Value of rigid bronchoscopy and cytodiagnosis of bronchial washings in detecting bronchial carcinoma in the presence of a carcinoma of the upper aerodigestive tract

Respiratory viral infections have been associated with exacerbations of asthma in humans, and are known to produce airway obstruction and hyperresponsiveness in rats. Virus-induced airway dysfunction may result in part from inflammatory cells and their products, and agents that target these mechanisms might therefore attenuate viral airway injury. The 21-aminosteroid class of drugs has been reported to attenuate tissue injury in a variety of models, and we hypothesized that U-83836E, an orally-active aminosteroid, would prevent the development of airway dysfunction during acute viral illness. Adult rats were inoculated with either parainfluenza type 1 (Sendai) virus or sterile vehicle, treated with either U-83836E 20 mg/kg or water by oral gavage twice daily, and studied on postinoculation day 5, 6 or 7. Anesthetized, paralysed, mechanically ventilated rats were placed in a body plethysmograph for measurements of airway obstruction (resistance, dynamic compliance, eucapneic PaO2), and responsiveness to i.v. methacholine; lungs were lavaged to obtain inflammatory cells. The water-treated virus group was significantly different from the non-infected controls for all variables. Virus-induced hyperresponsiveness was attenuated (P = 0.027) by aminosteroid treatment, although airway obstruction and inflammation were not improved by the treatment. We conclude that 21-aminosteroids may protect airways from virus-induced hyperresponsiveness.     

Performance analysis of a PWM inverter VAr compensator

The performance of a three-phase solid-state reactive power compensator with fast dynamic response is analyzed. The compensator consists of a three-phase pulse-width modulated voltage-source inverter connected to a self-controlled DC bus. The principal advantage of this scheme is that it can maintain a near-unity source power factor without sensing and computation of the associated reactive power component. A mathematical model for the compensator connected across a variable power factor load is derived. The frequency response is obtained for open-loop operation. This allows the design of the controller. Predicted results are verified experimentally for both open and closed-loop responses     

Stable Operating Regions of Torsional Interaction Phenomenon in Synchronous Generators

This paper shows that the unstable torsional interaction phenomenon, which had been the cause of shaft failures, is restricted only to the condition when the network resonance frequency and the interacting torsional resonance frequency are both subsynhronous. The interactions, in which this condition is not fulfilled, are positively damped and therefore, safe. The paper also presents physical and analytical insights into the characteristics of the damping torque-vs-frequency curve of the synchronous generator.     

Output voltage integral control technique for compensating nonidealDC buses in voltage source inverters

Output harmonic minimization in standard pulse width modulation (PWM) pattern generators is based on the assumption that the input DC bus voltage is ripple-free. However, in a practical converter system, a nonideal DC bus deteriorates the quality of the inverter output voltage by introducing undesirable low-order harmonics that may be difficult to filter. The existing compensation techniques often use additional and complex circuitry to eliminate the effect of this ripple on the output voltage. This paper presents an online PWM pattern generator that inherently takes into account the DC bus ripple and generates gating signals required to produce high-quality sinusoidal output voltages. The technique is based on integrating the output voltage at a constant frequency on a pulse-by-pulse basis to ensure a sinusoidal volt-sec (V/s) distribution, irrespective of the input DC bus. The principles of operation are explained, and design equations are derived. The features of the proposed PWM pattern generator are illustrated. Comparison of the output voltage waveforms of those standard sinusoidal PWM (SPWM) techniques illustrate, in particular, the effectiveness of the ripple-rejection mechanism. Experimental results obtained on a 3-kVA laboratory prototype confirm the feasibility and features of the proposed pattern generator     

A PWM quadrature-booster phase shifter for AC power transmission

The conventional structures used for phase shifters employ quadrature voltage injection controlled by means of on-load tap changers that require considerable maintenance. Line-commutated thyristor structures have been proposed to replace tap changers, but problems related to filter requirements or the number of switches have limited their utilization. This paper proposes a pulse width modulation (PWM) quadrature-booster phase shifter based on a force-commutated AC controller. It offers features such as fast dynamic response, continuous variation of the phase angle with low harmonic injection, and it requires a simple power structure and can be controlled by adjusting the duty cycle of the switches. The operating principles of the proposed phase shifter are analyzed and their feasibility is demonstrated through digital simulation and experimental implementation     

Altering Mechanical Properties to Improve Electrode Contacts by Organic Modification of Silica-Based Ionogel Electrolytes for Sodium-Ion Batteries

Sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) are a possible candidate to create safe, sustainable, and cost-effective batteries. Solid sodium-ion conducting organically modified ionogel electrolytes are investigated. Silica-based ionogels typically consist of an ionic liquid electrolyte (ILE) confined within a silica matrix and possess high thermal stability, good ionic conductivity, safety, and good electrochemical stability. However, they readily deteriorate when stress is applied, decreasing the electrolyte's and battery's overall performance. The mechanical characteristics of silica can be improved using organic moieties, creating Ormosils®. Silica-based ionogels with phenyl-modified silanes improve the mechanical characteristics by a reduction of their Young's modulus (from 29 to 6 MPa). This is beneficial to the charge-transfer resistance, which decreases after implementing the electrolyte in half cells, demonstrating the improved interfacial contact. Most importantly, the phenyl groups change the interacting species at the silica interface. Cationic imidazolium species pi-stacked to the phenyl groups of the silica matrix, pushing the anions to the bulk of the ILE, which affects the ionic conductivity and electrochemical stability, and might affect the quality of the SEI in half cells. In essence, the work at hand can be used as a directory to improve mechanical characteristics and modify and control functional properties of ionogel electrolytes.     

On the intrinsic complexity of point finding in real singular hypersurfaces

In previous work we designed an efficient procedure that finds an algebraic sample point for each connected component of a smooth real complete intersection variety. This procedure exploits geometric properties of generic polar varieties and its complexity is intrinsic with respect to the problem. In the present paper we introduce a natural construction that allows to tackle the case of a non-smooth real hypersurface by means of a reduction to a smooth complete intersection.