The Port Hamiltonian approach to modeling and control of Continuous Stirred Tank Reactors.

International audienceThis paper proposes a thermodynamical pseudo Hamiltonian formulation of Continuous Stirred Tank Reactor model in which takes place some chemical reaction. This is done both in the isothermal and non isothermal cases. It is shown that the Gibbs free energy and the opposite of entropy can be chosen as Hamiltonian function respectively. For the non isothermal case, the so called Interconnection and Damping Assignment Passivity Based Control method is applied to stabilize the system at a desired state. For this general reaction scheme, the control problem is shown to be easy to solve as soon as the closed loop Hamiltonian function is chosen to be proportional to the so called thermodynamic availability function. Simulation results based on a simple first order reaction and operating conditions leading to multiple steady states of the CSTR are given to validate the proposed control design procedure

Passivity-based nonlinear control of CSTR via asymptotic observers.

International audienceThis work makes use of a passivity-based approach (PBA) and tools from Lyapunov theory to design a nonlinear controller for the asymptotic stabilization of a class of non isothermal Continuous Stirred Tank Reactors (CSTR) around any desired stationary point. The convergence and stability proofs are derived in the port Hamiltonian framework. Asymptotic observers that do not require knowledge of reaction kinetics are also proposed for a system with incomplete state measurement. Numerical simulations are given to illustrate the application of the theoretical results to a CSTR with multiple steady states

Adjunctive buccal and palatal corticotomy for adult maxillary expansion in an animal model

Objective: This study aimed to explore the usefulness of adjunctive buccal and palatal corticotomy for adult maxillary expansion in an animal model using cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT). Methods: Twelve adult sheep were randomly divided into two groups (each n = 6): a control group, where no treatment was administered, and a treatment group, where buccal and palatal corticotomy-assisted maxillary expansion was performed. CBCT scans were taken before (T1) and after (T2) treatment. Differences in all transverse dental and alveolar dimensions, alveolar width at crest level, hard palate level, horizontal bone loss, interdental cusp width and inter-root apex were assessed using Wilcoxon signed-rank and Mann-Whitney U-tests. Kruskal-Wallis tests and pairwise comparisons were used to detect the significance of differences among the inter-premolar and inter-molar widths. Results: CBCT data revealed significant changes in all transverse dental and alveolar dimensions. The mean interpremolar alveolar width showed an increase of 2.29 to 3.62 mm at the hard palate level, 3.89 to 4.38 mm at the alveolar crest level, and 9.17 to 10.42 mm at the buccal cusp level. Dental changes in the vertical dimension were not significant. Conclusions: Our findings based on an adult animal model suggest that adjunctive buccal and palatal corticotomy can allow for both skeletal and dental expansion, with the amount of dental expansion exceeding that of skeletal expansion at alveolar crest and hard palate levels by two and three folds, respectively. Therefore, this treatment modality is potential to enhance the outcomes of maxillary expansion in adults

Coulomb Gauge QCD, Confinement, and the Constituent Representation

Quark confinement and the genesis of the constituent quark model are examined in nonperturbative QCD in Coulomb gauge. We employ a self-consistent method to construct a quasiparticle basis and to determine the quasiparticle interaction. The results agree remarkably well with lattice computations. They also illustrate the mechanism by which confinement and constituent quarks emerge, provide support for the Gribov-Zwanziger confinement scenario, clarify several perplexing issues in the constituent quark model, and permit the construction of an improved model of low energy QCD.Comment: 43 pages, 14 figures, revtex, uses psfig.st

Application of GIS in land-use planning: a case study in the Coastal Mekong Delta of Vietnam

This paper presents the applications of Geographic Information System (GIS) in three different Land Use Planning (LUP) approaches: The participatory LUP (PLUP) which strongly considers the local people perceptions for land utilizations, the guidelines for LUP by FAO enhanced with multi-criteria evaluation (FAO-MCE), and the LUP and analysis system (LUPAS) using interactive multiple-goal linear programming. GIS plays an important role in the application of these approaches. In PLUP, GIS help to integrate the acquired spatial and attribute data from farmer discussions, and to analyzes the changes not only in biophysical, land cover but also in farmers' perception on land utilizations. In FAO-MCE, GIS was used to combine biophysical and socio-economic characteristics and to perform multi-criteria evaluation. In LUPAS, an optimization model was developed. The model is linked with a GIS for data input and results presentation. The land use planners can use the model to explore different land use scenarios with different objectives and constraints, both biophysically and socio-economicall

Skin lesion segmentation method for dermoscopic images with convolutional neural networks and semantic segmentation

Melanoma skin cancer is one of the most dangerous forms of skin cancer because it grows fast and causes most of the skin cancer deaths. Hence, early detection is a very important task to treat melanoma. In this article, we propose a skin lesion segmentation method for dermoscopic images based on the U-Net architecture with VGG-16 encoder and the semantic segmentation. Base on the segmented skin lesion, diagnostic imaging systems can evaluate skin lesion features to classify them. The proposed method requires fewer resources for training, and it is suitable for computing systems without powerful GPUs, but the training accuracy is still high enough (above 95 %). In the experiments, we train the model on the ISIC dataset – a common dermoscopic image dataset. To assess the performance of the proposed skin lesion segmentation method, we evaluate the Sorensen-Dice and the Jaccard scores and compare to other deep learning-based skin lesion segmentation methods. Experimental results showed that skin lesion segmentation quality of the proposed method are better than ones of the compared methods.This research was funded by University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Effectiveness of cervical pessary compared to cervical cerclage with or without vaginal progesterone for the prevention of preterm birth in women with twin pregnancies and a short cervix : Study protocol for a two-by-two factorial randomised clinical trial

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Superprocesses as models for information dissemination in the Future Internet

Future Internet will be composed by a tremendous number of potentially interconnected people and devices, offering a variety of services, applications and communication opportunities. In particular, short-range wireless communications, which are available on almost all portable devices, will enable the formation of the largest cloud of interconnected, smart computing devices mankind has ever dreamed about: the Proximate Internet. In this paper, we consider superprocesses, more specifically super Brownian motion, as a suitable mathematical model to analyse a basic problem of information dissemination arising in the context of Proximate Internet. The proposed model provides a promising analytical framework to both study theoretical properties related to the information dissemination process and to devise efficient and reliable simulation schemes for very large systems

Spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in the linked cluster expansion

We investigate dynamical chiral symmetry breaking in the Coulomb gauge Hamiltonian QCD. Within the framework of the linked cluster expansion we extend the BCS ansatz for the vacuum and include correlation beyond the quark-antiquark paring. In particular we study the effects of the three-body correlations involving quark-antiquark and transverse gluons. The high momentum behavior of the resulting gap equation is discussed and numerical computation of the chiral symmetry breaking is presented.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figure