[en] The radiolytic degradation of Triton X-100 surfactant was investigated at concentrations below and above the critical micelle concentration (CMC, ∼ 0.23 mmol dm^-3) in air saturated aqueous solutions. At low concentrations the degradation took place both on the aromatic head and on the polyethoxylates chain, while above CMC it was shifted towards the chain. The CMC was higher in irradiated solutions at 10 Gy by a factor of 2, at 20 kGy by a factor of 3 than in the un-irradiated solution. The degradation of clofibric acid in the presence of TX-100 was more effective outside the micelles than inside them. (author)

[en] The aim of this article is to present the reason and the process of creating new modified mathematical model of heat pump plate condenser. The fundamental mathematical model is modified according to analytical optimization procedure. The adaptation is carried out by applying the procedure of elimination. The modified mathematical model include 2 governing equations instead of 6. The two governing equations contain 2 unknown dependent variables and 6 known parameters. The modified mathematical model is validated using the comparative method. The compared data are obtained by numerical simulation using fundamental and modified mathematical models. Applying both models the obtained data fully coincided. By using the new modified mathematical model and implementing the optimization process may lead to the determination of the maximum energy efficiency of hot water subsystem. The subsystem comprises a condenser, a circulation pump, a connecting pipeline and the heating units. The objective function in the optimization process is the coefficient of performance, COP, as a function of the mass flow rate of the hot water or of the circulation pump power. The paper offers the implementation of modeling the circulation pump power to achieve the maximum value of the COP. - Highlights: • A new modified mathematical model of heat pump's condenser was created. • The modified and the fundamental model are steady-state with lumped parameters. • The analytical optimization procedure required the modification. • The fundamental model comprises 6 while modified 2 equations only. • The deviations decrease with the increase of the circulation pump power

[en] Highlights: • We propose a new model for calculating the strain impact on transmission rate of a device. • We found the in-plain strain can significantly change the refractive index and cause optical loss. • We found that strain can change the device performance and current density-voltage characteristics. - Abstract: We propose a new and simple modeling approach for strain impact on the transmission and reflection rate of semiconductor devices. The model is applied to graphene or carbon nanotubes deposited on substrates. Any change in transmission rate by strain can directly impact on the short-circuit current density of an electronic device. The nanolayers of graphene and nanotubes are often used as the excellent replacement for the conventional metallic contacts. However, these nanolayers are sensitive to in-plain and out-plain strain. It is shown that the transmission rate is significantly reduced by the strain. We have also calculated the change in the refractive index under in-plain strain and the consequent change in reflection rate. The modeling can be extended to calculate the change in the refractive index under out-plain strain. Furthermore, one can calculate the change in short-circuit current density of the full device (i.e. solar cell) under in-plain or out-plain strains. A practical outcome of our modeling approach is to optimize the thickness or concentration of graphene and carbon nanotube to en extent which is less sensitive to any thermo-mechanical strain. This leads the reader to strain tuning techniques which are rarely applied to sensors, solar cells or photodetector devices through fabrication and characterization process.

[en] Earth fissures are the cracks on the surface of the earth mainly formed in the arid and the semi-arid basins. The excessive withdrawal of groundwater, as well as the other underground natural resources, has been introduced as the significant causing of land subsidence and potentially, the earth fissuring. Fissuring is rapidly turning into the nations’ major disasters which are responsible for significant economic, social, and environmental damages with devastating consequences. Modeling the earth fissure hazard is particularly important for identifying the vulnerable groundwater areas for the informed water management, and effectively enforce the groundwater recharge policies toward the sustainable conservation plans to preserve existing groundwater resources. Modeling the formation of earth fissures and ultimately prediction of the hazardous areas has been greatly challenged due to the complexity, and the multidisciplinary involved to predict the earth fissures. This paper aims at proposing novel machine learning models for prediction of earth fissuring hazards. The Simulated annealing feature selection (SAFS) method was applied to identify key features, and the generalized linear model (GLM), multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS), classification and regression tree (CART), random forest (RF), and support vector machine (SVM) have been used for the first time to build the prediction models. Results indicated that all the models had good accuracy (>86%) and precision (>81%) in the prediction of the earth fissure hazard. The GLM model (as a linear model) had the lowest performance, while the RF model was the best model in the modeling process. Sensitivity analysis indicated that the hazardous class in the study area was mainly related to low elevations with characteristics of high groundwater withdrawal, drop in groundwater level, high well density, high road density, low precipitation, and Quaternary sediments distribution.