which the large datasets are partitioned into independent computing units using natural watershed boundaries instead of using regular 1-dimensional (strip-wise) and 2-dimensional (block-wise) decomposition. Because the distribution of drainage networks is strongly related to watershed boundaries, the new decomposition method is more effective and natural. The method to extract natural watershed boundaries was improved by using multi-scale DEMs instead of single-scale DEMs. A HTC environment is employed to test the proposed methods with real datasets.

  19. High efficiency, long life terrestrial solar panel

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chao, T.; Khemthong, S.; Ling, R.; Olah, S.

    1977-01-01

    The design of a high efficiency, long life terrestrial module was completed. It utilized 256 rectangular, high efficiency solar cells to achieve high packing density and electrical output. Tooling for the fabrication of solar cells was in house and evaluation of the cell performance was begun. Based on the power output analysis, the goal of a 13% efficiency module was achievable.

  20. Advanced Extraction Methods for Actinide/Lanthanide Separations

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Scott, M.J.

    2005-01-01

    high level liquid wastes and a general actinide clean-up procedure. The selectivity of the standard extractant for tetravalent actinides, (N,N-diisobutylcarbamoylmethyl) octylphenylphosphineoxide (CMPO), was markedly improved by the attachment of three CMPO-like functions onto a triphenoxymethane platform, and a ligand that is both highly selective and effective for An(IV) ions was isolated. A 10 fold excess of ligand will remove virtually all of the 4+ actinides from the acidic layer without extracting appreciable quantities of An(III) and Ln(III) unlike simple CMPO ligands. Inspired by the success of the DIAMEX industrial process for extractions, three new tripodal chelates bearing three diglycolamide and thiodiglycolamide units precisely arranged on a triphenoxymethane platform have been synthesized for an highly efficient extraction of trivalent f-element cations from nitric acid media. A single equivalent of ligand will remove 80% of the Ln(III) ion from the acidic layer since the ligand is perfectly suited to accommodate the tricapped trigonal prismatic geometry preferred by the metal center. The ligand is perhaps the most efficient binder available for the heavier lanthanides and due to this unique attribute, the extraction event can be easily followed by 1H NMR spectroscopy confirming the formation of a TPP complex. The most lipophilic di-n-butyl tris-diglycolamide was found to be a significantly weaker extractant in comparison to the di-isopropyl analogs. The tris-thiodiglycolamide derivative proved to be an ineffective chelate for f-elements and demonstrated the importance of the etheric oxygens in the metal binding. The results presented herein clearly demonstrate a cooperative action of these three ligating groups within a single molecule, confirmed by composition and structure of the extracted complexes, and since actinides prefer to have high coordination numbers, the ligands should be particularly adept at binding with three arms. The use of such an

  1. Advanced Extraction Methods for Actinide/Lanthanide Separations

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Scott, M.J.

    2005-12-01

    high level liquid wastes and a general actinide clean-up procedure. The selectivity of the standard extractant for tetravalent actinides, (N,N-diisobutylcarbamoylmethyl) octylphenylphosphineoxide (CMPO), was markedly improved by the attachment of three CMPO-like functions onto a triphenoxymethane platform, and a ligand that is both highly selective and effective for An(IV) ions was isolated. A 10 fold excess of ligand will remove virtually all of the 4+ actinides from the acidic layer without extracting appreciable quantities of An(III) and Ln(III) unlike simple CMPO ligands. Inspired by the success of the DIAMEX industrial process for extractions, three new tripodal chelates bearing three diglycolamide and thiodiglycolamide units precisely arranged on a triphenoxymethane platform have been synthesized for an highly efficient extraction of trivalent f-element cations from nitric acid media. A single equivalent of ligand will remove 80% of the Ln(III) ion from the acidic layer since the ligand is perfectly suited to accommodate the tricapped trigonal prismatic geometry preferred by the metal center. The ligand is perhaps the most efficient binder available for the heavier lanthanides and due to this unique attribute, the extraction event can be easily followed by 1H NMR spectroscopy confirming the formation of a TPP complex. The most lipophilic di-n-butyl tris-diglycolamide was found to be a significantly weaker extractant in comparison to the di-isopropyl analogs. The tris-thiodiglycolamide derivative proved to be an ineffective chelate for f-elements and demonstrated the importance of the etheric oxygens in the metal binding. The results presented herein clearly demonstrate a cooperative action of these three ligating groups within a single molecule, confirmed by composition and structure of the extracted complexes, and since actinides prefer to have high coordination numbers, the ligands should be particularly adept at binding with three arms. The use of such an

  2. Application of micro-solid-phase extraction for the on-site extraction of heterocyclic aromatic amines in seawater.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Basheer, Chanbasha

    2018-04-01

    An efficient on-site extraction technique to determine carcinogenic heterocyclic aromatic amines in seawater has been reported. A micro-solid-phase extraction device placed inside a portable battery-operated pump was used for the on-site extraction of seawater samples. Before on-site applications, parameters that influence the extraction efficiency (extraction time, type of sorbent materials, suitable desorption solvent, desorption time, and sample volume) were investigated and optimized in the laboratory. The developed method was then used for the on-site sampling of heterocyclic aromatic amines determination in seawater samples close to distillation plant. Once the on-site extraction completed, the small extraction device with the analytes was brought back to the laboratory for analysis using high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection. Based on the optimized conditions, the calibration curves were linear over the concentration range of 0.05-20 μg/L with correlation coefficients up to 0.996. The limits of detection were 0.004-0.026 μg/L, and the reproducibility values were between 1.3 and 7.5%. To evaluate the extraction efficiency, a comparison was made with conventional solid-phase extraction and it was applied to various fortified real seawater samples. The average relative recoveries obtained from the spiked seawater samples varied in the range 79.9-95.2%. © 2017 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

  3. Salting-out homogenous extraction followed by ionic liquid/ionic liquid liquid-liquid micro-extraction for determination of sulfonamides in blood by high performance liquid chromatography.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Zhongling; Yu, Wei; Zhang, Hanqi; Gu, Fanbin; Jin, Xiangqun

    2016-12-01

    Salting-out homogenous extraction followed by ionic liquid/ionic liquid dispersive liquid-liquid micro-extraction system was developed and applied to the extraction of sulfonamides in blood. High-performance liquid chromatography was applied to the determination of the analytes. The blood sample was centrifuged to obtain the serum. After the proteins in the serum were removed in the presence of acetonitrile, ionic liquid 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate, dipotassium hydrogen phosphate, ionic liquid 1-Hexyl-3-methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate were added into the resulting solution. After the resulting mixture was ultrasonically shaken and centrifuged, the precipitate was separated. The acetonitrile was added in the precipitate and the analytes were extracted into the acetonitrile phase. The parameters affecting the extraction efficiency, such as volume of ionic liquid, amount of dipotassium hydrogen phosphate, volume of dispersant, extraction time and temperature were investigated. The limits of detection of sulfamethizole (STZ), sulfachlorpyridazine (SCP), sulfamethoxazole (SMX) and Sulfisoxazole (SSZ) were 4.78, 3.99, 5.21 and 3.77μgL -1 , respectively. When the present method was applied to the analysis of real blood samples, the recoveries of analytes ranged from 90.0% to 113.0% and relative standard deviations were lower than 7.2%. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  4. Seawater-cultured Botryococcus braunii for efficient hydrocarbon extraction.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kenichi Furuhashi

    Full Text Available As a potential source of biofuel, the green colonial microalga Botryococcus braunii produces large amounts of hydrocarbons that are accumulated in the extracellular matrix. Generally, pretreatment such as drying or heating of wet algae is needed for sufficient recoveries of hydrocarbons from B. braunii using organic solvents. In this study, the Showa strain of B. braunii was cultured in media derived from the modified Chu13 medium by supplying artificial seawater, natural seawater, or NaCl. After a certain period of culture in the media with an osmotic pressure corresponding to 1/4-seawater, hydrocarbon recovery rates exceeding 90% were obtained by simply mixing intact wet algae with n-hexane without any pretreatments and the results using the present culture conditions indicate the potential for hydrocarbon milking.Seawater was used for efficient hydrocarbon extraction from Botryococcus braunii. The alga was cultured in media prepared with seawater or NaCl. Hydrocarbon recovery rate exceeding 90% was obtained without any pretreatment.

  5. Optimisation of pressurised liquid extraction (PLE) for rapid and efficient extraction of superficial and total mineral oil contamination from dry foods.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Moret, Sabrina; Scolaro, Marianna; Barp, Laura; Purcaro, Giorgia; Sander, Maren; Conte, Lanfranco S

    2014-08-15

    Pressurised liquid extraction (PLE) represents a powerful technique which can be conveniently used for rapid extraction of mineral oil saturated (MOSH) and aromatic hydrocarbons (MOAH) from dry foods with a low fat content, such as semolina pasta, rice, and other cereals. Two different PLE methods, one for rapid determination of superficial contamination mainly from the packaging, the other for efficient extraction of total contamination from different sources, have been developed and optimised. The two methods presented good performance characteristics in terms of repeatability (relative standard deviation lower than 5%) and recoveries (higher than 95%). To show their potentiality, the two methods have been applied in combination on semolina pasta and rice packaged in direct contact with recycled cardboard. In the case of semolina pasta it was possible to discriminate between superficial contamination coming from the packaging, and pre-existing contamination (firmly enclosed into the matrix). Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  6. A nanoscale study of charge extraction in organic solar cells: the impact of interfacial molecular configurations.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tang, Fu-Ching; Wu, Fu-Chiao; Yen, Chia-Te; Chang, Jay; Chou, Wei-Yang; Gilbert Chang, Shih-Hui; Cheng, Horng-Long

    2015-01-07

    In the optimization of organic solar cells (OSCs), a key problem lies in the maximization of charge carriers from the active layer to the electrodes. Hence, this study focused on the interfacial molecular configurations in efficient OSC charge extraction by theoretical investigations and experiments, including small molecule-based bilayer-heterojunction (sm-BLHJ) and polymer-based bulk-heterojunction (p-BHJ) OSCs. We first examined a well-defined sm-BLHJ model system of OSC composed of p-type pentacene, an n-type perylene derivative, and a nanogroove-structured poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (NS-PEDOT) hole extraction layer. The OSC with NS-PEDOT shows a 230% increment in the short circuit current density compared with that of the conventional planar PEDOT layer. Our theoretical calculations indicated that small variations in the microscopic intermolecular interaction among these interfacial configurations could induce significant differences in charge extraction efficiency. Experimentally, different interfacial configurations were generated between the photo-active layer and the nanostructured charge extraction layer with periodic nanogroove structures. In addition to pentacene, poly(3-hexylthiophene), the most commonly used electron-donor material system in p-BHJ OSCs was also explored in terms of its possible use as a photo-active layer. Local conductive atomic force microscopy was used to measure the nanoscale charge extraction efficiency at different locations within the nanogroove, thus highlighting the importance of interfacial molecular configurations in efficient charge extraction. This study enriches understanding regarding the optimization of the photovoltaic properties of several types of OSCs by conducting appropriate interfacial engineering based on organic/polymer molecular orientations. The ultimate power conversion efficiency beyond at least 15% is highly expected when the best state-of-the-art p-BHJ OSCs are combined with present arguments.

  7. Parallel artificial liquid membrane extraction as an efficient tool for removal of phospholipids from human plasma.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ask, Kristine Skoglund; Bardakci, Turgay; Parmer, Marthe Petrine; Halvorsen, Trine Grønhaug; Øiestad, Elisabeth Leere; Pedersen-Bjergaard, Stig; Gjelstad, Astrid

    2016-09-10

    Generic Parallel Artificial Liquid Membrane Extraction (PALME) methods for non-polar basic and non-polar acidic drugs from human plasma were investigated with respect to phospholipid removal. In both cases, extractions in 96-well format were performed from plasma (125μL), through 4μL organic solvent used as supported liquid membranes (SLMs), and into 50μL aqueous acceptor solutions. The acceptor solutions were subsequently analysed by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) using in-source fragmentation and monitoring the m/z 184→184 transition for investigation of phosphatidylcholines (PC), sphingomyelins (SM), and lysophosphatidylcholines (Lyso-PC). In both generic methods, no phospholipids were detected in the acceptor solutions. Thus, PALME appeared to be highly efficient for phospholipid removal. To further support this, qualitative (post-column infusion) and quantitative matrix effects were investigated with fluoxetine, fluvoxamine, and quetiapine as model analytes. No signs of matrix effects were observed. Finally, PALME was evaluated for the aforementioned drug substances, and data were in accordance with European Medicines Agency (EMA) guidelines. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  8. State Support for Promotion of Electrical Energy Produced in High Efficiency Cogeneration in Romania

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mushatescu V.

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available Romania accumulated a useful experience in supporting high efficient cogeneration through a bonus type scheme. Spreading this experience to other countries that can choose a similar support scheme could lead to important savings and better results in developing this efficient tool. This state aid is operational, targeted to new investments stimulation for cogeneration technologies and replacement or existing plants rehabilitation. Present paper focuses on the results of support scheme after five years of its application: increase of number of producers who benefit of this aid, raising of general efficiency of high efficient cogeneration, important savings of primary energy and CO2 emissions avoided. On the other hand, use of this scheme showed a number of problems (to which this paper proposes adequate solutions on institutional/administrative, investition, technical, economical-financial and social frameworks that influences beneficiaries and/or financiers of state aid.

  9. High thermal efficiency x-ray energy conversion scheme for advanced fusion reactors

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Quimby, D.C.; Taussig, R.T.; Hertzberg, A.

    1977-01-01

    This paper reports on a new radiation energy conversion scheme which appears to be capable of producing electricity from the high quality x-ray energy with efficiencies of 60 to 70 percent. This new reactor concept incorporates a novel x-ray radiation boiler and a new thermal conversion device known as an energy exchanger. The low-Z first walls of the radiation boiler are semi-transparent to x-rays, and are kept cool by incoming working fluid, which is subsequently heated to temperatures of 2000 to 3000 0 K in the interior of the boiler by volumetric x-ray absorption. The radiation boiler may be a compact part of the reactor shell since x-rays are readily absorbed in high-Z materials. The energy exchanger transfers the high-temperature working fluid energy to a lower temperature gas which drives a conventional turbine. The overall efficiency of the cycle is characterized by the high temperature of the working fluid. The high thermal efficiencies which appear achievable with this cycle would make an otherwise marginal advanced fusion reactor into an attractive net power producer. The operating principles, initial conceptual design, and engineering problems of the radiation boiler and thermal cycle are presented

  10. Application of enzymes for efficient extraction, modification, and development of functional properties of lime pectin

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Dominiak, Malgorzata Maria; Marie Søndergaard, Karen; Wichmann, Jesper

    2014-01-01

    pectin. The most efficient enzyme preparation was Laminex C2K derived from Penicillium funiculosum which, during 4 h treatment at pH 3.5, 50 °C, released pectin with similar yield (23% w/w), molecular weight (69 kDa), and functional properties e.g. gelling, stabilization of acidified milk drinks...... and viscosity as the classically acid-extracted pectins (8 h treatment at 70 °C, pH ... at higher temperatures. The Laminex CK2 extracted pectin polymers were not sensitive to the presence of Ca2+ ions, they formed a gel at low pH in the presence of sugar and were able to stabilize acidified milk drinks. Further modification by enzymatic de-esterification of the pectin extracted with Laminex C...

  11. Optimisation of pressurized liquid extraction using a multivariate chemometric approach for the determination of anticancer drugs in sludge by ultra high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry

    OpenAIRE

    Seira , Jordan; Claparols , Catherine; Joannis-Cassan , Claire; Albasi , Claire; Montréjaud-Vignoles , Mireille; Sablayrolles , Caroline

    2013-01-01

    International audience; The present paper describes an analytical method for the determination of 2 widely administered anticancer drugs, ifosfamide and cyclophosphamide, contained in sewage sludge. The method relies on the extraction from the solid matrix by pressurized liquid extraction, sample purification by solid-phase extraction and analysis by ultra high performance liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry. The different parameters affecting the extraction efficiency...

  12. Optimized ultra-high-pressure-assisted extraction of procyanidins from lychee pericarp improves the antioxidant activity of extracts.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Ruifen; Su, Dongxiao; Hou, Fangli; Liu, Lei; Huang, Fei; Dong, Lihong; Deng, Yuanyuan; Zhang, Yan; Wei, Zhencheng; Zhang, Mingwei

    2017-08-01

    To establish optimal ultra-high-pressure (UHP)-assisted extraction conditions for procyanidins from lychee pericarp, a response surface analysis method with four factors and three levels was adopted. The optimum conditions were as follows: 295 MPa pressure, 13 min pressure holding time, 16.0 mL/g liquid-to-solid ratio, and 70% ethanol concentration. Compared with conventional ethanol extraction and ultrasonic-assisted extraction methods, the yields of the total procyanidins, flavonoids, and phenolics extracted using the UHP process were significantly increased; consequently, the oxygen radical absorbance capacity and cellular antioxidant activity of UHP-assisted lychee pericarp extracts were substantially enhanced. LC-MS/MS and high-performance liquid chromatography quantification results for individual phenolic compounds revealed that the yield of procyanidin compounds, including epicatechin, procyanidin A2, and procyanidin B2, from lychee pericarp could be significantly improved by the UHP-assisted extraction process. This UHP-assisted extraction process is thus a practical method for the extraction of procyanidins from lychee pericarp.

  13. Design of guanidinium ionic liquid based microwave-assisted extraction for the efficient extraction of Praeruptorin A from Radix peucedani.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ding, Xueqin; Li, Li; Wang, Yuzhi; Chen, Jing; Huang, Yanhua; Xu, Kaijia

    2014-12-01

    A series of novel tetramethylguanidinium ionic liquids and hexaalkylguanidinium ionic liquids have been synthesized based on 1,1,3,3-tetramethylguanidine. The structures of the ionic liquids were confirmed by (1)H NMR spectroscopy and mass spectrometry. A green guanidinium ionic liquid based microwave-assisted extraction method has been developed with these guanidinium ionic liquids for the effective extraction of Praeruptorin A from Radix peucedani. After extraction, reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography with UV detection was employed for the analysis of Praeruptorin A. Several significant operating parameters were systematically optimized by single-factor and L9 (3(4)) orthogonal array experiments. The amount of Praeruptorin A extracted by [1,1,3,3-tetramethylguanidine]CH2CH(OH)COOH is the highest, reaching 11.05 ± 0.13 mg/g. Guanidinium ionic liquid based microwave-assisted extraction presents unique advantages in Praeruptorin A extraction compared with guanidinium ionic liquid based maceration extraction, guanidinium ionic liquid based heat reflux extraction and guanidinium ionic liquid based ultrasound-assisted extraction. The precision, stability, and repeatability of the process were investigated. The mechanisms of guanidinium ionic liquid based microwave-assisted extraction were researched by scanning electron microscopy and IR spectroscopy. All the results show that guanidinium ionic liquid based microwave-assisted extraction has a huge potential in the extraction of bioactive compounds from complex samples. © 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

  14. Polyaniline-coated cigarette filters as a solid-phase extraction sorbent for the extraction and enrichment of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon in water samples.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bunkoed, Opas; Rueankaew, Thanaschaphorn; Nurerk, Piyaluk; Kanatharana, Proespichaya

    2016-06-01

    Polyaniline coated cigarette filters were successfully synthesized and used as a solid-phase extraction sorbent for the extraction and preconcentration of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in water samples. The polyaniline helped to enhance the adsorption ability of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons on the sorbent through π-π interactions. The high porosity and large surface area of the cigarette filters helped to reduce backpressure and can be operated with high sample flow rate without loss of extraction efficiency. The developed sorbent was characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy. The parameters that affected the extraction efficiencies, i.e. polymerization time, type of desorption solvent and its volume, sample flow rate, sample volume, sample pH, ionic strength, and organic modifier were investigated. Under the optimal conditions, the method was linear over the range of 0.5-10 μg/L and a detection limit of 0.5 ng/L. This simple, rapid, and cost-effective method was successfully applied to the preconcentration of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from water samples. The developed method provided a high enrichment factor with good extraction efficiency (85-98%) and a relative standard deviation <10%. © 2016 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

  15. Novel thiosalicylate-based ionic liquids for heavy metal extractions

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Leyma, Raphlin; Platzer, Sonja [Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Vienna, Waehringer Str. 42, A-1090 Vienna (Austria); Jirsa, Franz [Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Vienna, Waehringer Str. 42, A-1090 Vienna (Austria); Department of Zoology, University of Johannesburg, PO Box 524, Auckland Park, 2006, Johannesburg (South Africa); Kandioller, Wolfgang, E-mail: wolfgang.kandioller@univie.ac.at [Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Vienna, Waehringer Str. 42, A-1090 Vienna (Austria); Krachler, Regina; Keppler, Bernhard K. [Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Vienna, Waehringer Str. 42, A-1090 Vienna (Austria)

    2016-08-15

    Highlights: • Six thiosalicylate-based ammonium and phosphonium ionic liquids (ILs) were newly synthesized. • ILs showed good extraction of cadmium, copper, and zinc. • Phosphonium ILs showed better extraction efficiencies than their ammonium counterparts. - Abstract: This study aims to develop novel ammonium and phosphonium ionic liquids (ILs) with thiosalicylate (TS) derivatives as anions and evaluate their extracting efficiencies towards heavy metals in aqueous solutions. Six ILs were synthesized, characterized, and investigated for their extracting efficacies for cadmium, copper, and zinc. Liquid-liquid extractions of Cu, Zn, or Cd with ILs after 1–24 h using model solutions (pH 7; 0.1 M CaCl{sub 2}) were assessed using flame atomic absorption spectroscopy (F-AAS). Phosphonium-based ILs trihexyltetradecylphosphonium 2-(propylthio)benzoate [P{sub 66614}][PTB] and 2-(benzylthio)benzoate [P{sub 66614}][BTB] showed best extraction efficiency for copper and cadmium, respectively and zinc was extracted to a high degree by [P{sub 66614}][BTB] exclusively.

  16. Efficient Non-Linear Finite Element Implementation of Elasto-Plasticity for Geotechnical Problems

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Clausen, Johan

    -Coulomb yield criterion and the corresponding plastic potential possess corners and an apex, which causes numerical difficulties. A simple, elegant and efficient solution to these problems is presented in this thesis. The solution is based on a transformation into principal stress space and is valid for all...... linear isotropic plasticity models in which corners and apexes are encountered. The validity and merits of the proposed solution are examined in relation to the Mohr-Coulomb and the Modified Mohr-Coulomb material models. It is found that the proposed method compares well with existing methods......-Brown material. The efficiency and validity are demonstrated by comparing the finite-element results with well-known solutions for simple geometries. A common geotechnical problem is the assessment of slope stability. For slopes with simple geometries and consisting of a linear Mohr-Coulomb material, this can...

  17. Magnetic hydrophilic-lipophilic balance sorbent for efficient extraction of chemical warfare agents from water samples.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Singh, Varoon; Purohit, Ajay Kumar; Chinthakindi, Sridhar; Goud D, Raghavender; Tak, Vijay; Pardasani, Deepak; Shrivastava, Anchal Roy; Dubey, Devendra Kumar

    2016-02-19

    Magnetic hydrophilic-lipophilic balance (MHLB) hybrid resin was prepared by precipitation polymerization using N-vinylpyrrolidone (PVP) and divinylbenzene (DVB) as monomers and Fe2O3 nanoparticles as magnetic material. These resins were successfully applied for the extraction of chemical warfare agents (CWAs) and their markers from water samples through magnetic dispersive solid-phase extraction (MDSPE). By varying the ratios of monomers, resin with desired hydrophilic-lipophilic balance was prepared for the extraction of CWAs and related esters of varying polarities. Amongst different composites Fe2O3 nanoparticles coated with 10% PVP+90% DVB exhibited the best recoveries varying between 70.32 and 97.67%. Parameters affecting the extraction efficiencies, such as extraction time, desorption time, nature and volume of desorption solvent, amount of extraction sorbent and the effect of salts on extraction were investigated. Under the optimized conditions, linearity was obtained in the range of 0.5-500 ng mL(-1) with correlation ranging from 0.9911-0.9980. Limits of detection and limits of quantification were 0.5-1.0 and 3.0-5.0 ng mL(-1) respectively with RSDs varying from 4.88-11.32% for markers of CWAs. Finally, the developed MDSPE method was employed for extraction of analytes from water samples of various sources and the OPCW proficiency test samples. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  18. Online hyphenation of extraction, Sephadex LH-20 column chromatography, and high-speed countercurrent chromatography: A highly efficient strategy for the preparative separation of andrographolide from Andrographis paniculata in a single step.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Ying-Qi; Wang, Shan-Shan; Han, Chao; Xu, Jin-Fang; Luo, Jian-Guang; Kong, Ling-Yi

    2017-12-01

    A novel isolation strategy, online hyphenation of ultrasonic extraction, Sephadex LH-20 column chromatography combined with high-speed countercurrent chromatography, was developed for pure compounds extraction and purification. Andrographolide from Andrographis paniculata was achieved only in a single step purification protocol via the present strategy. The crude powder was ultrasonic extracted and extraction was pumped into Sephadex LH-20 column directly to cut the nontarget fractions followed by the second-dimensional high-speed countercurrent chromatography, hyphenated by a six-port valve equipped at the post-end of Sephadex LH-20 column, for the final purification. The results yielded andrographolide with the amount of 1.02 mg and a purity of 98.5% in a single step, indicating that the present method is effective to harvest target compound from medicinal plant. © 2017 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

  19. A Robust Formant Extraction Algorithm Combining Spectral Peak Picking and Root Polishing

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Seo Kwang-deok

    2006-01-01

    Full Text Available We propose a robust formant extraction algorithm that combines the spectral peak picking, formants location examining for peak merger checking, and the root extraction methods. The spectral peak picking method is employed to locate the formant candidates, and the root extraction is used for solving the peak merger problem. The location and the distance between the extracted formants are also utilized to efficiently find out suspected peak mergers. The proposed algorithm does not require much computation, and is shown to be superior to previous formant extraction algorithms through extensive tests using TIMIT speech database.

  20. Extraction of transuranic elements from high-level waste

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Morita, Y.; Kubota, M.; Tani, S.

    1991-01-01

    The present study on the counter-current continuous extraction and back-extraction offered a promising prospect of separating TRU from HLW by the DIDPA extraction process which consisted of the following three steps; simultaneous extraction of TRU, Np, Pu, Am and Cm (and rare earths) with 0.5 M DIDPA - 0.1 M TBP solvent, back-extraction of trivalent TRU, Am and Cm, with 4 M HNO 3 , and back-extraction of TRU actinides, Np and Pu, with oxalic acid. At the extraction step, temperature should be raised and H 2 O 2 should be added several times. The contacting time of the aqueous and organic phases is the most important parameter for Np extraction. Raising temperature at the first back-extraction step also has a good effect on the recovery of Am and Cm. The back-extraction of Np with oxalic acid is a simple process without change of Np oxidation state. A small part of Ru remained in the used solvent. However, its concentration was not so high that its remaining would have no influence on the several times recycling of the solvent. (author)

  1. Evaluation of the essential oil of Foeniculum vulgare Mill (fennel) fruits extracted by three different extraction methods by GC/MS.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hammouda, Faiza M; Saleh, Mahmoud A; Abdel-Azim, Nahla S; Shams, Khaled A; Ismail, Shams I; Shahat, Abdelaaty A; Saleh, Ibrahim A

    2014-01-01

    Hydrodistillation (HD) and steam-distillation, or solvent extraction methods of essential oils have some disadvantages like thermal decomposition of extracts, its contamination with solvent or solvent residues and the pollution of residual vegetal material with solvent which can be also an environmental problem. Thus, new green techniques, such as supercritical fluid extraction and microwave assisted techniques, are potential solutions to overcome these disadvantages. The aim of this study was to evaluate the essential oil of Foeniculum vulgare subsp. Piperitum fruits extracted by three different extraction methods viz. Supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) using CO2, microwave-assisted extraction (MAE) and hydro-distillation (HD) using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC/MS). The results revealed that both MAE and SFE enhanced the extraction efficiency of the interested components. MAE gave the highest yield of oil as well as higher percentage of Fenchone (28%), whereas SFE gave the highest percentage of anethol (72%). Microwave-assisted extraction (MAE) and supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) not only enhanced the essential oil extraction but also saved time, reduced the solvents use and produced, ecologically, green technologies.

  2. Extraction of diode parameters of silicon solar cells under high illumination conditions

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Khan, Firoz; Baek, Seong-Ho; Park, Yiseul; Kim, Jae Hyun

    2013-01-01

    Graphical abstract: We have developed an analytical method to determine the diode parameters of concentrator solar cells under high illumination conditions. The determined values of diode parameters have been used to compute the theoretical values of performance parameters. The computed values of the open circuit voltage, curve factor, and efficiency obtained using diode parameters determined with this method showed good agreement (<2% discrepancy) with their experimental values in the temperature range 298–323 K. Highlights: • An analytical method to extract the diode parameters of concentrated Si solar cells. • This method uses single I–V curve under high illumination conditions. • The theoretical values of performance parameters have been computed. • Theoretical values of parameters matched within 2% discrepancy limit. • This method gives best results among the methods used in this work. - Abstract: An analytical method has been developed to extract all four diode parameters, namely the shunt resistance, series resistance, diode ideality factor, and reverse saturation current density, using a single J–V curve, based on one exponential model of silicon solar cells under high illumination conditions. The slope of the J–V curve (dV/dJ) at a short circuit condition is used to determine the value of the shunt resistance. The slope of the J–V curve at an open circuit condition together with the short circuit current density, open circuit voltage, current density, and voltage at maximum power point have been used to determine the values of the series resistance, diode ideality factor, and reverse saturation current density. The determined values of the diode parameters have been used to compute the theoretical values of the open circuit voltage, curve factor, and efficiency of the solar cell. The theoretical J–V curves matched well with the corresponding experimental curves. This method is applied to determine the diode parameters of concentrator

  3. High-resolution extraction of particle size via Fourier Ptychography

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Shengfu; Zhao, Yu; Chen, Guanghua; Luo, Zhenxiong; Ye, Yan

    2017-11-01

    This paper proposes a method which can extract the particle size information with a resolution beyond λ/NA. This is achieved by applying Fourier Ptychographic (FP) ideas to the present problem. In a typical FP imaging platform, a 2D LED array is used as light sources for angle-varied illuminations, a series of low-resolution images was taken by a full sequential scan of the array of LEDs. Here, we demonstrate the particle size information is extracted by turning on each single LED on a circle. The simulated results show that the proposed method can reduce the total number of images, without loss of reliability in the results.

  4. High-gradient electromagnetic separator with continuous slurry extraction

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Dolle, L.

    1986-04-01

    This kind of separator is operating without matrix in a cascade arrangement of conventional electromagnets. It is most suitable for continuous extraction of paramagnetic particulate solids in liquid suspensions. The water-cooled coils are supported by an iron-yoke with an adjustable air-gap. A one-stage device of laboratory size has been worked out in order to achieve measurements of the magnetic field intensities distributions. Then efficiency measurements were first carried out with a reference magnetite particles suspension in water, without sludge bleeding. As representatives of paramagnetic solids, manganese dioxide, copper oxide and a ruthenium oxide colloid in water are chosen, at concentrations ranging from 100 to 2000 ppm. Efficiencies were measured with continuous and periodical sludge bleedings. Results of such measurements are discussed

  5. A highly efficient single-photon source based on a quantum dot in a photonic nanowire

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Claudon, Julien; Bleuse, Joel; Malik, Nitin Singh

    2010-01-01

    –4 or a semiconductor quantum dot5–7. Achieving a high extraction efficiency has long been recognized as a major issue, and both classical solutions8 and cavity quantum electrodynamics effects have been applied1,9–12. We adopt a different approach, based on an InAs quantum dot embedded in a GaAs photonic nanowire......The development of efficient solid-state sources of single photons is a major challenge in the context of quantum communication,optical quantum information processing and metrology1. Such a source must enable the implementation of a stable, single-photon emitter, like a colour centre in diamond2...

  6. An accurate and efficient identification of children with psychosocial problems by means of computerized adaptive testing

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Reijneveld Symen A

    2011-08-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Questionnaires used by health services to identify children with psychosocial problems are often rather short. The psychometric properties of such short questionnaires are mostly less than needed for an accurate distinction between children with and without problems. We aimed to assess whether a short Computerized Adaptive Test (CAT can overcome the weaknesses of short written questionnaires when identifying children with psychosocial problems. Method We used a Dutch national data set obtained from parents of children invited for a routine health examination by Preventive Child Healthcare with 205 items on behavioral and emotional problems (n = 2,041, response 84%. In a random subsample we determined which items met the requirements of an Item Response Theory (IRT model to a sufficient degree. Using those items, item parameters necessary for a CAT were calculated and a cut-off point was defined. In the remaining subsample we determined the validity and efficiency of a Computerized Adaptive Test using simulation techniques, with current treatment status and a clinical score on the Total Problem Scale (TPS of the Child Behavior Checklist as criteria. Results Out of 205 items available 190 sufficiently met the criteria of the underlying IRT model. For 90% of the children a score above or below cut-off point could be determined with 95% accuracy. The mean number of items needed to achieve this was 12. Sensitivity and specificity with the TPS as a criterion were 0.89 and 0.91, respectively. Conclusion An IRT-based CAT is a very promising option for the identification of psychosocial problems in children, as it can lead to an efficient, yet high-quality identification. The results of our simulation study need to be replicated in a real-life administration of this CAT.

  7. New highly efficient piezoceramic materials

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Dantsiger, A.Ya.; Razumovskaya, O.N.; Reznichenko, L.A.; Grineva, L.D.; Devlikanova, R.U.; Dudkina, S.I.; Gavrilyachenko, S.V.; Dergunova, N.V.

    1993-01-01

    New high efficient piezoceramic materials with various combination of parameters inclusing high Curie point for high-temperature transducers using in atomic power engineering are worked. They can be used in systems for heated matters nondestructive testing, controllers for varied industrial power plants and other high-temperature equipment

  8. Problems of high energy physics

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kadyshevskij, V.G.

    1989-01-01

    Some problems of high energy physics are discussed. The main attention is paid to describibg the standard model. The model comprises quantum chromodynamics and electroweak interaction theory. The problem of CP breaking is considered as well. 8 refs.; 1 tab

  9. ANTIMICROBIAL POTENTIAL OF GARLIC AND OREGANO EXTRACTS AND ESSENTIAL OILS AGAINST DIFFERENT BACTERIAL STRAINS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ionica Deliu

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available The modern world is often concerned about the bacterial diseases and the diversity of treatment possibilities. The herbal medicines overreach the medical world because the less number of side effects than synthetic drugs and their low costs. In addition to conventional drugs, the natural remedies can solve exceptional health problems. In this study the antibacterial actions of ethanolic, methanolic and aqueous plant extracts (Allium sativum L. and Origanum vulgare L. were tested. Also, we tested the antimicrobial effects of garlic and oregano essential oils against three bacterial strains. The extracts were tested by diffusion method and certain variants were used. The antibacterial effects were read after 24h of incubation at 37°C. The most obvious effect was observed for oregano essential oil and the smallest growth inhibition was registered for aqueous extracts. The alcoholic extracts were more efficient after concentration by evaporation. The most sensitive bacterial strain was Staphylococcus aureus strain. However the Citrobacter freundii clinical strain had not so high sensitivity at plant extracts, we shall consider the plant extracts as a good alternative to synthetic drugs.

  10. Implementation of a computationally efficient least-squares algorithm for highly under-determined three-dimensional diffuse optical tomography problems.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yalavarthy, Phaneendra K; Lynch, Daniel R; Pogue, Brian W; Dehghani, Hamid; Paulsen, Keith D

    2008-05-01

    Three-dimensional (3D) diffuse optical tomography is known to be a nonlinear, ill-posed and sometimes under-determined problem, where regularization is added to the minimization to allow convergence to a unique solution. In this work, a generalized least-squares (GLS) minimization method was implemented, which employs weight matrices for both data-model misfit and optical properties to include their variances and covariances, using a computationally efficient scheme. This allows inversion of a matrix that is of a dimension dictated by the number of measurements, instead of by the number of imaging parameters. This increases the computation speed up to four times per iteration in most of the under-determined 3D imaging problems. An analytic derivation, using the Sherman-Morrison-Woodbury identity, is shown for this efficient alternative form and it is proven to be equivalent, not only analytically, but also numerically. Equivalent alternative forms for other minimization methods, like Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) and Tikhonov, are also derived. Three-dimensional reconstruction results indicate that the poor recovery of quantitatively accurate values in 3D optical images can also be a characteristic of the reconstruction algorithm, along with the target size. Interestingly, usage of GLS reconstruction methods reduces error in the periphery of the image, as expected, and improves by 20% the ability to quantify local interior regions in terms of the recovered optical contrast, as compared to LM methods. Characterization of detector photo-multiplier tubes noise has enabled the use of the GLS method for reconstructing experimental data and showed a promise for better quantification of target in 3D optical imaging. Use of these new alternative forms becomes effective when the ratio of the number of imaging property parameters exceeds the number of measurements by a factor greater than 2.

  11. High performance preconcentration of inorganic Se species by dispersive micro-solid phase extraction with a nanosilica-ionic liquid hybrid material

    Science.gov (United States)

    Llaver, Mauricio; Coronado, Eduardo A.; Wuilloud, Rodolfo G.

    2017-12-01

    A highly sensitive and efficient dispersive micro-solid phase extraction (D-μ-SPE) method was developed for inorganic Se speciation analysis. A novel ionic liquid (IL)-nanomaterial hybrid consisting of 1-dodecyl-3-methylimidazolium bromide-functionalized nanosilica was used for the efficient retention of Se(IV) complexed with ammonium pyrrolidine dithiocarbamate, followed by elution with an ethyl acetate/Triton X-114 mixture and determination by electrothermal atomic absorption spectroscopy. The Se(VI) species was selectively determined by difference between total inorganic Se and Se(IV) after pre-reduction. The IL-nanomaterial hybrid was characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and transmission electronic microscopy. Likewise, Se(IV) sorption capacity of the retention material and maximum amount of IL loaded on its surface were determined. Several factors concerning the functionalization, extraction and elution steps were optimized, yielding a 100% extraction efficiency for Se(IV) under optimal conditions. A limit of detection of 1.1 ng L- 1, a relative standard deviation of 5.7% and a 110-fold enhancement factor were obtained. The D-μ-SPE method was successfully applied to several water samples from different origins and compositions, including rain, tap, underground, river and sea.

  12. Microfluidic Air Sampler for Highly Efficient Bacterial Aerosol Collection and Identification.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bian, Xiaojun; Lan, Ying; Wang, Bing; Zhang, Yu Shrike; Liu, Baohong; Yang, Pengyuan; Zhang, Weijia; Qiao, Liang

    2016-12-06

    The early warning capability of the presence of biological aerosol threats is an urgent demand in ensuing civilian and military safety. Efficient and rapid air sample collection in relevant indoor or outdoor environment is a key step for subsequent analysis of airborne microorganisms. Herein, we report a portable battery-powered sampler that is capable of highly efficient bioaerosol collection. The essential module of the sampler is a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microfluidic chip, which consisted of a 3-loop double-spiral microchannel featuring embedded herringbone and sawtooth wave-shaped structures. Vibrio parahemolyticus (V. parahemolyticus) as a model microorganism, was initially employed to validate the bioaerosol collection performance of the device. Results showed that the sampling efficacy reached as high as >99.9%. The microfluidic sampler showed greatly improved capturing efficiency compared with traditional plate sedimentation methods. The high performance of our device was attributed to the horizontal inertial centrifugal force and the vertical turbulence applied to airflow during sampling. The centrifugation field and turbulence were generated by the specially designed herringbone structures when air circulated in the double-spiral microchannel. The sawtooth wave-shaped microstructure created larger specific surface area for accommodating more aerosols. Furthermore, a mixture of bacterial aerosols formed by V. parahemolyticus, Listeria monocytogenes, and Escherichia coli was extracted by the microfluidic sampler. Subsequent integration with mass spectrometry conveniently identified the multiple bacterial species captured by the sampler. Our developed stand-alone and cable-free sampler shows clear advantages comparing with conventional strategies, including portability, easy-to-use, and low cost, indicating great potential in future field applications.

  13. High-Efficiency Colloidal Quantum Dot Photovoltaics via Robust Self-Assembled Monolayers

    KAUST Repository

    Kim, Gi-Hwan

    2015-11-11

    © 2015 American Chemical Society. The optoelectronic tunability offered by colloidal quantum dots (CQDs) is attractive for photovoltaic applications but demands proper band alignment at electrodes for efficient charge extraction at minimal cost to voltage. With this goal in mind, self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) can be used to modify interface energy levels locally. However, to be effective SAMs must be made robust to treatment using the various solvents and ligands required for to fabricate high quality CQD solids. We report robust self-assembled monolayers (R-SAMs) that enable us to increase the efficiency of CQD photovoltaics. Only by developing a process for secure anchoring of aromatic SAMs, aided by deposition of the SAMs in a water-free deposition environment, were we able to provide an interface modification that was robust against the ensuing chemical treatments needed in the fabrication of CQD solids. The energy alignment at the rectifying interface was tailored by tuning the R-SAM for optimal alignment relative to the CQD quantum-confined electron energy levels. This resulted in a CQD PV record power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 10.7% with enhanced reproducibility relative to controls.

  14. Polytetrafluoroethylene-jacketed stirrer modified with graphene oxide and polydopamine for the efficient extraction of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Zinxin; Mwadini, Mwadini Ahmada; Chen, Zilin

    2016-10-01

    Steel stirrers jacketed with polytetrafluoroethylene can be regarded as an ideal substrate for stirrer bar sorptive extraction. However, it is still a great challenge to immobilize graphene onto a polytetrafluoroethylene stirrer due to the high chemical resistance of the surface of a polytetrafluoroethylene stirrer. We describe here a method to modify the surface of polytetrafluoroethylene stirrers with graphene. In this work, graphene was used as the sorbent due to its excellent adsorption capability for aromatic compounds, such as polycyclic aromatic compounds. Graphene was successfully immobilized onto polytetrafluoroethylene-stirrer by a bio-inspired polydopamine functionalization method. The graphene-modified polytetrafluoroethylene-stirrer shows good stability and tolerance to stirring, ultrasonication, strong acidic and basic solutions, and to organic solvents. The multilayer coating was characterized by scanning electronic microscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. After the optimization of some experimental conditions, the graphene-modified polytetrafluoroethylene stirrer was used for the stirrer bar sorptive extraction of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, in which the binding between the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and the graphene layer was mainly based on π-π stacking and hydrophobic interactions. The graphene-modified polytetrafluoroethylene-stirrer-based stirrer bar sorptive extraction and high-performance liquid chromatography method was developed for the determination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons with great extraction efficiency, with enrichment factors from 18 to 62. The method has low limits of detection of 1-5 pg/mL, wide linear range (5-100 and 10-200 pg/mL), good linearity (R ≥ 0.9957) and good reproducibility (RSD ≤ 6.45%). The proposed method has been applied to determine polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in real dust samples. Good recoveries were obtained, ranging from 88.53 to 109.43%. © 2016 WILEY-VCH Verlag

  15. Novel concepts for high-efficiency white organic light-emitting diodes

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Schwartz, Gregor

    2007-07-01

    This work deals with novel concepts to realize high efficiency white OLEDs by combining fluorescent blue and phosphorescent green and orange emitters. A key point determining the maximum efficiency possible, as well as the device structure to be chosen to reach high efficiency, is the triplet exciton energy of the fluorescent blue emitter. If its triplet state is lower than that of the phosphorescent emitters, mutual exciton quenching can occur. This problem is solved by the first concept with spatial separation of the fluorescent blue from the phosphorescent emitters by a large-gap exciton blocking layer. To still realize exciton generation on both sides, the interlayer has to be ambipolar. On the other hand, if the triplet exciton energy of the fluorescent blue is higher than that of at least one of the phosphorescent emitters, appropriate arrangement of the emission layers makes a separation layer obsolete, since phosphorescence quenching does not occur anymore. Moreover, the intrinsically non-radiative triplet excitons of the fluorescent blue emitter may be harvested by the phosphor for light emission, which means that even 100% internal quantum efficiency is possible. The last chapter 6 deals with this second concept, where the main issue is to simultaneously achieve exciton harvesting as complete as possible and a balanced white emission spectrum by appropriately distributing singlet and triplet excitons to the used emitters. All emitters used in this work are commercially available and their molecular structure is disclosed in order to make the results transparent. (orig.)

  16. Design of high efficiency and energy saving aeration device for aquaculture

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Sibo

    2017-03-01

    Energy efficient aeration device for aquaculture, in line with "by more than a generation, dynamic aeration" train of thought for technical design and improvement. Removable aeration terminal as the core, multi-level water to improve the method, the mobile fading pore aeration, intelligent mobile and open and close as the main function, aimed at solving the existing pond aeration efficiency, low energy consumption is high, the function of a single problem. From energy saving, efficiency, biological bacteria on the three directions, the aquaculture industry of energy conservation and emissions reduction. Device of the main advantages are: 1, original mobile fading aerator on the one hand, to expand the scope of work, playing a micro porous aeration of dissolved oxygen with high efficiency and to achieve "by more than a generation", on the other hand, through the sports equipment, stir the mixture of water, the water surface of photosynthesis of plants rich in dissolved oxygen input parts of the tank, compared to the stillness of the aerator can be more fully dissolved oxygen.2, through the opening of the pressure sensor indirect control device, can make the equipment timely and stop operation, convenient in use at the same time avoid the waste of energy.3, the biofilm suspension in aeration terminal, can be accomplished by nitration of microbial multi-level water improvement, still can make biofilm increase rate of netting in the movement process, the biological and mechanical aerobic promote each other, improve the efficiency of both. In addition, the device has small power consumption, low cost of characteristics. And have a certain degree of technical barriers, have their own intellectual property rights, and high degree of product market demand, easily accepted by customers, has a very high popularization value.

  17. High-efficiency cavity-dumped micro-chip Yb:YAG laser

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nishio, M.; Maruko, A.; Inoue, M.; Takama, M.; Matsubara, S.; Okunishi, H.; Kato, K.; Kyomoto, K.; Yoshida, T.; Shimabayashi, K.; Morioka, M.; Inayoshi, S.; Yamagata, S.; Kawato, S.

    2014-09-01

    High-efficiency cavity-dumped ytterbium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet (Yb:YAG) laser was developed. Although the high quantum efficiency of ytterbium-doped laser materials is appropriate for high-efficiency laser oscillation, the efficiency is decreased by their quasi-three/four laser natures. High gain operation by high intensity pumping is suitable for high efficiency oscillation on the quasi-three/four lasers without extremely low temperature cooling. In our group, highest efficiency oscillations for continuous wave, nanosecond to picosecond pulse lasers were achieved at room temperature by the high gain operation in which pump intensities were beyond 100 kW/cm2.

  18. Solid-Phase Extraction Combined with High Performance Liquid ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Methods: Solid-phase extraction method was employed for the extraction of the estrogen from milk and high performance liquid chromatography-diode array detector (HPLC-DAD) was used for the determination of estrogen. Results: Optimal chromatographic conditions were achieved on an Eclipse XDB-C18 column at a ...

  19. Evaluation of light extraction efficiency for the light-emitting diodes based on the transfer matrix formalism and ray-tracing method

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pingbo, An; Li, Wang; Hongxi, Lu; Zhiguo, Yu; Lei, Liu; Xin, Xi; Lixia, Zhao; Junxi, Wang; Jinmin, Li

    2016-06-01

    The internal quantum efficiency (IQE) of the light-emitting diodes can be calculated by the ratio of the external quantum efficiency (EQE) and the light extraction efficiency (LEE). The EQE can be measured experimentally, but the LEE is difficult to calculate due to the complicated LED structures. In this work, a model was established to calculate the LEE by combining the transfer matrix formalism and an in-plane ray tracing method. With the calculated LEE, the IQE was determined and made a good agreement with that obtained by the ABC model and temperature-dependent photoluminescence method. The proposed method makes the determination of the IQE more practical and conventional. Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos.11574306, 61334009), the China International Science and Technology Cooperation Program (No. 2014DFG62280), and the National High Technology Program of China (No. 2015AA03A101).

  20. Highly efficient high temperature electrolysis

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Hauch, Anne; Ebbesen, Sune; Jensen, Søren Højgaard

    2008-01-01

    High temperature electrolysis of water and steam may provide an efficient, cost effective and environmentally friendly production of H-2 Using electricity produced from sustainable, non-fossil energy sources. To achieve cost competitive electrolysis cells that are both high performing i.e. minimum...... internal resistance of the cell, and long-term stable, it is critical to develop electrode materials that are optimal for steam electrolysis. In this article electrolysis cells for electrolysis of water or steam at temperatures above 200 degrees C for production of H-2 are reviewed. High temperature...... electrolysis is favourable from a thermodynamic point of view, because a part of the required energy can be supplied as thermal heat, and the activation barrier is lowered increasing the H-2 production rate. Only two types of cells operating at high temperature (above 200 degrees C) have been described...

  1. Efficient methods for isolating five phytochemicals from Gentiana macrophylla using high-performance countercurrent chromatography.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rho, Taewoong; Jung, Mila; Lee, Min Won; Chin, Young-Won; Yoon, Kee Dong

    2016-12-01

    Efficient high-performance countercurrent chromatography methods were developed to isolate five typical compounds from the extracts of Gentiana macrophylla. n-Butanol-soluble extract of G. macrophylla contained three hydrophilic iridoids, loganic acid (1), swertiamarin (2) and gentiopicroside (3), and a chromene derivative, macrophylloside D (4) which were successfully isolated by flow rate gradient (1.5 mL/min in 0-60 min, 5.0 mL/min in 60-120 min), and consecutive flow rate gradient HPCCC using n-butanol/0.1% aqueous trifluoroacetic acid (1:1, v/v, normal phase mode) system. The yields of 1-4 were 22, 16, 122, and 6 mg, respectively, with purities over 97% in a flow rate gradient high-performance countercurrent chromatography, and consecutive flow rate gradient high-performance countercurrent chromatography gave 1, 2, 3 (54, 41, 348 mg, respectively, purities over 97%) and 4 (13 mg, purity at 95%) from 750 mg of sample. The main compound in methylene chloride soluble extract, 2-methoxyanofinic acid, was successfully separated by n-hexane/ethyl acetate/methanol/water (4:6:4:6, v/v/v/v, flow-rate: 4 mL/min, reversed phase mode) condition. The structures of five isolates were elucidated by 1 H, 13 C NMR and ESI-Q-TOF-MS spectroscopic data which were compared with previously reported values. © 2016 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

  2. Efficient solution to the stagnation problem of the particle swarm optimization algorithm for phase diversity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Qi, Xin; Ju, Guohao; Xu, Shuyan

    2018-04-10

    The phase diversity (PD) technique needs optimization algorithms to minimize the error metric and find the global minimum. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is very suitable for PD due to its simple structure, fast convergence, and global searching ability. However, the traditional PSO algorithm for PD still suffers from the stagnation problem (premature convergence), which can result in a wrong solution. In this paper, the stagnation problem of the traditional PSO algorithm for PD is illustrated first. Then, an explicit strategy is proposed to solve this problem, based on an in-depth understanding of the inherent optimization mechanism of the PSO algorithm. Specifically, a criterion is proposed to detect premature convergence; then a redistributing mechanism is proposed to prevent premature convergence. To improve the efficiency of this redistributing mechanism, randomized Halton sequences are further introduced to ensure the uniform distribution and randomness of the redistributed particles in the search space. Simulation results show that this strategy can effectively solve the stagnation problem of the PSO algorithm for PD, especially for large-scale and high-dimension wavefront sensing and noisy conditions. This work is further verified by an experiment. This work can improve the robustness and performance of PD wavefront sensing.

  3. Effects of pyrite and sphalerite on population compositions, dynamics and copper extraction efficiency in chalcopyrite bioleaching process.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xiao, Yunhua; Liu, Xueduan; Dong, Weiling; Liang, Yili; Niu, Jiaojiao; Gu, Yabing; Ma, Liyuan; Hao, Xiaodong; Zhang, Xian; Xu, Zhen; Yin, Huaqun

    2017-07-01

    This study used an artificial microbial community with four known moderately thermophilic acidophiles (three bacteria including Acidithiobacillus caldus S1, Sulfobacillus thermosulfidooxidans ST and Leptospirillum ferriphilum YSK, and one archaea, Ferroplasma thermophilum L1) to explore the variation of microbial community structure, composition, dynamics and function (e.g., copper extraction efficiency) in chalcopyrite bioleaching (C) systems with additions of pyrite (CP) or sphalerite (CS). The community compositions and dynamics in the solution and on the ore surface were investigated by real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR). The results showed that the addition of pyrite or sphalerite changed the microbial community composition and dynamics dramatically during the chalcopyrite bioleaching process. For example, A. caldus (above 60%) was the dominant species at the initial stage in three groups, and at the middle stage, still dominated C group (above 70%), but it was replaced by L. ferriphilum (above 60%) in CP and CS groups; at the final stage, L. ferriphilum dominated C group, while F. thermophilum dominated CP group on the ore surface. Furthermore, the additions of pyrite or sphalerite both made the increase of redox potential (ORP) and the concentrations of Fe 3+ and H + , which would affect the microbial community compositions and copper extraction efficiency. Additionally, pyrite could enhance copper extraction efficiency (e.g., improving around 13.2% on day 6) during chalcopyrite bioleaching; on the contrary, sphalerite restrained it.

  4. The High-efficiency LED Driver for Visible Light Communication Applications.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gong, Cihun-Siyong Alex; Lee, Yu-Chen; Lai, Jyun-Liang; Yu, Chueh-Hao; Huang, Li Ren; Yang, Chia-Yen

    2016-08-08

    This paper presents a LED driver for VLC. The main purpose is to solve the low data rate problem used to be in switching type LED driver. The GaN power device is proposed to replace the traditional silicon power device of switching LED driver for the purpose of increasing switching frequency of converter, thereby increasing the bandwidth of data transmission. To achieve high efficiency, the diode-connected GaN power transistor is utilized to replace the traditional ultrafast recovery diode used to be in switching type LED driver. This work has been experimentally evaluated on 350-mA output current. The results demonstrate that it supports the data of PWM dimming level encoded in the PPM scheme for VLC application. The experimental results also show that system's efficiency of 80.8% can be achieved at 1-Mb/s data rate.

  5. Comparative exergy analyses of Jatropha curcas oil extraction methods: Solvent and mechanical extraction processes

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ofori-Boateng, Cynthia; Keat Teong, Lee; JitKang, Lim

    2012-01-01

    Highlights: ► Exergy analysis detects locations of resource degradation within a process. ► Solvent extraction is six times exergetically destructive than mechanical extraction. ► Mechanical extraction of jatropha oil is 95.93% exergetically efficient. ► Solvent extraction of jatropha oil is 79.35% exergetically efficient. ► Exergy analysis of oil extraction processes allow room for improvements. - Abstract: Vegetable oil extraction processes are found to be energy intensive. Thermodynamically, any energy intensive process is considered to degrade the most useful part of energy that is available to produce work. This study uses literature values to compare the efficiencies and degradation of the useful energy within Jatropha curcas oil during oil extraction taking into account solvent and mechanical extraction methods. According to this study, J. curcas seeds on processing into J. curcas oil is upgraded with mechanical extraction but degraded with solvent extraction processes. For mechanical extraction, the total internal exergy destroyed is 3006 MJ which is about six times less than that for solvent extraction (18,072 MJ) for 1 ton J. curcas oil produced. The pretreatment processes of the J. curcas seeds recorded a total internal exergy destructions of 5768 MJ accounting for 24% of the total internal exergy destroyed for solvent extraction processes and 66% for mechanical extraction. The exergetic efficiencies recorded are 79.35% and 95.93% for solvent and mechanical extraction processes of J. curcas oil respectively. Hence, mechanical oil extraction processes are exergetically efficient than solvent extraction processes. Possible improvement methods are also elaborated in this study.

  6. On the Computation of the Efficient Frontier of the Portfolio Selection Problem

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Clara Calvo

    2012-01-01

    Full Text Available An easy-to-use procedure is presented for improving the ε-constraint method for computing the efficient frontier of the portfolio selection problem endowed with additional cardinality and semicontinuous variable constraints. The proposed method provides not only a numerical plotting of the frontier but also an analytical description of it, including the explicit equations of the arcs of parabola it comprises and the change points between them. This information is useful for performing a sensitivity analysis as well as for providing additional criteria to the investor in order to select an efficient portfolio. Computational results are provided to test the efficiency of the algorithm and to illustrate its applications. The procedure has been implemented in Mathematica.

  7. Linking attentional processes and conceptual problem solving: visual cues facilitate the automaticity of extracting relevant information from diagrams.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rouinfar, Amy; Agra, Elise; Larson, Adam M; Rebello, N Sanjay; Loschky, Lester C

    2014-01-01

    This study investigated links between visual attention processes and conceptual problem solving. This was done by overlaying visual cues on conceptual physics problem diagrams to direct participants' attention to relevant areas to facilitate problem solving. Participants (N = 80) individually worked through four problem sets, each containing a diagram, while their eye movements were recorded. Each diagram contained regions that were relevant to solving the problem correctly and separate regions related to common incorrect responses. Problem sets contained an initial problem, six isomorphic training problems, and a transfer problem. The cued condition saw visual cues overlaid on the training problems. Participants' verbal responses were used to determine their accuracy. This study produced two major findings. First, short duration visual cues which draw attention to solution-relevant information and aid in the organizing and integrating of it, facilitate both immediate problem solving and generalization of that ability to new problems. Thus, visual cues can facilitate re-representing a problem and overcoming impasse, enabling a correct solution. Importantly, these cueing effects on problem solving did not involve the solvers' attention necessarily embodying the solution to the problem, but were instead caused by solvers attending to and integrating relevant information in the problems into a solution path. Second, this study demonstrates that when such cues are used across multiple problems, solvers can automatize the extraction of problem-relevant information extraction. These results suggest that low-level attentional selection processes provide a necessary gateway for relevant information to be used in problem solving, but are generally not sufficient for correct problem solving. Instead, factors that lead a solver to an impasse and to organize and integrate problem information also greatly facilitate arriving at correct solutions.

  8. An efficient simulated annealing algorithm for the redundancy allocation problem with a choice of redundancy strategies

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Chambari, Amirhossain; Najafi, Amir Abbas; Rahmati, Seyed Habib A.; Karimi, Aida

    2013-01-01

    The redundancy allocation problem (RAP) is an important reliability optimization problem. This paper studies a specific RAP in which redundancy strategies are chosen. To do so, the choice of the redundancy strategies among active and cold standby is considered as decision variables. The goal is to select the redundancy strategy, component, and redundancy level for each subsystem such that the system reliability is maximized. Since RAP is a NP-hard problem, we propose an efficient simulated annealing algorithm (SA) to solve it. In addition, to evaluating the performance of the proposed algorithm, it is compared with well-known algorithms in the literature for different test problems. The results of the performance analysis show a relatively satisfactory efficiency of the proposed SA algorithm

  9. Plasma extraction rate and collection efficiency during therapeutic plasma exchange with Spectra Optia in comparison with Haemonetics MCS+.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lambert, Catherine; Gericke, Marion; Smith, Richard; Hermans, Cedric

    2011-01-01

    For therapeutic plasma exchange (TPE), continuous and intermittent flow separators are known to be efficient. This study was undertaken to compare the performances of the Spectra Optia, a continuous flow centrifugal apheresis system recently developed by CaridianBCT, with the Haemonetics Multicomponents System (MCS)+ apheresis system based on intermittent flow centrifugation. The primary objective of the study was to compare the time required to exchange one total plasma volume with both separators. The secondary objectives were to determine the plasma exchange efficiency, the plasma extraction rate, the percentage of target exchange volume achieved, and the loss of cellular components. The study involved prospectively paired comparison of 16 TPE on each device performed in patients with chronic diseases treated with TPE. The time required to exchange 1 total plasma volume was 182 ± 36 minutes for MCS+ procedures and 100 ± 20 minutes for the Spectra Optia procedures (P higher plasma extraction rate was achieved (30.2 ± 4.3 vs 16.8 ± 3.4 mL/min, respectively, P exchange efficiency was slightly better with the Spectra Optia compared with the MCS+ procedures (83.4 ± 7.0 vs 80.0 ± 8.5%, P higher extraction rate and exchange efficiency than the MCS+ allowing to remove the same amount of plasma in less time, by processing less blood. It also removes significantly less platelets than the MCS+ separator. Copyright © 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

  10. Neutron activation analysis for the optimal sampling and extraction of extractable organohalogens in human hari

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Zhang, H.; Chai, Z.F.; Sun, H.B.; Xu, H.F.

    2005-01-01

    Many persistent organohalogen compounds such as DDTs and polychlorinated biphenyls have caused seriously environmental pollution problem that now involves all life. It is know that neutron activation analysis (NAA) is a very convenient method for halogen analysis and is also the only method currently available for simultaneously determining organic chlorine, bromine and iodine in one extract. Human hair is a convenient material to evaluate the burden of such compounds in human body and dan be easily collected from people over wide ranges of age, sex, residential areas, eating habits and working environments. To effectively extract organohalogen compounds from human hair, in present work the optimal Soxhelt-extraction time of extractable organohalogen (EOX) and extractable persistent organohalogen (EPOX) from hair of different lengths were studied by NAA. The results indicated that the optimal Soxhelt-extraction time of EOX and EPOX from human hair was 8-11 h, and the highest EOX and EPOX contents were observed in hair powder extract. The concentrations of both EOX and EPOX in different hair sections were in the order of hair powder ≥ 2 mm > 5 mm, which stated that hair samples milled into hair powder or cut into very short sections were not only for homogeneous. hair sample but for the best hair extraction efficiency.

  11. High-temperature extraction of rhenium from sulfuric acid solutions with trialkylamines

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Gladyhev, V.P.; Andreeva, N.N.; Kim, E.M.; Kovaleva, S.V.

    1985-01-01

    This paper attempts to determine the possibility of conducting high-temperature extraction of rhenium from sulfuric acid solutions with trialkylamines (TAA) using higher hydrocarbon-paraffin mixtures as the diluent of the extraction system. Substitution of kerosene by paraffin in the extraction system would permit decreasing the danger of fire and explosions during he extraction process. In extracting rhenium from industrial solutions with a melt of higher paraffins containing TAA and alcohols, the extraction system can be continously heated in heat exchangers through which washing sulfuric acid passes and then goes to the extractor. This permits utilizing the heat and decreases the temperature of the solutions for extraction to the optimum temperatures. Extraction of rhenium with a melt of trioctylamine in paraffin obeys the same mechanisms as high-temperature extraction of ruthenium (IV) by amines in kerosene and aromatic hydrocarbons

  12. Time efficient optimization of instance based problems with application to tone onset detection

    OpenAIRE

    Bauer, Nadja; Friedrichs, Klaus; Weihs, Claus

    2016-01-01

    A time efficient optimization technique for instance based problems is proposed, where for each parameter setting the target function has to be evaluated on a large set of problem instances. Computational time is reduced by beginning with a performance estimation based on the evaluation of a representative subset of instances. Subsequently, only promising settings are evaluated on the whole data set. As application a comprehensive music onset detection algorithm is introduce...

  13. Using high-throughput barcode sequencing to efficiently map connectomes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Peikon, Ian D; Kebschull, Justus M; Vagin, Vasily V; Ravens, Diana I; Sun, Yu-Chi; Brouzes, Eric; Corrêa, Ivan R; Bressan, Dario; Zador, Anthony M

    2017-07-07

    The function of a neural circuit is determined by the details of its synaptic connections. At present, the only available method for determining a neural wiring diagram with single synapse precision-a 'connectome'-is based on imaging methods that are slow, labor-intensive and expensive. Here, we present SYNseq, a method for converting the connectome into a form that can exploit the speed and low cost of modern high-throughput DNA sequencing. In SYNseq, each neuron is labeled with a unique random nucleotide sequence-an RNA 'barcode'-which is targeted to the synapse using engineered proteins. Barcodes in pre- and postsynaptic neurons are then associated through protein-protein crosslinking across the synapse, extracted from the tissue, and joined into a form suitable for sequencing. Although our failure to develop an efficient barcode joining scheme precludes the widespread application of this approach, we expect that with further development SYNseq will enable tracing of complex circuits at high speed and low cost. © The Author(s) 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research.

  14. The Evolution of Chemical High-Throughput Experimentation To Address Challenging Problems in Pharmaceutical Synthesis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Krska, Shane W; DiRocco, Daniel A; Dreher, Spencer D; Shevlin, Michael

    2017-12-19

    The structural complexity of pharmaceuticals presents a significant challenge to modern catalysis. Many published methods that work well on simple substrates often fail when attempts are made to apply them to complex drug intermediates. The use of high-throughput experimentation (HTE) techniques offers a means to overcome this fundamental challenge by facilitating the rational exploration of large arrays of catalysts and reaction conditions in a time- and material-efficient manner. Initial forays into the use of HTE in our laboratories for solving chemistry problems centered around screening of chiral precious-metal catalysts for homogeneous asymmetric hydrogenation. The success of these early efforts in developing efficient catalytic steps for late-stage development programs motivated the desire to increase the scope of this approach to encompass other high-value catalytic chemistries. Doing so, however, required significant advances in reactor and workflow design and automation to enable the effective assembly and agitation of arrays of heterogeneous reaction mixtures and retention of volatile solvents under a wide range of temperatures. Associated innovations in high-throughput analytical chemistry techniques greatly increased the efficiency and reliability of these methods. These evolved HTE techniques have been utilized extensively to develop highly innovative catalysis solutions to the most challenging problems in large-scale pharmaceutical synthesis. Starting with Pd- and Cu-catalyzed cross-coupling chemistry, subsequent efforts expanded to other valuable modern synthetic transformations such as chiral phase-transfer catalysis, photoredox catalysis, and C-H functionalization. As our experience and confidence in HTE techniques matured, we envisioned their application beyond problems in process chemistry to address the needs of medicinal chemists. Here the problem of reaction generality is felt most acutely, and HTE approaches should prove broadly enabling

  15. An efficient heuristic method for dynamic portfolio selection problem under transaction costs and uncertain conditions

    Science.gov (United States)

    Najafi, Amir Abbas; Pourahmadi, Zahra

    2016-04-01

    Selecting the optimal combination of assets in a portfolio is one of the most important decisions in investment management. As investment is a long term concept, looking into a portfolio optimization problem just in a single period may cause loss of some opportunities that could be exploited in a long term view. Hence, it is tried to extend the problem from single to multi-period model. We include trading costs and uncertain conditions to this model which made it more realistic and complex. Hence, we propose an efficient heuristic method to tackle this problem. The efficiency of the method is examined and compared with the results of the rolling single-period optimization and the buy and hold method which shows the superiority of the proposed method.

  16. Study on the mechanism and efficiency of simulated annealing using an LP optimization benchmark problem - 113

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Qianqian, Li; Xiaofeng, Jiang; Shaohong, Zhang

    2010-01-01

    Simulated Annealing Algorithm (SAA) for solving combinatorial optimization problems is a popular method for loading pattern optimization. The main purpose of this paper is to understand the underlying search mechanism of SAA and to study its efficiency. In this study, a general SAA that employs random pair exchange of fuel assemblies to search for the optimum fuel Loading Pattern (LP) is applied to an exhaustively searched LP optimization benchmark problem. All the possible LPs of the benchmark problem have been enumerated and evaluated via the use of the very fast and accurate Hybrid Harmonics and Linear Perturbation (HHLP) method, such that the mechanism of SA for LP optimization can be explicitly analyzed and its search efficiency evaluated. The generic core geometry itself dictates that only a small number LPs can be generated by performing random single pair exchanges and that the LPs are necessarily mostly similar to the initial LP. This phase space effect turns out to be the basic mechanism in SAA that can explain its efficiency and good local search ability. A measure of search efficiency is introduced which shows that the stochastic nature of SAA greatly influences the variability of its search efficiency. It is also found that using fuel assembly k-infinity distribution as a technique to filter the LPs can significantly enhance the SAA search efficiency. (authors)

  17. Efficient analysis and extraction of MS/MS result data from Mascot™ result files

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sickmann Albert

    2005-12-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Mascot™ is a commonly used protein identification program for MS as well as for tandem MS data. When analyzing huge shotgun proteomics datasets with Mascot™'s native tools, limits of computing resources are easily reached. Up to now no application has been available as open source that is capable of converting the full content of Mascot™ result files from the original MIME format into a database-compatible tabular format, allowing direct import into database management systems and efficient handling of huge datasets analyzed by Mascot™. Results A program called mres2x is presented, which reads Mascot™ result files, analyzes them and extracts either selected or all information in order to store it in a single file or multiple files in formats which are easier to handle downstream of Mascot™. It generates different output formats. The output of mres2x in tab format is especially designed for direct high-performance import into relational database management systems using native tools of these systems. Having the data available in database management systems allows complex queries and extensive analysis. In addition, the original peak lists can be extracted in DTA format suitable for protein identification using the Sequest™ program, and the Mascot™ files can be split, preserving the original data format. During conversion, several consistency checks are performed. mres2x is designed to provide high throughput processing combined with the possibility to be driven by other computer programs. The source code including supplement material and precompiled binaries is available via http://www.protein-ms.de and http://sourceforge.net/projects/protms/. Conclusion The database upload allows regrouping of the MS/MS results using a database management system and complex analyzing queries using SQL without the need to run new Mascot™ searches when changing grouping parameters.

  18. Extraction and quantification of "condensed tannins" as a measure of plant anti-herbivore defence? Revisiting an old problem.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Heil, Martin; Baumann, Birgit; Andary, Claude; Linsenmair, K Eduard; McKey, Doyle

    2002-11-01

    Contents of phenolic compounds in leaf extracts often serve as a measure of plant anti-herbivore defence. This method suffers from the multifunctionality of phenolics and from problems with their colorimetric quantification. Here we present further evidence for the pertinence of these problems. Contents of condensed tannins (CCT) were spectrophotometrically quantified in leaf extracts of 11 closely related mimosoid species, and Spodoptera littoralis caterpillars were reared on artificial diet containing these extracts. The relationship of CCT with caterpillar growth differed considerably among plant species, since both positive and negative correlations were detected. There was, however, a negative correlation of CCT with fungal spore germination, indicating a role of these compounds in resistance to fungi. Detailed knowledge on the structure and biological function of defensive compounds and on the overall composition of leaves is required to estimate a plant's defensive efficacy against a particular group of enemies.

  19. Antireflective sub-wavelength structures for improvement of the extraction efficiency and color rendering index of monolithic white light-emitting diode

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Ou, Yiyu; Corell, Dennis Dan; Dam-Hansen, Carsten

    2011-01-01

    We have theoretically investigated the influence of antireflective sub-wavelength structures on a monolithic white light-emitting diode (LED). The simulation is based on the rigorous coupled wave analysis (RCWA) algorithm, and both cylinder and moth-eye structures have been studied in the work. Our...... simulation results show that a moth-eye structure enhances the light extraction efficiency over the entire visible light range with an extraction efficiency enhancement of up to 26 %. Also for the first time to our best knowledge, the influence of sub-wavelength structures on both the color rendering index...

  20. Analysis of Free Amino Acids in Different Extracts of Orthosiphon stamineus Leaves by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography Combined with Solid-Phase Extraction.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shafaei, Armaghan; Halim, Nor Hidayah Ab; Zakaria, Norhidayah; Ismail, Zhari

    2017-10-01

    Orthosiphon stamineus (OS) Benth is a medicinal plant and native in Southeast Asia. Previous studies have shown that OS leaves possess antioxidant, cytotoxic, diuretic, antihypertensive, and uricosuric effects. These beneficial effects have been attributed to the presence of primary and secondary metabolites such as polyphenols, amino acids, and flavonoids. To develop and validate an high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)-diode array detector (DAD) method combined with solid-phase extraction that involves precolumn derivatization with O -phthaladehyde for simultaneous analysis of free amino acids in OS leaves extracts. OS leaves were extracted with water (OS-W), ethanol (OS-E), methanol (OS-M), 50% ethanol (OS-EW), and 50% methanol (OS-MW). The extracts were treated by C18 cartridge before derivatization, resulting in great improvement of separation by Zorbox Eclipse XDB-C 18 column. The HPLC-DAD method was successfully developed and validated for analyzing the contents of free amino acids in OS extracts. The results showed that l-aspartic acid with 0.93 ± 0.01 nmol/mg was the major free amino acid in OS-W extract. However, in OS-E, OS-M, OS-EW, and OS-MW, l-glutamic acid with 3.53 ± 0.16, 2.17 ± 0.10, 4.01 ± 0.12, and 2.49 ± 0.12 nmol/mg, respectively, was the major free amino acid. Subsequently, l-serine, which was detected in OS-W, OS-E, and OS-M, was the minor free amino acid with 0.33 ± 0.02, 0.12 ± 0.01, and 0.06 ± 0.01 nmol/mg, respectively. However, l-threonine with 0.26 ± 0.02 and 0.19 ± 0.08 nmol/mL in OS-EW and OS-MW, respectively, had the lowest concentration compared with other amino acid components. All validation parameters of the developed method indicate that the method is reliable and efficient to simultaneously determine the free amino acids content for routine analysis of OS extracts. The HPLC-DAD method combined with solid phase extraction was successfully developed and validated for simultaneous determination and

  1. High Efficiency Power Converter for Low Voltage High Power Applications

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Nymand, Morten

    The topic of this thesis is the design of high efficiency power electronic dc-to-dc converters for high-power, low-input-voltage to high-output-voltage applications. These converters are increasingly required for emerging sustainable energy systems such as fuel cell, battery or photo voltaic based......, and remote power generation for light towers, camper vans, boats, beacons, and buoys etc. A review of current state-of-the-art is presented. The best performing converters achieve moderately high peak efficiencies at high input voltage and medium power level. However, system dimensioning and cost are often...

  2. An Efficient Approach for Solving Mesh Optimization Problems Using Newton’s Method

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jibum Kim

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available We present an efficient approach for solving various mesh optimization problems. Our approach is based on Newton’s method, which uses both first-order (gradient and second-order (Hessian derivatives of the nonlinear objective function. The volume and surface mesh optimization algorithms are developed such that mesh validity and surface constraints are satisfied. We also propose several Hessian modification methods when the Hessian matrix is not positive definite. We demonstrate our approach by comparing our method with nonlinear conjugate gradient and steepest descent methods in terms of both efficiency and mesh quality.

  3. Computationally Efficient Clustering of Audio-Visual Meeting Data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hung, Hayley; Friedland, Gerald; Yeo, Chuohao

    This chapter presents novel computationally efficient algorithms to extract semantically meaningful acoustic and visual events related to each of the participants in a group discussion using the example of business meeting recordings. The recording setup involves relatively few audio-visual sensors, comprising a limited number of cameras and microphones. We first demonstrate computationally efficient algorithms that can identify who spoke and when, a problem in speech processing known as speaker diarization. We also extract visual activity features efficiently from MPEG4 video by taking advantage of the processing that was already done for video compression. Then, we present a method of associating the audio-visual data together so that the content of each participant can be managed individually. The methods presented in this article can be used as a principal component that enables many higher-level semantic analysis tasks needed in search, retrieval, and navigation.

  4. Countercurrent extraction of soluble sugars from almond hulls and assessment of the bioenergy potential.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Holtman, Kevin M; Offeman, Richard D; Franqui-Villanueva, Diana; Bayati, Andre K; Orts, William J

    2015-03-11

    Almond hulls contain considerable proportions (37% by dry weight) of water-soluble, fermentable sugars (sucrose, glucose, and fructose), which can be extracted for industrial purposes. The maximum optimal solids loading was determined to be 20% for sugar extraction, and the addition of 0.5% (w/v) pectinase aided in maintaining a sufficient free water volume for sugar recovery. A laboratory countercurrent extraction experiment utilizing a 1 h steep followed by three extraction (wash) stages produced a high-concentration (131 g/L fermentable sugar) syrup. Overall, sugar recovery efficiency was 88%. The inner stage washing efficiencies were compatible with solution equilibrium calculations, indicating that efficiency was high. The concentrated sugar syrup was fermented to ethanol at high efficiency (86% conversion), and ethanol concentrations in the broth were 7.4% (v/v). Thin stillage contained 233 g SCOD/L, which was converted to biomethane at an efficiency of 90% with a biomethane potential of 297 mL/g SCODdestroyed. Overall, results suggested that a minima of 49 gal (185 L) ethanol and 75 m(3) methane/t hulls (dry whole hull basis) are achievable.

  5. Efficient Sum of Outer Products Dictionary Learning (SOUP-DIL) and Its Application to Inverse Problems.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ravishankar, Saiprasad; Nadakuditi, Raj Rao; Fessler, Jeffrey A

    2017-12-01

    The sparsity of signals in a transform domain or dictionary has been exploited in applications such as compression, denoising and inverse problems. More recently, data-driven adaptation of synthesis dictionaries has shown promise compared to analytical dictionary models. However, dictionary learning problems are typically non-convex and NP-hard, and the usual alternating minimization approaches for these problems are often computationally expensive, with the computations dominated by the NP-hard synthesis sparse coding step. This paper exploits the ideas that drive algorithms such as K-SVD, and investigates in detail efficient methods for aggregate sparsity penalized dictionary learning by first approximating the data with a sum of sparse rank-one matrices (outer products) and then using a block coordinate descent approach to estimate the unknowns. The resulting block coordinate descent algorithms involve efficient closed-form solutions. Furthermore, we consider the problem of dictionary-blind image reconstruction, and propose novel and efficient algorithms for adaptive image reconstruction using block coordinate descent and sum of outer products methodologies. We provide a convergence study of the algorithms for dictionary learning and dictionary-blind image reconstruction. Our numerical experiments show the promising performance and speedups provided by the proposed methods over previous schemes in sparse data representation and compressed sensing-based image reconstruction.

  6. Increasing Scalability of Researcher Network Extraction from the Web

    Science.gov (United States)

    Asada, Yohei; Matsuo, Yutaka; Ishizuka, Mitsuru

    Social networks, which describe relations among people or organizations as a network, have recently attracted attention. With the help of a social network, we can analyze the structure of a community and thereby promote efficient communications within it. We investigate the problem of extracting a network of researchers from the Web, to assist efficient cooperation among researchers. Our method uses a search engine to get the cooccurences of names of two researchers and calculates the streangth of the relation between them. Then we label the relation by analyzing the Web pages in which these two names cooccur. Research on social network extraction using search engines as ours, is attracting attention in Japan as well as abroad. However, the former approaches issue too many queries to search engines to extract a large-scale network. In this paper, we propose a method to filter superfluous queries and facilitates the extraction of large-scale networks. By this method we are able to extract a network of around 3000-nodes. Our experimental results show that the proposed method reduces the number of queries significantly while preserving the quality of the network as compared to former methods.

  7. Efficient Perovskite Solar Cells over a Broad Temperature Window : The Role of the Charge Carrier Extraction

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Shao, Shuyan; Liu, Jian; Fang, Hong-Hua; Qiu, Li; ten Brink, Gert H.; Hummelen, Jan C.; Koster, L. Jan Anton; Loi, Maria Antonietta

    2017-01-01

    The mechanism behind the temperature dependence of the device performance in hybrid perovskite solar cells (HPSCs) is investigated systematically. The power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the reference cell using [60] PCBM as electron extraction layer (EEL) drops significantly from 11.9% at 295 K to

  8. An Efficient Combined Meta-Heuristic Algorithm for Solving the Traveling Salesman Problem

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Majid Yousefikhoshbakht

    2016-08-01

    Full Text Available The traveling salesman problem (TSP is one of the most important NP-hard Problems and probably the most famous and extensively studied problem in the field of combinatorial optimization. In this problem, a salesman is required to visit each of n given nodes once and only once, starting from any node and returning to the original place of departure. This paper presents an efficient evolutionary optimization algorithm developed through combining imperialist competitive algorithm and lin-kernighan algorithm called (MICALK in order to solve the TSP. The MICALK is tested on 44 TSP instances involving from 24 to 1655 nodes from the literature so that 26 best known solutions of the benchmark problem are also found by our algorithm. Furthermore, the performance of MICALK is compared with several metaheuristic algorithms, including GA, BA, IBA, ICA, GSAP, ABO, PSO and BCO on 32 instances from TSPLIB. The results indicate that the MICALK performs well and is quite competitive with the above algorithms.

  9. Preparative isolation and purification of capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin from Capsici Fructus using supercritical fluid extraction combined with high speed countercurrent chromatography.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yan, Rongwei; Zhao, Leilei; Tao, Junfei; Zou, Yong; Xu, Xinjun

    2018-05-01

    Supercritical fluid extraction with CO 2 (SFE-CO 2 ) was utilized for extraction of capsaicin (CA) and dihydrocapsaicin (DHCA) from Capsici Fructus, and then a two-step enrichment method for separating capsaicinoids from SFE-CO 2 extracts was developed. The process involved extraction with aqueous methanol and crystallization by alkali extraction and acid precipitation. Finally, a consecutive high-speed countercurrent chromatography (HSCCC) separation method was successfully applied in the purification of CA and DHCA from capsaicinoid crystal. The extraction pressure, extraction temperature and volume of co-solvent were optimized at 33 MPa, 41 °C and 75 mL, respectively, using response surface methodology; the extraction rates of CA and DHCA were about 93.18% and 93.49%, respectively. 407.43 mg capsaicinoid crystal was isolated from the SFE-CO 2 extracts obtained from 100 g capsicum powder by the two-step enrichment method. About 506 mg and 184 mg CA and DHCA with purities up to 98.31% and 96.68%, respectively, were obtained from 1 g capsaicinoid crystal in one HSCCC of three consecutive sample loadings without exchanging any solvent system. This method comprising SFE-CO 2 , a two-step enrichment and HSCCC was efficient, powerful and practical for the large-scale preparation of CA and DHCA from Capsici Fructus with high purity and high yield. © 2017 Society of Chemical Industry. © 2017 Society of Chemical Industry.

  10. Quaternary ammonium based task specific ionic liquid for the efficient and selective extraction of neptunium

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Gupta, Nishesh Kumar [National Institute of Technology, Odisha (India). Dept. of Chemistry; Sengupta, Arijit [Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai (India). Radiochemistry Div.; Biswas, Sujoy [Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai (India). Uranium Extraction Div.

    2017-07-01

    Liquid-liquid extraction of neptunium from aqueous acidic solution using quaternary ammonium based task specific ionic liquid (TSIL) was investigated. The extraction of Np was predominated by the 'cation exchange' mechanism via [NpO{sub 2}.Hpth]{sup +} species for NpO{sub 2}{sup 2+}, while NpO{sub 2}{sup +} was extracted in ionic liquid as [NpO{sub 2}.H.Hpth]{sup +}. The extraction process was thermodynamically spontaneous while kinetically slower. Na{sub 2}CO{sub 3} as strippant showed quantitative back extraction of neptunium ions from TSIL. TSIL showed excellent radiolytic stability upto 500 kGy gamma exposure. Finally, the TSIL was employed for the processing of simulated high level waste solutions revealing high selectivity of TSIL towards neptunium.

  11. High-Efficiency Volume Reflection of an Ultrarelativistic Proton Beam with a Bent Silicon Crystal

    CERN Document Server

    Scandale, Walter; Carnera, Alberto; Della Mea, Gianantonio; De Salvador, Davide; Milan, Riccardo; Vomiero, Alberto; Baricordi, Stefano; Dalpiaz, Pietro; Fiorini, Massimiliano; Guidi, Vincenzo; Martinelli,Giuliano; Mazzolari, Andrea; Milan, Emiliano; Ambrosi, Giovanni; Azzarello, Philipp; Battiston, Roberto; Bertucci, Bruna; Burger, William J; Ionica, Maria; Zuccon, Paolo; Cavoto, Gianluca; Santacesaria, Roberta; Valente, Paolo; Vallazza, Erik; Afonin, Alexander G; Baranov, Vladimir T; Chesnokov, Yury A; Kotov, Vladilen I; Maisheev, Vladimir A; Yaznin, Igor A; Afansiev, Sergey V; Kovalenko, Alexander D; Taratin, Alexander M; Denisov, Alexander S; Gavrikov, Yury A; Ivanov, Yuri M; Ivochkin, Vladimir G; Kosyanenko, Sergey V; Petrunin, Anatoli A; Skorobogatov, Vyacheslav V; Suvorov, Vsevolod M; Bolognini, Davide; Foggetta,Luca; Hasan, Said; Prest, Michela

    2007-01-01

    The volume reflection phenomenon was detected while investigating 400 GeV proton interactions with bent silicon crystals in the external beam H8 of the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron. Such a process was observed for a wide interval of crystal orientations relative to the beam axis, and its efficiency exceeds 95%, thereby surpassing any previously observed value. These observations suggest new perspectives for the manipulation of high-energy beams, e.g., for collimation and extraction in new-generation hadron colliders, such as the CERN Large Hadron Collider.

  12. Proposal for Efficiency Improvement of Beam Extraction from the AIC-l44 Beam Formation During Its Acceleration

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Schwabe, J.; Godunowa, H.

    1998-10-01

    The computer simulations of the beam dynamics both in the radial and vertical phase planes for the AIC-144 cyclotron are presented. The calculation results show how it is possible to improve the beam extraction efficiency

  13. Optimization of microwave-assisted extraction conditions for preparing lignan-rich extract from Saraca asoca bark using Box-Behnken design.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mishra, Shikha; Aeri, Vidhu

    2016-07-01

    Lyoniside is the major constituent of Saraca asoca Linn. (Caesalpiniaceae) bark. There is an immediate need to develop an efficient method to isolate its chemical constituents, since it is a therapeutically important plant. A rapid extraction method for lyoniside based on microwave-assisted extraction of S. asoca bark was developed and optimized using response surface methodology (RSM). Lyoniside was analyzed and quantified by high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with ultraviolet detection (HPLC-UV). The extraction solvent ratio (%), material solvent ratio (g/ml) and extraction time (min) were optimized using Box-Behnken design (BBD) to obtain the highest extraction efficiency. The optimal conditions were the use of 1:30 material solvent ratio with 70:30 mixture of methanol:water for 10 min duration. The optimized microwave-assisted extraction yielded 9.4 mg/g of lyoniside content in comparison to reflux extraction under identical conditions which yielded 4.2 mg/g of lyoniside content. Under optimum conditions, the experimental values agreed closely with the predicted values. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated a high goodness-of-fit model and the success of the RSM method for optimizing lyoniside extraction from the bark of S. asoca. All the three variables significantly affected the lyoniside content. Increased polarity of solvent medium enhances the lyoniside yield. The present study shows the applicability of microwave-assisted extraction in extraction of lyoniside from S. asoca bark.

  14. Efficiency of Methanolic Extract of Gamma Irradiated Parsley as Antioxidant and Antimicrobial

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Abdeldaiem, M.H.; Ali, H.G.M.; Mohamed, E.A.

    2011-01-01

    Antioxidant and antimicrobial activities of methanolic extract of gamma irradiated parsley (Petroselinum crispum) at dose levels of 3, 6 and 9 kGy were determined, and the composition of methanolic extracts of non-irradiated and irradiated parsley were identified by GC-MS. The results showed that the methanolic extracts of non-irradiated and irradiated parsley had higher contents of total phenolic compounds and exhibited antioxidant of DPPH radical scavenging activity. Based on these results, the methanolic extracts of irradiated parsley at 6 kGy were selected for their higher activity as antioxidant as compared to other samples owing to their high content of total phenolic compounds and scavenging effect on DPPH radical. The analysis by GC-MS led to the identification of 23 and 24 components for non-irradiated and irradiated samples at 6 kGy, respectively. The main compound of the methanolic extract of non-irradiated parsley was acetic acid ethyl ester (28.5%). Meanwhile, the main compound of irradiated parsley at 6 kGy methanolic extract was phenol,2-methoxy-3(27.3 %). The antibacterial effect of methanolic extract of non-irradiated and irradiated parsley and the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) values were assayed. The methanolic extract of irradiated parsley (6 kGy) was generally more effective against tested bacterial strains than the extract of non-irradiated parsley. The study exhibited that gram- negative bacteria under study were more sensitive than gram-positive one. The MIC values of tested bacteria of the methanolic extract of irradiated parsley (6 kGy) were in the range 4 to 20 μg/ml. It could be concluded that the methanolic extract of parsley can be used in food industry as natural food additive and in particular that extract from irradiated parsley at 6 kGy

  15. Determination of the extraction efficiency for {sup 233}U source α-recoil ions from the MLL buffer-gas stopping cell

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Wense, Lars v.d.; Seiferle, Benedict; Thirolf, Peter G. [Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen, Garching (Germany); Laatiaoui, Mustapha [GSI Helmholtzzentrum fuer Schwerionenforschung GmbH, Darmstadt (Germany); Helmholtz Institut Mainz, Mainz (Germany)

    2015-03-01

    Following the α decay of {sup 233}U, {sup 229}Th recoil ions are shown to be extracted in a significant amount from the MLL buffer-gas stopping cell. The produced recoil ions and subsequent daughter nuclei are mass purified with the help of a customized quadrupole mass spectrometer. The combined extraction and mass purification efficiency for {sup 229}Th{sup 3+} is determined via MCP-based measurements and via the direct detection of the {sup 229}Th α decay. A large value of (10±2)% for the combined extraction and mass purification efficiency of {sup 229}Th{sup 3+} is obtained at a mass resolution of about 1u/e. In addition to {sup 229}Th, also other α-recoil ions of the {sup 233,} {sup 232}U decay chains are addressed. (orig.)

  16. High-Resolution Tracking Asymmetric Lithium Insertion and Extraction and Local Structure Ordering in SnS2.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gao, Peng; Wang, Liping; Zhang, Yu-Yang; Huang, Yuan; Liao, Lei; Sutter, Peter; Liu, Kaihui; Yu, Dapeng; Wang, En-Ge

    2016-09-14

    In the rechargeable lithium ion batteries, the rate capability and energy efficiency are largely governed by the lithium ion transport dynamics and phase transition pathways in electrodes. Real-time and atomic-scale tracking of fully reversible lithium insertion and extraction processes in electrodes, which would ultimately lead to mechanistic understanding of how the electrodes function and why they fail, is highly desirable but very challenging. Here, we track lithium insertion and extraction in the van der Waals interactions dominated SnS2 by in situ high-resolution TEM method. We find that the lithium insertion occurs via a fast two-phase reaction to form expanded and defective LiSnS2, while the lithium extraction initially involves heterogeneous nucleation of intermediate superstructure Li0.5SnS2 domains with a 1-4 nm size. Density functional theory calculations indicate that the Li0.5SnS2 is kinetically favored and structurally stable. The asymmetric reaction pathways may supply enlightening insights into the mechanistic understanding of the underlying electrochemistry in the layered electrode materials and also suggest possible alternatives to the accepted explanation of the origins of voltage hysteresis in the intercalation electrode materials.

  17. Magnetic Partitioning Nanofluid for Rare Earth Extraction from Geothermal Fluids

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    McGrail, Bernard P. [Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States); Thallapally, Praveen K. [Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States); Liu, Jian [Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States); Nune, Satish K. [Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)

    2017-08-21

    Rare earth metals are critical materials in a wide variety of applications in generating and storing renewable energy and in designing more energy efficient devices. Extracting rare earth metals from geothermal brines is a very challenging problem due to the low concentrations of these elements and engineering challenges with traditional chemical separations methods involving packed sorbent beds or membranes that would impede large volumetric flow rates of geothermal fluids transitioning through the plant. We are demonstrating a simple and highly cost-effective nanofluid-based method for extracting rare earth metals from geothermal brines. Core-shell composite nanoparticles are produced that contain a magnetic iron oxide core surrounded by a shell made of silica or metal-organic framework (MOF) sorbent functionalized with chelating ligands selective for the rare earth elements. By introducing the nanoparticles at low concentration (≈0.05 wt%) into the geothermal brine after it passes through the plant heat exchanger, the brine is exposed to a very high concentration of chelating sites on the nanoparticles without need to pass through a large and costly traditional packed bed or membrane system where pressure drop and parasitic pumping power losses are significant issues. Instead, after a short residence time flowing with the brine, the particles are effectively separated out with an electromagnet and standard extraction methods are then applied to strip the rare earth metals from the nanoparticles, which are then recycled back to the geothermal plant. Recovery efficiency for the rare earths at ppm level has now been measured for both silica and MOF sorbents functionalized with a variety of chelating ligands. A detailed preliminary techno-economic performance analysis of extraction systems using both sorbents showed potential to generate a promising internal rate of return (IRR) up to 20%.

  18. Efficient evaluation of influence coefficients in three-dimensional extended boundary-node method for potential problems

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Itoh, Taku; Saitoh, Ayumu; Kamitani, Atsushi; Nakamura, Hiroaki

    2011-01-01

    For the purpose of speed-up of the three-dimensional eXtended Boundary-Node Method (X-BNM), an efficient algorithm for evaluating influence coefficients has been developed. The algorithm can be easily implemented into the X-BNM without using any integration cells. By applying the resulting X-BNM to the Laplace problem, the performance of the algorithm is numerically investigated. The numerical experiments show that, by using the algorithm, computational costs for evaluating influence coefficients in the X-BNM are reduced considerably. Especially for a large-sized problem, the algorithm is efficiently performed, and the computational costs of the X-BNM are close to those of the Boundary-Element Method (BEM). In addition, for the problem, the X-BNM shows almost the same accuracy as that of the BEM. (author)

  19. High Efficiency Room Air Conditioner

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Bansal, Pradeep [Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)

    2015-01-01

    This project was undertaken as a CRADA project between UT-Battelle and Geberal Electric Company and was funded by Department of Energy to design and develop of a high efficiency room air conditioner. A number of novel elements were investigated to improve the energy efficiency of a state-of-the-art WAC with base capacity of 10,000 BTU/h. One of the major modifications was made by downgrading its capacity from 10,000 BTU/hr to 8,000 BTU/hr by replacing the original compressor with a lower capacity (8,000 BTU/hr) but high efficiency compressor having an EER of 9.7 as compared with 9.3 of the original compressor. However, all heat exchangers from the original unit were retained to provide higher EER. The other subsequent major modifications included- (i) the AC fan motor was replaced by a brushless high efficiency ECM motor along with its fan housing, (ii) the capillary tube was replaced with a needle valve to better control the refrigerant flow and refrigerant set points, and (iii) the unit was tested with a drop-in environmentally friendly binary mixture of R32 (90% molar concentration)/R125 (10% molar concentration). The WAC was tested in the environmental chambers at ORNL as per the design rating conditions of AHAM/ASHRAE (Outdoor- 95F and 40%RH, Indoor- 80F, 51.5%RH). All these modifications resulted in enhancing the EER of the WAC by up to 25%.

  20. Highly efficient photonic nanowire single-photon sources for quantum information applications

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Gregersen, Niels; Claudon, J.; Munsch, M.

    2013-01-01

    to a collection efficiency of only 1-2 %, and efficient light extraction thus poses a major challenge in SPS engineering. Initial efforts to improve the efficiency have exploited cavity quantum electrodynamics (cQED) to efficiently couple the emitted photons to the optical cavity mode. An alternative approach......Within the emerging field of optical quantum information processing, the current challenge is to construct the basic building blocks for the quantum computing and communication systems. A key component is the singlephoton source (SPS) capable of emitting single photons on demand. Ideally, the SPS...... must feature near-unity efficiency, where the efficiency is defined as the number of detected photons per trigger, the probability g(2)(τ=0) of multi-photon emission events should be 0 and the emitted photons are required to be indistinguishable. An optically or electrically triggered quantum light...

  1. Automated Extraction Of Associations Between Methylated Genes and Diseases From Biomedical Literature

    KAUST Repository

    Bin Res, Arwa A.

    2012-12-01

    Associations between methylated genes and diseases have been investigated in several studies, and it is critical to have such information available for better understanding of diseases and clinical decisions. However, such information is scattered in a large number of electronic publications and it is difficult to manually search for it. Therefore, the goal of the project is to develop a machine learning model that can efficiently extract such information. Twelve machine learning algorithms were applied and compared in application to this problem based on three approaches that involve: document-term frequency matrices, position weight matrices, and a hybrid approach that uses the combination of the previous two. The best results we obtained by the hybrid approach with a random forest model that, in a 10-fold cross-validation, achieved F-score and accuracy of nearly 85% and 84%, respectively. On a completely separate testing set, F-score and accuracy of 89% and 88%, respectively, were obtained. Based on this model, we developed a tool that automates extraction of associations between methylated genes and diseases from electronic text. Our study contributed an efficient method for extracting specific types of associations from free text and the methodology developed here can be extended to other similar association extraction problems.

  2. Efficient solvent extraction of antioxidant-rich extract from a tropical diatom, Chaetoceros calcitrans (Paulsen Takano 1968

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Su Chern Foo

    2015-10-01

    Conclusions: Methanol was the recommended solvent for the production of antioxidant rich extract from C. calcitrans. Both carotenoids and phenolic acids were found to be positively correlated to the antioxidant capacities of C. calcitrans. Lead bioactives confirmed by subsequent high performance liquid chromatography studies were fucoxanthin, gallic acid and protocatechuic acid.

  3. Rare Earth Extraction from NdFeB Magnet Using a Closed-Loop Acid Process.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kitagawa, Jiro; Uemura, Ryohei

    2017-08-14

    There is considerable interest in extraction of rare earth elements from NdFeB magnets to enable recycling of these elements. In practical extraction methods using wet processes, the acid waste solution discharge is a problem that must be resolved to reduce the environmental impact of the process. Here, we present an encouraging demonstration of rare earth element extraction from a NdFeB magnet using a closed-loop hydrochloric acid (HCl)-based process. The extraction method is based on corrosion of the magnet in a pretreatment stage and a subsequent ionic liquid technique for Fe extraction from the HCl solution. The rare earth elements are then precipitated using oxalic acid. Triple extraction has been conducted and the recovery ratio of the rare earth elements from the solution is approximately 50% for each extraction process, as compared to almost 100% recovery when using a one-shot extraction process without the ionic liquid but with sufficient oxalic acid. Despite its reduced extraction efficiency, the proposed method with its small number of procedures at almost room temperature is still highly advantageous in terms of both cost and environmental friendliness. This study represents an initial step towards realization of a closed-loop acid process for recycling of rare earth elements.

  4. FacetGist: Collective Extraction of Document Facets in Large Technical Corpora.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Siddiqui, Tarique; Ren, Xiang; Parameswaran, Aditya; Han, Jiawei

    2016-10-01

    Given the large volume of technical documents available, it is crucial to automatically organize and categorize these documents to be able to understand and extract value from them. Towards this end, we introduce a new research problem called Facet Extraction. Given a collection of technical documents, the goal of Facet Extraction is to automatically label each document with a set of concepts for the key facets ( e.g. , application, technique, evaluation metrics, and dataset) that people may be interested in. Facet Extraction has numerous applications, including document summarization, literature search, patent search and business intelligence. The major challenge in performing Facet Extraction arises from multiple sources: concept extraction, concept to facet matching, and facet disambiguation. To tackle these challenges, we develop FacetGist, a framework for facet extraction. Facet Extraction involves constructing a graph-based heterogeneous network to capture information available across multiple local sentence-level features, as well as global context features. We then formulate a joint optimization problem, and propose an efficient algorithm for graph-based label propagation to estimate the facet of each concept mention. Experimental results on technical corpora from two domains demonstrate that Facet Extraction can lead to an improvement of over 25% in both precision and recall over competing schemes.

  5. Efficient Output Solution for Nonlinear Stochastic Optimal Control Problem with Model-Reality Differences

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sie Long Kek

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available A computational approach is proposed for solving the discrete time nonlinear stochastic optimal control problem. Our aim is to obtain the optimal output solution of the original optimal control problem through solving the simplified model-based optimal control problem iteratively. In our approach, the adjusted parameters are introduced into the model used such that the differences between the real system and the model used can be computed. Particularly, system optimization and parameter estimation are integrated interactively. On the other hand, the output is measured from the real plant and is fed back into the parameter estimation problem to establish a matching scheme. During the calculation procedure, the iterative solution is updated in order to approximate the true optimal solution of the original optimal control problem despite model-reality differences. For illustration, a wastewater treatment problem is studied and the results show the efficiency of the approach proposed.

  6. Extraction of Plutonium From Spiked INEEL Soil Samples Using the Ligand-Assisted Supercritical Fluid Extraction (LA-SFE) Technique

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Fox, R.V.; Mincher, B.J.; Holmes, R.G.G.

    1999-01-01

    In order to investigate the effectiveness of ligand-assisted supercritical fluid extraction for the removal of transuranic contaminations from soils an Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) silty-clay soil sample was obtained from near the Radioactive Waste Management Complex area and subjected to three different chemical preparations before being spiked with plutonium. The spiked INEEL soil samples were subjected to a sequential aqueous extraction procedure to determine radionuclide portioning in each sample. Results from those extractions demonstrate that plutonium consistently partitioned into the residual fraction across all three INEEL soil preparations whereas americium partitioned 73% into the iron/manganese fraction for soil preparation A, with the balance partitioning into the residual fraction. Plutonium and americium were extracted from the INEEL soil samples using a ligand-assisted supercritical fluid extraction technique. Initial supercritical fluid extraction runs produced plutonium extraction technique. Initial supercritical fluid extraction runs produced plutonium extraction efficiencies ranging from 14% to 19%. After a second round wherein the initial extraction parameters were changed, the plutonium extraction efficiencies increased to 60% and as high as 80% with the americium level in the post-extracted soil samples dropping near to the detection limits. The third round of experiments are currently underway. These results demonstrate that the ligand-assisted supercritical fluid extraction technique can effectively extract plutonium from the spiked INEEL soil preparations

  7. Microwave-Assisted Extraction and Purification of Arctiin and Arctigenin from Fructus Arctii by High-Speed Countercurrent Chromatography.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lü, Haitao; Sun, Zhaoyun; Shan, Hu; Song, Jiying

    2016-03-01

    An efficient method for the rapid extraction, separation and purification of bioactive lignans, arctiin and arctigenin, from Fructus arctii by microwave-assisted extraction coupled with high-speed countercurrent chromatography was developed. The optimal extraction conditions of arctiin and arctigenin were evaluated by orthogonal array. Arctigenin could be converted from arctiin by hydrochloric acid hydrolysis. The separations were performed at a preparative scale with two-phase solvents composed of ethyl acetate-ethanol-water (5 : 1 : 5, v/v/v) for arctiin, and n-hexane-ethyl acetate-ethanol-water (4 : 4 : 3 : 4, v/v/v/v) for arctigenin. From 500 mg of crude extract sample, 122.3 mg of arctiin and 45.7 mg of arctigenin were obtained with the purity of 98.46 and 96.57%, and the recovery of 94.3 and 81.6%, respectively. Their structures were determined by comparison with the high-performance liquid chromatography retention time of standard substance as well as UV, FT-IR, electrospray ion source (ESI)-MS, (1)H-NMR and (13)C-NMR spectrum. According to the antioxidant activity assay, arctigenin had stronger 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl free radicals scavenging activity. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  8. Addition of urea and thiourea to electrophoresis sample buffer improves efficiency of protein extraction from TCA/acetone-treated smooth muscle tissues for phos-tag SDS-PAGE.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Takeya, Kosuke; Kaneko, Toshiyuki; Miyazu, Motoi; Takai, Akira

    2018-01-01

    Phosphorylation analysis by using phos-tag technique has been reported to be suitable for highly sensitive quantification of smooth muscle myosin regulatory light chain (LC 20 ) phosphorylation. However, there is another factor that will affect the sensitivity of phosphorylation analysis, that is, protein extraction. Here, we optimized the conditions for total protein extraction out of trichloroacetic acid (TCA)-fixed tissues. Standard SDS sample buffer extracted less LC 20 , actin and myosin phosphatase targeting subunit 1 (MYPT1) from TCA/acetone treated ciliary muscle strips. On the other hand, sample buffer containing urea and thiourea in addition to lithium dodecyl sulfate (LDS) or SDS extracted those proteins more efficiently, and thus increased the detection sensitivity up to 4-5 fold. Phos-tag SDS-PAGE separated dephosphorylated and phosphorylated LC 20 s extracted in LDS/urea/thiourea sample buffer to the same extent as those in standard SDS buffer. We have concluded that LDS (or SDS) /urea/thiourea sample buffer is suitable for highly sensitive phosphorylation analysis in smooth muscle, especially when it is treated with TCA/acetone. © 2017 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

  9. RFID Cryptographic Protocol Based on Cyclic Redundancy Check for High Efficiency

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nian Liu

    2014-04-01

    Full Text Available In this paper, RFID encryption protocol is proposed based on the security problems in wireless signal channel. In order to solve the privacy issues of electronic tags, the most commonly way is to improve algorithms based on Hash function. However, there are some problems that can only play roles in some specific domains. Due to the limitations in various kinds of algorithms, in this paper we put forward a new kind of agreement. When it is required to locate target labels accurately and rapidly in a movement environment, using this agreement can achieve high efficiency through combining the Hash function, the two division search algorithm and CRC check. The results show that this algorithm can accurately identify the tags with merits of low cost, execution rate and anti-attack ability etc.

  10. An Efficient Algorithm for the Maximum Distance Problem

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gabrielle Assunta Grün

    2001-12-01

    Full Text Available Efficient algorithms for temporal reasoning are essential in knowledge-based systems. This is central in many areas of Artificial Intelligence including scheduling, planning, plan recognition, and natural language understanding. As such, scalability is a crucial consideration in temporal reasoning. While reasoning in the interval algebra is NP-complete, reasoning in the less expressive point algebra is tractable. In this paper, we explore an extension to the work of Gerevini and Schubert which is based on the point algebra. In their seminal framework, temporal relations are expressed as a directed acyclic graph partitioned into chains and supported by a metagraph data structure, where time points or events are represented by vertices, and directed edges are labelled with < or ≤. They are interested in fast algorithms for determining the strongest relation between two events. They begin by developing fast algorithms for the case where all points lie on a chain. In this paper, we are interested in a generalization of this, namely we consider the problem of finding the maximum ``distance'' between two vertices in a chain ; this problem arises in real world applications such as in process control and crew scheduling. We describe an O(n time preprocessing algorithm for the maximum distance problem on chains. It allows queries for the maximum number of < edges between two vertices to be answered in O(1 time. This matches the performance of the algorithm of Gerevini and Schubert for determining the strongest relation holding between two vertices in a chain.

  11. Enhanced Charge Extraction of Li-Doped TiO₂ for Efficient Thermal-Evaporated Sb₂S₃ Thin Film Solar Cells.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lan, Chunfeng; Luo, Jingting; Lan, Huabin; Fan, Bo; Peng, Huanxin; Zhao, Jun; Sun, Huibin; Zheng, Zhuanghao; Liang, Guangxing; Fan, Ping

    2018-02-28

    We provided a new method to improve the efficiency of Sb₂S₃ thin film solar cells. The TiO₂ electron transport layers were doped by lithium to improve their charge extraction properties for the thermal-evaporated Sb₂S₃ solar cells. The Mott-Schottky curves suggested a change of energy band and faster charge transport in the Li-doped TiO₂ films. Compared with the undoped TiO₂, Li-doped mesoporous TiO₂ dramatically improved the photo-voltaic performance of the thermal-evaporated Sb₂S₃ thin film solar cells, with the average power conversion efficiency ( PCE ) increasing from 1.79% to 4.03%, as well as the improved open-voltage ( V oc ), short-circuit current ( J sc ) and fill factors. The best device based on Li-doped TiO₂ achieved a power conversion efficiency up to 4.42% as well as a V oc of 0.645 V, which are the highest values among the reported thermal-evaporated Sb₂S₃ solar cells. This study showed that Li-doping on TiO₂ can effectively enhance the charge extraction properties of electron transport layers, offering a new strategy to improve the efficiency of Sb₂S₃-based solar cells.

  12. Shilajit: A panacea for high-altitude problems.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Meena, Harsahay; Pandey, H K; Arya, M C; Ahmed, Zakwan

    2010-01-01

    High altitude problems like hypoxia, acute mountain sickness, high altitude cerebral edema, pulmonary edema, insomnia, tiredness, lethargy, lack of appetite, body pain, dementia, and depression may occur when a person or a soldier residing in a lower altitude ascends to high-altitude areas. These problems arise due to low atmospheric pressure, severe cold, high intensity of solar radiation, high wind velocity, and very high fluctuation of day and night temperatures in these regions. These problems may escalate rapidly and may sometimes become life-threatening. Shilajit is a herbomineral drug which is pale-brown to blackish-brown, is composed of a gummy exudate that oozes from the rocks of the Himalayas in the summer months. It contains humus, organic plant materials, and fulvic acid as the main carrier molecules. It actively takes part in the transportation of nutrients into deep tissues and helps to overcome tiredness, lethargy, and chronic fatigue. Shilajit improves the ability to handle high altitudinal stresses and stimulates the immune system. Thus, Shilajit can be given as a supplement to people ascending to high-altitude areas so that it can act as a "health rejuvenator" and help to overcome high-altitude related problems.

  13. High-Q Bandpass Comb Filter for Mains Interference Extraction

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Neycheva T.

    2009-12-01

    Full Text Available This paper presents a simple digital high-Q bandpass comb filter for power-line (PL or other periodical interference extraction. The filter concept relies on a correlated signal average resulting in alternating constructive and destructive spectrum interference i.e. the so-called comb frequency response. The presented filter is evaluated by Matlab simulations with real ECG signal contaminated with low amplitude PL interference. The made simulations show that this filter accurately extract the PL interference. It has high-Q notches only at PL odd harmonics and is appropriate for extraction of any kind of odd harmonic interference including rectangular shape. The filter is suitable for real-time operation with popular low-cost microcontrollers.

  14. Buddleja officinalis Maximowicz extract inhibits lipid accumulation on adipocyte differentiation in 3T3-L1 cells and high-fat mice.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Roh, Changhyun; Park, Min-Kyoung; Shin, Hee-June; Jung, Uhee; Kim, Jin-Kyu

    2012-07-23

    Obesity is a global health problem. It is also known to be a risk factor for the development of metabolic disorders, type 2 diabetes, systemic hypertension, cardiovascular disease, dyslipidemia, and atherosclerosis. In this study, we elucidated that Buddleja officinalis Maximowicz extract significantly inhibited lipid accumulation during 3T3-L1 adipocyte differentiation. Furthermore, Buddleja officinalis Maximowicz extract reduced the body weight gain induced through feeding a high-fat diet to C57BL/6 mice. The treatment of Buddleja officinalis Maximowicz extract significantly reduced the adipose tissue weight to 2.7/100 g of body weight in high-fat mice. When their adipose tissue morphology was investigated for histochemical staining, the distribution of cell size in the high-fat diet groups was hypertrophied compared with those from Buddleja officinalis Maximowicz extract-treated mice. In addition, in Buddleja officinalis Maximowicz extract-treated mice, a significant reduction of serum triglyceride and T-cholesterol was observed at to 21% and 17%, respectively. The discovery of bioactive compounds from diet or dietary supplementation is one of possible ways to control obesity and to prevent or reduce the risks of various obesity-related diseases. These results support that Buddleja officinalis Maximowicz extract is expected to create the therapeutic interest with respect to the treatment of obesity.

  15. Isolation and Purification of Unstable Iridoid Glucosides from Traditional Chinese Medicine by Preparative High Performance Liquid Chromatography Coupled with Solid-phase Extraction

    Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

    LI Cun-man; XIAO Yuan-sheng; XUE Xing-ya; FENG Jia-tao; ZHANG Xiu-li; LIANG Xin-miao

    2011-01-01

    An efficient preparative method was successfully developed for isolation and purification of unstable components from medicinal plant extracts, using a combined method of preparative high performance liquid chro matography(HPLC) and solid-phase extraction(SPE). The aim of this study was to obtain an effective method with high preparative efficiency and importantly to avoid the transformation of unstable compounds. The preparative HPLC system was based on an LC/MS controlled four-channel autopurification system. The SPE method was per formed with a C1s packing material to trap the target compounds and to remove the acidic additive derived from the mobile phase. Using this method, the unstable iridoid glucosides(IGs) as model compounds were successfully iso lated and purified from the extract of Hedyotis diffusa Willd. Six IGs(including one new minor IG) and one nucleo tide compound were simultaneously obtained, each with a purity of >91% as determined by HPLC. The structures of the isolated compounds were identified by UPLC/Q-TOF MS, UV, ID and/or 2D NMR. It was demonstrated that the combination of preparative HPLC with SPE is a versatile tool for preparative purification of unstable compounds from complex natural products.

  16. High-efficiency resonant coupled wireless power transfer via tunable impedance matching

    Science.gov (United States)

    Anowar, Tanbir Ibne; Barman, Surajit Das; Wasif Reza, Ahmed; Kumar, Narendra

    2017-10-01

    For magnetic resonant coupled wireless power transfer (WPT), the axial movement of near-field coupled coils adversely degrades the power transfer efficiency (PTE) of the system and often creates sub-resonance. This paper presents a tunable impedance matching technique based on optimum coupling tuning to enhance the efficiency of resonant coupled WPT system. The optimum power transfer model is analysed from equivalent circuit model via reflected load principle, and the adequate matching are achieved through the optimum tuning of coupling coefficients at both the transmitting and receiving end of the system. Both simulations and experiments are performed to evaluate the theoretical model of the proposed matching technique, and results in a PTE over 80% at close coil proximity without shifting the original resonant frequency. Compared to the fixed coupled WPT, the extracted efficiency shows 15.1% and 19.9% improvements at the centre-to-centre misalignment of 10 and 70 cm, respectively. Applying this technique, the extracted S21 parameter shows more than 10 dB improvements at both strong and weak couplings. Through the developed model, the optimum coupling tuning also significantly improves the performance over matching techniques using frequency tracking and tunable matching circuits.

  17. Mesoporous Three-Dimensional Graphene Networks for Highly Efficient Solar Desalination under 1 sun Illumination.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, Kwanghyun; Yu, Sunyoung; An, Cheolwon; Kim, Sung-Wook; Jang, Ji-Hyun

    2018-05-09

    Solar desalination via thermal evaporation of seawater is one of the most promising technologies for addressing the serious problem of global water scarcity because it does not require additional supporting energy other than infinite solar energy for generating clean water. However, low efficiency and a large amount of heat loss are considered critical limitations of solar desalination technology. The combination of mesoporous three-dimensional graphene networks (3DGNs) with a high solar absorption property and water-transporting wood pieces with a thermal insulation property has exhibited greatly enhanced solar-to-vapor conversion efficiency. 3DGN deposited on a wood piece provides an outstanding value of solar-to-vapor conversion efficiency, about 91.8%, under 1 sun illumination and excellent desalination efficiency of 5 orders salinity decrement. The mass-producible 3DGN enriched with many mesopores efficiently releases the vapors from an enormous area of the surface by heat localization on the top surface of the wood piece. Because the efficient solar desalination device made by 3DGN on the wood piece is highly scalable and inexpensive, it could serve as one of the main sources for the worldwide supply of purified water achieved via earth-abundant materials without an extra supporting energy source.

  18. A simple and efficient method for the extraction and separation of menaquinone homologs from wet biomass of Flavobacterium.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wei, Hongfei; Zhao, Genhai; Liu, Hui; Wang, Han; Ni, Wenfeng; Wang, Peng; Zheng, Zhiming

    2018-01-01

    Menaquinone homologs (MK-n), that is, MK-4, MK-5, and MK-6, can be produced by the fermentation of Flavobacterium. In this study, we proposed a simple and efficient method for the extraction of menaquinones from wet cells without the process of drying the biomass. Meanwhile, a rapid and effective solution for the separation of menaquinone homologs was developed using a single organic solvent, which was conducive to the recovery of the solvent. The results showed that the highest yield was obtained with pretreatment using absolute ethanol at a ratio of 6:1 (v/m) for 30 min and then two extractions of 30 min each using methanol at a ratio of 6:1 (v/m). The recovery efficiency of the menaquinones reached to 102.8% compared to the positive control. The menaquinone homologs were effectively separated using methanol as eluent at a flow rate of 0.52 mL/min by a glass reverse-phase C18 silica gel column with a height-to-diameter ratio of 5.5:1. The recovery of menaquinones achieved was 99.6%. In conclusion, the methods for extraction and separation of menaquinone homologs from wet Flavobacterium cells were simple and efficient, which makes them suitable not only on a laboratory scale but also for application on a large scale.

  19. Hexagonal boron nitride neutron detectors with high detection efficiencies

    Science.gov (United States)

    Maity, A.; Grenadier, S. J.; Li, J.; Lin, J. Y.; Jiang, H. X.

    2018-01-01

    Neutron detectors fabricated from 10B enriched hexagonal boron nitride (h-10BN or h-BN) epilayers have demonstrated the highest thermal neutron detection efficiency among solid-state neutron detectors to date at about 53%. In this work, photoconductive-like vertical detectors with a detection area of 1 × 1 mm2 were fabricated from 50 μm thick free-standing h-BN epilayers using Ni/Au and Ti/Al bilayers as ohmic contacts. Leakage currents, mobility-lifetime (μτ) products under UV photoexcitation, and neutron detection efficiencies have been measured for a total of 16 different device configurations. The results have unambiguously identified that detectors incorporating the Ni/Au bilayer on both surfaces as ohmic contacts and using the negatively biased top surface for neutron irradiation are the most desired device configurations. It was noted that high growth temperatures of h-10BN epilayers on sapphire substrates tend to yield a higher concentration of oxygen impurities near the bottom surface, leading to a better device performance by the chosen top surface for irradiation than by the bottom. Preferential scattering of oxygen donors tends to reduce the mobility of holes more than that of electrons, making the biasing scheme with the ability of rapidly extracting holes at the irradiated surface while leaving the electrons to travel a large average distance inside the detector at a preferred choice. When measured against a calibrated 6LiF filled micro-structured semiconductor neutron detector, it was shown that the optimized configuration has pushed the detection efficiency of h-BN neutron detectors to 58%. These detailed studies also provided a better understanding of growth-mediated impurities in h-BN epilayers and their effects on the charge collection and neutron detection efficiencies.

  20. 40 CFR 761.71 - High efficiency boilers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-07-01

    ... 40 Protection of Environment 30 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false High efficiency boilers. 761.71... PROHIBITIONS Storage and Disposal § 761.71 High efficiency boilers. (a) To burn mineral oil dielectric fluid containing a PCB concentration of ≥50 ppm, but boiler shall comply with the following...

  1. Development and validation of an efficient ultrasound assisted extraction of phenolic compounds from flax (Linum usitatissimum L.) seeds.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Corbin, Cyrielle; Fidel, Thibaud; Leclerc, Emilie A; Barakzoy, Esmatullah; Sagot, Nadine; Falguiéres, Annie; Renouard, Sullivan; Blondeau, Jean-Philippe; Ferroud, Clotilde; Doussot, Joël; Lainé, Eric; Hano, Christophe

    2015-09-01

    Flaxseed accumulates in its seedcoat a macromolecular complex composed of lignan (secoisolariciresinol diglucoside, SDG), flavonol (herbacetin diglucoside, HDG) and hydroxycinnamic acids (p-couramic, caffeic and ferulic acid glucosides). Their antioxidant and/or cancer chemopreventive properties support their interest in human health and therefore, the demand for their extraction. In the present study, ultrasound-assisted extraction (UAE) of flaxseed phenolic compounds was investigated. Scanning Electron Microscopy imaging and histochemical analysis revealed the deep alteration of the seedcoat ultrastructure and the release of the mucilage following ultrasound treatment. Therefore, this method was found to be very efficient for the reduction of mucilage entrapment of flaxseed phenolics. The optimal conditions for UAE phenolic compounds extraction from flaxseeds were found to be: water as solvent supplemented with 0.2N of sodium hydroxide for alkaline hydrolysis of the SDG-HMG complex, an extraction time of 60 min at a temperature of 25°C and an ultrasound frequency of 30 kHz. Under these optimized and validated conditions, highest yields of SDG, HDG and hydroxycinnamic acid glucosides were detected in comparison to other published methods. Therefore, the procedure presented herein is a valuable method for efficient extraction and quantification of the main flaxseed phenolics. Moreover, this UAE is of particular interest within the context of green chemistry in terms of reducing energy consumption and valuation of flaxseed cakes as by-products resulting from the production of flax oil. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  2. A Micro grid design for a kind of household energy efficiency management system based on high permeability

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Siwei; Li, Jun; Liu, Zhuochu; Wang, Min; Yue, Liang

    2017-05-01

    After the access of household distributed photovoltaic, conditions of high permeability generally occur, which cut off the connection between distributed power supply and major network rapidly and use energy storage device to realize electrical energy storage. The above operations cannot be adequate for the power grid health after distributed power supply access any more from the perspective of economy and rationality. This paper uses the integration between device and device, integration between device and system and integration between system and system of household microgrid and household energy efficiency management, to design household microgrid building program and operation strategy containing household energy efficiency management, to achieve efficient integration of household energy efficiency management and household microgrid, to effectively solve problems of high permeability of household distributed power supply and so on.

  3. Unconventional, High-Efficiency Propulsors

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Andersen, Poul

    1996-01-01

    The development of ship propellers has generally been characterized by search for propellers with as high efficiency as possible and at the same time low noise and vibration levels and little or no cavitation. This search has lead to unconventional propulsors, like vane-wheel propulsors, contra-r...

  4. Photoelectron extraction efficiency from a CsI photocathode and THGEM operation in He−CF4 and He−CH4 mixtures

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Coimbra, A.E.C.; Santos, J.M.F. dos; Israelashvili, I.

    2016-01-01

    This work presents the experimental measurements obtained for UV-induced photo-electron extraction efficiency from a CsI photocathode into He with CF 4 and CH 4 gas mixtures. A 1000Å CsI photocathode was deposited on a gold plated THGEM for photo-electron conversion. Charge-gain measurements were obtained with a Single-THGEM detector operating in these gas mixtures using a continuous UV lamp for the extraction of photo-electrons. Charge-gains in excess of 10 5 were obtained for gas mixtures containing percentages of quencher higher than 20% while photo-electron extraction efficiency achieved ∼ 50% for He/CF 4 and ∼ 30% for He/CH 4 . Single photon electron measurements were also performed to assess the maximal gains reached in this regime. A discussion for future GPM cryogenic applications is presented

  5. Turbocharged molecular discovery of OLED emitters: from high-throughput quantum simulation to highly efficient TADF devices

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gómez-Bombarelli, Rafael; Aguilera-Iparraguirre, Jorge; Hirzel, Timothy D.; Ha, Dong-Gwang; Einzinger, Markus; Wu, Tony; Baldo, Marc A.; Aspuru-Guzik, Alán.

    2016-09-01

    Discovering new OLED emitters requires many experiments to synthesize candidates and test performance in devices. Large scale computer simulation can greatly speed this search process but the problem remains challenging enough that brute force application of massive computing power is not enough to successfully identify novel structures. We report a successful High Throughput Virtual Screening study that leveraged a range of methods to optimize the search process. The generation of candidate structures was constrained to contain combinatorial explosion. Simulations were tuned to the specific problem and calibrated with experimental results. Experimentalists and theorists actively collaborated such that experimental feedback was regularly utilized to update and shape the computational search. Supervised machine learning methods prioritized candidate structures prior to quantum chemistry simulation to prevent wasting compute on likely poor performers. With this combination of techniques, each multiplying the strength of the search, this effort managed to navigate an area of molecular space and identify hundreds of promising OLED candidate structures. An experimentally validated selection of this set shows emitters with external quantum efficiencies as high as 22%.

  6. Research & Implementation of AC - DC Converter with High Power Factor & High Efficiency

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hsiou-Hsian Nien

    2014-05-01

    Full Text Available In this paper, we design and develop a high power factor, high efficiency two-stage AC - DC power converter. This paper proposes a two-stage AC - DC power converter. The first stage is boost active power factor correction circuit. The latter stage is near constant frequency LLC resonant converter. In addition to traditional LLC high efficiency advantages, light-load conversion efficiency of this power converter can be improved. And it possesses high power factor and near constant frequency operating characteristics, can significantly reduce the electromagnetic interference. This paper first discusses the main structure and control manner of power factor correction circuit. And then by the LLC resonant converter equivalent model proceed to circuit analysis to determine the important parameters of the converter circuit elements. Then design a variable frequency resonant tank. The resonant frequency can change automatically on the basis of the load to reach near constant frequency operation and a purpose of high efficiency. Finally, actually design and produce an AC – DC power converter with output of 190W to verify the characteristics and feasibility of this converter. The experimental results show that in a very light load (9.5 W the efficiency is as high as 81%, the highest efficiency of 88% (90 W. Full load efficiency is 87%. At 19 W ~ 190 W power changes, the operating frequency change is only 0.4 kHz (AC 110 V and 0.3 kHz (AC 220 V.

  7. Highly efficient solutions for smart and bulk power transmission of 'green energy'

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Breuer, Wilfried; Retzmann, Dietmar; Uecker, Karl

    2010-09-15

    Environmental constraints, loss minimization and CO2 reduction will play an increasingly more important role in future. Security and sustainability of power supply as well as economic efficiency needs application of advanced technologies. Innovative solutions with HVDC (High Voltage Direct Current) and FACTS (Flexible AC Transmission Systems) have the potential to cope with these challenges. They provide the features which are necessary to avoid technical problems in power systems, they increase the transmission capacity and system stability very efficiently and help prevent cascading outages. Furthermore, they are essential for Grid Access of Renewable Energy Sources such as Hydro, Wind and Solar-Energy.

  8. Use of ultrasound radiation for extraction of bioactive compounds from natural sources. Current events and perspectives

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Rodriguez Riera, Zalua; Robaina Mesa, Malvis; Jauregui Haza, Ulises

    2014-01-01

    In recent years, clean technologies have been developed for high efficiency extracting of isolation of biologically active compounds from natural sources, without the loss of biological activity, with good yield and high purity. Ultrasound-assisted extraction has low instrumental requirements and their implementation is very appropriate where the stability of the active component to be removed is affected by the high temperatures of conventional processes. In this paper it is evaluated the state of the art of ultrasound-assisted extraction of bioactive compounds from various natural sources, its mechanism, the parameters governing its use and research perspectives in this field. Ultrasonic cavitation phenomenon promotes cell wall rupture, reduction of particle size and tissue permeability, which facilitates the diffusion of the solvent into the inert part of the plant material and increasing the mass transferred through membranes. This mechanism explains the high efficiency of ultrasound-assisted extraction as it allows to reduce the time, temperature and amounts of solvent extraction process with high yields and high purity of the extracted product. Currently there is a great demand for the use of ultrasound to industrial and current research lead to the development of larger scale reactors and the theoretical modeling of the parameters that determine efficient extraction

  9. Efficiency of poly-generating high temperature fuel cells

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Margalef, Pere; Brown, Tim; Brouwer, Jacob; Samuelsen, Scott [National Fuel Cell Research Center (NFCRC), University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-3550 (United States)

    2011-02-15

    High temperature fuel cells can be designed and operated to poly-generate electricity, heat, and useful chemicals (e.g., hydrogen) in a variety of configurations. The highly integrated and synergistic nature of poly-generating high temperature fuel cells, however, precludes a simple definition of efficiency for analysis and comparison of performance to traditional methods. There is a need to develop and define a methodology to calculate each of the co-product efficiencies that is useful for comparative analyses. Methodologies for calculating poly-generation efficiencies are defined and discussed. The methodologies are applied to analysis of a Hydrogen Energy Station (H{sub 2}ES) showing that high conversion efficiency can be achieved for poly-generation of electricity and hydrogen. (author)

  10. Power extraction problem in the externally pumped 16 μm gasdynamic lasers: modelling and optimization

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Bahrampour, A R; Farrahi, R-M

    2003-01-01

    Power extraction problem in the gasdynamic lasers is studied by developing a quasi-one-dimensional model. Flow variables and characteristic parameters of the 16 μm output beam are obtained by numerical calculations. It is shown numerically that this type of the gasdynamic lasers can deliver a large amount of energy in high repetition rate. Based on this model, the output energy of the laser is optimized by employing the variational method. The most important parameter, the optimal nozzle-shape, is obtained by defining the family of optimal shapes. It is shown that the supersonic part of each member of this family consists of an acceleration part, an uniformization part which is a curved surface and is smoothly connected to the first part, and a relaxation duct. Finally, numerical optimization with respect to several parameters is carried out

  11. Fast, simple and efficient salting-out assisted liquid-liquid extraction of naringenin from fruit juice samples prior to their enantioselective determination by liquid chromatography.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Magiera, Sylwia; Kwietniowska, Ewelina

    2016-11-15

    In this study, an easy, simple and efficient method for the determination of naringenin enantiomers in fruit juices after salting-out-assisted liquid-liquid extraction (SALLE) and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with diode-array detection (DAD) was developed. The sample treatment is based on the use of water-miscible acetonitrile as the extractant and acetonitrile phase separation under high-salt conditions. After extraction, juice samples were incubated with hydrochloric acid in order to achieve hydrolysis of naringin to naringenin. The hydrolysis parameters were optimized by using a half-fraction factorial central composite design (CCD). After sample preparation, chromatographic separation was obtained on a Chiralcel® OJ-RH column using the mobile phase consisting of 10mM aqueous ammonium acetate:methanol:acetonitrile (50:30:20; v/v/v) with detection at 288nm. The average recovery of the analyzed compounds ranged from 85.6 to 97.1%. The proposed method was satisfactorily used for the determination of naringenin enantiomers in various fruit juices samples. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  12. A highly efficient parallel algorithm for solving the neutron diffusion nodal equations on shared-memory computers

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Azmy, Y.Y.; Kirk, B.L.

    1990-01-01

    Modern parallel computer architectures offer an enormous potential for reducing CPU and wall-clock execution times of large-scale computations commonly performed in various applications in science and engineering. Recently, several authors have reported their efforts in developing and implementing parallel algorithms for solving the neutron diffusion equation on a variety of shared- and distributed-memory parallel computers. Testing of these algorithms for a variety of two- and three-dimensional meshes showed significant speedup of the computation. Even for very large problems (i.e., three-dimensional fine meshes) executed concurrently on a few nodes in serial (nonvector) mode, however, the measured computational efficiency is very low (40 to 86%). In this paper, the authors present a highly efficient (∼85 to 99.9%) algorithm for solving the two-dimensional nodal diffusion equations on the Sequent Balance 8000 parallel computer. Also presented is a model for the performance, represented by the efficiency, as a function of problem size and the number of participating processors. The model is validated through several tests and then extrapolated to larger problems and more processors to predict the performance of the algorithm in more computationally demanding situations

  13. Matrix molecularly imprinted mesoporous sol-gel sorbent for efficient solid-phase extraction of chloramphenicol from milk.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Samanidou, Victoria; Kehagia, Maria; Kabir, Abuzar; Furton, Kenneth G

    2016-03-31

    Highly selective and efficient chloramphenicol imprinted sol-gel silica based inorganic polymeric sorbent (sol-gel MIP) was synthesized via matrix imprinting approach for the extraction of chloramphenicol in milk. Chloramphenicol was used as the template molecule, 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (3-APTES) and triethoxyphenylsilane (TEPS) as the functional precursors, tetramethyl orthosilicate (TMOS) as the cross-linker, isopropanol as the solvent/porogen, and HCl as the sol-gel catalyst. Non-imprinted sol-gel polymer (sol-gel NIP) was synthesized under identical conditions in absence of template molecules for comparison purpose. Both synthesized materials were characterized by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR) and nitrogen adsorption porosimetry, which unambiguously confirmed their significant structural and morphological differences. The synthesized MIP and NIP materials were evaluated as sorbents for molecularly imprinted solid phase extraction (MISPE) of chloramphenicol in milk. The effect of critical extraction parameters (flow rate, elution solvent, sample and eluent volume, selectivity coefficient, retention capacity) was studied in terms of retention and desorption of chloramphenicol. Competition and cross reactivity tests have proved that sol-gel MIP sorbent possesses significantly higher specific retention and enrichment capacity for chloramphenicol compared to its non-imprinted analogue. The maximum imprinting factor (IF) was found as 9.7, whereas the highest adsorption capacity of chloramphenicol by sol-gel MIP was 23 mg/g. The sol-gel MIP was found to be adequately selective towards chloramphenicol to provide the necessary minimum required performance limit (MRPL) of 0.3 μg/kg set forth by European Commission after analysis by LC-MS even without requiring time consuming solvent evaporation and sample reconstitution step, often considered as an integral part in solid phase extraction work-flow. Intra and

  14. High-Efficiency Food Production in a Renewable Energy Based Micro-Grid Power System

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bubenheim, David; Meiners, Dennis

    2016-01-01

    Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) systems can be used to produce high-quality, desirable food year round, and the fresh produce can positively contribute to the health and well being of residents in communities with difficult supply logistics. While CEA has many positive outcomes for a remote community, the associated high electric demands have prohibited widespread implementation in what is typically already a fully subscribed power generation and distribution system. Recent advances in CEA technologies as well as renewable power generation, storage, and micro-grid management are increasing system efficiency and expanding the possibilities for enhancing community supporting infrastructure without increasing demands for outside supplied fuels. We will present examples of how new lighting, nutrient delivery, and energy management and control systems can enable significant increases in food production efficiency while maintaining high yields in CEA. Examples from Alaskan communities where initial incorporation of renewable power generation, energy storage and grid management techniques have already reduced diesel fuel consumption for electric generation by more than 40% and expanded grid capacity will be presented. We will discuss how renewable power generation, efficient grid management to extract maximum community service per kW, and novel energy storage approaches can expand the food production, water supply, waste treatment, sanitation and other community support services without traditional increases of consumable fuels supplied from outside the community. These capabilities offer communities with a range of choices to enhance their communities. The examples represent a synergy of technology advancement efforts to develop sustainable community support systems for future space-based human habitats and practical implementation of infrastructure components to increase efficiency and enhance health and well being in remote communities today and tomorrow.

  15. High efficiency, variable geometry, centrifugal cryogenic pump

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Forsha, M.D.; Nichols, K.E.; Beale, C.A.

    1994-01-01

    A centrifugal cryogenic pump has been developed which has a basic design that is rugged and reliable with variable speed and variable geometry features that achieve high pump efficiency over a wide range of head-flow conditions. The pump uses a sealless design and rolling element bearings to achieve high reliability and the ruggedness to withstand liquid-vapor slugging. The pump can meet a wide range of variable head, off-design flow requirements and maintain design point efficiency by adjusting the pump speed. The pump also has features that allow the impeller and diffuser blade heights to be adjusted. The adjustable height blades were intended to enhance the pump efficiency when it is operating at constant head, off-design flow rates. For small pumps, the adjustable height blades are not recommended. For larger pumps, they could provide off-design efficiency improvements. This pump was developed for supercritical helium service, but the design is well suited to any cryogenic application where high efficiency is required over a wide range of head-flow conditions

  16. Rapid extraction of genomic DNA from medically important yeasts and filamentous fungi by high-speed cell disruption.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Müller, F M; Werner, K E; Kasai, M; Francesconi, A; Chanock, S J; Walsh, T J

    1998-06-01

    Current methods of DNA extraction from different fungal pathogens are often time-consuming and require the use of toxic chemicals. DNA isolation from some fungal organisms is difficult due to cell walls or capsules that are not readily susceptible to lysis. We therefore investigated a new and rapid DNA isolation method using high-speed cell disruption (HSCD) incorporating chaotropic reagents and lysing matrices in comparison to standard phenol-chloroform (PC) extraction protocols for isolation of DNA from three medically important yeasts (Candida albicans, Cryptococcus neoformans, and Trichosporon beigelii) and two filamentous fungi (Aspergillus fumigatus and Fusarium solani). Additional extractions by HSCD were performed on Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Pseudallescheria boydii, and Rhizopus arrhizus. Two different inocula (10(8) and 10(7) CFU) were compared for optimization of obtained yields. The entire extraction procedure was performed on as many as 12 samples within 1 h compared to 6 h for PC extraction. In comparison to the PC procedure, HSCD DNA extraction demonstrated significantly greater yields for 10(8) CFU of C. albicans, T. beigelii, A. fumigatus, and F. solani (P extraction and PC extraction. For 10(7) CFU of T. beigelii, PC extraction resulted in a greater yield than did HSCD (P fungi than for yeasts by the HSCD extraction procedure (P extraction procedure, differences were not significant. For all eight organisms, the rapid extraction procedure resulted in good yield, integrity, and quality of DNA as demonstrated by restriction fragment length polymorphism, PCR, and random amplified polymorphic DNA. We conclude that mechanical disruption of fungal cells by HSCD is a safe, rapid, and efficient procedure for extracting genomic DNA from medically important yeasts and especially from filamentous fungi.

  17. Phase retrieval problems in X-ray physics. From modeling to efficient algorithms

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Homann, Carolin

    2015-01-01

    In phase retrieval problems that occur in imaging by coherent X-ray diffraction, one tries to reconstruct information about a sample of interest from possibly noisy intensity measurements of the wave field traversing the sample. The mathematical formulation of these problems bases on some assumptions. Usually one of them is that the X-ray wave field is generated by a point source. In order to address this very idealized assumption, it is common to perform a data preprocessing step, the so-called empty beam correction. Within this work, we study the validity of this approach by presenting a quantitative error estimate. Moreover, in order to solve these phase retrieval problems, we want to incorporate a priori knowledge about the structure of the noise and the solution into the reconstruction process. For this reason, the application of a problem adapted iteratively regularized Newton-type method becomes particularly attractive. This method includes the solution of a convex minimization problem in each iteration step. We present a method for solving general optimization problems of this form. Our method is a generalization of a commonly used algorithm which makes it efficiently applicable to a wide class of problems. We also proof convergence results and show the performance of our method by numerical examples.

  18. Rapid and reliable high-throughput methods of DNA extraction for use in barcoding and molecular systematics of mushrooms.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dentinger, Bryn T M; Margaritescu, Simona; Moncalvo, Jean-Marc

    2010-07-01

    We present two methods for DNA extraction from fresh and dried mushrooms that are adaptable to high-throughput sequencing initiatives, such as DNA barcoding. Our results show that these protocols yield ∼85% sequencing success from recently collected materials. Tests with both recent (100 years) specimens reveal that older collections have low success rates and may be an inefficient resource for populating a barcode database. However, our method of extracting DNA from herbarium samples using small amount of tissue is reliable and could be used for important historical specimens. The application of these protocols greatly reduces time, and therefore cost, of generating DNA sequences from mushrooms and other fungi vs. traditional extraction methods. The efficiency of these methods illustrates that standardization and streamlining of sample processing should be shifted from the laboratory to the field. © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

  19. Characterization and Antioxidant Properties of Six Algerian Propolis Extracts: Ethyl Acetate Extracts Inhibit Myeloperoxidase Activity

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yasmina Mokhtaria Boufadi

    2014-02-01

    Full Text Available Because propolis contains many types of antioxidant compounds such as polyphenols and flavonoids, it can be useful in preventing oxidative damages. Ethyl acetate extracts of propolis from several Algerian regions show high activity by scavenging free radicals, preventing lipid peroxidation and inhibiting myeloperoxidase (MPO. By fractioning and assaying ethyl acetate extracts, it was observed that both polyphenols and flavonoids contribute to these activities. A correlation was observed between the polyphenol content and the MPO inhibition. However, it seems that kaempferol, a flavonoid, contributes mainly to the MPO inhibition. This molecule is in a high amount in the ethyl acetate extract and demonstrates the best efficiency towards the enzyme with an inhibiting concentration at 50% of 4 ± 2 µM.

  20. Research on the method of extracting DEM based on GBInSAR

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yue, Jianping; Yue, Shun; Qiu, Zhiwei; Wang, Xueqin; Guo, Leping

    2016-05-01

    Precise topographical information has a very important role in geology, hydrology, natural resources survey and deformation monitoring. The extracting DEM technology based on synthetic aperture radar interferometry (InSAR) obtains the three-dimensional elevation of the target area through the phase information of the radar image data. The technology has large-scale, high-precision, all-weather features. By changing track in the location of the ground radar system up and down, it can form spatial baseline. Then we can achieve the DEM of the target area by acquiring image data from different angles. Three-dimensional laser scanning technology can quickly, efficiently and accurately obtain DEM of target area, which can verify the accuracy of DEM extracted by GBInSAR. But research on GBInSAR in extracting DEM of the target area is a little. For lack of theory and lower accuracy problems in extracting DEM based on GBInSAR now, this article conducted research and analysis on its principle deeply. The article extracted the DEM of the target area, combined with GBInSAR data. Then it compared the DEM obtained by GBInSAR with the DEM obtained by three-dimensional laser scan data and made statistical analysis and normal distribution test. The results showed the DEM obtained by GBInSAR was broadly consistent with the DEM obtained by three-dimensional laser scanning. And its accuracy is high. The difference of both DEM approximately obeys normal distribution. It indicated that extracting the DEM of target area based on GBInSAR is feasible and provided the foundation for the promotion and application of GBInSAR.

  1. Wavelet-Based Feature Extraction in Fault Diagnosis for Biquad High-Pass Filter Circuit

    OpenAIRE

    Yuehai Wang; Yongzheng Yan; Qinyong Wang

    2016-01-01

    Fault diagnosis for analog circuit has become a prominent factor in improving the reliability of integrated circuit due to its irreplaceability in modern integrated circuits. In fact fault diagnosis based on intelligent algorithms has become a popular research topic as efficient feature extraction and selection are a critical and intricate task in analog fault diagnosis. Further, it is extremely important to propose some general guidelines for the optimal feature extraction and selection. In ...

  2. Carbon isotope discrimination as a selection tool for high water use efficiency and high crop yields

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kumarasinghe, K.S.; Kirda, C.; Bowen, G.D.; Zapata, F.; Awonaike, K.O.; Holmgren, E.; Arslan, A.; De Bisbal, E.C.; Mohamed, A.R.A.G.; Montenegro, A.

    1996-01-01

    Results of back-up research conducted at the FAO/IAEA Agriculture and Biotechnology Laboratory in support of the FAO/IAEA Co-ordinated Research Programme on the Use of Isotope Studies on Increasing and Stabilizing Plant Productivity in Low Phosphate and Semi-arid and Sub-humid Soils of the Tropics and Sub-tropics, are presented here. Neutron probe measurements confirmed the earlier reports of a strong correlation of Δ with grain yield and water use efficiency of wheat. High soil gypsum content and soil salinity, a wide spread problem in soils of arid and semi-arid climatic zones, do not interfere with the association of Δ with crop yields, provided plants are grown in similar soil water status and soil fertility level. Results of a glasshouse experiment using selected cowpea genotypes showed that Δ values measured at flowering stage positively correlated with total dry matter production and percent N 2 derived from atmosphere (%Ndfa), contributing to an earlier report from the laboratory that it may be possible to use Δ values for screening of leguminous crops for high N 2 fixation potential. 13 C isotope discrimination in the leaves of Gliricidia sepium was measured to examine if the technique could be extended to studies with trees. Results of a glasshouse experiment with 18 provenances of Gliricidia sepium showed highly significant correlations of Δ with total dry matter production, water use efficiency and total N accumulated through biological nitrogen fixation. Although the correlation of Δ with water use efficiency and dry matter yield are relatively clear and better understood, the correlation with nitrogen fixation still needs a closer examination under different environmental conditions and with different species. While 13 C isotope discrimination may be a valuable tool for identifying annual crops with high water use efficiency and high yield potential, it may be more attractive for tree species considering the long growth periods taken for trees

  3. AN EFFICIENT METHOD FOR AUTOMATIC ROAD EXTRACTION BASED ON MULTIPLE FEATURES FROM LiDAR DATA

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Y. Li

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available The road extraction in urban areas is difficult task due to the complicated patterns and many contextual objects. LiDAR data directly provides three dimensional (3D points with less occlusions and smaller shadows. The elevation information and surface roughness are distinguishing features to separate roads. However, LiDAR data has some disadvantages are not beneficial to object extraction, such as the irregular distribution of point clouds and lack of clear edges of roads. For these problems, this paper proposes an automatic road centerlines extraction method which has three major steps: (1 road center point detection based on multiple feature spatial clustering for separating road points from ground points, (2 local principal component analysis with least squares fitting for extracting the primitives of road centerlines, and (3 hierarchical grouping for connecting primitives into complete roads network. Compared with MTH (consist of Mean shift algorithm, Tensor voting, and Hough transform proposed in our previous article, this method greatly reduced the computational cost. To evaluate the proposed method, the Vaihingen data set, a benchmark testing data provided by ISPRS for “Urban Classification and 3D Building Reconstruction” project, was selected. The experimental results show that our method achieve the same performance by less time in road extraction using LiDAR data.

  4. An Efficient Method for Automatic Road Extraction Based on Multiple Features from LiDAR Data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Y.; Hu, X.; Guan, H.; Liu, P.

    2016-06-01

    The road extraction in urban areas is difficult task due to the complicated patterns and many contextual objects. LiDAR data directly provides three dimensional (3D) points with less occlusions and smaller shadows. The elevation information and surface roughness are distinguishing features to separate roads. However, LiDAR data has some disadvantages are not beneficial to object extraction, such as the irregular distribution of point clouds and lack of clear edges of roads. For these problems, this paper proposes an automatic road centerlines extraction method which has three major steps: (1) road center point detection based on multiple feature spatial clustering for separating road points from ground points, (2) local principal component analysis with least squares fitting for extracting the primitives of road centerlines, and (3) hierarchical grouping for connecting primitives into complete roads network. Compared with MTH (consist of Mean shift algorithm, Tensor voting, and Hough transform) proposed in our previous article, this method greatly reduced the computational cost. To evaluate the proposed method, the Vaihingen data set, a benchmark testing data provided by ISPRS for "Urban Classification and 3D Building Reconstruction" project, was selected. The experimental results show that our method achieve the same performance by less time in road extraction using LiDAR data.

  5. Simulation design of P–I–N-type all-perovskite solar cells with high efficiency

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Du Hui-Jing; Wang Wei-Chao; Gu Yi-Fan

    2017-01-01

    According to the good charge transporting property of perovskite, we design and simulate a p–i–n-type all-perovskite solar cell by using one-dimensional device simulator. The perovskite charge transporting layers and the perovskite absorber constitute the all-perovskite cell. By modulating the cell parameters, such as layer thickness values, doping concentrations and energy bands of n-, i-, and p-type perovskite layers, the all-perovskite solar cell obtains a high power conversion efficiency of 25.84%. The band matched cell shows appreciably improved performance with widen absorption spectrum and lowered recombination rate, so weobtain a high J sc of 32.47 mA/cm 2 . The small series resistance of the all-perovskite solar cell also benefits the high J sc . The simulation provides a novel thought of designing perovskite solar cells with simple producing process, low production cost and high efficient structure to solve the energy problem. (paper)

  6. Barriers to energy efficiency in shipping: A triangulated approach to investigate the principal agent problem

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Rehmatulla, Nishatabbas; Smith, Tristan

    2015-01-01

    Energy efficiency is a key policy strategy to meet some of the challenges being faced today and to plan for a sustainable future. Numerous empirical studies in various sectors suggest that there are cost-effective measures that are available but not always implemented due to existence of barriers to energy efficiency. Several cost-effective energy efficient options (technologies for new and existing ships and operations) have also been identified for improving energy efficiency of ships. This paper is one of the first to empirically investigate barriers to energy efficiency in the shipping industry using a novel framework and multidisciplinary methods to gauge implementation of cost-effective measures, perception on barriers and observations of barriers. It draws on findings of a survey conducted of shipping companies, content analysis of shipping contracts and analysis of energy efficiency data. Initial results from these methods suggest the existence of the principal agent problem and other market failures and barriers that have also been suggested in other sectors and industries. Given this finding, policies to improve implementation of energy efficiency in shipping need to be carefully considered to improve their efficacy and avoid unintended consequences. -- Highlights: •We provide the first analysis of the principal agent problem in shipping. •We develop a framework that incorporates methodological triangulation. •Our results show the extent to which this barrier is observed and perceived. •The presence of the barrier has implications on the policy most suited to shipping

  7. A fast, simple and green method for the extraction of carbamate pesticides from rice by microwave assisted steam extraction coupled with solid phase extraction.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Song, Weitao; Zhang, Yiqun; Li, Guijie; Chen, Haiyan; Wang, Hui; Zhao, Qi; He, Dong; Zhao, Chun; Ding, Lan

    2014-01-15

    This paper presented a fast, simple and green sample pretreatment method for the extraction of 8 carbamate pesticides in rice. The carbamate pesticides were extracted by microwave assisted water steam extraction method, and the extract obtained was immediately applied on a C18 solid phase extraction cartridge for clean-up and concentration. The eluate containing target compounds was finally analysed by high performance liquid chromatography with mass spectrometry. The parameters affecting extraction efficiency were investigated and optimised. The limits of detection ranging from 1.1 to 4.2ngg(-1) were obtained. The recoveries of 8 carbamate pesticides ranged from 66% to 117% at three spiked levels, and the inter- and intra-day relative standard deviation values were less than 9.1%. Compared with traditional methods, the proposed method cost less extraction time and organic solvent. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  8. Self Esteem, Information Search and Problem Solving Efficiency.

    Science.gov (United States)

    1979-05-01

    Weiss (1977, 1978) has shown that low self esteem workers are more likely to model the role behaviors and work values of superiors than are high self ...task where search is functional. Results showed that, as expected, low self esteem subjects searched for more information, search was functional and low ...situation. He has also argued that high self esteem individuals search for less information on problem solving tasks and are therefore less likely to

  9. High-efficiency VCSEL arrays for illumination and sensing in consumer applications

    Science.gov (United States)

    Seurin, Jean-Francois; Zhou, Delai; Xu, Guoyang; Miglo, Alexander; Li, Daizong; Chen, Tong; Guo, Baiming; Ghosh, Chuni

    2016-03-01

    There has been increased interest in vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) for illumination and sensing in the consumer market, especially for 3D sensing ("gesture recognition") and 3D image capture. For these applications, the typical wavelength range of interest is 830~950nm and power levels vary from a few milli-Watts to several Watts. The devices are operated in short pulse mode (a few nano-seconds) with fast rise and fall times for time-of-flight applications (ToF), or in CW/quasi-CW for structured light applications. In VCSELs, the narrow spectrum and its low temperature dependence allows the use of narrower filters and therefore better signal-to-noise performance, especially for outdoor applications. In portable devices (mobile devices, wearable devices, laptops etc.) the size of the illumination module (VCSEL and optics) is a primary consideration. VCSELs offer a unique benefit compared to other laser sources in that they are "surface-mountable" and can be easily integrated along with other electronics components on a printed circuit board (PCB). A critical concern is the power-conversion efficiency (PCE) of the illumination source operating at high temperatures (>50 deg C). We report on various VCSEL based devices and diffuser-integrated modules with high efficiency at high temperatures. Over 40% PCE was achieved in broad temperature range of 0-70 °C for either low power single devices or high power VCSEL arrays, with sub- nano-second rise and fall time. These high power VCSEL arrays show excellent reliability, with extracted mean-time-to-failure (MTTF) of over 500 years at 60 °C ambient temperature and 8W peak output.

  10. Two efficient methods for isolation of high-quality genomic DNA from entomopathogenic fungi.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Serna-Domínguez, María G; Andrade-Michel, Gilda Y; Arredondo-Bernal, Hugo C; Gallou, Adrien

    2018-03-27

    Conventional and commercial methods for isolation of nucleic acids are available for fungal samples including entomopathogenic fungi (EPF). However, there is not a unique optimal method for all organisms. The cell wall structure and the wide range of secondary metabolites of EPF can broadly interfere with the efficiency of the DNA extraction protocol. This study compares three commercial protocols: DNeasy® Plant Mini Kit (Qiagen), Wizard® Genomic DNA Purification Kit (Promega), and Axygen™ Multisource Genomic DNA Miniprep Kit (Axygen) and three conventional methods based on different buffers: SDS, CTAB/PVPP, and CTAB/β-mercaptoethanol versus three cell lysis procedures: liquid nitrogen homogenization and two bead-beating materials (i.e., tungsten-carbide and stainless-steel) for four representative species of EPF (i.e., Beauveria bassiana, Hirsutella citriformis, Isaria javanica, and Metarhizium anisopliae). Liquid nitrogen homogenization combined with DNeasy® Plant Mini Kit (i.e., QN) or SDS buffer (i.e., SN) significantly improved the yield with a good purity (~1.8) and high integrity (>20,000 bp) of genomic DNA in contrast with other methods, also, these results were better when compared with the two bead-beating materials. The purified DNA was evaluated by PCR-based techniques: amplification of translation elongation factor 1-α (TEF) and two highly sensitive molecular markers (i.e., ISSR and AFLP) with reliable and reproducible results. Despite a variation in yield, purity, and integrity of extracted DNA across the four species of EPF with the different DNA extraction methods, the SN and QN protocols maintained a high-quality of DNA which is required for downstream molecular applications. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  11. Matrix molecularly imprinted mesoporous sol–gel sorbent for efficient solid-phase extraction of chloramphenicol from milk

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Samanidou, Victoria; Kehagia, Maria; Kabir, Abuzar; Furton, Kenneth G.

    2016-01-01

    Highly selective and efficient chloramphenicol imprinted sol–gel silica based inorganic polymeric sorbent (sol–gel MIP) was synthesized via matrix imprinting approach for the extraction of chloramphenicol in milk. Chloramphenicol was used as the template molecule, 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (3-APTES) and triethoxyphenylsilane (TEPS) as the functional precursors, tetramethyl orthosilicate (TMOS) as the cross-linker, isopropanol as the solvent/porogen, and HCl as the sol–gel catalyst. Non-imprinted sol–gel polymer (sol–gel NIP) was synthesized under identical conditions in absence of template molecules for comparison purpose. Both synthesized materials were characterized by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR) and nitrogen adsorption porosimetry, which unambiguously confirmed their significant structural and morphological differences. The synthesized MIP and NIP materials were evaluated as sorbents for molecularly imprinted solid phase extraction (MISPE) of chloramphenicol in milk. The effect of critical extraction parameters (flow rate, elution solvent, sample and eluent volume, selectivity coefficient, retention capacity) was studied in terms of retention and desorption of chloramphenicol. Competition and cross reactivity tests have proved that sol–gel MIP sorbent possesses significantly higher specific retention and enrichment capacity for chloramphenicol compared to its non-imprinted analogue. The maximum imprinting factor (IF) was found as 9.7, whereas the highest adsorption capacity of chloramphenicol by sol–gel MIP was 23 mg/g. The sol–gel MIP was found to be adequately selective towards chloramphenicol to provide the necessary minimum required performance limit (MRPL) of 0.3 μg/kg set forth by European Commission after analysis by LC-MS even without requiring time consuming solvent evaporation and sample reconstitution step, often considered as an integral part in solid phase extraction work

  12. Matrix molecularly imprinted mesoporous sol–gel sorbent for efficient solid-phase extraction of chloramphenicol from milk

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Samanidou, Victoria, E-mail: samanidu@chem.auth.gr [Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece); Kehagia, Maria [Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece); Kabir, Abuzar, E-mail: akabir@fiu.edu [International Forensic Research Institute, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Florida International University, Miami, FL (United States); Furton, Kenneth G. [International Forensic Research Institute, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Florida International University, Miami, FL (United States)

    2016-03-31

    Highly selective and efficient chloramphenicol imprinted sol–gel silica based inorganic polymeric sorbent (sol–gel MIP) was synthesized via matrix imprinting approach for the extraction of chloramphenicol in milk. Chloramphenicol was used as the template molecule, 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (3-APTES) and triethoxyphenylsilane (TEPS) as the functional precursors, tetramethyl orthosilicate (TMOS) as the cross-linker, isopropanol as the solvent/porogen, and HCl as the sol–gel catalyst. Non-imprinted sol–gel polymer (sol–gel NIP) was synthesized under identical conditions in absence of template molecules for comparison purpose. Both synthesized materials were characterized by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR) and nitrogen adsorption porosimetry, which unambiguously confirmed their significant structural and morphological differences. The synthesized MIP and NIP materials were evaluated as sorbents for molecularly imprinted solid phase extraction (MISPE) of chloramphenicol in milk. The effect of critical extraction parameters (flow rate, elution solvent, sample and eluent volume, selectivity coefficient, retention capacity) was studied in terms of retention and desorption of chloramphenicol. Competition and cross reactivity tests have proved that sol–gel MIP sorbent possesses significantly higher specific retention and enrichment capacity for chloramphenicol compared to its non-imprinted analogue. The maximum imprinting factor (IF) was found as 9.7, whereas the highest adsorption capacity of chloramphenicol by sol–gel MIP was 23 mg/g. The sol–gel MIP was found to be adequately selective towards chloramphenicol to provide the necessary minimum required performance limit (MRPL) of 0.3 μg/kg set forth by European Commission after analysis by LC-MS even without requiring time consuming solvent evaporation and sample reconstitution step, often considered as an integral part in solid phase extraction work

  13. USE OF VARIOUS BAITS FOR EXTRACTION OF EARTHWORMS FROM VERMICOMPOST

    OpenAIRE

    Joanna Kostecka; Vinod Kumar Garg

    2015-01-01

    During vermicomposting, earthworm grower has to overcome a lot of different problems. For instance, in case of a sudden requirement to sell earthworms it is useful to have the ability to collect them in one place. Fresh food extraction is an effective and neutral way to do it. The efficiency of gathering and extracting E. fetida from the vermicompost was studied, using a fresh bait method. Experiments were carried out in the laboratory (at the mean temperature of 20±0.5 °C) in pots filled wit...

  14. Efficient methods for solving discrete topology design problems in the PLATO-N project

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Canh, Nam Nguyen; Stolpe, Mathias

    This paper considers the general multiple load structural topology design problems in the framework of the PLATO-N project. The problems involve a large number of discrete design variables and were modeled as a non-convex mixed 0–1 program. For the class of problems considered, a global...... optimization method based on the branch-and-cut concept was developed and implemented. In the method a large number of continuous relaxations were solved. We also present an algorithm for generating cuts to strengthen the quality of the relaxations. Several heuristics were also investigated to obtain efficient...... algorithms. The branch and cut method is used to solve benchmark examples which can be used to validate other methods and heuristics....

  15. HIGH EFFICIENCY TURBINE

    OpenAIRE

    VARMA, VIJAYA KRUSHNA

    2012-01-01

    Varma designed ultra modern and high efficiency turbines which can use gas, steam or fuels as feed to produce electricity or mechanical work for wide range of usages and applications in industries or at work sites. Varma turbine engines can be used in all types of vehicles. These turbines can also be used in aircraft, ships, battle tanks, dredgers, mining equipment, earth moving machines etc, Salient features of Varma Turbines. 1. Varma turbines are simple in design, easy to manufac...

  16. High-rise housing construction as a way of solving the problem of providing people with comfortable habitation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Misailovov, Andrey

    2018-03-01

    The article analyzes the role of high-rise construction in solving the problem of providing people with comfortable habitation. High-rise construction is considered as a part of urban environment of big cities, a way of effective land use and development of entrepreneurship, including small and medium-sized enterprises. The economic efficiency of high-rise construction, an increase in budgetary financing and the number of introduced innovations are discussed.

  17. Efficiency enhancement of hybridized solar cells through co-sensitization and fast charge extraction by up-converted polyethylene glycol modified carbon quantum dots

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhu, Wanlu; Duan, Jialong; Duan, Yanyan; Zhao, Yuanyuan; Tang, Qunwei

    2017-11-01

    Photovoltaics are promising solutions to energy crisis and environmental pollution problems. The dye-sensitized solar cells with mesoscopic structures have attracted growing interests because of zero emissions, easy fabrication, scalable materials and techniques, etc. However, the state-of-the-art dye-sensitized solar cells have narrow spectral absorption for photoelectric conversion and high electron-hole recombination rate under sunlight illumination. Therefore, it is a persistent object to make wide-spectral absorption and fast charge extraction solar cells for energy harvest in both solar and dark-light conditions. To address this issue, we present here experimental realization of a category of solar cells converting visible and near-infrared light into electricity by co-sensitizing photoanode with N719 dye and polyethylene glycol (PEG) modified carbon quantum dots (PEG-m-CQDs), arising from up-conversion and hole-transporting behaviors of PEG-m-CQDs as well as photofluorescence of green-emitting long persistence phosphors. The optimized solar cell yields maximized photoelectric conversion efficiencies of 9.89% and 25.81% under simulated sunlight (air mass 1.5, 100 mW cm-2) illumination and dark conditions, respectively. This work is far from optimization, but the physical proof-of-concept hybridized solar cell may markedly increase electricity generation time and total power output of photovoltaic platforms.

  18. Unusual seeding mechanism for enhanced performance in solid-phase magnetic extraction of Rare Earth Elements

    Science.gov (United States)

    Polido Legaria, Elizabeth; Rocha, Joao; Tai, Cheuk-Wai; Kessler, Vadim G.; Seisenbaeva, Gulaim A.

    2017-03-01

    Due to the increasing demand of Rare Earth Elements (REE or RE), new and more efficient techniques for their extraction are necessary, suitable for both mining and recycling processes. Current techniques such as solvent extraction or solid adsorbents entail drawbacks such as using big volumes of harmful solvents or limited capacity. Hybrid nanoadsorbents based on SiO2 and highly stable γ-Fe2O3-SiO2 nanoparticles, proved recently to be very attractive for adsorption of REE, yet not being the absolute key to solve the problem. In the present work, we introduce a highly appealing new approach in which the nanoparticles, rather than behaving as adsorbent materials, perform as inducers of crystallization for the REE in the form of hydroxides, allowing their facile and practically total removal from solution. This induced crystallization is achieved by tuning the pH, offering an uptake efficiency more than 20 times higher than previously reported (up to 900 mg RE3+/g vs. 40 mg RE3+/g). The obtained phases were characterized by SEM-EDS, TEM, STEM and EFTEM and 13C and 29Si solid state NMR. Magnetic studies showed that the materials possessed enough magnetic properties to be easily removed by a magnet, opening ways for an efficient and industrially applicable separation technique.

  19. Efforts to Improve Efficiency of Extraction Well Operation at the Fernald Preserve, Harrison, Ohio – 16177

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Glassmeyer, Cathy [Navarro Research and Engineering; Hooten, Gwen [U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Legacy Management; Hertel, Bill [Navarro Research and Engineering; Broberg, Ken [Nararro Research and Engineering

    2016-03-01

    The Fernald Preserve, a former uranium processing facility that produced high-purity uranium metal products during the Cold War, is located in southwest Ohio. The facility became a US Department of Energy Office of Legacy Management (LM) site in November 2006, following completion of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act environmental remediation and site restoration (with the exception of groundwater). When the site was turned over to LM, approximately 76.5 ha of the Great Miami Aquifer remained contaminated with uranium above the final remediation level of 30 μg/L. Here, uranium contamination is being removed from groundwater in the Great Miami Aquifer through a pump-and-treat operation, which is predicted to continue until 2033. Twenty extraction wells pump about 30 million liters per day. Operation of the system is impacted by iron in the groundwater that promotes iron fouling of the well pumps, motors, and screens. The design of the well field evolved over 21 years and reflected a conservative system that could respond to a wide range of pumping conditions. For instance, some of the extraction wells were sized with pumps and motors that would allow the well to pump up to 1890 L/min (500 gpm) if warranted. The added flexibility, though, came at the cost of operational efficiency. We describe the efforts that have been taken by LM since the Fernald site was transferred to LM to mitigate the operational impacts from the iron fouling aquifer conditions and improve the efficiency of the well-field operation. Variable-frequency drives were installed at six wells to replace flow control valves. Several wells with oversized pumps and motors were changed from 24-hour per day operation to 8-hour per day operation to allow the pumps to operate closer to their design flow rates. Pumps and motors were “right-sized” at many wells to improve pumping efficiency. The process used to rehabilitate (or clean) well screens was improved, and

  20. Multi-scale Analysis of High Resolution Topography: Feature Extraction and Identification of Landscape Characteristic Scales

    Science.gov (United States)

    Passalacqua, P.; Sangireddy, H.; Stark, C. P.

    2015-12-01

    With the advent of digital terrain data, detailed information on terrain characteristics and on scale and location of geomorphic features is available over extended areas. Our ability to observe landscapes and quantify topographic patterns has greatly improved, including the estimation of fluxes of mass and energy across landscapes. Challenges still remain in the analysis of high resolution topography data; the presence of features such as roads, for example, challenges classic methods for feature extraction and large data volumes require computationally efficient extraction and analysis methods. Moreover, opportunities exist to define new robust metrics of landscape characterization for landscape comparison and model validation. In this presentation we cover recent research in multi-scale and objective analysis of high resolution topography data. We show how the analysis of the probability density function of topographic attributes such as slope, curvature, and topographic index contains useful information for feature localization and extraction. The analysis of how the distributions change across scales, quantified by the behavior of modal values and interquartile range, allows the identification of landscape characteristic scales, such as terrain roughness. The methods are introduced on synthetic signals in one and two dimensions and then applied to a variety of landscapes of different characteristics. Validation of the methods includes the analysis of modeled landscapes where the noise distribution is known and features of interest easily measured.

  1. Towards a more efficient environmental policy. A socio-economic analysis of four persistent environmental problems

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    2000-11-01

    For the benefit of the National Environmental Policy Plan that will be published in 2001, the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis analysed four persistent environmental problems. These problems are the environmental effects of the manure surplus in the agricultural sector; the climate problem; the acidification by traffic and the air traffic noise around the airport Schiphol. This study not only looks ahead, but also looks back on 30 years of environmental policy. From a welfare economic perspective an analysis is made of the efficiency and effectiveness of that policy. Several questions are answered,e.g.: how could the manure problem of such a small sector as the livestock breeding persist for so many years?; how effective were the agreements with the industry and other sectors on energy efficiency improvement?; what made the acidification policy directed on traffic so successful?; why is the noise production of air traffic still a problem whereas the number of seriously bothered houses is decreased? The answers on these questions provide information which can be useful for the formulation of the future environmental policy. This information refers to the conditions for formulating adequate policy goals, the relation between those goals and policy instruments and the differences between direct versus indirect steering. This report also gives some points of interest for tackling complex international environmental problems. refs

  2. [Simultaneous determination of 15 industrial synthetic dyes in condiment by solid phase extraction-high performance liquid chromatography].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Min; Li, Xiaolin; Bie, Wei; Wang, Minglin; Feng, Qian

    2011-02-01

    A new method was established for the determination of 15 industrial synthetic dyes in condiment by solid phase extraction-high performance liquid chromatography (SPE-HPLC). The samples were extracted by methanol-water (1:1, v/v) and purified by a solid phase extraction column. Then, the chromatographic separation was achieved on a Luna C18 column by linear gradient elution. The mobile phase was 10 mmol/L ammonium acetate-acetonitrile (containing 1% acetic acid). The results showed that the 15 industrial synthetic dyes can be separated efficiently. The recoveries of the 15 industrial synthetic dyes spiked in condiment were between 84.6% and 114.2% with the relative standard deviations of 0.9% - 10.3%. The limits of detection of this method was 0.05 - 0.18 mg/kg for the 15 industrial synthetic dyes. The method is simple, sensitive, accurate, repeatable and can be used for simultaneous determination of the 15 illegally added industrial synthetic dyes.

  3. Gamma-ray spectrometer system with high efficiency and high resolution

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Moss, C.E.; Bernard, W.; Dowdy, E.J.; Garcia, C.; Lucas, M.C.; Pratt, J.C.

    1983-01-01

    Our gamma-ray spectrometer system, designed for field use, offers high efficiency and high resolution for safeguards applications. The system consists of three 40% high-purity germanium detectors and a LeCroy 3500 data acquisition system that calculates a composite spectrum for the three detectors. The LeCroy 3500 mainframe can be operated remotely from the detector array with control exercised through modems and the telephone system. System performance with a mixed source of 125 Sb, 154 Eu, and 155 Eu confirms the expected efficiency of 120% with the overall resolution showing little degradation over that of the worst detector

  4. A high throughput DNA extraction method with high yield and quality

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xin Zhanguo

    2012-07-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Preparation of large quantity and high quality genomic DNA from a large number of plant samples is a major bottleneck for most genetic and genomic analyses, such as, genetic mapping, TILLING (Targeting Induced Local Lesion IN Genome, and next-generation sequencing directly from sheared genomic DNA. A variety of DNA preparation methods and commercial kits are available. However, they are either low throughput, low yield, or costly. Here, we describe a method for high throughput genomic DNA isolation from sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L. Moench] leaves and dry seeds with high yield, high quality, and affordable cost. Results We developed a high throughput DNA isolation method by combining a high yield CTAB extraction method with an improved cleanup procedure based on MagAttract kit. The method yielded large quantity and high quality DNA from both lyophilized sorghum leaves and dry seeds. The DNA yield was improved by nearly 30 fold with 4 times less consumption of MagAttract beads. The method can also be used in other plant species, including cotton leaves and pine needles. Conclusion A high throughput system for DNA extraction from sorghum leaves and seeds was developed and validated. The main advantages of the method are low cost, high yield, high quality, and high throughput. One person can process two 96-well plates in a working day at a cost of $0.10 per sample of magnetic beads plus other consumables that other methods will also need.

  5. High voltage generator circuit with low power and high efficiency applied in EEPROM

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Liu Yan; Zhang Shilin; Zhao Yiqiang

    2012-01-01

    This paper presents a low power and high efficiency high voltage generator circuit embedded in electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM). The low power is minimized by a capacitance divider circuit and a regulator circuit using the controlling clock switch technique. The high efficiency is dependent on the zero threshold voltage (V th ) MOSFET and the charge transfer switch (CTS) charge pump. The proposed high voltage generator circuit has been implemented in a 0.35 μm EEPROM CMOS process. Measured results show that the proposed high voltage generator circuit has a low power consumption of about 150.48 μW and a higher pumping efficiency (83.3%) than previously reported circuits. This high voltage generator circuit can also be widely used in low-power flash devices due to its high efficiency and low power dissipation. (semiconductor integrated circuits)

  6. Magnetic metal-organic frameworks for fast and efficient solid-phase extraction of six Sudan dyes in tomato sauce.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shi, Xin-Ran; Chen, Xue-Lei; Hao, Yu-Lan; Li, Li; Xu, Hou-Jun; Wang, Man-Man

    2018-06-01

    Magnetic solid-phase extraction is an effective and useful technique to preconcentrate trace analytes from food samples. In this study, a magnetic trimeric chromium octahedral metal-organic framework (Fe 3 O 4 -NH 2 @MIL-101) was fabricated and characterized. Fe 3 O 4 -NH 2 @MIL-101 was applied as an adsorbent of magnetic solid-phase extraction combined with high performance liquid chromatography to effectively isolate and simultaneously determine six Sudan dyes (Para Red, Sudan I-IV, and Sudan Red 7B) from tomato sauce. Potential factors affecting the MSPE were investigated in detail, and adsorption efficiency of Fe 3 O 4 -NH 2 @MIL-101 was compared with those of conventional adsorbents, such as neutral alumina, HLB, and C 18 . The developed method facilitated the extraction with using only 3 mg of adsorbent in 2 min. In addition, enhancement factors of 50, linear range of 0.01-25 μg/mL, and detection limit (S/N = 3) of 0.5-2.5 μg/kg were obtained. The intra-day and inter-day recoveries for spiked Sudan dyes were in the range of 72.6%-92.9% and 69.6%-91.6%, respectively, with relative standard deviations of ≤9.2%. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  7. Exploiting graph kernels for high performance biomedical relation extraction.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Panyam, Nagesh C; Verspoor, Karin; Cohn, Trevor; Ramamohanarao, Kotagiri

    2018-01-30

    Relation extraction from biomedical publications is an important task in the area of semantic mining of text. Kernel methods for supervised relation extraction are often preferred over manual feature engineering methods, when classifying highly ordered structures such as trees and graphs obtained from syntactic parsing of a sentence. Tree kernels such as the Subset Tree Kernel and Partial Tree Kernel have been shown to be effective for classifying constituency parse trees and basic dependency parse graphs of a sentence. Graph kernels such as the All Path Graph kernel (APG) and Approximate Subgraph Matching (ASM) kernel have been shown to be suitable for classifying general graphs with cycles, such as the enhanced dependency parse graph of a sentence. In this work, we present a high performance Chemical-Induced Disease (CID) relation extraction system. We present a comparative study of kernel methods for the CID task and also extend our study to the Protein-Protein Interaction (PPI) extraction task, an important biomedical relation extraction task. We discuss novel modifications to the ASM kernel to boost its performance and a method to apply graph kernels for extracting relations expressed in multiple sentences. Our system for CID relation extraction attains an F-score of 60%, without using external knowledge sources or task specific heuristic or rules. In comparison, the state of the art Chemical-Disease Relation Extraction system achieves an F-score of 56% using an ensemble of multiple machine learning methods, which is then boosted to 61% with a rule based system employing task specific post processing rules. For the CID task, graph kernels outperform tree kernels substantially, and the best performance is obtained with APG kernel that attains an F-score of 60%, followed by the ASM kernel at 57%. The performance difference between the ASM and APG kernels for CID sentence level relation extraction is not significant. In our evaluation of ASM for the PPI task, ASM

  8. Efficient and accurate nearest neighbor and closest pair search in high-dimensional space

    KAUST Repository

    Tao, Yufei

    2010-07-01

    Nearest Neighbor (NN) search in high-dimensional space is an important problem in many applications. From the database perspective, a good solution needs to have two properties: (i) it can be easily incorporated in a relational database, and (ii) its query cost should increase sublinearly with the dataset size, regardless of the data and query distributions. Locality-Sensitive Hashing (LSH) is a well-known methodology fulfilling both requirements, but its current implementations either incur expensive space and query cost, or abandon its theoretical guarantee on the quality of query results. Motivated by this, we improve LSH by proposing an access method called the Locality-Sensitive B-tree (LSB-tree) to enable fast, accurate, high-dimensional NN search in relational databases. The combination of several LSB-trees forms a LSB-forest that has strong quality guarantees, but improves dramatically the efficiency of the previous LSH implementation having the same guarantees. In practice, the LSB-tree itself is also an effective index which consumes linear space, supports efficient updates, and provides accurate query results. In our experiments, the LSB-tree was faster than: (i) iDistance (a famous technique for exact NN search) by two orders ofmagnitude, and (ii) MedRank (a recent approximate method with nontrivial quality guarantees) by one order of magnitude, and meanwhile returned much better results. As a second step, we extend our LSB technique to solve another classic problem, called Closest Pair (CP) search, in high-dimensional space. The long-term challenge for this problem has been to achieve subquadratic running time at very high dimensionalities, which fails most of the existing solutions. We show that, using a LSB-forest, CP search can be accomplished in (worst-case) time significantly lower than the quadratic complexity, yet still ensuring very good quality. In practice, accurate answers can be found using just two LSB-trees, thus giving a substantial

  9. A simple, rapid and efficient method for the extraction of genomic ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    The isolation of intact, high-molecular-mass genomic DNA is essential for many molecular biology applications including long range PCR, endonuclease restriction digestion, southern blot analysis, and genomic library construction. Many protocols are available for the extraction of DNA from plant material, but obtain it is ...

  10. Light extraction efficiency improvement in GaN-based blue light emitting diode with two-dimensional nano-cavity structure

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Cho, Joong-Yeon; Hong, Sung-Hoon; Byeon, Kyeong-Jae; Lee, Heon

    2012-01-01

    The light extraction efficiency of light emitting diode (LED) devices was improved by embedding nano-sized two-dimensional, air cavity photonic crystal (PC) structure on the indium tin oxide (ITO) layer of GaN-based LEDs. The embedded air cavity PC structure was fabricated using a reversal imprint lithography technique. The nano-cavity patterns had a width of 560 nm, a space of 240 nm and a height of 280 nm. According to current–voltage characterization, the electrical performance of the LED devices was not degraded by the fabrication process of air cavity PC structure. The optical output power of the LED device was increased by up to 10% at a drive current of 20 mA by forming the nano-cavity PC structure on the transparent electrode of the blue LED device, which was grown on a patterned sapphire substrate, to maximize the photon extraction. Since photons are scattered with cavities and are unaffected by the packaging process, which is the encapsulation of a LED device with epoxy resin, this enhancement in light extraction efficiency will not be decreased after the packaging process.

  11. Efficiency Of Transuranium Nuclides Transmutation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kazansky, Yu.A.; Klinov, D.A.; Semenov, E.V.

    2002-01-01

    One of the ways to create a wasteless nuclear power is based on transmutation of spent fuel nuclides. In particular, it is considered that the radioactivity of the nuclear power wastes should be the same (or smaller), than radioactivity of the uranium and the thorium extracted from entrails of the Earth. The problem of fission fragments transmutation efficiency was considered in article, where, in particular, the concepts of transmutation factor and the ''generalised'' index of biological hazard of the radioactive nuclides were entered. The transmutation efficiency has appeared to be a function of time and, naturally, dependent on nuclear power activity scenario, from neutron flux, absorption cross-sections of the nuclides under transmutation and on the rate of their formation in reactors. In the present paper the efficiency of the transmutation of transuranium nuclides is considered

  12. Separation of rare earths by liquid-liquid extraction

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Helgorsky, M.; Leveque, M.

    1978-01-01

    The elements of the rare earth family are characterised by very similar chemical properties connected with their special electronic structure. The purification of the rare earths sold by RHONE-POULENC is now done by the liquid-liquid extraction technique. The development of different extracting agents and also counter-current techniques have led to solvent extraction replacing the other fractionation techniques because of its efficiency and low cost. There are usually several possible solutions to the main problem of choosing the extracting agent and its mode of use. The difficulty is to find the most economical one taking account of the thermodynamic and hydrodynamic constraints of the solvent. It is shown how ideas about the separation have changed over the course of the development of the uses of the rare earths, ending finally in an integrated scheme that makes RHONE-POULENC a world leader of manufacturers of separated rare earths [fr

  13. Detailed Hydrographic Feature Extraction from High-Resolution LiDAR Data

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Danny L. Anderson

    2012-05-01

    Detailed hydrographic feature extraction from high-resolution light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data is investigated. Methods for quantitatively evaluating and comparing such extractions are presented, including the use of sinuosity and longitudinal root-mean-square-error (LRMSE). These metrics are then used to quantitatively compare stream networks in two studies. The first study examines the effect of raster cell size on watershed boundaries and stream networks delineated from LiDAR-derived digital elevation models (DEMs). The study confirmed that, with the greatly increased resolution of LiDAR data, smaller cell sizes generally yielded better stream network delineations, based on sinuosity and LRMSE. The second study demonstrates a new method of delineating a stream directly from LiDAR point clouds, without the intermediate step of deriving a DEM. Direct use of LiDAR point clouds could improve efficiency and accuracy of hydrographic feature extractions. The direct delineation method developed herein and termed “mDn”, is an extension of the D8 method that has been used for several decades with gridded raster data. The method divides the region around a starting point into sectors, using the LiDAR data points within each sector to determine an average slope, and selecting the sector with the greatest downward slope to determine the direction of flow. An mDn delineation was compared with a traditional grid-based delineation, using TauDEM, and other readily available, common stream data sets. Although, the TauDEM delineation yielded a sinuosity that more closely matches the reference, the mDn delineation yielded a sinuosity that was higher than either the TauDEM method or the existing published stream delineations. Furthermore, stream delineation using the mDn method yielded the smallest LRMSE.

  14. Junior High School Students’ Perception about Simple Environmental Problem as an Impact of Problem based Learning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tapilouw, M. C.; Firman, H.; Redjeki, S.; Chandra, D. T.

    2017-09-01

    Environmental problem is a real problem that occur in student’s daily life. Junior high school students’ perception about environmental problem is interesting to be investigated. The major aim of this study is to explore junior high school students’ perception about environmental problems around them and ways to solve the problem. The subject of this study is 69 Junior High School Students from two Junior High School in Bandung. This study use two open ended question. The core of first question is environmental problem around them (near school or house). The core of second question is the way to prevent or to solve the problem. These two question are as an impact of problem based learning in science learning. There are two major findings in this study. The first finding, based on most students’ perception, plastic waste cause an environmental problem. The second finding, environmental awareness can be a solution to prevent environmental pollution. The third finding, most student can classify environmental pollution into land, water and air pollution. We can conclude that Junior High School Students see the environmental problem as a phenomenon and teacher can explore environmental problem to guide the way of preventing and resolving environmental problem.

  15. Development and characterization of high-efficiency, high-specific impulse xenon Hall thrusters

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hofer, Richard Robert

    This dissertation presents research aimed at extending the efficient operation of 1600 s specific impulse Hall thruster technology to the 2000--3000 s range. While recent studies of commercially developed Hall thrusters demonstrated greater than 4000 s specific impulse, maximum efficiency occurred at less than 3000 s. It was hypothesized that the efficiency maximum resulted as a consequence of modern magnetic field designs, optimized for 1600 s, which were unsuitable at high-specific impulse. Motivated by the industry efforts and mission studies, the aim of this research was to develop and characterize xenon Hall thrusters capable of both high-specific impulse and high-efficiency operation. The research divided into development and characterization phases. During the development phase, the laboratory-model NASA-173M Hall thrusters were designed with plasma lens magnetic field topographies and their performance and plasma characteristics were evaluated. Experiments with the NASA-173M version 1 (v1) validated the plasma lens design by showing how changing the magnetic field topography at high-specific impulse improved efficiency. Experiments with the NASA-173M version 2 (v2) showed there was a minimum current density and optimum magnetic field topography at which efficiency monotonically increased with voltage. Between 300--1000 V, total specific impulse and total efficiency of the NASA-173Mv2 operating at 10 mg/s ranged from 1600--3400 s and 51--61%, respectively. Comparison of the thrusters showed that efficiency can be optimized for specific impulse by varying the plasma lens design. During the characterization phase, additional plasma properties of the NASA-173Mv2 were measured and a performance model was derived accounting for a multiply-charged, partially-ionized plasma. Results from the model based on experimental data showed how efficient operation at high-specific impulse was enabled through regulation of the electron current with the magnetic field. The

  16. Extraction study on uranyl nitrate for energy applications

    Science.gov (United States)

    Giri, R.; Nath, G.

    2017-07-01

    Due to the ever-growing demand of energy nuclear reactor materials and the nuclear energy are now considered to be the most critical materials and source of energy for future era. Deposition of nuclear wastes in different industry, nuclear power sector are very much toxic in open environment which are hazardous to living being. There are different methods for extraction and reprocessing of these materials which are cost effective and tedious process. Ultrasonic assisted solvent extraction process is a most efficient and economical way for extraction of such type materials. The presence of third phase in mixing of extractants-diluent pair with aqueous phase imposes the problems in extraction of nuclear reactor materials. The appropriate solvent mixture in proper concentration is an important step in the solvent extraction process. Study of thermo-physical properties helps in selecting an optimum blend for extraction process. In the present work, the extraction of uranium with the binary mixture of Methyl Ethyl Ketone (MEK) and Kerosene was investigated and discussed with the variation of ultrasonic frequency for different temperatures. The result shows that the low frequency and low temperature is suitable environment for extraction. The extraction of uranium by this method is found to be a better result for extraction study in laboratory scale as well as industrial sector.

  17. Automatization of laboratory extraction installation intended for investigations in the field of reprocessing of spenf fuels

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Vznuzdaev, E.A.; Galkin, B.Ya.; Gofman, F.Eh.

    1981-01-01

    Automatized stand for solving the problem of optimum control on technological extraction process in the spent fuel reprocessing by means of an automatized control system which is based on the means of computation technick is described in the paper. Preliminary experiments which had been conducted on the stand with spent fuel from WWER-440 reactor have shown high efficiency of automatization and possibility to conduct technological investigations in a short period of time and to have much of information which can not be obtained by ordinary organisation of work [ru

  18. High-efficiency white OLEDs based on small molecules

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hatwar, Tukaram K.; Spindler, Jeffrey P.; Ricks, M. L.; Young, Ralph H.; Hamada, Yuuhiko; Saito, N.; Mameno, Kazunobu; Nishikawa, Ryuji; Takahashi, Hisakazu; Rajeswaran, G.

    2004-02-01

    Eastman Kodak Company and SANYO Electric Co., Ltd. recently demonstrated a 15" full-color, organic light-emitting diode display (OLED) using a high-efficiency white emitter combined with a color-filter array. Although useful for display applications, white emission from organic structures is also under consideration for other applications, such as solid-state lighting, where high efficiency and good color rendition are important. By incorporating adjacent blue and orange emitting layers in a multi-layer structure, highly efficient, stable white emission has been attained. With suitable host and dopant combinations, a luminance yield of 20 cd/A and efficiency of 8 lm/W have been achieved at a drive voltage of less than 8 volts and luminance level of 1000 cd/m2. The estimated external efficiency of this device is 6.3% and a high level of operational stability is observed. To our knowledge, this is the highest performance reported so far for white organic electroluminescent devices. We will review white OLED technology and discuss the fabrication and operating characteristics of these devices.

  19. A Waterline Extraction Method from Remote Sensing Image Based on Quad-tree and Multiple Active Contour Model

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    YU Jintao

    2016-09-01

    Full Text Available After the characteristics of geodesic active contour model (GAC, Chan-Vese model(CV and local binary fitting model(LBF are analyzed, and the active contour model based on regions and edges is combined with image segmentation method based on quad-tree, a waterline extraction method based on quad-tree and multiple active contour model is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the method provides an initial contour according to quad-tree segmentation. Secondly, a new signed pressure force(SPF function based on global image statistics information of CV model and local image statistics information of LBF model has been defined, and then ,the edge stopping function(ESF is replaced by the proposed SPF function, which solves the problem such as evolution stopped in advance and excessive evolution. Finally, the selective binary and Gaussian filtering level set method is used to avoid reinitializing and regularization to improve the evolution efficiency. The experimental results show that this method can effectively extract the weak edges and serious concave edges, and owns some properties such as sub-pixel accuracy, high efficiency and reliability for waterline extraction.

  20. Shopping Problems among High School Students

    Science.gov (United States)

    Grant, Jon E.; Potenza, Marc N.; Krishnan-Sarin, Suchitra; Cavallo, Dana A.; Desai, Rani A.

    2010-01-01

    Background Although shopping behavior among adolescents is normal, for some the shopping becomes problematic. An assessment of adolescent shopping behavior along a continuum of severity and its relationship to other behaviors and health issues is incompletely understood. Methods A large sample of high school students (n=3999) was examined using a self-report survey with 153 questions concerning demographic characteristics, shopping behaviors, other health behaviors including substance use, and functioning variables such as grades and violent behavior. Results The overall prevalence of problem shopping was 3.5% (95%CI: 2.93–4.07). Regular smoking, marijuana and other drug use, sadness and hopelessness, and antisocial behaviors (e.g., fighting, carrying weapons) were associated with problem shopping behavior in both boys and girls. Heavy alcohol use was significantly associated with problem shopping only in girls. Conclusion Problem shopping appears fairly common among high school students and is associated with symptoms of depression and a range of potentially addictive and antisocial behaviors. Significant distress and diminished behavioral control suggest that excessive shopping may often have significant associated morbidity. Additional research is needed to develop specific prevention and treatment strategies for adolescents who report problems with shopping. PMID:21497217

  1. Shopping problems among high school students.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Grant, Jon E; Potenza, Marc N; Krishnan-Sarin, Suchitra; Cavallo, Dana A; Desai, Rani A

    2011-01-01

    Although shopping behavior among adolescents is normal, for some, the shopping becomes problematic. An assessment of adolescent shopping behavior along a continuum of severity and its relationship to other behaviors and health issues is incompletely understood. A large sample of high school students (n = 3999) was examined using a self-report survey with 153 questions concerning demographic characteristics, shopping behaviors, other health behaviors including substance use, and functioning variables such as grades and violent behavior. The overall prevalence of problem shopping was 3.5% (95% CI, 2.93-4.07). Regular smoking, marijuana and other drug use, sadness and hopelessness, and antisocial behaviors (e.g., fighting, carrying weapons) were associated with problem shopping behavior in both boys and girls. Heavy alcohol use was significantly associated with problem shopping only in girls. Problem shopping appears fairly common among high school students and is associated with symptoms of depression and a range of potentially addictive and antisocial behaviors. Significant distress and diminished behavioral control suggest that excessive shopping may often have significant associated morbidity. Additional research is needed to develop specific prevention and treatment strategies for adolescents who report problems with shopping. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  2. Approaches to achieve high grain yield and high resource use efficiency in rice

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jianchang YANG

    2015-06-01

    Full Text Available This article discusses approaches to simultaneously increase grain yield and resource use efficiency in rice. Breeding nitrogen efficient cultivars without sacrificing rice yield potential, improving grain fill in later-flowering inferior spikelets and enhancing harvest index are three important approaches to achieving the dual goal of high grain yield and high resource use efficiency. Deeper root distribution and higher leaf photosynthetic N use efficiency at lower N rates could be used as selection criteria to develop N-efficient cultivars. Enhancing sink activity through increasing sugar-spikelet ratio at the heading time and enhancing the conversion efficiency from sucrose to starch though increasing the ratio of abscisic acid to ethylene in grains during grain fill could effectively improve grain fill in inferior spikelets. Several practices, such as post-anthesis controlled soil drying, an alternate wetting and moderate soil drying regime during the whole growing season, and non-flooded straw mulching cultivation, could substantially increase grain yield and water use efficiency, mainly via enhanced remobilization of stored carbon from vegetative tissues to grains and improved harvest index. Further research is needed to understand synergistic interaction between water and N on crop and soil and the mechanism underlying high resource use efficiency in high-yielding rice.

  3. Attention-Based Recurrent Temporal Restricted Boltzmann Machine for Radar High Resolution Range Profile Sequence Recognition

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yifan Zhang

    2018-05-01

    Full Text Available The High Resolution Range Profile (HRRP recognition has attracted great concern in the field of Radar Automatic Target Recognition (RATR. However, traditional HRRP recognition methods failed to model high dimensional sequential data efficiently and have a poor anti-noise ability. To deal with these problems, a novel stochastic neural network model named Attention-based Recurrent Temporal Restricted Boltzmann Machine (ARTRBM is proposed in this paper. RTRBM is utilized to extract discriminative features and the attention mechanism is adopted to select major features. RTRBM is efficient to model high dimensional HRRP sequences because it can extract the information of temporal and spatial correlation between adjacent HRRPs. The attention mechanism is used in sequential data recognition tasks including machine translation and relation classification, which makes the model pay more attention to the major features of recognition. Therefore, the combination of RTRBM and the attention mechanism makes our model effective for extracting more internal related features and choose the important parts of the extracted features. Additionally, the model performs well with the noise corrupted HRRP data. Experimental results on the Moving and Stationary Target Acquisition and Recognition (MSTAR dataset show that our proposed model outperforms other traditional methods, which indicates that ARTRBM extracts, selects, and utilizes the correlation information between adjacent HRRPs effectively and is suitable for high dimensional data or noise corrupted data.

  4. An Efficient Genetic Algorithm to Solve the Intermodal Terminal Location problem

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mustapha Oudani

    2014-11-01

    Full Text Available The exponential growth of the flow of goods and passengers, fragility of certain products and the need for the optimization of transport costs impose on carriers to use more and more multimodal transport. In addition, the need for intermodal transport policy has been strongly driven by environmental concerns and to benefit from the combination of different modes of transport to cope with the increased economic competition. This research is mainly concerned with the Intermodal Terminal Location Problem introduced recently in scientific literature which consists to determine a set of potential sites to open and how to route requests to a set of customers through the network while minimizing the total cost of transportation. We begin by presenting a description of the problem. Then, we present a mathematical formulation of the problem and discuss the sense of its constraints. The objective function to minimize is the sum of road costs and railroad combined transportation costs. As the Intermodal Terminal Location Problemproblem is NP-hard, we propose an efficient real coded genetic algorithm for solving the problem. Our solutions are compared to CPLEX and also to the heuristics reported in the literature. Numerical results show that our approach outperforms the other approaches.

  5. Efficiency and Loading Evaluation of High Efficiency Mist Eliminators (HEME) - 12003

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Giffin, Paxton K.; Parsons, Michael S.; Waggoner, Charles A. [Institute for Clean Energy Technology, Mississippi State University, 205 Research Blvd Starkville, MS 39759 (United States)

    2012-07-01

    High efficiency mist eliminators (HEME) are filters primarily used to remove moisture and/or liquid aerosols from an air stream. HEME elements are designed to reduce aerosol and particulate load on primary High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters and to have a liquid particle removal efficiency of approximately 99.5% for aerosols down to sub-micron size particulates. The investigation presented here evaluates the loading capacity of the element in the absence of a water spray cleaning system. The theory is that without the cleaning system, the HEME element will suffer rapid buildup of solid aerosols, greatly reducing the particle loading capacity. Evaluation consists of challenging the element with a waste surrogate dry aerosol and di-octyl phthalate (DOP) at varying intervals of differential pressure to examine the filtering efficiency of three different element designs at three different media velocities. Also, the elements are challenged with a liquid waste surrogate using Laskin nozzles and large dispersion nozzles. These tests allow the loading capacity of the unit to be determined and the effectiveness of washing down the interior of the elements to be evaluated. (authors)

  6. The compressed word problem for groups

    CERN Document Server

    Lohrey, Markus

    2014-01-01

    The Compressed Word Problem for Groups provides a detailed exposition of known results on the compressed word problem, emphasizing efficient algorithms for the compressed word problem in various groups. The author presents the necessary background along with the most recent results on the compressed word problem to create a cohesive self-contained book accessible to computer scientists as well as mathematicians. Readers will quickly reach the frontier of current research which makes the book especially appealing for students looking for a currently active research topic at the intersection of group theory and computer science. The word problem introduced in 1910 by Max Dehn is one of the most important decision problems in group theory. For many groups, highly efficient algorithms for the word problem exist. In recent years, a new technique based on data compression for providing more efficient algorithms for word problems, has been developed, by representing long words over group generators in a compres...

  7. The ability of in vitro antioxidant assays to predict the efficiency of a cod protein hydrolysate and brown seaweed extract to prevent oxidation in marine food model systems.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jónsdóttir, Rósa; Geirsdóttir, Margrét; Hamaguchi, Patricia Y; Jamnik, Polona; Kristinsson, Hordur G; Undeland, Ingrid

    2016-04-01

    The ability of different in vitro antioxidant assays to predict the efficiency of cod protein hydrolysate (CPH) and Fucus vesiculosus ethyl acetate extract (EA) towards lipid oxidation in haemoglobin-fortified washed cod mince and iron-containing cod liver oil emulsion was evaluated. The progression of oxidation was followed by sensory analysis, lipid hydroperoxides and thiobarbituric acid-reactive substances (TBARS) in both systems, as well as loss of redness and protein carbonyls in the cod system. The in vitro tests revealed high reducing capacity, high DPPH radical scavenging properties and a high oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) value of the EA which also inhibited lipid and protein oxidation in the cod model system. The CPH had a high metal chelating capacity and was efficient against oxidation in the cod liver oil emulsion. The results indicate that the F. vesiculosus extract has a potential as an excellent natural antioxidant against lipid oxidation in fish muscle foods while protein hydrolysates are more promising for fish oil emulsions. The usefulness of in vitro assays to predict the antioxidative properties of new natural ingredients in foods thus depends on the knowledge about the food systems, particularly the main pro-oxidants present. © 2015 Society of Chemical Industry.

  8. Preconcentration of Trace Neonicotinoid Insecticide Residues Using Vortex-Assisted Dispersive Micro Solid-Phase Extraction with Montmorillonite as an Efficient Sorbent

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Khwankaew Moyakao

    2018-04-01

    Full Text Available In this work, we investigated montmorillonite for adsorption of neonicotinoid insecticides in vortex-assisted dispersive micro-solid phase extraction (VA-d-μ-SPE. High-performance liquid chromatography with photodiode array detection was used for quantification and determination of neonicotinoid insecticide residues, including thiamethoxam, clothianidin, imidacloprid, acetamiprid, and thiacloprid. In this method, the solid sorbent was dispersed into the aqueous sample solution and vortex agitation was performed to accelerate the extraction process. Finally, the solution was filtered from the solid sorbent with a membrane filter. The parameters affecting the extraction efficiency of the proposed method were optimized, such as amount of sorbent, sample volume, salt addition, type and volume of extraction solvent, and vortex time. The adsorbing results show that montmorillonite could be reused at least 4 times and be used as an effective adsorbent for rapid extraction/preconcentration of neonicotinoid insecticide residues. Under optimum conditions, linear dynamic ranges were achieved between 0.5 and 1000 ng mL−1 with a correlation of determination (R2 greater than 0.99. Limit of detection (LOD ranged from 0.005 to 0.065 ng mL−1, while limit of quantification (LOQ ranged from 0.008 to 0.263 ng mL−1. The enrichment factor (EF ranged from 8 to 176-fold. The results demonstrated that the proposed method not only provided a more simple and sensitive method, but also can be used as a powerful alternative method for the simultaneous determination of insecticide residues in natural surface water and fruit juice samples.

  9. Dimethyl adipimidate/Thin film Sample processing (DTS); A simple, low-cost, and versatile nucleic acid extraction assay for downstream analysis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shin, Yong; Lim, Swee Yin; Lee, Tae Yoon; Park, Mi Kyoung

    2015-09-15

    Sample processing, especially that involving nucleic acid extraction, is a prerequisite step for the isolation of high quantities of relatively pure DNA for downstream analyses in many life science and biomedical engineering studies. However, existing methods still have major problems, including labor-intensive time-consuming methods and high costs, as well as requirements for a centrifuge and the complex fabrication of filters and membranes. Here, we first report a versatile Dimethyl adipimidate/Thin film based Sample processing (DTS) procedure without the limitations of existing methods. This procedure is useful for the extraction of DNA from a variety of sources, including 6 eukaryotic cells, 6 bacteria cells, and 2 body fluids in a single step. Specifically, the DTS procedure does not require a centrifuge and has improved time efficiency (30 min), affordability, and sensitivity in downstream analysis. We validated the DTS procedure for the extraction of DNA from human body fluids, as well as confirmed that the quality and quantity of the extracted DNA were sufficient to allow robust detection of genetic and epigenetic biomarkers in downstream analysis.

  10. Critical study of high efficiency deep grinding

    OpenAIRE

    Johnstone, lain

    2002-01-01

    The recent years, the aerospace industry in particular has embraced and actively pursued the development of stronger high performance materials, namely nickel based superalloys and hardwearing steels. This has resulted in a need for a more efficient method of machining, and this need was answered with the advent of High Efficiency Deep Grinding (HEDG). This relatively new process using Cubic Boron Nitride (CBN) electroplated grinding wheels has been investigated through experim...

  11. Optimization of conditions to extract high quality DNA for PCR analysis from whole blood using SDS-proteinase K method

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Wajhul Qamar

    2017-11-01

    Full Text Available In case of studies associated with human genetics, genomics, and pharmacogenetics the genomic DNA is extracted from the buccal cells, whole blood etc. Several methods are exploited by the researchers to extract DNA from the whole blood. One of these methods, which utilizes cell lysis and proteolytic properties of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS and proteinase K respectively, might also be called SDS-PK method. It does not include any hazardous chemicals such as phenol or chloroform and is inexpensive. However, several researchers report the same method with different formulas and conditions. During our experiments with whole blood DNA extraction we experienced problems such as protein contamination, DNA purity and yield when followed some SDS-PK protocols reported elsewhere. A260/A280 and A260/A230 ratios along with PCR amplification give a clear idea about the procedure that was followed to extract the DNA. In an effort to increase the DNA purity from human whole blood, we pointed out some steps of the protocol that play a crucial role in determining the extraction of high quality DNA.

  12. Combustion phasing for maximum efficiency for conventional and high efficiency engines

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Caton, Jerald A.

    2014-01-01

    Highlights: • Combustion phasing for max efficiency is a function of engine parameters. • Combustion phasing is most affected by heat transfer, compression ratio, burn duration. • Combustion phasing is less affected by speed, load, equivalence ratio and EGR. • Combustion phasing for a high efficiency engine was more advanced. • Exergy destruction during combustion as functions of combustion phasing is reported. - Abstract: The importance of the phasing of the combustion event for internal-combustion engines is well appreciated, but quantitative details are sparse. The objective of the current work was to examine the optimum combustion phasing (based on maximum bmep) as functions of engine design and operating variables. A thermodynamic, engine cycle simulation was used to complete this assessment. As metrics for the combustion phasing, both the crank angle for 50% fuel mass burned (CA 50 ) and the crank angle for peak pressure (CA pp ) are reported as functions of the engine variables. In contrast to common statements in the literature, the optimum CA 50 and CA pp vary depending on the design and operating variables. Optimum, as used in this paper, refers to the combustion timing that provides the maximum bmep and brake thermal efficiency (MBT timing). For this work, the variables with the greatest influence on the optimum CA 50 and CA pp were the heat transfer level, the burn duration and the compression ratio. Other variables such as equivalence ratio, EGR level, engine speed and engine load had a much smaller impact on the optimum CA 50 and CA pp . For the conventional engine, for the conditions examined, the optimum CA 50 varied between about 5 and 11°aTDC, and the optimum CA pp varied between about 9 and 16°aTDC. For a high efficiency engine (high dilution, high compression ratio), the optimum CA 50 was 2.5°aTDC, and the optimum CA pp was 7.8°aTDC. These more advanced values for the optimum CA 50 and CA pp for the high efficiency engine were

  13. Solving Multiple Timetabling Problems at Danish High Schools

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Kristiansen, Simon

    name; Elective Course Student Sectioning. The problem is solved using ALNS and solutions are proven to be close to optimum. The algorithm has been implemented and made available for the majority of the high schools in Denmark. The second Student Sectioning problem presented is the sectioning of each...... high schools. Two types of consultations are presented; the Parental Consultation Timetabling Problem (PCTP) and the Supervisor Consultation Timetabling Problem (SCTP). One mathematical model containing both consultation types has been created and solved using an ALNS approach. The received solutions...... problems as mathematical models and solve them using operational research techniques. Two of the models and the suggested solution methods have resulted in implementations in an actual decision support software, and are hence available for the majority of the high schools in Denmark. These implementations...

  14. Highly efficient construction of oriented sandwich structures for surface-enhanced Raman scattering

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Guo Hongyun; Xu Weiqing; Xu Shuping; Zhou Ji; Lombardi, John R

    2013-01-01

    The purpose of this study is to solve the problem of low achievement in fabricating sandwich surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates. We demonstrated a highly efficient sandwich structure by the oriented assembly of metal nanoparticles (NPs) on a periodic hexagonal array of metal nanoprisms with 1,4-benzenedithiol (1,4-BDT) as linkers. The metal nanoprism array was prepared by vacuum deposition of metal on a close-packed polystyrene nanosphere pre-patterned substrate. The metal nanoprism array presents different surface properties from the pits left from the removal of polystyrene nanospheres, which causes linkers to selectively adsorb on the metal nanoprism array and sequentially leads to the oriented immobilization of the second-layer metal NPs, avoiding mismatched orientation. These sandwich SERS substrates were characterized by extinction spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy and their enhancement activity was evaluated under different excitation wavelengths. The sandwich structure greatly increases the achievement of ‘hot spots’ to almost 100% of all the metal nanoprisms and enables a large amplification of SERS signals by a factor of ten. This method has the advantages of simplicity, high efficiency, high throughput, controllability and high reproducibility. It has significance in both the study of SERS substrates and the development of plasmonic devices. (paper)

  15. Enhancing Arithmetic and Word-Problem Solving Skills Efficiently by Individualized Computer-Assisted Practice

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schoppek, Wolfgang; Tulis, Maria

    2010-01-01

    The fluency of basic arithmetical operations is a precondition for mathematical problem solving. However, the training of skills plays a minor role in contemporary mathematics instruction. The authors proposed individualization of practice as a means to improve its efficiency, so that the time spent with the training of skills is minimized. As a…

  16. Near-critical and supercritical fluid extraction of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from town gas soil

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kocher, B.S.; Azzam, F.O.; Cutright, T.J.; Lee, S.

    1995-01-01

    The contamination of soil by hazardous and toxic organic pollutants is an ever-growing problem facing the global community. One particular family of contaminants that are of major importance are polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). PAHs are the result of coal gasification and high-temperature processes. Sludges from these town gas operations were generally disposed of into unlined pits and left there for eventual biodegradation. However, the high levels of PAH contained in the pits prevented the occurrence of biodegradation. PAH contaminated soil is now considered hazardous and must be cleaned to environmentally acceptable standards. One method for the remediation is extraction with supercritical water. Water in or about its critical region exhibits enhanced solvating power toward most organic compounds. Contaminated soil containing 4% by mass of hydrocarbons was ultra-cleaned in a 300-cm 3 semicontinuous system to an environmentally acceptable standard of less than 200 ppm residual hydrocarbon concentration. The effects of subcritical or supercritical extraction, solvent temperature, pressure, and density have been studied, and the discerning characteristics of this type of fluid have been identified. The efficiencies of subcritical and supercritical extraction have been discussed from a process engineering standpoint

  17. Liposome-containing Hibiscus sabdariffa calyx extract formulations with increased antioxidant activity, improved dermal penetration and reduced dermal toxicity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pinsuwan, Sirirat; Amnuaikit, Thanaporn; Ungphaiboon, Suwipa; Itharat, Arunporn

    2010-12-01

    Hibiscus sabdariffa Linn, or Roselle, is a medicinal plant used extensively in traditional Thai medicine since ancient times. The extracts of Roselle calyces possess antioxidant activity and have potential for development as active ingredients in cosmetic products. However the limitations of using Roselle extracts in cosmetics are its low skin permeation and dermal irritation. Liposome technology is an obvious approach that might overcome these problems. Liposome formulations of standardized Roselle extracts were developed with various lipid components. The formulation showing the highest entrapment efficiency was selected for stability, skin permeation and dermal irritability studies. The liposome formulation with the highest entrapment efficiency (83%) and smalôlest particle size (332 mm) was formulated with phosphatidylcholine from soybean (SPC): Tween 80: deoxycholic acid (DA); 84:16:2.5 weight ratio, total lipid of 200 g/mL and 10% w/v Roselle extract in final liposomal preparation. This liposome formulation was found to be stable after storage at 4 degrees C, protected from light, for 2 months. The in vitro skin permeation studies, using freshly excised pig skin and modified Franz-diffusion cells, showed that the liposome formulation was able to considerably increased the rate of permeation of active compounds in Roselle extracts compared to the Roselle extract solution. The in vivo dermal irritability testing on rabbit skin showed that the liposome formulation dramatically decreased skin irritability compared to the unformulated extract. These results showed that the liposomes containing Roselle extracts had good stability, high entrapment efficacy, increased skin permeation and low skin irritation.

  18. Sulfonated nanocellulose for the efficient dispersive micro solid-phase extraction and determination of silver nanoparticles in food products.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ruiz-Palomero, Celia; Soriano, M Laura; Valcárcel, Miguel

    2016-01-08

    This paper reports a simple approach to Analytical Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (AN&N) that integrates the nanotool, sulfonated nanocellulose (s-NC), and nanoanalyte, silver nanoparticles (AgNPs), in the same analytical process by using an efficient, environmentally friendly dispersive micro solid-phase extraction (D-μSPE) capillary electrophoresis (CE) method with s-NC as sorbent material. Introducing negatively charged sulfate groups onto the surface of cellulose enhances its surface chemistry and enables the extraction and preconcentration of AgNPs of variable diameter (10, 20 and 60nm) and shell composition (citrate and polyvinylpyrrolidone coatings) from complex matrices into a cationic surfactant. In this way, AgNPs of diverse nature were successfully extracted onto the s-NC sorbent and then desorbed into an aqueous solution containing thiotic acid (TA) prior to CE without the need for any labor-intensive cleanup. The ensuing eco-friendly D-μSPE method exhibited a linear response to AgNPs with a limit of detection (LOD) of 20μg/L. Its ability to specifically recognize AgNPs of different sizes was checked in orange juice and mussels, which afforded recoveries of 70.9-108.4%. The repeatability of the method at the limit of quantitation (LOQ) level was 5.6%. Based on the results, sulfonated nanocellulose provides an efficient, cost-effective analytical nanotool for the extraction of AgNPs from food products. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  19. Comparison of quenching and extraction methodologies for metabolome analysis of Lactobacillus plantarum

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Faijes Magda

    2007-08-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background A reliable quenching and metabolite extraction method has been developed for Lactobacillus plantarum. The energy charge value was used as a critical indicator for fixation of metabolism. Results Four different aqueous quenching solutions, all containing 60% of methanol, were compared for their efficiency. Only the solutions containing either 70 mM HEPES or 0.85% (w/v ammonium carbonate (pH 5.5 caused less than 10% cell leakage and the energy charge of the quenched cells was high, indicating rapid inactivation of the metabolism. The efficiency of extraction of intracellular metabolites from cell cultures depends on the extraction methods, and is expected to vary between micro-organisms. For L. plantarum, we have compared five different extraction methodologies based on (i cold methanol, (ii perchloric acid, (iii boiling ethanol, (iv chloroform/methanol (1:1 and (v chloroform/water (1:1. Quantification of representative intracellular metabolites showed that the best extraction efficiencies were achieved with cold methanol, boiling ethanol and perchloric acid. Conclusion The ammonium carbonate solution was selected as the most suitable quenching buffer for metabolomics studies in L. plantarum because (i leakage is minimal, (ii the energy charge indicates good fixation of metabolism, and (iii all components are easily removed during freeze-drying. A modified procedure based on cold methanol extraction combined good extractability with mild extraction conditions and high enzymatic inactivation. These features make the combination of these quenching and extraction protocols very suitable for metabolomics studies with L. plantarum.

  20. Highly efficient red electrophosphorescent devices at high current densities

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Wu Youzhi; Zhu Wenqing; Zheng Xinyou; Sun, Runguang; Jiang Xueyin; Zhang Zhilin; Xu Shaohong

    2007-01-01

    Efficiency decrease at high current densities in red electrophosphorescent devices is drastically restrained compared with that from conventional electrophosphorescent devices by using bis(2-methyl-8-quinolinato)4-phenylphenolate aluminum (BAlq) as a hole and exciton blocker. Ir complex, bis(2-(2'-benzo[4,5-α]thienyl) pyridinato-N,C 3' ) iridium (acetyl-acetonate) is used as an emitter, maximum external quantum efficiency (QE) of 7.0% and luminance of 10000cd/m 2 are obtained. The QE is still as high as 4.1% at higher current density J=100mA/cm 2 . CIE-1931 co-ordinates are 0.672, 0.321. A carrier trapping mechanism is revealed to dominate in the process of electroluminescence