Operating Characteristic Curves for the Exponential Bayes‐Truncated Test

Operating characteristic (OC) curves are often useful in determining how large a sample is required to detect a specified difference for a particular consumer and producer risk. In this paper, OC curves with Bayes stopping rules for the exponential distribution are developed. Example curves are provided for the sequential and batch testing situations. The power of the test is greater under batch testing. A table illustrates the performance of the plans for stopping at each opportunity in a sample of size 20. Some examples are used to demonstrate the application of the proposed methodology. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cereal sprouts: Composition,nutritive value,food applications

The practice of sprouting of cereal grains has become popular in the western world. Sprouted grains are thought of as having exceptional nutritive value. Sprouting is easy and can be done without sophisticated equipment. Untreated seeds of good quality and high germination percentage are placed in an environment of adequate water, a desirable temperature, and a certain composition of gases in the atmosphere for several days for sprouting. The sprouts can be kept for a few days to over a week under refrigeration. They can be used in many different foods including breakfast items, salads, soups, casseroles, pasta, and baked products. Sprouting of grains causes increased enzyme activity, a loss of total dry matter, an increase in total protein, a change in amino acid composition, a decrease in starch, increases in sugars, a slight increase in crude fat and crude fiber, and slightly higher amounts of certain vitamins and minerals. Most of the increases in nutrients are not true increases, however. They simply reflect the loss of dry matter, mainly in the form of carbohydrates, due to respiration during sprouting. As total carbohydrates decreases, the percentage of other nutrients increases. There are no nutritional evaluations of cereal sprouts in humans. Animal studies with cattle, pigs, chickens, and rats have failed to show a superior nutritive value of sprouted grains over ungerminated grains. Studies with humans are not likely to produce more encouraging results.     

Emotional impact of videotape and reenacted feedback on subjects with high and low defenses.

A group of 40 high and low defensive college students were given reenacted videotape and videotape feedback of an earlier stressful interview. Defensiveness was based upon the L and K scores from the MMPI. The stress interview was reenacted by having an actor or actress portray the earlier interview performance. The Ss rated the emotional impact of the experience 5 times during the feedback interview and again at its conclusion. All Ss had more negative feelings when viewing actor/actress self-portrayals. Low defensive Ss viewed both themselves and the actor/actress portrayals more negatively than did high defensive Ss. Many of the low defensive Ss still had negative feelings after viewing themselves, whereas none of the high defensive Ss did. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Nonlinear bending analysis of orthotropic rectangular plates by the method of differential quadrature

The behavior of thin, rectangular, orthotropic elastic plates, with immovable edges and undergoing large deflections, is investigated by the numerical technique of differential quadrature. Approximate results are obtained, using the Newton-Raphson method and, alternatively, a finite-difference-based method to solve the nonlinear systems of equations. Bending stresses, membrane stresses, and deflections are calculated for plates with fully clamped and simply supported flexural edge conditions under uniform pressure loading. Results are compared with existing analytical, numerical, and experimental ones. The present method gives good accuracy and is computationally efficient.     

An improved approximation for settling time of second-order linear systems

An improved approximate expression is developed for the settling time of a second-order linear system subjected to a step input. The new expression is more accurate than several existing approximate expressions. Furthermore, although it is slightly more complicated than one of the existing approximations, it is much more convenient to use than the other, which requires iteration for design application. Finally, it is noted that explicit results in dimensionless graphical form are given for the first time for the exact settling time versus damping ratio.     

Experimental and numerical investigation of shock response in 3.5 and 2.5 in. form factor hard disk drives

The shock performance of the head/disk interface (HDI) of 3.5 and 2.5 in. hard disk drives (HDDs) is investigated. The displacement of the actuator arm, the suspension, and the disk due to linear shock loads is studied experimentally for both non-operating and operating states of the disk drive. A finite element model of the disk drive was developed to simulate the shock response. Numerical simulation results and experimental results are compared and presented.     

Unconscious Primes Activate Motor Codes Through Semantics.

Today, it is generally accepted that unconscious stimuli can activate a response code, which leads to a response congruency effect (RCE) on a subsequent target. However, it is not yet clear whether this is due to the semantic processing of the primes or to the formation of direct stimulus-response (S-R) associations bypassing the semantic system. Recently, it was shown that even novel primes, for which no direct S-R links exist, can also evoke an RCE that is in line with the activation of response codes through semantics. In these experiments, the authors examined 3 alternatives for this RCE from novel primes and report a novel effect in unconscious priming. First, the authors show that this effect is not limited to a small set of numerical stimuli but also extends to letter stimuli (Experiments 1-3). Second, the authors show that the RCE is not a side effect of the prime-target distance effect, as has been reported before (Experiments 1-2). Third, the authors found that, for RCE to occur, overlap at the motor level but not at the semantic level was crucial (Experiments 2-3). Finally, in addition, the results showed a category match priming effect independent of RCE. This last result is evidence that novel unconscious primes activate their semantic category prior to the target and might be considered a good marker for semantic processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Influence of uncertainty in heat–moisture transport properties on convective drying of porous materials by numerical modelling

The influence of uncertainties in heat–moisture transport properties, due to measurement errors and material heterogeneity, on the numerical simulation results of convective drying of two capillary-saturated porous materials is investigated by a transport-property parameter analysis (TP-PA), based on the Monte Carlo method. Here, the heat–air–moisture transfer model is evaluated many times, each time using a random set of one or multiple input parameters (i.e. transport properties), by which a stochastic model output is generated. The propagation of these transport-property uncertainties to the hygrothermal behaviour of the drying system is evaluated by statistical analysis of the model simulation output. The spread on the hygrothermal response is found to be strongly material dependent and is related to the dominant mode of moisture transport in the material, i.e. liquid or vapour transport. The TP-PA results clearly indicate that uncertainties in the heat–moisture transport properties can lead to significant differences in drying behaviour predictions, where differences of the total drying time with respect to its mean value up to 200% are found for the materials considered. Therefore, numerical modelling of heat and moisture transport in porous materials should preferably include a quantification of the propagation of these uncertainties, for example by means of the proposed transport-property parameter analysis. Such analysis, however, additionally requires detailed (a priori) experimental material characterisation to determine realistic uncertainty ranges.