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A new facile strategy for preparation of mesoporous anatase-TiO2 films by a combination of sol–gel and evaporation-induced self-assembly (EISA) processes aided by tri-block Pluronic F127 is reported. Two major parameters, sol preparation and EISA processing parameters, are identified for preparation of mesoporous crack-free films with desired thickness. The mesoporous crack-free films with thickness of 650 nm can be obtained with low water: precursor molar ratio (e.g., 2.5:1) under aging in 10 % relative humidity for 72 h at the low temperature of 5 °C. Although template: precursor molar ratio and annealing temperature show little influence on preparation of crack-free films the optimum... 

The electrohydrodynamic (EHD) vortices produced by an electric current in freely suspended liquid crystal (LC) films of N-(4-methoxybenzylidene)-4- butylaniline (MBBA), convert to a pure rotation in the presence of external electric field (E ext) perpendicular to the current direction. Here, the direction and strength of the rotation are precisely under control by our self-made device called "liquid-film motor". In this paper, we present experimental observations of the EHD fluid flow when external electric field varies from zero to a value in which pure rotation on the liquid crystal (LC) film is observed. We also show experimentally that the presence of external electric field causes a... 

The interaction between two spherical colloidal particles with degenerate planar anchoring in a nematic media is studied by numerically minimizing the bulk Landau-de Gennes and surface energy using a finite element method. We find that the energy achieves its global minimum when the particles are in close contact and forming an angle = 28°± 2 with respect to the bulk nematic director, in agreement with the experiments. Although the quadrupolar structure of the director field is preserved in the majority of configurations, we show that for smaller orientation angles and at smaller inter-particle separations, the axial symmetry of the topological defect-pairs is continuously broken, resulting... 

Fractals are remarkable examples of self-similarity where a structure or dynamic pattern is repeated over multiple spatial or time scales. However, little is known about how fractal stimuli such as fractal surfaces interact with their local environment if it exhibits order. Here we show geometry-induced formation of fractal defect states in Koch nematic colloids, exhibiting fractal self-similarity better than 90% over three orders of magnitude in the length scales, from micrometers to nanometres. We produce polymer Koch-shaped hollow colloidal prisms of three successive fractal iterations by direct laser writing, and characterize their coupling with the nematic by polarization microscopy and... 

Use of multi-carrier energy systems and the energy hub concept has recently been a widespread trend worldwide. However, most of the related researches specialize in CHP systems with constant electricity/heat ratios and linear operating characteristics. In this paper, integrated energy hub planning and sizing is developed for the energy systems with mid-scale and large-scale CHP units, by taking their wide operating range into consideration. The proposed formulation is aimed at taking the best use of the beneficial degrees of freedom associated with these units for decreasing total costs and increasing reliability. High-accuracy piecewise linearization techniques with approximation errors of... 

The phase formation and the variation of the normal phonon frequencies of high temperature superconductors YBa2Cu3O7-δ and GdBa2Cu3O7-δ upon doping Tb and Ce for Y and Gd, respectively, have been investigated using XRD and Raman spectroscopy measurements. It is found that the increase of doping content causes the formation of impurity phases that can be detected in the XRD and Raman spectra, and results in the suppression of superconductivity. Moreover, analysis of the Raman peaks reveals that substitutions of Tb and Ce for Y and Gd in the parent structure are restricted to low concentrations in favor of impurity island formation. © 2008  

The spin structure in a magnetic dot is studied as a function of the exchange coupling strength and dot size within the semiclassical approximation on a discrete lattice. As the exchange coupling is decreased or the size is increased, the ground state undergoes a phase change from a homogeneous single-domain ferromagnet (HSDF) to a spin vortex. The line separating these two phases has been calculated numerically for small system sizes. The dipolar interaction has been fully included in our calculations. Magnon frequencies in such a dot have also been calculated in both phases by the linearized equation of motion method. These results have also been reproduced from the Fourier transform of... 

The light scattering and harvesting effects in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) is studied by controlling morphology, phase composition, and thickness of monolayer and double-layer TiO2 photoanode electrodes. The starting materials for preparation of TiO2 cells, including 25 nm mesoporous anatase nanoparticles, 200 nm anatase microspheres, 10 µm dandelion-like rutile particles and 40 nm nanoparticles containing 80% anatase-20% rutile, are synthesized by evaporation-induced self-assembly, sol-gel, and hydrothermal processes. It was found that the mesoporous anatase nanoparticles may improve light harvesting and dye-sensitization due to their high surface area and small particle size,... 

In this paper, two different hybrid intelligent systems are applied to develop practical soft identifiers for modeling the tool-tissue force as well as the resulted maximum local stress in laparoscopic surgery. To conduct the system identification process, a 2D model of an in vivo porcine liver was built for different probing tasks. Based on the simulation, three different geometric features, i.e. maximum deformation angle, maximum deformation depth and width of displacement constraint of the reconstructed shape of the deformed body are extracted. Thereafter, two different fuzzy inference paradigms are proposed for the identification task. The first identifier is an adaptive co-evolutionary... 

Complex systems are omnipresent and play a vital role in in our every-day lives. Adverse behavior of such systems has generated considerable interest in being able to control complex systems modeled as networks. Here, we propose a topology-dynamics-based approach for controlling complex systems modeled as networks of coupled multi-dimensional dynamical entities. For given dynamics and topology, we introduce an efficient scheme to identify in polynomial time a finite set of driver nodes, which – when endowed with the control function – steer the network to the desired behavior. We demonstrate the high suitability of our approach by controlling various networked multi-dimensional dynamics,... 

This paper undertakes to facilitate appraisal of aeroelastic interaction of a locally distributed, flap-type control surface with aircraft wings operating in a subsonic potential flow field. The extended Hamilton's principle serves as a framework to ascertain the Euler-Lagrange equations for coupled bending-torsional-flap vibration. An analytical solution to this boundary-value problem is then accomplished by assumed modes and the extended Galerkin's method. The developed aeroelastic model considers both the inherent flexibility of the control surface displaced on the wing and the inertial coupling between these two flexible bodies. The structural deformations also obey the Euler-Bernoulli... 

Long-term distribution network planning (DNP) is considered as one of the most challenging issues for distribution network operators (DNOs). By increasing EVs in cities, it has appeared some new players such as electric vehicles (EVs) owners and electric vehicle parking lots (EVPLs) owners for DNP. In this article, we conduct a new study on the coupled dynamic expansion problem of EVPLs placement and distribution networks. To reach this goal, at first, EVs driving and charging/discharging behavior as some influential factors is modeled using an efficient probabilistic algorithm. An analytical model is then introduced to estimate the number of EVs in EVPLs at different times. To find out the... 

Let G be a graph with no isolated vertex. A total dominating set of G is a set S of vertices of G such that every vertex is adjacent to at least one vertex in S. The total domatic number of a graph is the maximum number of total dominating sets which partition the vertex set of G. In this paper we provide a criterion under which a cubic graph has total domatic number at least two  

Falling film heat and mass transfer analysis of a horizontal tube bundle in a generator of absorption chillers have been studied. The film Reynolds number is limited to the laminar flow and the effect of ripple on the free surface has been ignored. Thermal boundary conditions are considered to be constant wall temperature and desorption is considered to be free surface evaporation. Analysis is based on a single column of horizontal tubes, arranged in a vertically spaced configuration. A comprehensive numerical code has been developed to solved the governing equations. The functional relationship of average heat transfer coefficient of tube bundle has been analytically correlated to the first... 

The objective of this paper is to provide optimization of falling film LiBr solution on a horizontal single tube based on minimization of entropy generation. Flow regime is considered to be laminar. The effect of boiling has been ignored and wall temperature is constant. Velocity, temperature and concentration distributions are numerically determined and dimensionless correlations are obtained to predict the average heat transfer coefficient and average evaporation factor on the horizontal tube. Thermodynamic imperfection due to passing lithium bromide solution is attributed to nonisothermal heat transfer; fluid flow friction and mass transfer irreversibility. Scale analysis shows that the... 

The development of extremely-constrained embedded systems having sensitive nodes such as RFID tags and nanosensors necessitates the use of lightweight block ciphers. Nevertheless, providing the required security properties does not guarantee their reliability and hardware assurance when the architectures are prone to natural and malicious faults. In this letter, error detection schemes for lightweight block ciphers are proposed with the case study of XTEA (eXtended TEA). Lightweight block ciphers such as XTEA, PRESENT, SIMON, and the like might be better suited for low-resource deeply-embedded systems compared to the Advanced Encryption Standard. Three different error detection approaches... 

Graphene was first discovered as a sheet structure mechanically exfoliated from a block of graphite, but in recent years researchers have extended their investigations into this two-dimensional carbon nanostructure. Various applications of graphene-based materials have included electronics, photonics, optoelectronics, sensors, and drug / gene delivery systems. These single atom carbon layers have the potential to be formed in different morphologies e. g., quantum dots, nanosheets, and nanoparticles, which can be tailored to achieve new breakthrough innovations. Nowadays, the utilization of graphene-based nanomaterials in medicine is a hot research topic. This review discusses the structure,... 

ECG denoising has always been an important issue in medical engineering. The purposes of denoising are reducing noise level and improving signal to noise ratio (SNR) without distorting the signal. This paper proposes a method for removing white Gaussian noise from ECG signals. The concepts of singularity and local maxima of the wavelet transform modulus were used for analyzing singularity and reconstructing the ECG signal. Adaptive thresholding was used to remove white Gaussian noise modulus maximum of wavelet transform and then reconstruct the signal  

ECG denoising has always been an important issue in medical engineering. The purposes of denoising are reducing noise level and improving signal to noise ratio (SNR) without distorting the signal. This paper proposes a method for removing white Gaussian noise from ECG signals. The concepts of singularity and local maxima of the wavelet transform modulus were used for analyzing singularity and reconstructing the ECG signal. Adaptive thresholding was used to remove white Gaussian noise modulus maximum of wavelet transform and then reconstruct the signal. ©2009 IEEE  

The extended Euclidean algorithm (EEA) is an important scheme for performing the division operation in finite fields. Many sensitive and security-constrained applications such as those using the elliptic curve cryptography for establishing key agreement schemes, augmented encryption approaches, and digital signature algorithms utilize this operation in their structures. Although much study is performed to realize the EEA in hardware efficiently, research on its reliable implementations needs to be done to achieve fault-immune reliable structures. In this regard, this paper presents a new concurrent error detection (CED) scheme to provide reliability for the aforementioned sensitive and...