Syntactic recognition of ECG signals by attributed finite automata

A syntactic pattern recognition method of electrocardiograms (ECG) is described in which attributed automata are used to execute the analysis of ECG signals. An ECG signal is first encoded into a string of primitives and then attributed automata are used to analyse the string. We have found that we can perform fast and reliable analysis of ECG signals by attributed automata.     

Modeling of ferric sulfate decomposition and sulfation of potassium chloride during grate‐firing of biomass

Ferric sulfate is used as an additive in biomass combustion to convert the released potassium chloride to the less harmful potassium sulfate. The decomposition of ferric sulfate is studied in a fast heating rate thermogravimetric analyzer and a volumetric reaction model is proposed to describe the process. The yields of sulfur oxides from ferric sulfate decomposition under boiler conditions are investigated experimentally, revealing a distribution of approximately 40% SO₃ and 60% SO₂. The ferric sulfate decomposition model is combined with a detailed kinetic model of gas‐phase KCl sulfation and a model of K₂SO₄ condensation to simulate the sulfation of KCl by ferric sulfate addition. The simulation results show good agreements with experiments conducted in a biomass grate‐firing reactor. The results indicate that the SO₃ released from ferric sulfate decomposition is the main contributor to KCl sulfation and that the effectiveness of ferric sulfate addition is sensitive to the applied temperature conditions. © 2013 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 59: 4314–4324, 2013     

Parallelized Bayesian inversion for three-dimensional dental X-ray imaging

Diagnostic and operational tasks based on dental radiology often require three-dimensional (3-D) information that is not available in a single X-ray projection image. Comprehensive 3-D information about tissues can be obtained by computerized tomography (CT) imaging. However, in dental imaging a conventional CT scan may not be available or practical because of high radiation dose, low-resolution or the cost of the CT scanner equipment. In this paper, we consider a novel type of 3-D imaging modality for dental radiology. We consider situations in which projection images of the teeth are taken from a few sparsely distributed projection directions using the dentist's regular (digital) X-ray equipment and the 3-D X-ray attenuation function is reconstructed. A complication in these experiments is that the reconstruction of the 3-D structure based on a few projection images becomes an ill-posed inverse problem. Bayesian inversion is a well suited framework for reconstruction from such incomplete data. In Bayesian inversion, the ill-posed reconstruction problem is formulated in a well-posed probabilistic form in which a priori information is used to compensate for the incomplete information of the projection data. In this paper we propose a Bayesian method for 3-D reconstruction in dental radiology. The method is partially based on Kolehmainen et al. 2003. The prior model for dental structures consist of a weighted /spl lscr//sup 1/ and total variation (TV)-prior together with the positivity prior. The inverse problem is stated as finding the maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimate. To make the 3-D reconstruction computationally feasible, a parallelized version of an optimization algorithm is implemented for a Beowulf cluster computer. The method is tested with projection data from dental specimens and patient data. Tomosynthetic reconstructions are given as reference for the proposed method.     

Light‐Emitting Paper

A solution‐based fabrication of flexible and light‐weight light‐emitting devices on paper substrates is reported. Two different types of paper substrates are coated with a surface‐emitting light‐emitting electrochemical cell (LEC) device: a multilayer‐coated specialty paper with an intermediate surface roughness of 0.4 μm and a low‐end and low‐cost copy paper with a large surface roughness of 5 μm. The entire device fabrication is executed using a handheld airbrush, and it is notable that all of the constituent layers are deposited from solution under ambient air. The top‐emitting paper‐LECs are highly flexible, and display a uniform light emission with a luminance of 200 cd m^?2 at a current conversion efficacy of 1.4 cd A^?1.     

Magnetization transfer of pure DNA and purified sperm nuclei

Magnetization transfer (MT) imaging provides a novel opportunity to characterize interactions between tissue water and macromolecules. Although severalin vitro investigations have shown that proteins and lipids are important determinants of MT, the contribution of DNA is still unknown. This study was designed to determine whether DNA and cell nuclear material exhibit MT. We measured the magnetization transfer effect of pure DNA strands and purified bovine sperm head nuclei. Although no transfer of magnetization could be detected in samples of pure DNA strands, the sperm head nuclei exhibited a strong MT effect that increased with increasing solid content of the samples. Since the purified bovine sperm head samples consist of large nuclei with only minor traces of perinuclear matrix, the measured MT effect arises from the chromatin of the nuclei. The DNA fills 90% of the nuclear volume and it is extremely tightly packed as chromatin fibers by nucleoproteins. We hypothesize that the numerous intra- and intermolecular disulfide bonds that stabilize the chromatin fibers restrict the movement of the surface water binding sites of both DNA and protamines and thus facilitate the transfer of magnetization. Therefore, the results indicate that the amount of nuclear material may positively contribute to MT in tissues.     

Experimental study on tri-fuel combustion using premixed methane-hydrogen mixtures ignited by a diesel pilot

A comprehensive investigation on diesel pilot spray ignited methane-hydrogen (CH₄–H₂) combustion, tri-fuel combustion (TF), is performed in a single-cylinder compression ignition (CI) engine. The experiments provide a detailed analysis of the effect of H₂ concentration (based on mole fraction, M_H2) and charge-air temperature (T_air) on the ignition behavior, combustion stability, cycle-to-cycle (CCV) and engine performance. The results indicate that adding H₂ from 0 to 60% shortens the ignition delay time (IDT) and combustion duration (based on CA90) up to 33% and 45%, respectively. Thereby, H₂ helps to increase the indicated thermal efficiency (ITE) by as much as 10%. Furthermore, to gain an insight into the combustion stability and CCV, the short-time Fourier transform (STFT) and continuous wavelet transform (CWT) methodologies are applied to estimate the combustion stability and CCV of the TF combustion process. The results reveal that the pressure oscillation can be reduced up to 4 dB/Hz and the CCV by 50% when M_H2 < 60% and T_air < 55 °C. However, when M_H2 > 60% and T_air > 40 °C, abnormal combustion and knocking are observed.     

Polar lipid fraction from oat (Avena sativa): characterization and use as an o/w emulsifier

Oat seeds have an oil content of up to 13?%, of which up to 34?% can be polar lipids (glycolipids and phospholipids). Because of their amphiphilic structure, these polar lipids are potential emulsifiers. In this study, polar lipid fraction from oat produced by a supercritical fluid extraction process was fractionated into different polar lipid classes by HPLC and the lipid classes in subfractions were identified by comparing retention times with reference compounds and performing co-injections. The oat polar lipid fraction contained monogalactosyldiacylglycerol, digalactosyldiacylglycerol, steryl glycoside, and phosphatidyl choline, and also possibly phosphatidyl inositol. The polar lipid fraction was also used as an emulsifier to produce oil-in-water emulsions with different amounts of emulsifier and oil, and the stability and other properties of emulsions were studied. Emulsions were formed quite easily, but they were prone to rapid creaming even after a couple of days of storage at ambient conditions. Droplet size and droplet size distribution of the emulsions seemed to be slightly smaller with smaller amount of oil and larger amount of emulsifier. Generally, the droplet size of the emulsions was in the range of 0.2?C4???m, and with the largest amount of oil (5?%, w/v) up to 10???m. The upper phase of creamed emulsions contained slightly larger droplets, up to 30???m, while the lower phase retained smaller droplets. Microscopic investigation revealed that the increase in droplet size of the upper phase was mainly due to aggregation, which implies that these emulsions may be stable against coalescence to some extent.     

Reductions in particulate and NO(x) emissions by diesel engine parameter adjustments with HVO fuel

Hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) diesel fuel is a promising biofuel candidate that can complement or substitute traditional diesel fuel in engines. It has been already reported that by changing the fuel from conventional EN590 diesel to HVO decreases exhaust emissions. However, as the fuels have certain chemical and physical differences, it is clear that the full advantage of HVO cannot be realized unless the engine is optimized for the new fuel. In this article, we studied how much exhaust emissions can be reduced by adjusting engine parameters for HVO. The results indicate that, with all the studied loads (50%, 75%, and 100%), particulate mass and NO(x) can both be reduced over 25% by engine parameter adjustments. Further, the emission reduction was even higher when the target for adjusting engine parameters was to exclusively reduce either particulates or NO(x). In addition to particulate mass, different indicators of particulate emissions were also compared. These indicators included filter smoke number (FSN), total particle number, total particle surface area, and geometric mean diameter of the emitted particle size distribution. As a result of this comparison, a linear correlation between FSN and total particulate surface area at low FSN region was found.