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The most advanced solutions that are currently adopted in ports and terminals use technologies based on radio frequency identification (RFID) and the Global Positioning System (GPS) to identify and localize shipping containers in the yard. Nevertheless, because of the limitations of these solutions, the position of containers is still affected by errors, and it cannot be determined in real time. In this paper, a nonconventional approach is presented: Each container is equipped with nodes that use wireless communication to detect neighbor containers and to send proximity information to a base station. At the base station, geometrical constraints and proximity data are combined to determine the positions of containers. Missing information due to faulty nodes is tolerated by modeling geometrical constraints as an integer linear programming problem. Numerical simulations show that most of the containers can be localized, even when the number of nodes that are affected by faults is on the order of 30%.

The application of electric fields to flames has been reported as early as 1814, was applied to furnaces in the 1920 s and developed into several applications in the last half of the 20th Century. When the electric field strength is sufficient to cause electrical breakdown of a fuel or fuel/air mixture, plasma effects will dominate. Plasma effects can increase electron and ion temperatures and promote combustion through the formation of active species (such as free radicals) or the dissociation of fuel molecules into smaller, easily-combusted fragments [1]. Plasma-assisted combustion (PAC) is now a timely research topic worldwide [2], pointing to more efficient fossil-fuel usage, conversion of low-grade fuels into higher-grade fuels, and pollution reduction through ultralean burn combustion. Our work focuses on non-thermal ( cold ) plasmas (NTPs), particularly for enhancing combustion stability, efficiency, and reducing undesirable emissions. This is in contrast to thermal ( hot ) plasmas, See also ADM002371. 2013 IEEE Pulsed Power Conference, Digest of Technical Papers 1976-2013, and Abstracts of the 2013 IEEE International Conference on Plasma Science. IEEE International Pulsed Power Conference (19th). Held in San Francisco, CA on 16-21 June 2013.

By combined light scattering and circular dichroism measurements (CD), we have investigated the coil-to-globule transition of the thermosensitive polymer poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (pNIPAAm) copolymerized with a 1/10 fraction of valine- or leucine-derived groups randomly positioned along the chains. The comonomers provide the pNIPAAm chains with chirality, electric charge, and increased hydrophobicity. For valine-derived copolymers, the coil-globule transition is basically unmodified with respect to pNIPAAm, whereas doping with leucine-derived groups significantly lowers the transition temperature and makes the transition discontinuous. We find the CD signal of the chiral comonomers to cleanly depend on the local chain density. We interpret this behavior as an effect of the whole chain conformation on the conformations accessible to the chiral groups.