Towards a dynamic rule-based business process

IJWGS is now included in Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), starting from volume 4, 2008. The first impact factor, which will be for 2010, is expected to be published in mid 201

Effects of Acoustics on Induced Droplet Shedding In Dropwise Condensation

Research studies over the years have confirmed that dropwise condensation is more effective than film-wise condensation since it promotes higher rates of heat transfer. However, droplet shedding in dropwise condensation still is one of the limiting steps in the overall condensation phenomena, even when using engineered surfaces. Therefore, acoustic stimuli should be considered to promote adequate droplet shedding during condensation. To that end, an acoustic system has been developed to induce droplet shedding via substrate-droplet resonance. To understand the relationship between droplet sliding angle and body forces such as gravity and acoustic streaming, a mathematical model has been postulated capable of predicting the critical sliding angle of droplets. Recently, a mathematical physics-based model has been developed, which can predict droplet-sliding angles while using a variety of surfaces including those with hydrophobic and hydrophilic wetting characteristics. The model has been validated experimentally with and without imposing acoustic stimuli under the influence of gravity. Initially, the relationship between the sliding angle and droplet volume were investigated experimentally to obtain the contact angle hysteresis for smooth surfaces. Then, different natural frequencies of droplets were also examined to determine the best resonance mode of vibration that leads to lower-sliding angles. Experimental data show that the model can be used effectively to relate imposed resonance frequency to critical sliding angle of droplets. Experimental results to date also show that surfaces with hydrophobic properties, depict lower condensation rates than hydrophilic surfaces. Moreover, hydrophobic surfaces depict droplets with less contact area and greater surface area on the vapor side, which lead to greater thermal resistance and lower condensation rates. While imposing vibrations to a condensation system, a surface with super-hydrophobic properties shows an enhancement in heat flux of 45%. Furthermore, heat transfer enhancement in both hydrophilic and hydrophobic surfaces can be achieved when the difference between surface temperature and ambient temperature (T) is in the range of 10 to 12.5 °C. In summary, vibrations help shed smaller droplets faster, which allow for faster rate of dropwise condensation. Furthermore, vibrations help mitigate the effects of surface tension on condensation

Electric Field Induced Birefringence in Isotropic Suspensions of Nanoplates

Isotropic suspensions of colloidal nanoplates are of potential use in electronic displays. Electric field induced-birefringence and the response time of platelets are the two most relevant important properties for display applications. The Kerr coefficient quantifies how high is the field induced-birefringence for a given strength of electric field. The higher the Kerr coefficient, the lower is the required voltage for switching the pixels ON. Therefore, the battery consumption would be lower for high Kerr coefficient platelets. While graphene oxide platelets have shown a potential to be used in displays due to very high Kerr coefficient and very high diameter-to-thickness ratio, a systematic study on the variation of this ratio to study its effect on Kerr coefficient has not yet been done. Very dilute aqueous suspensions of 2D nanoplates of ?-zirconium phosphate (?-Zr(HPOv4) abbreviated as ?-ZrP) in isotropic phases were tested for electric field induced-birefringence. Different reaction conditions of synthesizing pristine ?-ZrP disks in hydrothermal reactor allowed controlled variation of disk sizes. The ?-ZrP disks were exfoliated in aqueous medium using tetra-(n)-butyl hydroxide (Buv4NOH). After exfoliation, nanoplates with uniform thickness (~3 nm) and diameter-to-thickness ratios of 300 to 900 were obtained and then tested for electric field induced-birefringence. The systematic variation in aspect ratio allowed us to study the dependence of Kerr coefficient on nanoplate diameter-to-thickness ratio. The obtained Kerr coefficient of ZrP nanoplates is higher than other platelet systems such as gibbsite, beidellite, but lower than graphene oxide. Due to the shape anisotropy of 2D materials, the electrical polarizability in the plane of this 2D material (??v?) and in the direction perpendicular to the plane (???) are different. The anisotropy in electric polarizability, defined as ???=??v????v?, induces birefringence in isotropic samples. The ?? value was measured for two different sizes of nanoplates and compared with those predicted by Maxwell-Wagner-O’Konski. By comparing the field interaction parameter of nanoplates for electric and magnetic fields, it turned out that a Tesla of magnetic field and a volt per millimeter of electric field have the same effect in terms of induced-birefringence. Hence, it can be concluded that electric field can easily induce-birefringence in isotropic suspensions of nanoplates as compared to magnetic field

Controlled Degradation of Poly(ester amide)s via Cyclization of Pendant Functional Groups

Polyesters have been used for many biomedical applications ranging from sutures to drug delivery vehicles. However, their bulk degradation results in an accumulation of acidic byproducts, which is detrimental to the human body. In order to circumvent this problem, as well as to impart new properties and functions to polymers for biomedical applications, poly(ester amide)s (PEAs) have been proposed as a different class of biodegradable polymers. However, up to date, there exists no way to stimulate the degradation of these polymers. The Gillies research group has previously incorporated self-immolative spacers into polymers and has been able to stimulate their degradation by adding the appropriate trigger. The objective of this thesis was to incorporate amino acids capable of 1,5-cyclization into the PEA backbone such that upon activation of the functional moiety, a 1,5-cyclization was induced, leading to degradation of the PEA backbone. PEAs containing L-2,4-diaminobutyric acid and DL-homocysteine were synthesized and their degradation was monitored in solution, and in films. It was found that the polymers containing the self-immolative spacers degraded faster than their controls under specific triggers (i.e. change in pH, reducing conditions, UV light), thereby allowing polymer degradation to be accelerated under these specific conditions

Valoración socio-cultural de los servicios ecosistémicos como acción estratégica de educación ambiental, en la comunidad El Socorro, municipio de Matagalpa, durante el II semestre del 2016

El presente trabajo de investigación tiene como tema “Valoración socio-cultural de los servicios ecosistémicos como acción estratégica de educación ambiental, en el departamento de Matagalpa, durante el 2016” y el Subtema “Valoración socio-cultural de los servicios ecosistémicos como acción estratégica de educación ambiental, en la comunidad El Socorro, municipio de Matagalpa, departamento de Matagalpa, durante el 2016”, con el propósito de valorar aspectos socioculturales de los servicios ecosistémicos como estrategia de educación ambiental. Para el logro del objetivo general el primer paso fue identificar qué servicios ecosistémicos se presentaban en el área de estudio y cuáles eran reconocidos como importantes por la población, que permitiera así analizar los factores socioculturales que influyen en los servicios ecosistémicos. Esta identificación se realizó a través de un análisis teórico y la aplicación de instrumentos como encuesta, entrevista y grupo focal a los actores sociales. Los resultados destacan que uno de los servicios ecosistémicos más importantes en el área de estudio es el agua, la producción de alimentos, los recursos genéticos, la identidad del sitio, y el disfrute espiritual que pertenecen a los cuatro servicios ecosistémicos. Finalmente se elaboró acciones estratégicas de educación ambiental como parte de alternativas viables en la conservación del medio ambiente. Es posible además concluir que la valoración sociocultural de los servicios ecosistémicos es de gran importancia para reconocer el valor de los servicios que los ecosistemas prestan para el beneficio de las personas y cómo esos valores se integran en la toma de decisiones para su conservación o uso sostenible Palabras claves: valoración sociocultural, servicios ecosistémicos, educación ambienta

Towards an Efficient Context-Aware System: Problems and Suggestions to Reduce Energy Consumption in Mobile Devices

Looking for optimizing the battery consumption is an open issue, and we think it is feasible if we analyze the battery consumption behavior of a typical context-aware application to reduce context-aware operations at runtime. This analysis is based on different context sensors configurations. Actually existing context-aware approaches are mainly based on collecting and sending context data to external components, without taking into account how expensive are these operations in terms of energy consumption. As a first result of our work in progress, we are proposing a way for reducing the context data publishing. We have designed a testing battery consumption architecture supported by Nokia Energy Profiler tool to verify consumption in different scenarios

MODERNIZATION OF VERKKOPALKKA IDENTITY MANAGEMENT AND USER ADMINISTRATION: TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP AND RETURN ON INVESTMENT ANALYSIS

In technology management field, Web-based technologies are becoming very popular within different kind of business domains. Actually, Web-based solutions are facing big challenges mainly related to proper and secure user’s identity management and role delegation operations. The value of improving user’s authentication and management flexibility across multiple organizations has been lately an important concern in order to provide business advantage. Verkkopalkka is a Web-based solution developed within Aditro Oy to process payslips generated from different systems and organizations. These organizations are granted with Verkkopalkka accounts and different kind of privileges to log into the system and perform user operations. Once Verkkopalkka started to grow in complexity and amount of users, limitations and disadvantages related to user’s identity management demanded a better and more flexible solution to handle user’s authorization and delegation operations. The new Verkkopalkka solution required a big investment in terms of budget and resources that was distributed in different areas. Creating technology and business advantage is meant to introduce a more competitive product into the market. The integration of technologies that create more business value to Aditro Oy through a better and improved Verkkopalkka application, are based on a well-defined technology strategy as a set of decisions intended to confer advantage from different angles, reduce costs and potentially increase revenue. The main scope of this thesis is analysing the total cost of ownership against the return on investment related to the modernization and improvement of Verkkopalkka application through the integration of a reliable identity management technology, such as Ubisecure. This analysis has been validated within a well-defined sensitivity analysis that considers variations of total cost of ownership and benefit, as well as, worst and best case scenarios.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

Prediction of time series using wavelet Gaussian process for wireless sensor networks

Articulo de investigacion idizado en JCR con factor de impacto 2.2The detection and transmission of a physical variable over time, by a node of a sensor network to its sink node, represents a significant communication overload and consequently one of the main energy consumption processes. In this article we present an algorithm for the prediction of time series, with which it is expected to reduce the energy consumption of a sensor network, by reducing the number of transmissions when reporting to the sink node only when the prediction of the sensed value differs in certain magnitude, to the actual sensed value. For this end, the proposed algorithm combines a wavelet multiresolution transform with robust prediction using Gaussian process. The data is processed in wavelet domain, taking advantage of the transform ability to capture geometric information and decomposition in more simple signals or subbands. Subsequently, the decomposed signal is approximated by Gaussian process one for each subband of the wavelet, in this manner the Gaussian process is given to learn a much simple signal. Once the process is trained, it is ready to make predictions. We compare our method with pure Gaussian process prediction showing that the proposed method reduces the prediction error and is improves large horizons predictions, thus reducing the energy consumption of the sensor network