Lock Operations Research Articles

RFID and Finger Print Based Dual Security System: A Robust Secured Control to Access Through Door Lock Operation

This paper focuses on research works of control engineering field and aims at impenetrable security system especially in case of medication, jewelry, documents & others valuable items and mandatorily in the higher intelligence agency. Here, a developed security system with automatic sensing is introduced by the use of both Radio frequency identification (RFID) card tagging system and fingerprint sensing biometric security system to maintain the valid access of a person to a secured place. RFID reader and fingerprint sensing device work as a locker of the security and RFID tag and a validly ratified finger is considered as the key of the locker. In case of access granted entity, door bar gets opened with a servo mechanism system connected with door bar. On the contrary, no action is taken as cavalcade if the entity is considered invalid in the sensing system. These knock out the necessity for keeping track of keys or remembering a combination of password or pin. A prototype of the security system is also designed and the performance of it is tested. The satisfactory results of its performance show the validity of the system and indicate a better solution for the future security system.

Role of Tetra Amino Acid Motif Properties on the Function of Protease-Activatable Viral Vectors.

Protease-activatable viruses (PAV) based on adeno-associated virus have previously been generated for gene delivery to pathological sites characterized by elevated extracellular proteases. "Peptide locks", composed of a tetra-aspartic acid motif flanked by protease cleavage sequences, were inserted into the virus capsid to inhibit virus-host cell receptor binding and transduction. In the presence of proteases, the peptide locks are cleaved off the capsid, restoring the virus' ability to bind cells and deliver cargo. Although promising, questions remained regarding how the peptide locks prevented cell binding. In particular, it was unclear if the tetra-amino acid (4AA) motif blocks receptor binding via electrostatic repulsion or steric obstruction. To explore this question, we generated a panel of PAVs with lock designs incorporating altered 4AA motifs, each wielding various chemical properties (negative, positive, uncharged polar, and hydrophobic) and characterized the resultant PAV candidates. Notably, all mutants display reduced receptor binding and decreased transduction effciency in the absence of proteases, suggesting simple electrostatics between heparin and the D4 motif do not play an exclusive role in obstructing virus-receptor binding. Even small hydrophobic (A4) and uncharged polar (SGGS) motifs confer a reduction in heparin binding compared to the wild type. Furthermore, both uncharged polar N4 and Q4 mutants (comparable in size to the D4 and E4 motifs respectively, but lacking the negative charge) demonstrate partial ablation of heparin binding. Collectively, these results support a possible dual mechanism of PAV lock operation, where steric hindrance and electrostatics make nonredundant contributions to the disruption of virus-receptor interactions. Finally, because of high virus titer production and superior capsid stability, only the negatively charged 4AA motifs remain viable design choices for PAV construction. Future studies probing the structure-function relationship of PAVs will further expand its promise as a gene delivery vector able to target diseased tissues exhibiting elevated extracellular proteases.

Adaptable Fuzzy Expert System for Ship Lock Control Support

A ship lock zone represents a specific area on waterway, and control of the ship lockage process requires a comprehensive approach. This research is a practical application of a Mamdani-type fuzzy inference system and particle swarm optimisation to control this process. It presents an optimisation process that adapts control logic to the desired criteria. The initially proposed Fuzzy Expert System (FES) was developed using suggestions from lockmasters (ship lock operators) with extensive experience. Further optimisation of the membership function parameters of the input variables was performed to achieve better results in the local distribution of ship arrivals. The presented fuzzy logic-based expert system was designed as part of a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) and Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) system to support decision making and control. The developed fuzzy algorithm is a rare application of artificial intelligence in navigable canals and significantly improves performance of the ship lockage process. This adaptable FES is designed to be used as a support in decision-making processes or for the direct control of ship lock operations.

Study of Global Change Impacts on the Inland Navigation Management: Application on the Nord-Pas de Calais Network

In a global change context, governments in Europe want to promote alternative transports as inland navigation or railway instead of road transport. As example, in north of France, a shift of 20% from road transport to these alternative transport solutions is expected by 2050. Reaching this goal requires not only the delivery of new infrastructures and equipment, but also the design of efficient management strategies. By focusing on waterborne transport, it is thus necessary to improve the management of the inland navigation networks particularly the water resource. Indeed, the waterborne transport accommodation is strongly linked to the available water resource. This will be a challenging point in a global change context.The paper deals with the global change impacts on inland navigation networks. It aims at proposing new contributions as compared to past and current results of European projects on climate change and inland navigation. It appeared that the multi-scale modeling approach for inland navigation networks that was proposed during the last TRA Conference in Paris in 2014 is useful to determine the resilience of these networks and their ability to guarantee the navigation conditions during drought and flood periods. The proposed tools are developed to consider two space and time scales. The first approach is used to determine the water quantity that is necessary to accommodate the navigation during half a day, and the second allows the efficient control of the gates to keep the water level of each navigation reach close to its setpoint by rejecting disturbances and compensating the waves due to the lock operations. One example based on the real inland navigation network of the north of France is used to highlight the contributions of the multi-scale modeling approach.

Statistical analysis of vessel waiting time and lockage time on the Upper Mississippi River

The Upper Mississippi River (UMR) is an important artery for transporting export-destined grains from the north central United States to lower Mississippi River ports. The increased traffic on the UMR system has led to increases in congestion, delays at locks and longer vessel proceeding times. We analyze systematically the arrival, waiting and lockage time of vessels at the locks of UMR. We construct linear and duration models of the lockage process and show the importance of modeling the delay time and lockage time as two separate processes. We find that real time traffic intensities are the most statistically significant factors in predicting delays at the locks. We also propose a non-parametric model of traffic intensity, which allows us to use the proposed lockage model for prediction purposes. This model can be useful to relieve congestion and increase the carrying capacity in the UMR system, and provide insight into the traffic and lock operating policies.

Optimal bandwidth allocation for hybrid Video-on-Demand streaming with a distributed max flow algorithm

Video-on-Demand (VoD) streaming counts for the largest share of Internet traffic, and commonly relies on P2P–CDN hybrid systems. In such hybrid systems, a peer’s upload bandwidth utilization is critical to P2P mode, thus the bandwidth allocation algorithm is important to the performance of VoD streaming. The current research either makes impractical assumptions, or is inefficient in real scenarios. Meanwhile some industrial practice such as additive-increase/multiplicative-decrease (AIMD) heuristic, although effective in practice, lacks theoretical foundation. This paper develops an optimal bandwidth allocation algorithm for hybrid VoD streaming. Specifically, we propose a novel Demand Driven Max-Flow Formulation, which treats each peer’s bandwidth demand as the flow commodity. The proposed distributed Free-for-All Push–Lift algorithm can solve the formulation in each peer, and is free of any lock, shared memory and atomic operation. Following the theoretical analysis, we implement the algorithms in real-world VoD streaming systems. Through extensive evaluations we demonstrate that our approach can provide high-quality bandwidth allocation for hybrid VoD systems.

잠금장치 작동에 따른 미서기 및 LS 창호 시스템의 기밀성

Abstract In this study, the effects of lock operations on the infiltration rates for the two window types sliding and lift sliding(LS) are investigated through experiment and simulation. The airtightness levels of the two window types-with locks bothon and off-were measured according to the KS F 2292 Test method of airtightness that is used for windows and doors.The air-flow rates of both window types with the locks on for a pressure differential of 10 Pa are 1.98 ㎥ /( ㎡ h) and 1.68 ㎥ /( ㎡ h), respectively; with the locks off, the air-flow rates of the sliding and LS windows are 2.64 ㎥ /( ㎡ h) and 5.83 ㎥ /( ㎡ h), respectively, whereby the air-flow rates are 33% higher for sliding and 247% higher for LS. The air change per hour (ACH) was calculated using the ventilation-simulation software CONTAM. For the sliding window, the ACH changedfrom 0.45 to 0.57 when the lock was operated from on to off, representing an increase of 27%. For the LS window, theACH changed from 0.29 to 0.81, showing an increase of 179%.

Achievement of 1020 MHz NMR

We have successfully developed a 1020MHz (24.0T) NMR magnet, establishing the world’s highest magnetic field in high resolution NMR superconducting magnets. The magnet is a series connection of LTS (low-Tc superconductors NbTi and Nb3Sn) outer coils and an HTS (high-Tc superconductor, Bi-2223) innermost coil, being operated at superfluid liquid helium temperature such as around 1.8K and in a driven-mode by an external DC power supply. The drift of the magnetic field was initially ±0.8ppm/10h without the 2H lock operation; it was then stabilized to be less than 1ppb/10h by using an NMR internal lock operation. The full-width at half maximum of a 1H spectrum taken for 1% CHCl3 in acetone-d6 was as low as 0.7Hz (0.7ppb), which was sufficient for solution NMR. On the contrary, the temporal field stability under the external lock operation for solid-state NMR was 170ppb/10h, sufficient for NMR measurements for quadrupolar nuclei such as 17O; a 17O NMR measurement for labeled tri-peptide clearly demonstrated the effect of high magnetic field on solid-state NMR spectra.

Migratory Characteristics and Passage of Paddlefishat Two Southeastern U.S. Lock‐and‐Dam Systems

AbstractDams have many effects on river systems, including impeding the migratory movements of fishes. However, locks associated with lock‐and‐dam structures may be useful for passing fish during their migrations. We investigated the potential to facilitate fish passage at dams through two navigational lock structures on the Alabama River, Alabama—Millers Ferry Lock and Dam (L&D) and Claiborne L&D—using targeted, nonnavigational lock operations. The movements of Paddlefish Polyodon spathula with implanted ultrasonic tags and/or radio tags were tracked via both manual receivers and submersible ultrasonic receivers (SURs) deployed inside of the lock chambers and above and below each dam to quantify migration characteristics and determine whether fish passage occurred. We tagged a total of 96 fish (79 received sonic tags, 4 received radio tags, and 13 received both types of tag), and we recorded over 275,000 SUR detections of 84 individuals and 91 manual detections of 39 individuals. Although nonnavigational lock operations increased the number of days available for potential passage by 0.5–4.7 times, only seven Paddlefish passed upstream through the locks (8% passage rate). Most of the fish movement past dams occurred during spring, when many riverine fish make spawning migrations. Movement past Claiborne Dam occurred most often over the spillway (87% of passage) during high‐water events. Our results suggest that while specialized nonnavigational lock operations along the Alabama River increased opportunities for upstream fish passage, relatively few Paddlefish actually moved upstream through the lock chambers.

A review of technical solutions and simulation approaches for ship collisions with lock gates

Lock gates are frequently found at inland waterway locks and sea navigation locks. Entering a lock with a ship is a challenging manoeuvre, which can potentially lead to the ship colliding with the lock gate. Such collision may permanently damage the gate causing the lock operation to be disrupted and the ship transport to be delayed. Consequently, it is important to design for the possibility of a ship colliding with the lock gate to ensure its operability as well as the safety of the operation. In order to do so, a variety of recommendations and standards exist, which are however neither unified nor require the assessment of the lock under a ship collision on a mandatory basis. Therefore, this paper presents the current developments in assessment approaches for ship collisions with lock gates as well as current gate protection practices. The paper concludes with a recommendation of assessment approaches, which can be used to identify safe lock gate approach velocities in the case of existing locks or collision resistant structural layouts for new buildings of lock facilities.

An ultrasensitive and highly selective fluorescent and colorimetric chemosensor for citrate ions based on rhodamine B and its application as the first molecular security keypad lock based on phosphomolybdic acid and citrate inputs

Rhodamine B (RhB) has been developed as novel and efficient colorimetric and fluorometric chemosensor for citrate ions (Cit3−) in an absolutely aqueous media. The UV–vis absorption and fluorescent emission titrations experiments have been employed to study the sensing process. RhB could act as an efficient “ON–OFF” fluorescent chemosensor for phosphomolybdic acid (PMA) based on an electron transfer (ET) process. Also (RhB+)3.PMA3− could operate as an “OFF–ON” fluorescent chemosensor for citrate ions based on a ligand substitution process. The chemosensor RhB shows excellent fluorescence sensitivity and selectivity toward citrate in aqueous media, and displays ON–OFF–ON type fluorescence change with alternately adding PMA and citrate to the media along with reversible association–dissociation of the complex. The (RhB+)3.PMA3− can be applied to the quantification of citrate with a linear ranges covering from 0.053 to 0.83 and 0.08 to 1.6µM by detection limits of 6.0 and 9.1nM for fluorescence and colorimetric methods respectively. The keypad lock operation is particularly important, as the output of the system depends not only on the proper combination but also on the order of input signals, creating the correct password that can be used to “open” this molecular keypad lock through strong fluorescence emission at 575nm. As a whole, its various logic gate properties may improve its impact for the development of new-generation “intelligence” digital devices. The ionic PMA and Cit3− inputs to (RhB+)3.PMA3− have been mimicked as a superimposed electronic molecular keypad lock. Also indicates that RhB is suitable for the detection of Cit3− ions in the biological environment.

The Multi-Site Joint Operation Method Based on Discharge Gate Ant Colony Algorithm

From the actual operation of the lock, respectively, with the objections to maximize utilization of the average chamber area and minimize average opening time and the product of the weight of the ship and minimize lock operating costs, it can make the use of AHP calculate the right target weight, so as to establish a multi-objective function model. Based on the constraints of each objection, it can be used improved ant colony algorithm for multi-site on the same river ship Joint operation, using MATLAB software for solving scheduling simulation, the results shows that the utilization and lock navigable levels have significantly improved . It proved this method can be used to optimize multi-site joint scheduling.

GreenDroid: Automated Diagnosis of Energy Inefficiency for Smartphone Applications

Smartphone applications' energy efficiency is vital, but many Android applications suffer from serious energy inefficiency problems. Locating these problems is labor-intensive and automated diagnosis is highly desirable. However, a key challenge is the lack of a decidable criterion that facilitates automated judgment of such energy problems. Our work aims to address this challenge. We conducted an in-depth study of 173 open-source and 229 commercial Android applications, and observed two common causes of energy problems: missing deactivation of sensors or wake locks, and cost-ineffective use of sensory data. With these findings, wepropose an automated approach to diagnosing energy problems in Android applications. Our approach explores an application's state space by systematically executing the application using Java PathFinder (JPF). It monitors sensor and wake lock operations to detect missing deactivation of sensors and wake locks. It also tracks the transformation and usage of sensory data and judges whether they are effectively utilized by the application using our state-sensitive data utilization metric. In this way, our approach can generate detailed reports with actionable information to assist developers in validating detected energy problems. We built our approach as a tool, GreenDroid, on top of JPF. Technically, we addressed the challenges of generating user interaction events and scheduling event handlers in extending JPF for analyzing Android applications. We evaluated GreenDroid using 13 real-world popular Android applications. GreenDroid completed energy efficiency diagnosis for these applications in a few minutes. It successfully located real energy problems in these applications, and additionally found new unreported energy problems that were later confirmed by developers.

Molecular keypad locks based on gated photochromism and enhanced fluorescence by protonation effects.

Being a "lock-unlock" system, gated photochromism is generally applied in nondestructive readout for optical memory materials. In the presented paper, we successfully constructed molecular keypad locks by introduction of the gated photochromism. A series of diarylethenes compounds (DAEs) based on fluorescent 5-methoxy-2-pyridyl thiazoles, were prepared and then characterized as photochromic fluorescent switches. Protoantion of the reported DAEs resulted in both protonation-locked photo-reactivities, i.e., gated photochromism, and enhancement of fluorescence. Molecular keypad locks were then successfully constructed, which are also featured by "one-key" lock operation.

Optimization of inland shipping

In this paper, we explore problems and algorithms related to the optimisation of locks, as used in inland shipping. We define several optimisation problems associated with inland shipping. We prove that the problem of scheduling a lock is NP-hard if one allows multiple ships to go through in the same lock operation. The single-ship lock optimization problem can, however, be solved in polynomial time and a novel deterministic scheduling algorithm for solving this problem is presented in this paper.

Using river locks to teach hydrodynamic concepts

In this work, the use of a river lock as a non-formal setting for teaching hydrodynamical concepts is proposed. In particular, we describe the operation of a river lock situated at the Sobradinho dam, on the São Francisco River (Brazil). A model to represent and to analyse the dynamics of river lock operation is presented and we derive the dynamical equations for the rising of the water column as an example to understand the Euler equation. Furthermore, with this activity, we enable the integration of content initially introduced in the classroom with practical applications, thereby allowing the association of physical themes to content relevant in disciplines such as history and geography. In addition, experiences of this kind enable teachers to talk about the environmental and social impacts caused by the construction of a dam and, consequently, a crossover of concepts has been made possible, leading to more meaningful learning for the students.

Mode locking with enhanced nonlinearity - a detailed study

We explore mode locked operation of a Ti:Sapphire laser with enhanced Kerr nonlinearity, where the threshold for pulsed operation can be continuously tuned down to the threshold for continuous-wave (CW) operation, and even below it. At the point of equality, even though a CW solution does not exist, pulsed oscillation can be realized directly from zero CW oscillation. We experimentally investigate the evolution of the mode locking mechanism towards this point and beyond it, and provide a qualitative theoretical model to explain the results.

Scalable deterministic replay in a parallel full-system emulator

Full-system emulation has been an extremely useful tool in developing and debugging systems software like operating systems and hypervisors. However, current full-system emulators lack the support for deterministic replay, which limits the reproducibility of concurrency bugs that is indispensable for analyzing and debugging the essentially multi-threaded systems software. This paper analyzes the challenges in supporting deterministic replay in parallel full-system emulators and makes a comprehensive study on the sources of non-determinism. Unlike application-level replay systems, our system, called ReEmu, needs to log sources of non-determinism in both the guest software stack and the dynamic binary translator for faithful replay. To provide scalable and efficient record and replay on multicore machines, ReEmu makes several notable refinements to the CREW protocol that replays shared memory systems. First, being aware of the performance bottlenecks in frequent lock operations in the CREW protocol, ReEmu refines the CREW protocol with a seqlock-like design, to avoid serious contention and possible starvation in instrumentation code tracking dependence of racy accesses on a shared memory object. Second, to minimize the required log files, ReEmu only logs minimal local information regarding accesses to a shared memory location, but instead relies on an offline log processing tool to derive precise shared memory dependence for faithful replay. Third, ReEmu adopts an automatic lock clustering mechanism that clusters a set of uncontended memory objects to a bulk to reduce the frequencies of lock operations, which noticeably boost performance. Our prototype ReEmu is based on our open-source COREMU system and supports scalable and efficient record and replay of full-system environments (both x64 and ARM). Performance evaluation shows that ReEmu has very good performance scalability on an Intel multicore machine. It incurs only 68.9% performance overhead on average (ranging from 51.8% to 94.7%) over vanilla COREMU to record five PARSEC benchmarks running on a 16-core emulated system.

SHIP‐LOCK–INDUCED SURGES IN AN IMPOUNDED RIVER AND THEIR IMPACT ON SUBDAILY FLOW VELOCITY VARIATION

ABSTRACTThe majority of large rivers are fragmented by dams, and navigation is often supported by the installation of ship locks. Despite their ubiquitous existence, the effect of ship locks on river basin hydrodynamics is rarely considered in an environmental context.Ship‐lock operation induces single‐wave crests or troughs called surges, which propagate along the basin and are subject to reflection at the up‐ and downstream impoundments. We used pressure sensors and acoustic Doppler current profiler measurements to investigate the effects of up‐ and downstream ship locking on the water level and the current velocity dynamics in a 12.9‐km‐long basin of the impounded river Saar (Germany).Ship lifting at the lower dam and the associated water export from the basin results in a negative surge propagating upstream, whereas a descending ship‐lock operation at the upper dam of the basin creates a positive surge propagating downstream. Both types of waves are subject to positive reflection at the opposing dams. Frequent lock operations lead to a complex pattern of multiple superimposing surges. The resulting water level fluctuations are comparable in magnitude with those associated with discharge variations due to hydropower peaking but occur at much shorter timescales. Associated with the water surface displacement during wave passage is a corresponding increase or decrease of the longitudinal current velocity. The magnitude of wave‐induced velocity fluctuations can exceed mean flow velocities by a factor of three and, depending on wave type and direction, can result in a reversal of the main flow direction of the river. Because of their longevity of several hours and superposition effects, ship‐lock–induced surges govern 66.3% and 45.4% of the subdaily variations in flow velocity and water level, respectively. This article concludes with a discussion of the potential effects of lock‐induced flow dynamics in impoundments on oxygen dynamics and methane ebullition. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Nonlinear dynamics of divide‐by‐two injection‐locked frequency dividers in locked operation mode

SUMMARYA method for analyzing the nonlinear dynamics of the injection‐locked frequency dividers in synchronized operation mode is presented, including the stability analysis of locked states. We use a specific divide‐by‐two circuit, namely a differential LC CMOS divider with a complementary topology, as a guideline for presentation, showing that the sizing of the devices significantly affects the synchronization mechanism of the divider, which exhibits a very rich dynamical behavior. We provide closed‐form expressions to determine the amplitude and the phase in the locked state, as well as the locking range, leading to accurate results, which are validated by numerical simulations. The presented analysis of the frequency divider dynamics enables us to establish that stable locked oscillations occur on the whole locking range predicted by the well‐known Adler's equation and that these are possible also beyond that range. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.