Automated single nucleotide polymorphism typing using bead array in capillary tube

A low-cost and simple on-site technique for genotyping single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) was developed. The technique is based on allele-specific primer PCR and the recently developed bead arrays in a single tip technique. The performance of the method was verified by genotyping four SNPs that correlate with cardiovascular diseases.     

To Journal of Phase Equilibria and Diffusion Phase Relationship of the BaO-ZrO<Subscript>2</Subscript>-YO<Subscript>1.5</Subscript> System at 1500 and 1600 °C

Phase relationship of a BaO-ZrO₂-YO_1.5 system at 1500 and 1600 °C was examined in order to determine whether a phase separation at the composition of 15% yttrium-doped barium zirconate exists. According to a pseudoternary phase diagram of the BaO-ZrO₂-YO_1.5 system established by this work, the solubility of yttria into cubic barium zirconate at 1600 °C is 0.25 in a mole fraction of yttria (X_\textYO1.5 ) (X_{{{\text{YO}}_{1.5} }} ) . Thus, we confirmed that there is no phase separation at the composition of 15% yttrium-doped barium zirconate at 1600 °C. On the other hand, at 1500 °C, there might be a phase separation at the composition of 15% yttrium-doped barium zirconate into yttrium-doped barium zirconate where quite small amount of yttrium is doped and a new phase whose composition is close to reported BZ(II) phase.     

Multivariable data analysis of a cold rolling control system to minimise defects

This paper focuses on the application of principal component analysis (PCA) to thoroughly analyse and interpret multidimensional data from a cold rolling process. The analysis includes the effects of variables on the final properties of strips in a cold rolling mill. Unscrambler software was used to analyse and identify hidden variables. Variable correlations were also used to derive correlations between the control parameters. The results of this research will be used to improve the selection of material in order to reduce the occurrence of defects in the cold rolling process and to improve the adjustment of the set points that are performed in every pass or section of the cold rolling process. The hot rolled strips that enter the cold rolling mill are made of different materials and are produced by different strip manufacturers. Some strips break during the thickness reduction process in the cold rolling mill. This paper focuses on two possible causes of breakage: non-uniform strip material properties and failures in the rolling mill process. Two types of rolled strips (those that break and those that do not break) were compared to identify causes of breakage. The results indicate that breakages are caused by material or process failures. PCA was applied to the dataset in order to identify and analyse the relationships between the variables in the process. This information was used to interpret and diagnose the process behaviour. Swarm analysis and relating observations to process behaviour were able to distinguish between different start-up conditions, and between desirable and undesirable process conditions.     

Nondaily behavior detection monitoring system for elderly people based on bayesian network representation of omnidirectional vision sensor

This paper describes an unusual behavior detection system based on an omnidirectional vision sensor, as one of the important elements in realizing “Sensing and Robotic Support Rooms” for elderly people. Such support rooms are expected to be further developed in the future with advanced abilities to automatically recognize elderly people's actions and behavior patterns, to detect unusual patterns by using sensors, and to support their daily motions by using robotic manipulator control systems. The proposed monitoring system using an omnidirectional vision sensor automatically learns daily behavior patterns and detects unusual behavior patterns and actions by using the Bayesian network approach. The Bayesian network is constructed by using image feature values such as area and center‐of‐gravity values extracted from a captured image sequence, and the respective behavior patterns are represented as conditional probabilities. Unusual behavior patterns can be automatically detected on the basis of the low generation probability values. Experiments based on the investigation of elderly people's typical daily behavior patterns have shown the effectiveness of the proposed system. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 172(3): 42–51, 2010; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/eej.20990     

Use of multivariate analysis for the improvement in prediction accuracy of bacterial aerobic plate count by flow cytometry

Flow cytometry (FCM) and aerobic plate count (APC) by the culture method were performed on green tea samples spiked with Escherichia coli type strain NCTC9001 (ATCC11775) solutions of different concentrations. In FCM, fluorescence signals from multiple stained bacteria and other fluorophores are detected using detector channels, and recorded as events with a voltage at each channel. FCM data were analyzed in two ways: conventional and multivariate analysis. In the former, the number of events with voltages larger than the defined threshold values was regarded as the predicted APC. In the latter, voltage histograms of all channels were obtained and merged horizontally to serve as explanatory variables. Then a partial least squares regression (PLSR) model was built to predict APC from the histogram data. The coefficient of determination (R²) and the root mean square error (RMSE) between APC by the culture method and that predicted by conventional FCM were 0.916 and 1.08 cfu/ml². The APC values predicted by the PLSR model and those measured were in good agreement with R² of 0.982 and RMSE of 0.417 cfu/ml, which verified the potential of the proposed method for improving APC prediction accuracy by FCM.     

Extraction,selection and ranking of Field Association (FA) Terms from domain-specific corpora for building a comprehensive FA terms dictionary

Field Association (FA) Terms—words or phrases that serve to identify document fields are effective in document classification, similar file retrieval and passage retrieval. But the problem lies in the lack of an effective method to extract and select relevant FA Terms to build a comprehensive dictionary of FA Terms. This paper presents a new method to extract, select and rank FA Terms from domain-specific corpora using part-of-speech (POS) pattern rules, corpora comparison and modified tf-idf weighting. Experimental evaluation on 21 fields using 306 MB of domain-specific corpora obtained from English Wikipedia dumps selected up to 2,517 FA Terms (single and compound) per field at precision and recall of 74–97 and 65–98. This is better than the traditional methods. The FA Terms dictionary constructed using this method achieved an average accuracy of 97.6% in identifying the fields of 10,077 test documents collected from Wikipedia, Reuters RCV1 corpus and 20 Newsgroup data set.     

Investigation of VFT surges propagated into transformer and overvoltages applied to winding

Investigations were conducted on the VFT (Very Fast Transient) surges that propagate into a 500‐kV transformer. The disconnector restriking surge and ground fault surged were discussed. It was regarded that a large part of the surge voltage was applied just at the entrance of the transformer winding for the VFT surges. Thus, an equivalent circuit that models the windings was used for the analysis. The overvoltages that appear between the first winding sections at the entrance of the transformer were computed. The following was established. (1) The overvoltage between the first winding sections becomes greater when the magnitude of the voltage change at the transformer terminal is larger. The overvoltage between the first winding sections is not affected by the magnitude of the transformer terminal voltage. (2) For the disconnectors that are not connected directly to the transformer, the voltage change at the transformer terminal is not so large. (3) In the case of a ground fault at the GIS near the transformer, the voltage change at the transformer terminal is the same as that for a disconnector directly connected to the transformer. (4) In actual GIS, the disconnector that is connected directly to the transformer is not usually used. In this situation, the overvoltages that threaten the transformer insulation will not be generated by the restriking of the disconnectors. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 146(2): 20–26, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/eej.10225     

Phonon Bands Associated with the Inner-Shell Electronic Absorption Lines of Eu Atoms in Bulk Liquid Helium

The phonon bands associated with the inner-shell electronic absorption lines of Eu atoms have been studied in bulk liquid helium in the temperature range between 1.6 and 3.1 K. Profiles of the phonon bands show the remarkable temperature dependence from a broad peak at 1.6 K to a monotonic decrease of the intensity by energy at higher temperatures. Two phonon bands, measured at about 1.9 K for two different lines with different interaction energies with the liquid, are found to show identical profiles, suggesting that the profiles depend only on the temperature. The broad peak at 1.6 K has been interpreted as temperature-broadened roton/maxon peaks, while the monotonically decreasing profiles have not been well understood yet.     

Unit commitment scheduling by Lagrange relaxation method taking into account transmission losses

Since the application of the Lagrange relaxation method to the unit commitment scheduling by Muckstadt in 1979, many papers using this method have been published. The greatest advantage of applying the Lagrange relaxation method for the unit commitment problem is that it can relax (ignore) each generator's output dependency caused by the demand–supply balance constraint so that a unit commitment of each generator is determined independently by dynamic programming. However, when we introduce the transmission loss into the demand–supply balance constraint, we cannot decompose the problem into the partial problems in which each generator's unit commitment is determined independently and have to take some measures to obtain an optimal schedule by the Lagrange relaxation method directly. In this paper, we present an algorithm for the unit commitment schedule using the Lagrange relaxation method for the case of taking into account transmission losses. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 152(4): 27–33, 2005; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/eej.20119     

Deformation behavior of polytetrafluoroethylene films under tensile stress at various temperatures

Deformation behavior of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) films was investigated by thermomechanical analysis (TMA) under various tensile stresses (σ) up to 1.15 MPa in the temperature range from room temperature to 360°C. In the heating process above σ ≈ 0.25 MPa, a contraction of the PTFE film occurs in the melting temperature region. In the cooling process above σ ≈ 0.05 MPa, an elongation occurs in the crystallization temperature region, and above σ ≈ 0.5 MPa, it reaches 20–30% of the original length of the film. The PTFE films in the melt state above σ ≈ 0.5 MPa contract with increasing temperature up to 360°C and elongate with decreasing temperature. For the films that underwent deformation in the TMA, the crystalline orientation and the surface morphology were investigated by wide-angle X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy, respectively. The degree of crystalline orientation in the deformed films increases with increasing σ and approaches a plateau at σ ≈ 0.4 MPa. On the surface of the deformed films, alignment of the bands and deformation of granules, which are formed by heat treatment above the melting point, are observed. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.