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In Fused Filament Fabrication, there is increasing interest in the potential of composite filaments for producing complex and load-bearing components. Carbon fibre-filled polyamide currently has highest available strength and stiffness, but promising variants are not in filament form. This paper investigates filament production of commercially available, high-filled PA-CF pellets by modifying a tabletop filament extruder. We show filament production is possible by improving cooling. The FFF printed specimens show an average UTS of 135.5 MPa, higher than most commercially available filaments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intercropping increases biodiversity in vegetable fields. It affects both above-ground and soil communities. The aim of the research was to study and analyze the soil microbiological and enzymatic activity in intercropping of cabbage with leek, green bean, tagetes, flower mix, and dill. The studies were carried out in two directions: 1) of microflora, as a sensitive indicator of the microbiological status of soils; 2) enzyme research, such as functional characterization and expression of microbial activity. Soil biogenicity increases at the end of the growing season in all variants. In the middle of the growing season, the biogenicity is highest with "cabbage and flower mix", while at the end of the growing season with "cabbage and tagetes". For the entire vegetation period, the biogenicity and catalase are consistently the lowest when intercropping cabbage and leeks, as well as cabbage and dill in the middle of the growing season. A regrouping was found in the composition of the general microflora in the variants: "cabbage and leek", "cabbage and beans" and "cabbage and flower mix" the bacilli began to dominate the non-spore-forming bacteria. Catalase and cellulase have the highest values at the end of the growing season in most combined variants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stack up materials which consists of fiber composite panel and aluminium / titanium alloys keep on replacing conventional materials in the aircraft industry. Though stack up materials have enhanced mechanical properties, machining of it is still being as a challenge. This paper compares the hole quality of the holes drilled by uncoated and tetrahedral amorphous carbon (Ta-C) coated tungsten carbide twist drills in terms of hole diameter error, circularity error and hole surface roughness. Drilling experiments were performed at a constant speed of 2600 rev/min and feed rate of 0.05 mm/rev. The stack material of Al7075-T6/CFRP which has a composite laminate thickness of 3.387 mm and Al7075-T6 thickness of 3.317 mm was used as workpiece and drilled under single shot process in dry condition. The results show that, uncoated drill produces better stack up diameter tolerance, circularity and Al7075-T6 surface finish, while Ta-C coated drill bits produce better CFRP surface finish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of the social and technological environment on business performance. Focus is placed on SMEs and their effort to achieve sustainable competitive advantage and thereby sustainable business performance. For this purpose, a survey study was carried out, where primary data was collected from a representative sample of SMEs operating in the Social Media industry of Greece. Questionnaires were distributed to managers and entrepreneurs of the Social Media Industry. These managers/entrepreneurs were selected using a simple random sampling methodology. The findings of the study revealed that social and technological developments have a major role in developing a sustainable competitive advantage. Strategy alignment was also found to be key in tackling the problems and in undertaking the opportunities that arise from the current social and technological environment, thereby reaching sustainable business performance. The findings of the study are especially useful to entrepreneurs and professionals in the industry in formulating effective strategies towards aligning their business with current advancements in emerging digital technologies. Such an alignment would bring numerous competitive advantages and in turn sustainable business performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The regime of heat treatment (annealing at 1448 K, 8 h with quenching in water), which leads to the appearance of thermal-induced martensitic transformation in [001]-oriented Ni42Fe19Ga27Co12 (at.%) single crystals was experimentally established. The large regions of γ-phase in size of 50−500 µm and volume fraction of∼20–25% were precipitated during annealing. The γ-phase leads to a decrease in the content of iron and cobalt and an increase in the content of gallium in the matrix; reduction of stresses for oriented martensite formation in stress-assisted thermal cycles by 4 times (from 200 to 50 MPa); broadening of thermal hysteresis in stress-assisted thermal cycles and stress hysteresis in loading/unloading cycles; a shift of superelasticity temperature range to higher temperatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Detection of lung cancer has great clinical importance and increases the chance for patient survival. One of the most effective technologies to automatically detecting lung cancer with an accuracy of diagnosis, robustness, and detection speed is the computer-aided diagnosis (CAD). For this cause, lung cancer detection based on CAD techniques has been suggested and investigated in many research studies. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the relevant literature on lung cancer detection based on CAD techniques and a number of associated challenges. Authors believe that automatic CAD techniques will be the promising value to help doctors and radiologists to detect and diagnose lung cancer with high accuracy, robustness, efficiency and speed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Composite filaments are getting increased attention in additive manufacturing (AM). More and better solutions for filament production are needed to assist researchers in discovering new materials capable of producing AM-made high-performance parts. This article presents a method for producing composite filament, including an open-source, low-cost automatic composite feeder designed to increase the accuracy and quality of the filament. The feeder includes a fibre screw designed through an iterative prototyping process to accurately control the filament's fibre percentage while reducing lumps' occurrence in a single step. An experiment evaluating the quality of filament made of Polylactic Acid (PLA) and carbon fibre (CF) tested the use of the feeder compared to manual mixing. Filament with a nominal diameter of 2.85mm with 4.5%, 7.9%, 11.2% and 14.5% CF was made. The results suggest that the composite feeder improved the filament quality. The filament diameter RMSE value was reduced from 0.08 to 0.06 and 0.15 to 0.13 for both 4.5% and 11.2%, respectively. The article concludes that the feeder design may help researchers develop and discover new materials while improving the quality of the filament. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of a copper Triangle shaped electrode for electric discharge machining of Aluminum7075 composite material was investigated and tested. For machining, the stimulus of input route constraints such as Current (amp), Pulsation (s), and Pulse-off time (s), as well as dielectric pressure (DEP) (kg/cm2) on availed characteristics such as Material Removal Rate (MRR), Tool Wear Rate (TWR), and machining time is taken into account. The inquiry was accompanied with a L9 orthogonal. Using Minitab's main effect plots, the influence of test on outcome physical appearance was assessed separately. The noteworthy variables governing narrated above found here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fast-growing connected smart vehicles are one of the technological evolvements of Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs). Cloud computing, fog computing, Software Defined Network (SDN), and the Internet of Things (IoT) with VANETs opens an area of possibilities for applications and services on the edge of cloud computing. However, unreliable connectivity and high latency of data transmission between vehicles in a vehicular cloud are still two of the most common issues of VANET. This research aims to revolve around connected vehicle issues in VANET and approaches to mitigate them. We introduce a framework for VANET to minimize connectivity and latency issues for moving Internet of Vehicles (IoV) in the traditional VANET architecture by using the fog controller and SDN. A use case called Fast Accident Message Passing (FAMP) is being evaluated as a performance analysis mechanism of the framework, and the findings lead to a better framework for connected vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pumped Thermal Electricity Storage (PTES) is an energy storage device that uses grid electricity to drive a heat pump that generates hot and cold storage reservoirs. This thermal potential is later used to power a heat engine and return electricity to the grid. In this article, a PTES variant that uses supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) as the working fluid is introduced. sCO2-PTES cycles have higher work ratios and power densities than the systems based on ideal gases that have been investigated to date. Furthermore, sCO2− PTES cycles may achieve higher round-trip efficiencies for a given hot storage temperature (up to 78% at 560°C). The sensitivity of PTES cycles to loss factors such as isentropic efficiencies and temperature differences between the power cycle and storage fluid is investigated. A second concept whereby an sCO2− PTES cycle is integrated with concentrating solar power (CSP) is introduced. This concept 'time-shifts' the recompression of an sCO2 recompression cycle to a period of lower electricity prices and stores the heat. When solar heat is dispatched, the recompressor may be avoided as the required heat is obtained from storage, thereby leading to increased heat engine efficiencies. The net work output of this integrated system is 10-18% greater than the conventional recompression cycle. Combining PTES with a CSP power cycle is therefore shown to improve the dispatch of solar heat as well as providing electricity storage services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a new quantum accurate Spectral Neighbor Analysis Potential (SNAP) machine-learning potential for simulating carbon under extreme conditions of dynamic compression (pressures up to 1 TPa and temperatures up to 10,000 K). The development of SNAP potential involves (1) the generation of the training database comprised of the consistent and meaningful set of first-principles DFT (Density Functional Theory) data for carbon materials at high pressure and temperature; (2) the robust and physically guided training of the SNAP parameters on first-principles data involving statistical data analysis; and (3) the validation of the SNAP potential in MD simulations of carbon at high PT conditions. The excellent performance of quadratic SNAP potential is demonstrated by simulating the radial distribution functions at high pressure-temperature conditions and melt curve of diamond, which were found in good agreement with DFT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]