The effect of increased grain moisture content on some life history characters of Sitophilus oryzae (L.) after staining egg plugs with acid fuchsin

Acid fuchsin staining is widely used as a method for easy detection of egg plugs deposited by Sitophilus spp. The effect of increasing grain moisture content through staining on some life history characters of three geographical strains of Sitophilus oryzae was examined. The results show that staining increases development rate and survival from egg to adult and there is also a suggestion of a strain × treatment interaction. Factors requiring consideration if staining is carried out are discussed.     

The effect of matrix microstructure on cyclic response and fatigue behavior of particle- reinforced 2219 aluminum: Part I. room temperature behavior

The low-cycle and high-cycle fatigue behavior and cyclic response of naturally aged and overaged 2219/TiC/15p and unreinforced 2219 Al were investigated using plastic strain-controlled and stress-controlled testing. In addition, the influence of grain size on the particle-reinforced materials was examined. In both reinforced and unreinforced materials, the naturally aged conditions were cyclically unstable, exhibiting an initial hardening behavior followed by an extended region of cyclic stability and ultimately a softening region. The overaged reinforced material was cyclically stable for the plastic strains examined, while the overaged unreinforced material exhibited cyclic hardening at plastic strains greater than 2.5 × 10⁻⁴. Decreasing grain size of particle-reinforced materials modestly increased the cyclic flow stress of both naturally aged and overaged materials. Reinforced and unreinforced materials exhibited similar fatigue life behaviors; however, the reinforced and unreinforced naturally aged materials had superior fatigue lives in comparison to the overaged materials. Grain size had no effect on the fatigue life behavior of the particle-reinforced materials. The fatigue lives were strongly influenced by the presence of clusters of TiC particles and exogenous Al₃Ti intermetallics. formerly Research Assistant with the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 This article is based on a presentation made in the symposium entitled “Creep and Fatigue in Metal Matrix Composites” at the 1994 TMS/ASM Spring meeting, held February 28–March 3, 1994 in San Francisco, California, under the auspices of the Joint TMS-SMD/ASM-MSD Composite Materials Committee.     

An overview of fault monitoring and diagnosis in mining equipment

Proper detection and diagnosis of failing system components is crucial to efficient mining operations. However, the harsh mining environment offers special challenges to these types of actions. The atmosphere is damp, dirty, and potentially explosive, and equipment is located in confined areas far from shop facilities. These conditions, coupled with the increasing cost of downtime and complexity of mining equipment, have forced researchers and operators to investigate alternatives for improving equipment maintainability. This paper surveys monitoring and diagnosis technologies that offer opportunities for improving equipment availability in mining. Expert systems, model-based approaches, and neural nets are each discussed in the context of fault detection and diagnosis. The paper concludes with a comparative discussion summarizing the advantages and disadvantages of each     

Design of a bistatic dual-Doppler radar for retrieving vector windsusing one transmitter and a remote low-gain passive receiver

A bistatic dual-Doppler network consisting of an existing single transmitting pencil-beam weather radar and a remotely located, nontransmitting, passive bistatic receiver with a low-gain antenna was constructed and tested during 1993. High-quality dual Doppler vector winds were retrieved from this system. The windfields were compared with those collected with a traditional two-transmitter dual-Doppler system. Several interesting engineering challenges relating to frequency and timing synchronization were resolved in order to retrieve successfully Doppler velocities at a remote bistatic site. Frequency synchronization was achieved by using extremely stable local oscillators, linked by both Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) signals and transmitter sidelobe coupling. Both methods provided the necessary one part in 10⁹ coherence necessary for calculating accurate Doppler velocities. Timing/gating synchronization with submicrosecond accuracy was achieved by using local oscillators at each site linked with GPS and sidelobe coupling. The successful testing of this system demonstrates that inexpensive and practical bistatic multiple-Doppler networks can be deployed. These systems can provide three-dimensional vector winds for a number of purposes in research, aviation, media, weather prediction, education, meteorological modeling and severe weather detection     

State observability and condition observability for a class of interacting discrete event systems

This paper introduces the concepts of state observability and condition observability for condition systems, a class of systems composed of discrete state components which interact via discrete binary signals called conditions. Given a set of externally observed conditions, state observability implies that the state of the system can be determined from the observations, and condition observability implies that all unobserved input and output conditions of the system can be determined from the observations. In this paper, we present a class of systems which is state observable and condition observable. We present a method to synthesize an observer system to provide state and condition signal estimates for a single component subsystem.     

1998 William J. Stickel Bronze Award. Antifungal activity of Melaleuca alternifolia (tea-tree) oil against various pathogenic organisms

Tea-tree oil (oil of Melaleuca alternifolia) has recently received much attention as a natural remedy for bacterial and fungal infections of the skin and mucosa. As with most naturally occurring agents, claims of effectiveness have been only anecdotal; however, several published studies have recently demonstrated tea-tree oil's antibacterial activity. This study was conducted to determine the activity of tea-tree oil against 58 clinical isolates: Candida albicans (n = 10), Trichophyton rubrum (n = 8), Trichophyton mentagrophytes (n = 9), Trichophyton tonsurans (n = 10), Aspergillus niger (n = 9), Penicillium species (n = 9), Epidermophyton floccosum (n = 2), and Microsporum gypsum (n = 1). Tea-tree oil showed inhibitory activity against all isolates tested except one strain of E floccosum. These in vitro results suggest that tea-tree oil may be useful in the treatment of yeast and fungal mucosal and skin infections.     

Aging and prospective memory: Examining the influences of self-initiated retrieval processes.

Past research has frequently failed to find age differences in prospective memory. This article tested the possibility that age differences would be more likely to emerge on a prospective memory task that was high in self-initiated retrieval. In the 1st experiment, participants were asked to perform an action every 10 min (a time-based task presumed to be high in self-initiated retrieval); in the 2nd experiment, participants were asked to perform an action whenever a particular word was presented (an event-based task presumed to be relatively low in self-initiated retrieval). Age differences were found with the time-based task but not with the event-based task. This pattern of age differences was again found in a 3rd experiment in which a new experimental procedure was used and the nature of the prospective memory task was directly varied. Generally, the results suggest that self-initiated retrieval processes are an important component of age-related differences across both retrospective and prospective memory tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Connecting the dots: Understanding the interrelated impacts of type,quality and children's awareness of design features and the mathematics content learning goals in digital math games and related learning outcomes

This study focused on an examination of how type, quality and children's awareness of design features in digital math games, along with an awareness of the mathematics goals of the game, were related to learning outcomes. We conducted a parallel conversion mixed methods study with 45 students in Grades 3 and 4 (ages 9–10). Students participated in clinical interviews using three digital math games. The results suggest a moderated mediation relationship in which the quality of the design features moderated the mediating impact of children's awareness of the game's design features, specifically when the child was aware of the mathematics content learning goal (MCLG) of the game. These findings show how important it is that design features are of high quality in a digital math game, and how this is intertwined with children's awareness of the features and the MCLG. When these variables intertwined in just the right way, the interactions between the children and the digital math game afforded mathematical learning growth.