8,858 research outputs found
Sol-gel electrochromic device
All solid state electrochromic devices have potential applications in architectural and automotive fields to regulate the transmission and reflection of radiant energy. We present the optical and electrochemical characteristics of two solid state windows having the configuration glass/ITO/TiO2-CeO2/TiO2/TiO2-CeO2/ITO/glass and glass/ITO/WOa/TiO2/TiO2-CeO2/ITO/glass where the three internal layers have been prepared by sol gel methods. The preparation of the individual sols and some physical properties of the different sol gel coatings are reported
Optimal Time-dependent Sequenced Route Queries in Road Networks
In this paper we present an algorithm for optimal processing of
time-dependent sequenced route queries in road networks, i.e., given a road
network where the travel time over an edge is time-dependent and a given
ordered list of categories of interest, we find the fastest route between an
origin and destination that passes through a sequence of points of interest
belonging to each of the specified categories of interest. For instance,
considering a city road network at a given departure time, one can find the
fastest route between one's work and his/her home, passing through a bank, a
supermarket and a restaurant, in this order. The main contribution of our work
is the consideration of the time dependency of the network, a realistic
characteristic of urban road networks, which has not been considered previously
when addressing the optimal sequenced route query. Our approach uses the A*
search paradigm that is equipped with an admissible heuristic function, thus
guaranteed to yield the optimal solution, along with a pruning scheme for
further reducing the search space. In order to compare our proposal we extended
a previously proposed solution aimed at non-time dependent sequenced route
queries, enabling it to deal with the time-dependency. Our experiments using
real and synthetic data sets have shown our proposed solution to be up to two
orders of magnitude faster than the temporally extended previous solution.Comment: 10 pages, 12 figures To be published as a short paper in the 23rd ACM
SIGSPATIA
International Portfolio Diversification: Short-Term Financial Assets and Gold
Using a continuous-time finance-theoretic framework, this paper presents the optimal portfolio rule of an international investor who consumes N national composite goods and who holds N domestic-currency-denominated assets with known nominal interest rates in an environment where prices of goods, assets and exchange rates follow geometric Brownian motion. It is shown that the currency portfolio rule described in Macedo (1982a) is applicable to the case where there are N assets with a known price and one asset, gold, with a random rice in terms of the numeraire. Under these assumptions, it is found that the optimal portfolio of an investor consuming goods from all major industrialized countries (according to their weight in total trade) would be dominated in March 1981 by long positions in U.S. dollars (25%), yen (17%), D. marks (16%), French francs (15%) and pounds sterling (10%). An investor consuming only U.S. goods, by contrast, would hold 96% of his optimal portfolio in U.S. dollars. Because of the covariance of exchange rates and gold, the exclusion of the latter generates substantial reshuffling. The analysis of the evolution of portfolios over time shows that shares changed dramatically at the beginning of the period and did not begin to approach their March 1981 values until the end of 1975. In the case of the yen and the pound there were oscillations throughout the period. With respect to the dollar share in the optimal portfolio of the U.S. and international investor, it is found that, in the period between late 1974 and mid-1976, a period in which the dollar is considered to have been "strong", a large decline in its optimal share took place.
Evidence of secondary relaxations in the dielectric spectra of ionic liquids
We investigated the dynamics of a series of room temperature ionic liquids
based on the same 1-butyl-3-methyl imidazolium cation and different anions by
means of broadband dielectric spectroscopy covering 15 decades in frequency
(10^(-6)-10^9 Hz), and in the temperature range from 400 K down to 35 K. An
ionic conductivity is observed above the glass transition temperature T_{g}
with a relaxation in the electric modulus representation. Below T_{g}, two
relaxation processes appear, with the same features as the secondary
relaxations typically observed in molecular glasses. The activation energy of
the secondary processes and their dependence on the anion are different. The
slower process shows the characteristics of an intrinsic Johari-Goldstein
relaxation, in particular an activation energy E_{beta}=24k_{B}T_{g} is found,
as observed in molecular glasses.Comment: Major revision, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let
An association UNIFAC model for aqueous and alcohol solutions of sugars
In this work, a modified UNIFAC model [1] that explicitly takes into account association effects is applied to mixtures containing common sugars, alcohols and water.
Following the same strategy adopted before [2], four residual groups were defined to represent the sugars family: the pyranose ring (PYR), the furanose ring (FUR), the osidic bond (-O-) and the hydroxyl ring group (OH ring) [2]. For the association term, a general two sites OH associating group is used to represent association effects in these solutions, allowing a straightforward extension to multicomponent mixtures. Correlation of both solvent activity properties (water activities, vapour pressures, boiling and freezing points of aqueous D-glucose and D-fructose solutions) and sugars (D-fructose, D-glucose and sucrose) solubility in water, ethanol and methanol give very good results. Satisfactory predictions are obtained for vapour-liquid equilibrium and solid-liquid equilibrium of ternary and quaternary mixtures of sugars in mixed solvents
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