Binding of Basic Dyes by the Algae, Chara aspera

Non-living biomass of the algae Chara aspera is capable of binding two basic dyes, methylene blue and basic blue 3, from aqueous solution. Factors such as dye concentration, contact time, sorbent dosage and pH of solution were studied. Maximum sorption capacities of the algae for methylene blue and basic blue 3 are 139.4 and 17.8 mg/g, respectively, as determined from the Langmuir isothenns

Applications of Built-up Sections in Lightweight Steel Trusses

Lightweight steel structures have been widely used in the construction industry. It is flexible and thus can be designed to cater for different usages. To enhance the application of cold-formed steel structures, innovative configurations are developed. These include increasing the load bearing capacity of the structure and stretching it over a larger span. Built-up section of lipped channels, either back-to-back or boxed-up for the critical elements of a truss is often adopted when it may have practical limitations in increasing the truss depth. This paper presents some of such applications in the construction industry. The built-up section possesses apparent improvement in lateral stiffness. Although these sections act together, they are currently designed individually. Current design codes do not have comprehensive provision for the design of built-up sections reflecting the improvement in design strength. The modified slenderness ratio for built-up sections in the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) North American Specification for the Design of Cold-Formed Steel Structural Members is adopted from researches and recommendations for hot-rolled sections. From literature search, field observation and preliminary test conducted, it reveals that the modification rule can be further developed to better reflect the improvement in the slenderness ratio of the built-up sections

Tidal signals in ocean-bottom magnetic measurements of the Northwestern Pacific: observation versus prediction

Motional induction in the ocean by tides has long been observed by both land and satellite measurements of magnetic fields. While these signals are weak (∼10 nT) when compared to the main magnetic field, their persistent nature makes them important for consideration during geomagnetic field modelling. Previous studies have reported several discrepancies between observations and numerical predictions of the tidal magnetic signals and those studies were inconclusive of the source of the error. We address this issue by (1) analysing magnetometer data from ocean-bottom stations, where the low-noise and high-signal environment is most suitable for detecting the weak tidal magnetic signals, (2) by numerically predicting the magnetic field with a spatial resolution that is 16times higher than the previous studies and (3) by using four different models of upper-mantle conductivity. We use vector magnetic data from six ocean-bottom electromagnetic (OBEM) stations located in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean. The OBEM tidal amplitudes were derived using an iteratively re-weighted least-squares (IRLS) method and by limiting the analysis of lunar semidiurnal (M2), lunar elliptic semidinurnal (N2) and diurnal (O1) tidal modes to the night-time. Using a 3-D electromagnetic induction solver and the TPX07.2 tidal model, we predict the tidal magnetic signal. We use earth models with non-uniform oceans and four 1-D mantle sections underneath taken from Kuvshinov and Olsen, Shimizu etal. and Baba etal. to compare the effect of upper-mantle conductivity. We find that in general, the predictions and observations match within 10-70 per cent across all the stations for each of the tidal modes. The median normalized percent difference (NPD) between observed and predicted amplitudes for the tidal modes M2, N2 and O1 were 15 per cent, 47 per cent and 98 per cent, respectively, for all the stations and models. At the majority of stations, and for each of the tidal modes, the higher resolution (0.25°×0.25°) modelling gave amplitudes consistently closer to the observations than the lower resolution (1°×1°) modelling. The difference in lithospheric resistance east and west of the Izu-Bonin trench system seems to be affecting the model response and observations in the O1 tidal mode. This response is not seen in the M2 and N2 modes, thereby indicating that the O1 mode is more sensitive to lithospheric resistanc

A Pragmatic Evaluation of Distance Vector Proactive Routing in MANETs via Open Space Real-World Experiments

Mobile Ad hoc Networks constitute a promising and fast developing technology that could significantly enhance user freedom. The flexibility provided by such networks is accompanied by unreliability due to notably dynamic conditions that render routing quite problematic. For that reason, the research community has proposed multiple protocols claimed to address this issue, however, only few have been tested via real experiments, while even fewer have reached maturity to become readily available to end users. The main purpose of this paper is to pragmatically evaluate a promising, complete, and finalized MANET protocol via real-world experimentation in open space environment. The considered protocol, with the acronym B.A.T.M.A.N, which is based on distance vector proactive routing, was tested in different networking scenarios that revealed its ability to satisfactorily handle traffic under different conditions

Computer simulations of VANETs using realistic city topologies

Researchers in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) commonly use simulation to test new algorithms and techniques. This is the case because of the high cost and labor involved in deploying and testing vehicles in real outdoor scenarios. However, when determining the factors that should be taken into account in these simulations, some factors such as realistic road topologies and presence of obstacles are rarely addressed. In this paper, we first evaluate the packet error rate (PER) through actual measurements in an outdoor road scenario, and deduce a close model of the PER for VANETs. Secondly, we introduce a topology-based visibility scheme such that road dimension and geometry can be accounted for, in addition to line-of-sight. We then combine these factors to determine when warning messages (i.e., messages that warn drivers of danger and hazards) are successfully received in a VANET. Through extensive simulations using different road topologies, city maps, and visibility schemes, we show these factors can impact warning message dissemination time and packet delivery rate.This work was partially supported by the Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia, Spain, under Grant TIN2011-27543-C03-01, and by the Diputacion General de Aragon, under Grant "subvenciones destinadas a la formacion y contratacion de personal investigador".Martínez, FJ.; Fogue, M.; Toh, C.; Cano Escribá, JC.; Tavares De Araujo Cesariny Calafate, CM.; Manzoni, P. (2013). Computer simulations of VANETs using realistic city topologies. Wireless Personal Communications. 69(2):639-663. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-012-0594-6S639663692Martinez F. J., Toh C.-K., Cano J.-C., Calafate C. T., Manzoni P. (2011) A survey and comparative study of simulators for vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Journal 11(7): 813–828Toh C.-K. (2001) Ad hoc mobile wireless networks: Protocols and systems. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJIEEE 802.11 Working Group. (2010). IEEE standard for information technology—telecommunications and information exchange between systems—local and metropolitan area networks—Specific requirements—Part 11: Wireless LAN medium access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) specifications amendment 6: Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments.Sommer, C., Eckhoff, D., German, R., & Dressler F. (2011). A computationally inexpensive empirical model of IEEE 802.11p radio shadowing in urban environments. In Eighth international conference on wireless on-demand network systems and services (WONS), pp. 84–90.Bohm, A., Lidstrom, K., Jonsson, M., & Larsson, T. (2010). Evaluating CALM M5-based vehicle-to-vehicle communication in various road settings through field trials. In Proceedings of the 35th IEEE conference on local computer networks (LCN’10), Denver, Colorado, USA, pp. 613–620.Martinez, F. J., Fogue, M., Coll, M., Cano, J.-C., Calafate, C. T., & Manzoni, P. (2010). Assessing the impact of a realistic radio propagation model on VANET scenarios using real maps. In 9th IEEE international symposium on network computing and applications (NCA), Boston, USA, pp. 132–139.Fall, K., & Varadhan, K. (2000). “ns notes and documents,” The VINT project. UC Berkeley, LBL, USC/ISI, and Xerox PARC, February 2000. Available at http://www.isi.edu/nsnam/ns/ns-documentation.html .Marinoni, S., & Kari, H. H. (2006). Ad hoc routing protocol performance in a realistic environment. In Proceedings of the international conference on networking, international conference on systems and international conference on mobile communications and learning technologies (ICN/ICONS/MCL 2006), Washington, DC, USA.Mahajan, A., Potnis, N., Gopalan, K., & Wang, A. (2007). Modeling VANET deployment in urban settings. In International workshop on modeling analysis and simulation of wireless and mobile systems (MSWiM 2007), Crete Island, Greece.Suriyapaiboonwattana, K., Pornavalai, C., & Chakraborty, G. (2009). An adaptive alert message dissemination protocol for VANET to improve road safety. In IEEE intlernational conference on fuzzy systems, 2009. FUZZ-IEEE 2009, pp. 1639–1644.Bako, B., Schoch, E., Kargl, F., & Weber, M. (2008). Optimized position based gossiping in VANETs. In Vehicular technology conference, 2008. VTC 2008-Fall. IEEE 68th, pp. 1–5.Martinez, F. J., Cano, J.-C., Calafate, C. T., & Manzoni, P. (2008). Citymob: A mobility model pattern generator for VANETs. In IEEE vehicular networks and applications workshop (Vehi-Mobi, held with ICC), Beijing, China.Torrent-Moreno, M., Santi, P., & Hartenstein, H. (2007). Inter-vehicle communications: Assessing information dissemination under safety constraints. In Proceedings of the 4th annual conference on wireless on demand network systems and services (WONS), Oberguyrgl, Austria.Martinez, F. J., Toh, C.-K., Cano, J.-C., Calafate, C. T., & Manzoni, P. (2009). Realistic radio propagation models (RPMs) for VANET simulations. In IEEE wireless communications and networking conference (WCNC), Budapest, Hungary.Martinez, F. J., Toh, C.-K., Cano, J.-C., Calafate, C. T., & Manzoni, P. (2010). A street broadcast reduction scheme (SBR) to mitigate the broadcast storm problem in VANETs. Wireless personal communications, pp. 1–14. doi: 10.1007/s11277-010-9989-4Ni, S.-Y., Tseng, Y.-C., Chen, Y.-S., & Sheu, J.-P. (1999). The broadcast storm problem in a mobile ad hoc network. In ACM/IEEE international conference on mobile computing and networking (MobiCom 1999), Seattle Washington.Krajzewicz, D., & Rossel, C. (2007). “Simulation of urban mobility (SUMO),” Centre for Applied Informatics (ZAIK) and the Institute of Transport Research at the German Aerospace Centre. Available at http://sumo.sourceforge.net/index.shtml .OpenStreetMap Team. (2009). OpenStreetMap, collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world. Available at http://www.openstreetmap.org .U.S. Census Bureau. (2009). TIGER, topologically integrated geographic encoding and referencing. Available at http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger .Krauss S., Wagner P., Gawron C. (1997) Metastable states in a microscopic model of traffic flow. Physical Review E 55(5): 5597–5602Krajzewicz, D., Hertkorn, G., Rossel, C., & Wagner, P. (2002). SUMO (Simulation of Urban MObility)—An open-source traffic simulation. In Proceedings of the 4th middle east symposium on simulation and modelling (MESM2002), Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, pp. 183–187

Stable two-dimensional solitary pulses in linearly coupled dissipative Kadomtsev-Petviashvili equations

A two-dimensional (2D) generalization of the stabilized Kuramoto - Sivashinsky (KS) system is presented. It is based on the Kadomtsev-Petviashvili (KP) equation including dissipation of the generic (Newell -- Whitehead -- Segel, NWS) type and gain. The system directly applies to the description of gravity-capillary waves on the surface of a liquid layer flowing down an inclined plane, with a surfactant diffusing along the layer's surface. Actually, the model is quite general, offering a simple way to stabilize nonlinear waves in media combining the weakly-2D dispersion of the KP type with gain and NWS dissipation. Parallel to this, another model is introduced, whose dissipative terms are isotropic, rather than of the NWS type. Both models include an additional linear equation of the advection-diffusion type, linearly coupled to the main KP-NWS equation. The extra equation provides for stability of the zero background in the system, opening a way to the existence of stable localized pulses. The consideration is focused on the case when the dispersive part of the system of the KP-I type, admitting the existence of 2D localized pulses. Treating the dissipation and gain as small perturbations and making use of the balance equation for the field momentum, we find that the equilibrium between the gain and losses may select two 2D solitons, from their continuous family existing in the conservative counterpart of the model (the latter family is found in an exact analytical form). The selected soliton with the larger amplitude is expected to be stable. Direct simulations completely corroborate the analytical predictions.Comment: a latex text file and 16 eps files with figures; Physical Review E, in pres

Surface-reconstructed Icosahedral Structures for Lead Clusters

We describe a new family of icosahedral structures for lead clusters. In general, structures in this family contain a Mackay icosahedral core with a reconstructed two-shell outer-layer. This family includes the anti-Mackay icosahedra, which have have a Mackay icosahedral core but with most of the surface atoms in hexagonal close-packed positions. Using a many-body glue potential for lead, we identify two icosahedral structures in this family which have the lowest energies of any known structure in the size range from 900 to 15000 lead atoms. We show that these structures are stabilized by a feature of the many-body glue part of the interatomic potential.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure

Molecular dynamics simulations of lead clusters

Molecular dynamics simulations of nanometer-sized lead clusters have been performed using the Lim, Ong and Ercolessi glue potential (Surf. Sci. {\bf 269/270}, 1109 (1992)). The binding energies of clusters forming crystalline (fcc), decahedron and icosahedron structures are compared, showing that fcc cuboctahedra are the most energetically favoured of these polyhedral model structures. However, simulations of the freezing of liquid droplets produced a characteristic form of ``shaved'' icosahedron, in which atoms are absent at the edges and apexes of the polyhedron. This arrangement is energetically favoured for 600-4000 atom clusters. Larger clusters favour crystalline structures. Indeed, simulated freezing of a 6525-atom liquid droplet produced an imperfect fcc Wulff particle, containing a number of parallel stacking faults. The effects of temperature on the preferred structure of crystalline clusters below the melting point have been considered. The implications of these results for the interpretation of experimental data is discussed.Comment: 11 pages, 18 figues, new section added and one figure added, other minor changes for publicatio