Design and implementation of a high‐efficiency LiFePO4 battery charger for electric vehicle applications

This letter studies and implements a high‐efficiency LiFePO₄ battery charger. The modular design can satisfy the requirements of series/parallel charging for electric vehicle applications. A CC‐CC‐CV charging scheme is also realized to meet the characteristics of LiFePO₄ battery stacks. A 2 kW laboratory prototype is built and tested. The experimental results are shown to verify the feasibility of the proposed scheme. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Color‐edge detection based on discrimination of noticeable color contrasts

Color‐edge detection is an important research task in the field of image processing. Efficient and accurate edge detection will lead to higher performance of subsequent image processing techniques, including image segmentation, object‐based image coding, and image retrieval. To improve the performance of color‐edge detection while considering that human eyes are ultimate receiver of color images, the perceptually insignificant edges should avoid being over‐detected. In this article, a color‐edge detection scheme based on the perceptual color contrast is proposed. The perceptual color contrast is defined as the visible color difference across an edge in the CIE‐Lab color space. A perceptual metric for measuring the visible color difference of a target color pixel is defined by utilizing the associated perceptually indistinguishable region. The perceptually indistinguishable region for each color pixel in the CIE‐Lab color space is estimated by the design of an experiment that considers the local property due to local changes in luminance. Simulation results show that the perceptual color contrast is effectively defined and the color edges in color images are detected while most of the perceptually insignificant edges are successfully suppressed through the proposed color‐edge detection scheme. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 19, 332–339, 2009     

Lower-error and area-efficient antilogarithmic converters with bit-correction schemes

In this article, we have proposed fast lower-error and area-efficient antilogarithmic converters. By employing new approximation schemes with two-region shift-and-add operations, our proposed converters can perform high-speed conversions from logarithmic numbers to binary numbers. Synthesis results show that our proposed converters can achieve time savings of over 32.5% and can save 42.3% of the area used compared with previously proposed methods. In addition, the percent error ranges for various logarithmic number system (LNS)-based operations used by our proposed logarithmic processor are lower than those of previous methods. Our proposed converters can be applied to LNS-based processors to ease the tremendous computation overhead and boost the performance.     

Decreased Expression of Plakophilin-2 and αT-Catenin in Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Cardiomyopathy: Potential Markers for Diagnosis

Arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC) is a hereditary disease of the heart muscle. Clinical challenges remain, however, in identifying patients with ARVC in the early or concealed stages with subtle clinical manifestations. Therefore, we wanted to identify potential targets by immunohistochemical (IHC) analysis in comparison with controls. Pathogenic mutations were identified in 11 of 37 autopsied patients with ARVC. As observed from IHC analysis of the RV, expression of αT-catenin and plakophilin-2 is significantly decreased in autopsied patients with ARVC as compared to controls, and the decreased expression is consistent in patients with and without pathogenic mutations. Furthermore, ARVC specimens demonstrated a reduced localization of αT-catenin, desmocollin-2, desmoglein-2, desmoplakin, and plakophilin-2 on intercalated discs. These findings have been validated by comparing RV specimens obtained via endomyocardial biopsy between patients with ARVC and those without. The pathogenic mutation was present in 3 of 5 clinical patients with ARVC. In HL-1 myocytes, siRNA was used to knockdown CTNNA3, and western blotting analysis demonstrated that the decline in αT-catenin expression was accompanied by a significant decline in the expression of plakophilin-2. The aforementioned effect was directed towards protein degradation rather than mRNA stability. Plakophilin-2 expression decreases concurrently with the decline in CTNNA3 expression. Therefore, the expression of αT-catenin and plakophilin-2 could be potential surrogates for the diagnosis of ARVC.     

A new point contact surface acoustic wave transducer for measurement of acoustoelastic effect of polymethylmethacrylate

A new acoustic transducer and measurement method have been developed for precise measurement of surface wave velocity. This measurement method is used to investigate the acoustoelastic effects for waves propagating on the surface of a polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) sample. The transducer uses two miniature conical PZT elements for acoustic wave transmitter and receiver on the sample surface; hence, it can be viewed as a point- source/point-receiver transducer. Acoustic waves are excited and detected with the PZT elements, and the wave velocity can be accurately determined with a cross-correlation waveform comparison method. The transducer and its measurement method are particularly sensitive and accurate in determining small changes in wave velocity; therefore, they are applied to the measurement of acoustoelastic effects in PMMA materials. Both the surface skimming longitudinal wave and Rayleigh surface wave can be simultaneously excited and measured. With a uniaxial-loaded PMMA sample, both acoustoelastic effects for surface skimming longitudinal wave and Rayleigh waves of PMMA are measured. The acoustoelastic coefficients for both types of surface wave motions are simultaneously determined. The transducer and its measurement method provide a practical way for measuring surface stresses nondestructively.     

CFD simulation of particle segregation in a rotating drum. Part I: Eulerian solid phase kinetic viscosity

Although the Eulerian approach coupling the kinetic theory of granular flow is usually used to study granular flows with relative lower solid fractions, it can be used to study relative denser granular flows if appropriate solid phase kinetic viscosity values were adopted. A granular bed surface fitting (BSF) method is proposed to determine the appropriate solid phase kinetic viscosities of the granular flows in a rotating drum. The specularity coefficient is also used to address the interaction between particles and the drum wall. The BSF solid phase kinetic viscosity increases with decreasing of particle sizes and drum rotational speeds. The BSF solid phase kinetic viscosity and the specularity coefficient follow a power-law relationship with 0.6–1.1 as the exponent of the specularity coefficient. The BSF solid phase kinetic viscosities for the particles of two different sizes are used to study particle segregation in a rotating drum. The core thickening segregation mechanism and the segregation band formations are well predicted.     

Brain MR images segmentation using statistical ratio: mapping between watershed and competitive Hopfield clustering network algorithms

Conventional watershed segmentation methods invariably produce over-segmented images due to the presence of noise or local irregularities in the source images. In this paper, a robust medical image segmentation technique is proposed, which combines watershed segmentation and the competitive Hopfield clustering network (CHCN) algorithm to minimize undesirable over-segmentation. In the proposed method, a region merging method is presented, which is based on employing the region adjacency graph (RAG) to improve the quality of watershed segmentation. The relation of inter-region similarities is then investigated using image mapping in the watershed and CHCN images to determine more appropriate region merging. The performance of the proposed technique is presented through quantitative and qualitative validation experiments on benchmark images. Significant and promising segmentation results were achieved on brain phantom simulated data.     

海洋数据质量检验方案中残差优化选择算法磁

随着信息化的快速发展,海洋数据的获取手段变得多种多样,海洋数据的“量”急剧增大,如何保证海洋大数据的质量问题成为热点。抽样检验是一个较成熟的课题,但适用于海洋数据特性的抽样方案研究较少。结合海洋数据的特点,利用 Skyline 的思想,提出了分批排序的优化抽样检验方案选择算法。通过各抽样检验方案残差的 Skyline 集合,选择优化的质量检验方案,提高海洋数据质量检验精度的同时保证海洋数据的检验费用。     

三维模型的二维矢量化机制的研究与实现

论述了三维模型二维图形矢量化的必要性,详细描述了一种三维模型的二维矢量化机制,包括三维模型的一致化建模方式以及模型的组织与分层聚合方法,并对以往的隐藏几何元素消除算法做出改进,使其适应三维空间曲面的情况。     

多支点锚桩支护结构计算方法及锚点位置优化的探讨

多支点锚桩支护结构设计方法较多,论文探讨采用等值梁法对支护结构进行内力、弯距、插入深度的计算,用弹性地基法对变形与位移进行计算;探讨多锚点位置的优化,提出一种综合考虑内力、弯距和嵌入深度三种指标对锚点位置优化的新思路。