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Root-cause analysis and gaining insight of the operations of manufacturing machines requires periodic measurements. Today, most such measurements are taken manually and are therefore not fine-grained, accurate, or fast enough for the smart solutions required by Industry 4.0. Such smart solutions are expected to use measurements from IoT sensors to make optimal decisions via data analytics, for instance, to perform continuous structural health monitoring [1], to enable smart manufacturing systems [2], to facilitate smart transportation [3], and many more. All of these systems need continuous feed of measurements from sensors, and very often the collected measurements are transmitted and stored in the cloud for data analysis [4]. Thus, not only the communication between the devices must be reliable, but also connection reliability to the cloud is equally important. In addition to that, the trend of data collection has become such that today, data is being collected before the precise needs of the data are known, so naturally, the best strategy is to store all of the data for possible future use [5]. This leads to a large amount of data, and considering that over the course of time more and more sensors will be deployed in an IoT environment, and more measurements will be generated, we can see that conventional networking approaches will not be able to cope with this huge demand. Smart systems, which need to be scalable, agile and fluid, are already forcing changes to conventional web technology to accommodate the volume, velocity and variety of measurements data generated from IoT [6]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The b-delayed neutron and g energy spectra taken from the decay of neutron-rich nucleus 21N were measured by using the b-g and b - n coincidence detection method. Thirteen new neutron groups ranging from 0.28MeV to 4.98MeV and with a total branching ratio of 88.7 ± 4.2% were observed and presented. One g transition with an energy of 1222keV emitted from the excited state of 21O, and four g transitions with energies of 1674, 2397, 2780, and 3175keV emitted from the excited states of 20O were identified in the b decay chain of 21N. The b decay half-life for 21N is determined to be 82.9 ± 1.9 ms. The uncertainty of half-life is much smaller than the previous result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present work, acute impact of heavy metals on activated sludge was investigated, specifically the release of biopolymers and nitrogenous soluble microbiological products (N-SMP) that significantly impact tertiary effluent quality. Based on the previously reported studies, Hg2+ and Ag+ were selected as representative "non-essential" heavy metals, while Cu2+ was selected as the "essential" heavy metal. Stress tests show that under the present experimental conditions, adding a higher concentration of heavy metals to the activated sludge increases the concentration of biopolymers and SMP in the supernatant; N-SMP increased more significantly than carbonaceous products, implying a greater risk of formation of toxic nitrogenous disinfection by-products or membrane fouling in relevant tertiary treatment processes. The severity of the release of SMP into the supernatant depended on the heavy metal, with an order of Hg2+ > Ag+ > Cu2+ ("non-essential" > "essential") under identical molar concentrations. The mass balance of typical organics (e.g., biopolymers) in SMP and extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) in activated sludge was analyzed, and a negative correlation between the organics in the SMP and tightly bound EPS was observed, implying that a significant fraction of the SMP could be quickly released from the tightly bound EPS under heavy metal shock conditions and could be related to cell response or damage. Image 1 • Hg2+, Cu2+ & Ag + deteriorate the performance of activated sludge & enzyme activity. • In Hg2+, Cu2+ & Ag + shock biopolymers and DON are more released than other organics. • Under mass balance condition SMP is negatively related to tightly bound EPS. • The correlation of some parameters implies their commonness in chemical property. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]