A self-adaptive fe system based on recursive spatial decomposition and multigrid analysis

This paper introduces an automatic self-adaptive finite element system for 3-D stress analysis of homogeneous elastic solids described in a Solid Modelling System (SMS). This system reduces the role of the analyst into two basic tasks: defining the problem (i.e. geometry, material properties and boundary conditions) and specifying the desired accuracy in the analysis. The approach followed in this work is based on Recursive Spatial Decomposition (RSD) of solids defined in a SMS. The system includes procedures for meshing, analysis, error estimation, and adaptive remeshing and reanalysis. The various procedures share the same hierarchical data structure built on the RSD.     

Photosynthetic membranes, 21. Immobilization of catalase by photochemically grafted ultrafiltration membranes

Catalase has been immobilized in membranes prepared by photoinduced grafting onto microporous polymeric supports and its catalytic activity on hydrogen peroxide decomposition has been studied under ultrafiltration conditions by means of a recirculation apparatus. The membranes showed a very good catalytic performance and the enzyme reaction took place exclusively within the membrane structure. Initial reaction rates measured in the temperature range 5 – 35°C as a function of both substrate concentration and enzyme amount immobilized per unit membrane surface indicate that the mechanism of action of catalase is not altered after immobilization.     

Sequential Decision Strategies for Machine Interpretation of Speech

Recognition errors made by automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems may not prevent the development of useful dialogue applications if the interpretation strategy has an introspection capability for evaluating the reliability of the results. This paper proposes an interpretation strategy which is particularly effective when applications are developed with a training corpus of moderate size. From the lattice of word hypotheses generated by an ASR system, a short list of conceptual structures is obtained with a set of finite state machines (FSM). Interpretation or a rejection decision is then performed by a tree-based strategy. The nodes of the tree correspond to elaboration-decision units containing a redundant set of classifiers. A decision tree based and two large margin classifiers are trained with a development set to become interpretation knowledge sources. Discriminative training of the classifiers selects linguistic and confidence-based features for contributing to a cooperative assessment of the reliability of an interpretation. Such an assessment leads to the definition of a limited number of reliability states. The probability that a proposed interpretation is correct is provided by its reliability state and transmitted to the dialogue manager. Experimental results are presented for a telephone service application     

Algebraic integer architecture with minimum adder count for the 2-D Daubechies 4-tap filters banks

A multiplierless architecture based on algebraic integer representation for computing the Daubechies 4-tap wavelet transform for 1-D/2-D signal processing is proposed. This architecture improves on previous designs in a sense that it minimizes the number of parallel 2-input adder circuits. The algorithm was achieved using numerical optimization based o exhaustive search over the algebraic integer representation. The proposed architecture furnishes exact computation up to the final reconstruction step, which is the operation that maps the exactly computed filtered results from algebraic integer representation to fixed-point. Compared to Madishetty et al. (IEEE Trans Circuits Syst I (Accepted, In Press), 2012a), this architecture shows a reduction of \(10\cdot n-3\) adder circuits, where \(n\) is the number of wavelet decomposition levels. Standard \(512\times 512\) images Mandrill, Lena, and Cameraman were submitted to digital realizations of both proposed algebraic integer based as well as fixed-point schemes, leading to quantifiable comparisons. The design is physically implemented for a 4-level 2-D decomposition using a Xilinx Virtex-6 vcx240t-1ff1156 FPGA device operating at up to a maximum clock frequency of 263.15 MHz. The FPGA implementation is tested using hardware co-simulation using an ML605 board with clock of 100 MHz. A 45 nm CMOS synthesis shows improved clock frequency of better than 500 MHz for a supply voltage of 1.1 V.     

Synthesis, hydration and durability of rice hull cements doped with chromium

This work describes the synthesis, hydration and durability behavior of β-Ca(2)SiO(4) doped with chromium. β-Ca(2)SiO(4) is a component of commercial cement. Rice hull is an agricultural residue containing about 10% of silica as inorganic constituent. The controlled burning of rice hull was used to obtain this biogenic silica, used as starting material. In many situations chromium is added during cement preparation in order to promote encapsulation, at temperatures around 1500°C. The synthesis presented here is completed at 800°C, causing a substantial reduction in energy consumption. Moreover, chromium is chemically bonded to cement crystal, which is safer than simple physical encapsulation. Results show that chromium can be inserted into the structure of β-Ca(2)SiO(4) up to 1% (molar ratio). Hydration degree and durability studies show that insertion of chromium causes no deleterious effects on physical and chemical properties of these doped materials when compared to β-pure Ca(2)SiO(4).     

Preoperative chemotherapy followed by concurrent chemoradiation therapy based on hyperfractionated accelerated radiotherapy and definitive surgery in locally advanced non-small-cell lung cancer: mature results of a phase II trial

The ability of rats to learn the location of a hidden platform in a swim maze was compared in animals with excitotoxic lesions of the anterior or posterior (retrosplenial) cingulate cortex or radiofrequency lesions of the cingulum bundle or fimbria-fornix. Performance of this allocentric spatial task was unaffected by the posterior cingulate cortex lesions, while anterior cingulate cortex damage produced only a mild acquisition deficit. Transection of the fornix and lesions of the cingulum bundle produced similar patterns of impairment on initial acquisition, but the cingulum bundle lesions had less effect on reversal of the task. The results from the water maze, and from a subsequent T-maze alternation task, indicate that cingulum bundle lesions can produce a spatial deficit that is similar, but milder, to that observed after fornix transection. The results of the excitotoxic lesions suggest that previous studies examining conventional cingulate lesions may have been influenced by damage to adjacent fibre tracts, such as the cingulum bundle.     

The performance of rolling production schedules in a process industry

In this paper we study lot-sizing and changeover decisions in production schedules that are implemented on a rolling-horizon basis. The study is carried out by comparing production schedules for the packaging operations of a pharmaceutical company that produces various products on several capacitated production lines. The schedules are obtained by solving a mixed-integer programming formulation by using a heuristic procedure. We examine the effects of the number of periods in the planning horizon, the starting inventory and the demand fluctuation on the schedules. We show empirically that the saving in annual production cost diminishes rapidly as more demand periods are added to the planning horizon. Computational results are reported.