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Applied Sciences, Volume 8, Issue 2

2018 February - 169 articles

Cover Story: Ship-in-a-bottle integration technology was recently introduced to construct three-dimensional (3D) microcomponents of photosensitive polymer inside closed glass microfluidic structures using two-photon polymerization. We extended the ship-in-a-bottle integration to proteinaceous microcomponents made from bovine serum albumin and enhanced green fluorescent protein. We improved the fabrication resolution and quality by replacing the 100% water solution with glycerol–water solutions for refractive index matching. This replacement enabled us to integrate a 3D woodpile structure in a closed glass microfluidic channel. Ultimately, the integration of 3D proteinaceous microstructures, a versatile and diverse biomolecule group, has great potential to advance medical and analytical microfluidic devices. View this paper
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Articles (169)

  • Article
  • Open Access
14 Citations
7,801 Views
23 Pages

24 February 2018

Seismic site effects and topographic effects related to ground motion occur during an earthquake due to site-specific geotechnical or geological characteristics, including the geological or geographical structure and the characteristics of near-surfa...

(This article belongs to the Section Acoustics and Vibrations)
  • Article
  • Open Access
5 Citations
5,107 Views
13 Pages

24 February 2018

Recently, bio-inspired artificial muscles based on ionic polymers have shown a bright perspective in engineering and medical research, but the inherent tremor behavior can cause instability of output response. In this paper, dynamic additional grey c...

(This article belongs to the Section Materials Science and Engineering)
  • Feature Paper
  • Article
  • Open Access
37 Citations
6,859 Views
14 Pages

A Multi-Usable Cloud Service Platform: A Case Study on Improved Development Pace and Efficiency

  • John Lindström,
  • Anders Hermanson,
  • Fredrik Blomstedt and
  • Petter Kyösti

24 February 2018

The case study, spanning three contexts, concerns a multi-usable cloud service platform for big data collection and analytics and how the development pace and efficiency of it has been improved by 50–75% by using the Arrowhead framework and changing...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Smart Sustainable Manufacturing Systems)
  • Article
  • Open Access
17 Citations
5,668 Views
12 Pages

24 February 2018

Robustness and discriminability are the two most important features of perceptual image hashing (PIH) schemes. In order to achieve a good balance between perceptual robustness and discriminability, a novel PIH algorithm is proposed by combining laten...

  • Article
  • Open Access
10 Citations
6,345 Views
15 Pages

23 February 2018

In the printing section of a roll-to-roll gravure printed electronics machine, the plastic film tension is directly associated with the product quality. The temperature distribution of the plastic film in the printing section is non-uniform, because...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Printed Electronics 2017)
  • Article
  • Open Access
32 Citations
6,582 Views
15 Pages

A Multi-Agent System for the Dynamic Emplacement of Electric Vehicle Charging Stations

  • Jaume Jordán,
  • Javier Palanca,
  • Elena Del Val,
  • Vicente Julian and
  • Vicente Botti

23 February 2018

One of the main current challenges of electric vehicles (EVs) is the creation of a reliable, accessible and comfortable charging infrastructure for citizens in order to enhance demand. In this paper, a multi-agent system (MAS) is proposed to facilita...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Multi-Agent Systems)
  • Article
  • Open Access
30 Citations
11,721 Views
15 Pages

22 February 2018

Zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8) was used as an adsorbent for the removal of toluene in its gas phase at different relative humidity (RH). High-purity ZIF-8 with an average particle size of 0.64 µm synthesized from an aqueous solution at room...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Environmental Remediation)
  • Article
  • Open Access
13 Citations
5,620 Views
15 Pages

22 February 2018

Laboratory tests on streamwise vortex-induced vibration (VIV) of a flexible, slender cylinder were carried out in a towing tank. A cylinder model, 20 mm in diameter and 3.91 m in length, was towed horizontally to generate a uniform profile of relativ...

(This article belongs to the Section Mechanical Engineering)
  • Review
  • Open Access
60 Citations
11,383 Views
20 Pages

21 February 2018

Low-temperature cracking is a major form of distress that can compromise the structural integrity of asphalt pavements located in cold regions. A review of an Acoustic Emission (AE)-based approach is presented that is capable of assessing the low-tem...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Structural Health Monitoring of Large Structures Using Acoustic Emission–Case Histories)
  • Feature Paper
  • Article
  • Open Access
2 Citations
4,337 Views
14 Pages

21 February 2018

Carbon fiber bicycle frames are complex-shaped structures and are prone to delaminations and difficult to inspect. The use of finite element model updating is common in structural dynamics but not so common in active thermography inspection. However,...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Novel Ideas for Infrared Thermography also Applied in Integrated Approaches)
  • Article
  • Open Access
21 Citations
7,491 Views
15 Pages

Excitation of Wet Perovskite Films by Ultrasonic Vibration Improves the Device Performance

  • Mohammad-Reza Ahmadian-Yazdi,
  • Mehran Habibi and
  • Morteza Eslamian

21 February 2018

In this work, a novel, facile, and low-cost mechanical post treatment technique, i.e., ultrasonic substrate vibration post treatment (SVPT) is applied on wet spun perovskite layers. The effect of varying the time of the SVPT on the characteristics of...

(This article belongs to the Section Acoustics and Vibrations)
  • Article
  • Open Access
50 Citations
7,412 Views
10 Pages

Synthesis of Aligned TiO2 Nanofibers Using Electrospinning

  • Jae-Hun Kim,
  • Jae-Hyoung Lee,
  • Jin-Young Kim and
  • Sang Sub Kim

21 February 2018

In this work, aligned TiO2 nanofibers (NFs) were synthesized using an electrospinning technique with a two-piece Al collector. The effects of processing parameters, including the calcination temperature, applied voltage, and needle-to-Al-collector di...

(This article belongs to the Section Nanotechnology and Applied Nanosciences)
  • Article
  • Open Access
43 Citations
8,570 Views
18 Pages

The Conversion of Wollastonite to CaCO3 Considering Its Use for CCS Application as Cementitious Material

  • Kristoff Svensson,
  • Andreas Neumann,
  • Flora Feitosa Menezes,
  • Christof Lempp and
  • Herbert Pöllmann

20 February 2018

The reaction of wollastonite (CaSiO3) with CO2 in the presence of aqueous solutions (H2O) and varied temperature conditions (296 K, 323 K, and 333 K) was investigated. The educts (CaSiO3) and the products (CaCO3 and SiO2) were analyzed by scanning el...

(This article belongs to the Section Chemical and Molecular Sciences)
  • Article
  • Open Access
21 Citations
8,214 Views
20 Pages

Cloud Incubator Car: A Reliable Platform for Autonomous Driving

  • Raúl Borraz,
  • Pedro J. Navarro,
  • Carlos Fernández and
  • Pedro María Alcover

20 February 2018

It appears clear that the future of road transport is going through enormous changes (intelligent transport systems), the main one being the Intelligent Vehicle (IV). Automated driving requires a huge research effort in multiple technological areas:...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Road Vehicles Surroundings Supervision: On-Board Sensors and Communications)
  • Article
  • Open Access
93 Citations
11,279 Views
13 Pages

20 February 2018

As the average age of the urban population increases, cities must adapt to improve the quality of life of their citizens. The City4Age H2020 project is working on the early detection of the risks related to mild cognitive impairment and frailty and o...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Socio-Cognitive and Affective Computing)
  • Review
  • Open Access
42 Citations
11,069 Views
32 Pages

Emergence of White Organic Light-Emitting Diodes Based on Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence

  • Peng Xiao,
  • Ting Dong,
  • Jianing Xie,
  • Dongxiang Luo,
  • Jian Yuan and
  • Baiquan Liu

19 February 2018

Recently, thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) have attracted both academic and industrial interest due to their extraordinary characteristics, such as high efficiency, low driving voltage, bright lumi...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Fluorescence and Phosphorescence in Organic Materials: from Fundamental to OLED Devices)
  • Article
  • Open Access
6 Citations
4,978 Views
17 Pages

19 February 2018

Featured Application: The proposed Uncertainty Flow framework may benefit the facial analysis with its promised elevation in discriminability in multi-label affective classification tasks. Moreover, this framework also allows the efficient model trai...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Socio-Cognitive and Affective Computing)
  • Feature Paper
  • Article
  • Open Access
11 Citations
4,802 Views
12 Pages

19 February 2018

Abstract: In this work, glass/epoxy has been chosen as case study as it represents the most-used composite material, being appropriate for a vast variety of applications and a reasonable performance/cost compromise. This material has already been inl...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Novel Ideas for Infrared Thermography also Applied in Integrated Approaches)
  • Article
  • Open Access
38 Citations
10,245 Views
18 Pages

Designing the Mind of a Social Robot

  • Nicole Lazzeri,
  • Daniele Mazzei,
  • Lorenzo Cominelli,
  • Antonio Cisternino and
  • Danilo Emilio De Rossi

19 February 2018

Humans have an innate tendency to anthropomorphize surrounding entities and have always been fascinated by the creation of machines endowed with human-inspired capabilities and traits. In the last few decades, this has become a reality with enormous...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Social Robotics)
  • Feature Paper
  • Article
  • Open Access
31 Citations
8,661 Views
19 Pages

Bias Impact Analysis and Calibration of UAV-Based Mobile LiDAR System with Spinning Multi-Beam Laser Scanner

  • Radhika Ravi,
  • Tamer Shamseldin,
  • Magdy Elbahnasawy,
  • Yun-Jou Lin and
  • Ayman Habib

18 February 2018

Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) is a technology that uses laser beams to measure ranges and generates precise 3D information about the scanned area. It is rapidly gaining popularity due to its contribution to a variety of applications such as Dig...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Laser Scanning)
  • Article
  • Open Access
13 Citations
6,064 Views
14 Pages

Depth Image Super Resolution Based on Edge-Guided Method

  • Dongsheng Zhou,
  • Ruyi Wang,
  • Jian Lu and
  • Qiang Zhang

18 February 2018

Depth image super-resolution (SR) is a technique which can reconstruct a high-resolution (HR) depth image from a low-resolution (LR) depth image. Its purpose is to obtain HR details to meet the needs of various applications in computer vision. In gen...

(This article belongs to the Section Optics and Lasers)
  • Feature Paper
  • Article
  • Open Access
4 Citations
5,967 Views
14 Pages

Separation of Light Liquid Paraffin C5–C9 with Cuban Volcanic Glass Previously Used in Copper Elimination from Water Solutions

  • Miguel Autie-Pérez,
  • Antonia Infantes-Molina,
  • Juan Antonio Cecilia,
  • Juan M. Labadie-Suárez and
  • Enrique Rodríguez-Castellón

17 February 2018

Featured Application: In this work, an inexpensive and available material, as volcanic glass, is used to absorb metals from wastewater and then it is used to the separation of light liquid-olefins.



Abstract
: Raw porous volcanic glass from Cuba was use...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Nanoporous Materials and Their Applications)
  • Article
  • Open Access
39 Citations
6,806 Views
10 Pages

17 February 2018

Noise pollution has become one of the four major pollution issues in the world and has drawn much attention recently. Controlling the sound source and using sound-absorbing materials reasonably is considered an effective way to reduce noise. Due to t...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Acoustic Metamaterials)
  • Article
  • Open Access
52 Citations
10,335 Views
15 Pages

16 February 2018

Monodispersed magnetite (Fe3O4) nanospheres with hollow or porous interior structures were synthesized by a facile one-pot solvothermal route. The facile synthetic process was carried out by using iron (III) chloride hexahydrate (FeCl3·6H2O) as only...

(This article belongs to the Section Chemical and Molecular Sciences)
  • Article
  • Open Access
7 Citations
7,604 Views
20 Pages

16 February 2018

This paper presents the numerical investigation on the seismic performance of a steel–concrete hybrid structure consisting of reinforced concrete (RC) tubular columns and steel braced truss with A-shaped steel frames, which is a novel supporting stru...

(This article belongs to the Section Mechanical Engineering)
  • Article
  • Open Access
30 Citations
5,712 Views
25 Pages

16 February 2018

The increasing exploration of alternative methods for solving optimization problems causes that parallelization and modification of the existing algorithms are necessary. Obtaining the right solution using the meta-heuristic algorithm may require lon...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Swarm Robotics)
  • Article
  • Open Access
25 Citations
6,362 Views
26 Pages

15 February 2018

In this study, cavitation flow around a hydrofoil and its radiated hydro-acoustic fields were numerically investigated, with an emphasis on the effects of viscous flux vectors. The full three-dimensional unsteady compressible Reynolds-averaged Navier...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Underwater Acoustics, Communications and Information Processing)
  • Article
  • Open Access
4 Citations
4,374 Views
13 Pages

Seabed Sediment as an Annually Renewable Heat Source

  • Anne Mäkiranta,
  • Birgitta Martinkauppi,
  • Erkki Hiltunen and
  • Mauri Lieskoski

15 February 2018

Thermal energy collected from the sediment layer under a water body has been suggested for use as a renewable heat source for a low energy network. A prototype system for using this sediment energy was installed in Suvilahti, Vaasa, in 2008 and is st...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Heating and Cooling Concepts)
  • Article
  • Open Access
20 Citations
4,987 Views
20 Pages

15 February 2018

Finding efficient and accurate solution methods for nonlinear equilibrium equations is a challenging task. This is the case of systems with friction-induced nonlinearities, e.g., friction-damped turbomachinery assemblies and automotive applications s...

(This article belongs to the Section Mechanical Engineering)
  • Article
  • Open Access
17 Citations
11,643 Views
10 Pages

14 February 2018

The Nintendo Wii Balance Board (WBB) has been suggested as an inexpensive, portable and accessible alternative to costly laboratory-grade force plates for measuring the vertical ground reaction force (vGRF) and center of pressure (COP). Kinetic gait...

(This article belongs to the Section Mechanical Engineering)
  • Feature Paper
  • Review
  • Open Access
10 Citations
7,840 Views
12 Pages

14 February 2018

Advancements in diagnostic ultrasound have allowed for a rapid expansion of the quantity and quality of non-invasive information that clinical researchers can acquire from cardiovascular physiology. The recent emergence of high frame rate ultrasound...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ultrafast Ultrasound Imaging)
  • Article
  • Open Access
10 Citations
6,160 Views
15 Pages

14 February 2018

This paper is concerned with the study of low-cost, low-power thermoacoustic electricity generators. Based on target electrical output power values of 50 and 100 W, three standing wave prototypes (of both one-stage and two-stage prototypes) integrati...

  • Feature Paper
  • Review
  • Open Access
137 Citations
17,802 Views
16 Pages

Inkjet-Printed and Paper-Based Electrochemical Sensors

  • Ryan P. Tortorich,
  • Hamed Shamkhalichenar and
  • Jin-Woo Choi

14 February 2018

It is becoming increasingly more important to provide a low-cost point-of-care diagnostic device with the ability to detect and monitor various biological and chemical compounds. Traditional laboratories can be time-consuming and very costly. Through...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Printed Electronics 2017)
  • Feature Paper
  • Article
  • Open Access
27 Citations
7,276 Views
12 Pages

Bi-Functionalized Clay Nanotubes for Anti-Cancer Therapy

  • William R. Grimes,
  • Yangyang Luo,
  • Antwine W. McFarland and
  • David K. Mills

13 February 2018

Systemic toxicity is an undesired consequence of the majority of chemotherapeutic drugs. Multifunctional nanoparticles with combined diagnostic and therapeutic functions show great promise towards personalized nanomedicine. Halloysite clay nanotubes...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Surface Modification of Halloysite Nanotubes)
  • Article
  • Open Access
7 Citations
6,517 Views
16 Pages

Design of the First Italian Roundabout with Jointed Plain Concrete Pavement

  • Paola Di Mascio,
  • Giuseppe Loprencipe,
  • Laura Moretti,
  • Maria Vittoria Corazza,
  • Sergio Vivaldi and
  • Giovanni Vincenti

13 February 2018

This work presents the results of the overall design of the first Italian roundabout with jointed plain concrete pavement. The examined case study complies with current international standards and practices for geometry of roundabouts and road paveme...

  • Article
  • Open Access
18 Citations
4,403 Views
19 Pages

13 February 2018

The paper reports the results from the tests of recycled mixture samples containing waste materials. Six types of waste materials were used in the mineral mix, in various configurations. Statistical inference was based on the multidimensional analysi...

(This article belongs to the Section Materials Science and Engineering)
  • Feature Paper
  • Article
  • Open Access
57 Citations
8,131 Views
26 Pages

Multispectral Applications of Infrared Thermography in the Diagnosis and Protection of Built Cultural Heritage

  • Antonia Moropoulou,
  • Nicolas P. Avdelidis,
  • Maria Karoglou,
  • Ekaterini T. Delegou,
  • Emmanouil Alexakis and
  • Vasileios Keramidas

13 February 2018

Infrared thermography (IRT) is a powerful non contact imaging technique, appropriate for the protection of cultural heritage. The National Technical University of Athens research team (scientist responsible: A. Moropoulou), started to use this techni...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Novel Ideas for Infrared Thermography also Applied in Integrated Approaches)
  • Article
  • Open Access
13 Citations
4,425 Views
13 Pages

12 February 2018

Soil nitrogen is one of the crucial components for plant growth. An accurate diagnosis based on soil nitrogen information is the premise of scientific fertilization in precision agriculture. Soil nitrogen content acquisition based on near-infrared (N...

  • Article
  • Open Access
13 Citations
6,523 Views
11 Pages

Controlling Chemical Reactions in Confined Environments: Water Dissociation in MOF-74

  • Erika M. A. Fuentes-Fernandez,
  • Stephanie Jensen,
  • Kui Tan,
  • Sebastian Zuluaga,
  • Hao Wang,
  • Jing Li,
  • Timo Thonhauser and
  • Yves J. Chabal

12 February 2018

The confined porous environment of metal organic frameworks (MOFs) is an attractive system for studying reaction mechanisms. Compared to flat oxide surfaces, MOFs have the key advantage that they exhibit a well-defined structure and present significa...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Nanoporous Materials and Their Applications)
  • Article
  • Open Access
14 Citations
5,088 Views
15 Pages

12 February 2018

This paper aims to study the comparative performance of original multi-objective population-based incremental learning (MPBIL) and three improvements of MPBIL. The first improvement of original MPBIL is an opposite-based concept, whereas the second a...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Soft Computing Techniques in Structural Engineering and Materials)
  • Article
  • Open Access
5 Citations
5,169 Views
17 Pages

An Improved MbICP Algorithm for Mobile Robot Pose Estimation

  • Lin Li,
  • Jun Liu,
  • Xinkai Zuo and
  • Haihong Zhu

12 February 2018

This paper presents an improved version of the metric-based iterative closest point algorithm to estimate robot poses by matching 2D laser scans with different overlapping percentages. Because of the greatly varied density distribution of realistic p...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Laser Scanning)
  • Article
  • Open Access
9 Citations
5,865 Views
12 Pages

A Heuristic Method for the Reduction of the Outage Rate of High-Voltage Substations Due to Atmospheric Overvoltages

  • Christos A. Christodoulou,
  • Vasiliki Vita,
  • Dionysios Voglitsis,
  • George Milushev and
  • Lambros Ekonomou

12 February 2018

The adequate protection against lightning surges and the limitation of the expected annual failure rate of high-voltage substations are critical issues, in an effort to secure the safety of the equipment and the personnel. Various factors affect the...

  • Article
  • Open Access
81 Citations
5,605 Views
18 Pages

12 February 2018

The multiphase fluid flow under the influence of electro-magnetohydrodynamics (EHD) is investigated in this study. The base fluid contains hafnium particles. Two illustrative models namely fluid phase and particulate phase are considered for three di...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Nanofluids and Their Applications)
  • Article
  • Open Access
18 Citations
5,638 Views
20 Pages

12 February 2018

With the rapid increase of private vehicles, traffic congestion has become a worldwide problem. Various models have been proposed to undertake traffic prediction. Among them, autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models are quite popular f...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Road Vehicles Surroundings Supervision: On-Board Sensors and Communications)
  • Article
  • Open Access
38 Citations
18,018 Views
19 Pages

Effective Biopotential Signal Acquisition: Comparison of Different Shielded Drive Technologies

  • Yanbing Jiang,
  • Oluwarotimi Williams Samuel,
  • Xueyu Liu,
  • Xin Wang,
  • Paul Oluwagbenga Idowu,
  • Peng Li,
  • Fei Chen,
  • Mingxing Zhu,
  • Yanjuan Geng and
  • Guanglin Li
  • + 2 authors

12 February 2018

Biopotential signals are mainly characterized by low amplitude and thus often distorted by extraneous interferences, such as power line interference in the recording environment and movement artifacts during the acquisition process. With the presence...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Bio-Inspired Robotics)
  • Article
  • Open Access
17 Citations
9,151 Views
22 Pages

12 February 2018

Bipedal locomotion remains one of the major open challenges of humanoid robotics. The common approaches are based on simple reduced model dynamics to generate walking trajectories, often neglecting the whole-body dynamics of the robots. As motions in...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Bio-Inspired Robotics)
  • Article
  • Open Access
24 Citations
6,900 Views
18 Pages

12 February 2018

There are several models for representing emotions in affect-aware applications, and available emotion recognition solutions provide results using diverse emotion models. As multimodal fusion is beneficial in terms of both accuracy and reliability of...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Socio-Cognitive and Affective Computing)
  • Article
  • Open Access
13 Citations
4,756 Views
18 Pages

Multiple-Factor Based Sparse Urban Travel Time Prediction

  • Xinyan Zhu,
  • Yaxin Fan,
  • Faming Zhang,
  • Xinyue Ye,
  • Chen Chen and
  • Han Yue

12 February 2018

The prediction of travel time is challenging given the sparseness of real-time traffic data and the uncertainty of travel, because it is influenced by multiple factors on the congested urban road networks. In our paper, we propose a three-layer neura...

  • Feature Paper
  • Article
  • Open Access
18 Citations
7,451 Views
16 Pages

12 February 2018

In this study, we investigated geometrical characteristics of the inkjet-printed lines with non-zero receding contact angle (CA) on plasma-treated substrates in terms of various printing variables and analyzed the fluidic behavior and hydrodynamic in...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Printed Electronics 2017)
  • Article
  • Open Access
6 Citations
4,818 Views
18 Pages

11 February 2018

The prioritization of capability gaps for weapon system of systems is the basis for design and capability planning in the system of systems development process. In order to address input information uncertainties, the prioritization of capability gap...

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Appl. Sci. - ISSN 2076-3417