Influence of Ni and Process Parameters in Medium Mn Steels Heat Treated by High Partitioning Temperature Q&P Cycles

In this work, two medium Mn steels (5.8 and 5.7 wt pct Mn) were subjected to a quenching and partitioning (Q&P) treatment employing a partitioning temperature which corresponded to the start of austenite reverse transformation (ART). The influence of a 1.6 wt pct Ni addition in one of the steels and cycle parameters on austenite stability and mechanical properties was also studied. High contents of retained austenite were obtained in the lower quenching temperature (QT) condition, which at the same time resulted in a finer microstructure. The addition of Ni was effective in stabilizing higher contents of austenite. The partitioning of Mn and Ni from martensite into austenite was observed by TEM–EDS. The partitioning behaviour of Mn depended on the QT condition. The lower QT condition facilitated Mn enrichment of austenite laths during partitioning and stabilization of a higher content of austenite. The medium Mn steel containing Ni showed outstanding values of the product of tensile strength (TS) and total elongation (TEL) in the lower QT condition and a higher mechanical stability of the austenite.

     

Characteristics of Optical Text Recognition Programs

Characteristics of optical recognition programs are described from the standpoint of typical recognition program modules. Not only quality criteria for the separate character recognition but also parameters of other important stages of document input, such as character boundary segmentation, binarization, page segmentation, and storing results, are discussed in detail. The set of characteristics presented can be used for the optimization of both separate recognition stages and the whole process of document input.     

Time-evolution of microstructure and mechanical behaviour of double annealed medium Mn steel

Cold rolled 0.1C-4.7Mn (wt-%) steel was submitted to double annealing. The holding time of second intercritical annealing at 650°C was varied between 3 min and 30?h. Tensile behavior after each treatment was measured and analysed. Microstructure characterisation was performed using field emission gun scanning electron microscope, transmission electron microscope and saturation magnetisation method. Moreover, interrupted tensile tests were done to obtain the kinetics of austenite destabilisation during straining. An important effect of soaking time on the microstructure and associate mechanical properties was revealed and analysed. Considering thermal and mechanical stability of retained austenite, the optimum combination of phases, providing the best strength-ductility balance, was found after 2?h holding.

This paper is part of a Thematic Issue on Medium Manganese Steels.     

ANA HEp-2 cells image classification using number,size, shape and localization of targeted cell regions

The ANA HEp-2 medical test is a powerful tool in autoimmune disease diagnostics. The last step of this test, the interpretation of immunofluorescent images by trained experts, represents a potential source of errors and could theoretically be replaced by automated methods. Here we present a fully automatic method for recognition of types of immunofluorescent images produced by the ANA HEp-2 medical test. The proposed method makes use of the difference in number, size, shape and localization of cell regions that are targeted by the antinuclear antibodies – the humoral components of immune system that bind human antigens as a result of the immune system malfunction. The method extracts morphological properties of stained cell regions using a combination of thresholding-based and thresholding-less approaches and applies a conventional machine-learning algorithm for image classification.     

Segmentation of small objects in color images

A method for effective segmentation of small objects in color images is presented. It can be used jointly with region growing algorithms. Segmentation of small objects in color images is a difficult problem because their boundaries are close to each other. The proposed algorithm accurately determines the location of the boundary points of closely located small objects and finds the skeletons (seed regions) of those objects. The method makes use of conditions obtained by analyzing the change of color characteristics of the edge pixels along the direction that is orthogonal to the boundaries of adjacent objects. These conditions are generalized for the case of the well-known class of color images having misregistration artifacts. If high-quality seed regions are available, the final segmentation can be performed using one of the region growing methods. The segmentation algorithm based on the proposed method was tested using a large number of color images, and it proved to be very efficient.     

Some methods of controlling the tree search in chess programs

This paper describes several tree search methods that have been implemented in our chess playing program (KAISSA) and some perspectives on this domain. The most general and most flexible method of program organization is exhaustive search with cut-offs. Therefore our program is based on searching exhaustively to a given depth, and permitting wide usage of cut-offs at any level of the search tree. Besides the program includes analysis of all exchanges up to their end. Experience with earlier programs has shown that disregard of exchanges would lead to gross errors.     

Performance Evaluation of a Recognition System on the VLIW Architecture by the Example of the Elbrus Platform

Programming and Computer Software - This paper overviews modern computing devices based on the Elbrus VLIW architecture and presents experimental results for the performance evaluation of the Smart...     

An accurate approach to real-time machine-readable zone detection with mobile devices

International Journal on Document Analysis and Recognition (IJDAR) - In this article we consider a problem of machine-readable zone (MRZ) detection in document images on mobile devices. MRZ...