The relationship between Salmonella levels in chicken spleen and mechanically separated ground chicken

The objective of this study was to determine the relationship between Salmonella levels (presence and numbers) in chicken spleens and in mechanically separated chicken (MSC) at a commercial processing plant. Composite spleen and MSC samples were collected from 18 flocks at a commercial poultry processing plant. A total of 180 samples of each type were collected and tested for Salmonella using the most probable number (MPN) and enrichment methods. Overall, Salmonella was detected in 15.6% and 27.8% of spleen and MSC samples, respectively. The mean log MPN was 0.95 and 0.85 for the spleen and MSC samples, respectively. There was a significant relationship between Salmonella presence in spleen and MSC samples. However, the log MPN numbers in MSC samples were not significantly related to those in spleen samples. Salmonella presence in composite spleen samples (an indication of systemic infection in chickens) may predict MSC contamination with this pathogen, at the flock level.     

On reliability of systems with moving material subjected to fracture and instability

The reliability of systems with moving cracked elastic and isotropic material is considered. The material is modeled as a moving plate which continually has a crack on the edge. The plate is subjected to homogeneous tension acting in the traveling direction and the tension varies temporally around a constant value, the set tension. The tension and the length of the crack are modeled by an Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process and an exponential Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process, respectively. Failure is regarded as the state at which the plate becomes unstable or fractures (or both) and a lower bound for the reliability of the system is derived. Considering reliability of the system leads to first passage time problems and, in solving them, a known explicit result for the first passage time of an Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process to a constant boundary is exploited. A change in the set tension has opposite effects on the probabilities of instability and fracture, and a safe range of set tension is studied. Numerical examples are computed for material and machine parameters typical of paper and printing presses. The results suggest that tension variations may significantly affect the pressroom runnability.     

Quantifying target spotting performances with complex geoscientific imagery using ERP P300 responses

Geoscientific data interpretation is a challenging task, which requires the detection and synthesis of complex patterns within data. As a first step towards better understanding this interpretation process, our research focuses on quantitative monitoring of interpreters' brain responses associated with geoscientific target spotting. This paper presents a method that profiles brain responses using electroencephalography (EEG) to detect P300-like responses that are associated with target spotting for complex geoscientific data. In our experiment, eight interpreters with varying levels of expertise and experience were asked to detect features, which are likely to be copper–gold rich porphyry systems within magnetic geophysical data. The target features appear in noisy background and often have incomplete shape. Magnetic images with targets and without targets were shown to participants using the “oddball” paradigm. Event related potentials were obtained by averaging the EEG epochs across multiple trials and the results show delayed P3 response to the targets, likely due to the complexity of the task. EEG epochs were classified and the results show reliable single trial classification of EEG responses with an average accuracy of 83%. The result demonstrated the usability of the P300-like responses to quantify the geoscientific target spotting performances.     

二里河铅锌矿井下支护方案综述

为总结出一套适合矿山实际的支护方案，二里河铅锌矿在矿山生产的20余年里，引进了多种支护工艺进行试验。矿山根据井巷、硐室所处工程环境，确定了锚杆、钢筋、钢架、混凝土进行单一或组合支护的方案，特别是千枚岩内12.4 m跨度的提升机硐室支护方式与参数，对矿山软弱岩层大跨度硐室工程支护具有参考价值。采场则按照急倾斜、缓倾斜矿体上盘千枚岩支护为例，分别列举了锚杆、锚杆+锚索支护的工程方案。采场联络巷、矿房行人通道等区域利用支柱+横梁临时支护。不但提高了采场作业安全性，也使采矿损失率降低5%，贫化率降低7%。     

Effects of twin tunnels construction beneath existing shield-driven twin tunnels

This paper presents a case of closely spaced twin tunnels excavated beneath other closely spaced existing twin tunnels in Beijing, China. The existing twin tunnels were previously built by the shield method while the new twin tunnels were excavated by the shallow tunnelling method. The settlements of the existing tunnels and the ground surfaces associated with the new tunnels construction were systematically monitored. A superposition method is adopted to describe the settlement profiles of both the existing tunnels and the ground surfaces under the influence of the new twin tunnels construction below. A satisfactory match between the proposed fitting curves and the measured settlement data of both the existing tunnels and the ground surfaces is obtained. As shown in a particular monitoring cross-section, the settlement profile shapes for the existing tunnel and the ground surface are different. The settlement profile of the existing structure displays a “W” shape while the ground surface settlement profile displays a “U” shape. It is also found that due to the flexibility of the segmental lining, the ground losses obtained from the existing tunnel level and the ground surface level in the same monitoring cross-section are nearly the same.     

Texture Feature Extraction Method for Ground Nephogram Based on Contourlet and the Power Spectrum Analysis Algorithm

It is important to extract texture feature from the ground-base cloud image for cloud type automatic detection. In this paper, a new method is presented to capture the contour edge, texture and geometric structure of cloud images by using Contourlet and the power spectrum analysis algorithm. More abundant texture information is extracted. Cloud images can be obtained a multiscale and multidirection decomposition. The coefficient matrix from Contourlet transform of ground nephogram is calculated. The energy, mean and variance characteristics calculated from coefficient matrix are composed of the feature information. The frequency information of the data series from the feature vector values is obtained by the power spectrum analysis. Then Support Vector Machines (SVM) classifier is used to classify according to the frequency information of the trend graph of data series. It is shown that altocumulus and stratus with different texture frequencies can be effectively recognized and further subdivided the types of clouds.     

MIMO SAR OFDM chirp waveform design and GMTI with RPCA based method

Multiple-input multiple-output synthetic aperture radar (MIMO SAR) has drawn wide attention for its increased degrees of freedom (DOFs) compared to the traditional multi-channel SAR (MC-SAR) system. The MIMO SAR system, which makes each antenna illuminate one subswath, can widen the range swath without decreasing PRF. One of the foremost tasks involved in the MIMO SAR system is the waveform design at the transmitter. Moreover, at the receiver, how to accurately separate the auto-correlation signal from the cross-correlation interferences is the other important issue. In this paper, an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) chirp signal designing method is firstly proposed, which is based on low cross-correlation interferences and good peak-to-sidelobe ratio (PSLR) rules. Using the designed OFDM chirp signals, the focused signal of MIMO SAR system matched the robust principal component analysis (RPCA) basic model. The moving target (sparse signal), clutter (low-rank signal) and noise (noise signal) can be separated directly. Hence, RPCA based method can be employed for ground moving target indication (GMTI) with no need for extracting the matched signal or suppressing the unmatched interferences. Extensive simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the waveform designing method and GMTI with RPCA based method for MIMO SAR system.     

New trends on moving object detection in video images captured by a moving camera: A survey

This paper presents a survey on the latest methods of moving object detection in video sequences captured by a moving camera. Although many researches and excellent works have reviewed the methods of object detection and background subtraction for a fixed camera, there is no survey which presents a complete review of the existing different methods in the case of moving camera. Most methods in this field can be classified into four categories; modeling based background subtraction, trajectory classification, low rank and sparse matrix decomposition, and object tracking. We discuss in details each category and present the main methods which proposed improvements in the general concept of the techniques. We also present challenges and main concerns in this field as well as performance metrics and some benchmark databases available to evaluate the performance of different moving object detection algorithms.     

The effects of ground granulated blast-furnace slag blending with fly ash and activator content on the workability and strength properties of geopolymer concrete cured at ambient temperature

Inclusion of ground granulated blast-furnace slag (GGBFS) with class F fly-ash can have a significant effect on the setting and strength development of geopolymer binders when cured in ambient temperature. This paper evaluates the effect of different proportions of GGBFS and activator content on the workability and strength properties of fly ash based geopolymer concrete. In this study, GGBFS was added as 0%, 10% and 20% of the total binder with variable activator content (40% and 35%) and sodium silicate to sodium hydroxide ratio (1.5–2.5). Significant increase in strength and some decrease in the workability were observed in geopolymer concretes with higher GGBFS and lower sodium silicate to sodium hydroxide ratio in the mixtures. Similar to OPC concrete, development of tensile strength correlated well with the compressive strength of ambient-cured geopolymer concrete. The predictions of tensile strength from compressive strength of ambient-cured geopolymer concrete using the ACI 318 and AS 3600 codes tend to be similar to that for OPC concrete. The predictions are more conservative for heat-cured geopolymer concrete than for ambient-cured geopolymer concrete.     

Model predictive control suitable for closed-loop re-identification

The main problem of a closed-loop re-identification procedure is that, in general, the dynamic control and identification objectives are conflicting. In fact, to perform a suitable identification, a persistent excitation of the system is needed, while the control objective is to stabilize the system at a given equilibrium point. However, a generalization of the concept of stability, from punctual stability to (invariant) set stability, allows for a flexibility that can be used to avoid the conflict between these objectives. Taking into account that an invariant target set includes not only a stationary component, but also a transient one, the system could be excited without deteriorating the stability of the closed-loop. In this work, a MPC controller is proposed that ensures the stability of invariant sets at the same time that a signal suitable for closed-loop re-identification is generated. Several simulation results show the propose controller formulation properties.