Alkyl side-chain derivatives of sordaricin as potent antifungal agents against yeast

Sordarin (1) was converted to 5 and 6, which showed potent antifungal activity against yeast. A series of C1-C9 alkyl side-chain derivatives was prepared, from which it was found that the optimal activity occurred with C5. A comparison of side chains with different unsaturation showed that the cis-alkene was the most active. This result suggested that the folding of the side chains might be crucial for the optimal activity.     

Probability distribution of CW induced currents on randomly oriented subresonant loops and wires

The deterministic prediction of both transient and CW field coupling to large complex electrical systems poses such a formidable problem that other approaches to predicting the coupling may be useful The continuous wave coupling to a complicated electrical system is analyzed in terms of random small dipole interactions in the low-frequency limit (wavelengthsggsystem components' sizes). Both random coupling to the incident wave and random interactions among the dipoles are considered. The variables being randomized are the incident direction and polarization, the sizes and orientations of the dipoles, the mutual coupling strengths, and the lumped load impedances. The resulting normalized current distributions are shown to be insensitive to the details of the model except at the extremely low and high percentiles. The magnetic dipole case is investigated in detail. Its resulting induced current distribution roughly resembles, but is not, a log-normal distribution with a standard deviation in the vicinity ofsim6dB. This result provides insight into some recent measurements obtained for EMP transient field coupling to large systems. An important implication of the results is that for a variety of complicated systems, essentially consisting of many small elements that the coupling is dominated by low-frequency magnetic fields, the central parts of the induced current probability distributions are similar and nearly log-normal. However, conclusions based on the extrapolation of log-normality from measured values near the median to the extreme percentiles may be susceptible to sizeable errors. The electric dipole ease is presented very briefly here, only to the extent of its basic formulations. We refer interested readers to our original report for some basic results for this case and also for the effects caused by an elliptically polarized incident wave versus a linearly polarized one.     

Adaptive stochastic control for a class of linear systems

The problem considered in this paper deals with the control of linear discrete-time stochastic systems with unknown (possibly time-varying and random) gain parameters. The philosophy of control is based on the use of an open-loop feedback optimal (OLFO) control using a quadratic index of performance. It is shown that the OLFO system consists of 1) an identifier that estimates the system state variables and gain parameters and 2) a controller described by an "adaptive" gain and correction term. Several qualitative properties and asymptotic properties of the OLFO adaptive system are discussed. Simulation results dealing with the control of stable and unstable third-order plants are presented. The key quantitative result is the precise variation of the control system adaptive gains as a function of the future expected uncertainty of the parameters; thus, in this problem the ordinary "separation theorem" does not hold.     

配电网络重构的改进混合遗传算法

提出了一种基于改进的混合遗传算法的配电网重构算法,在算法中使用可操作开关支路的整数编号的排列顺序来表示染色体,并通过译码器的设计来映射染色体所对应的辐射状网络结构,避免了产生不可行解的情况,大大提高了算法的运算效率。同时在算法中引入了局部寻优算子,改善了算法的局部寻优性能。算例结果表明本算法是高效可行的。     

Assessing the benefit and cost for a voluntary indoor air quality certification scheme in Hong Kong

A voluntary indoor air quality certification scheme has been proposed in Hong Kong for assessing and evaluating the indoor air quality level in a variety of public places like offices, restaurants and pubs. The scheme intends to promote the public well being, however, its technical and financial practicality has led to serious discussions among the government officials, practitioners and premises owners. Accordingly, this study intends to develop a protocol for examining its financial viability by linking the appropriate dose-response and economic data with the results from indoor micro-environment models. The financial viability of the scheme is evaluated by examining the cost and benefit associated with compliance on the different prescribed indoor particulate (PM10) levels. According to our analysis, the indoor action level of 180 microg/m3 as 8-h mean (with the objective of protecting the health of general public) does not require office owners to improve beyond the base setting. Nevertheless, owners should consider altering the base settings in their air conditioning systems so as to secure more benefit on every dollar they spent. On the contrary, the 20 microg/m3 level as 8-h mean (with the objective of providing comfort) is not considered to be financially viable for office owners as they will incur financial loss on compliance. Subsequent sensitivity analysis indicates that the total net benefit derived have a great dependency on the value-of-life estimates used. If conservative health estimates are adopted, the optimum level determined to be beneficial to both owners and the society will be 55 microg/m3, which can be obtained by operating the air conditioning system with a ventilation rate of 10 l/s, primary filters of 80-85% efficiency and secondary filters efficiency of 60-65% arrestance. This information should be extremely valuable for government officials and policy makers in assessing the financial viability of the voluntary indoor assessment scheme.     

Simple preparation of thin CR-39 detectors for alpha-particle radiobiological experiments

Alpha-particle radiobiological experiments involve irradiating cells with alpha particles and require accurate positions where the alpha particles hit the cells. In the present work, we prepared thin CR-39 detectors from commercially available CR-39 SSNTDs with a thickness of 100 μm by etching them in 1 N NaOH/ethanol at 40 °C to below 20 μm. The desired final thickness was achieved within ∼8 h. Such etching conditions can provide relatively small roughness of the detector as revealed by atomic force microscope, and thus provide transparent detectors for radiobiological experiments. UV radiation was employed to shorten track formation time on these thin CR-39 detectors. After exposure to UV light (UVA + B radiation) for 2-3 h with doses from 259 to 389 W/cm², 5 MeV alpha-particle tracks can be seen to develop on these CR-39 detectors clearly under the optical microscope within 2 h in 14 N KOH at 37 °C. As an example for practical use, custom-made petri dishes, with a hole drilled at the bottom and covered with a thin CR-39 detector, were used for culturing HeLa cells. The feasibility of using these thin CR-39 detectors is demonstrated by taking photographs of the cells and alpha-particle tracks together under the optical microscope, which can allow the hit positions on the cells by the alpha particles to be determined accurately.     

Special family of PWM-based sliding-mode voltage controllers for basic DC-DC converters in discontinuous conduction mode

A family of fixed-frequency pulse width-modulation-based sliding-mode voltage controllers for DC-DC converters operating in the discontinuous conduction mode is proposed. The proposed topology is developed for buck, boost and buck-boost converters. Preliminary verification and evaluation of these controllers are performed through computer simulations using precise models of the systems.     

Interactive Lighting Design with Hierarchical Light Representation

Lighting design plays a crucial role in indoor lighting design, computer cinematograph and many other applications. Computer‐assisted lighting design aims to find a lighting configuration that best approximates the illumination effect specified by designers. In this paper, we present an automatic approach for lighting design, in which discrete and continuous optimization of the lighting configuration, including the number, intensity, and position of lights, are achieved. Our lighting design algorithm consists of two major steps. The first step estimates an initial lighting configuration by light sampling and clustering. The initial light clusters are then recursively merged to form a light hierarchy. The second step optimizes the lighting configuration by alternatively selecting a light cut on the light hierarchy to determine the number of representative lights and optimizing the lighting parameters using the simplex method. To speed up the optimization computation, only illumination at scene vertices that are important to rendering are sampled and taken into account in the optimization. Using the proposed approach, we develop a lighting design system that can compute appropriate lighting configurations to generate the illumination effects iteratively painted and modified by a designer interactively.     

An ESR and Time-Resolved CIDEP Study of the Light-Induced Yellowing Processes of Tmp Paper

Integral ESR and time-resolved CIDEP techniques applied to the study of the light-induced yellowing of bleached and unbleached TMP samples provide some further insights into the nature and the mechanisms of the processes. The identity of the phenoxy and ketyl free radical intermediates involved in mese processes is established and the primary triplet photochemical mechanisms of their formation are characterized. The radical scavenging mechanisms responsible for the inhibition of light-induced yellowing in the TMP system by ascorbic acid and triphenylmethyl thiol are formulated.