Crystallization of MgO-CaO-SiO2-P2O5 Glass

The crystallization behavior of a glass with a composition of 40 wt% 3CaO · P₂O₅−60 wt% CaO · MgO · 2SiO₂ was investigated. The primary crystalline phase was apatite with a dendritic form and ellipsoidal shape. β-(3CaO · P₂O₅) and CaO · MgO · 2SiO₂ were crystallized as samples heated to 990°C, and a three-layer structure was obtained. The development and morphology of this construction were explained by both the surface crystallization of the apatite and CaO · MgO · 2SiO₂ and the bulk crystallization of apatite and the CaO · MgO · 2SiO₂-β-(3CaO · P₂O₅) composite.     

Statistical energy analysis of non-resonant response of isotropic and orthotropic plates

The conventional SEA model considers only the resonant part of the structural response to an acoustic excitation. Therefore, this study investigates non-resonant responses of isotropic and orthotropic plates to acoustically induced vibrations in a reverberation chamber. A modified SEA model is introduced to predict the non-resonant plate response. The estimated non-resonant and resonant responses are then compared with those obtained experimentally, and good agreement is observed for isotropic and orthotropic plates. For an isotropic plate with a small dissipation loss factor, when the non-resonant part is ignored, the estimated response can lead to significant errors at frequencies near and above the critical frequency, while large errors may occur at frequencies below the critical frequency for an orthotropic plate with a high dissipation loss factor. The experimental study indicates that the non-resonant response component should be included in the estimated responses to enhance predictive accuracy.     

Anti‐inflammatory properties of high pressure‐assisted extracts of Grifola frondosa in lipopolysaccharide‐activated RAW 264.7 macrophages

The aim of this study was to determine the in vitro anti‐inflammatory properties of the shake extract (SE) and the high pressure‐assisted extract (PE) of the mycelia of Grifola frondosa in a lipopolysaccharide‐stimulated RAW 264.7 macrophage model. The content of total polysaccharides and β‐glucans of PE at 600 MPa (PE‐600) was 41.2 and 6.2 mg g^?1 dry weight, respectively, which were significantly higher than SE extracts. The results showed that treatment with 500 μg mL^?1 of PE by 600 MPa (PE‐600) did not reduce RAW 264.7 cell viability but did significantly inhibit the production of LPS‐induced NO, PGE₂ and intracellular ROS. The PE‐600 inhibited the activation of NF‐kB and then reduced the production of LPS‐induced TNF‐α, IL‐6 and IL‐1β in a dose‐dependent manner. Thus, the PE could be used as an alternative extraction method for improving the extraction efficacy of G. frondosa and serve as an alternative source of anti‐inflammatory agents.     

Development of FRP Short-Span Deployable Bridge—Experimental Results

For military and civilian applications, there exists a need for lightweight, inexpensive, short-span bridges that can be easily transported and erected with minimal equipment. Owing to its favorable properties, fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) has been shown to be feasible for the construction of such bridges. Investigations into the behavior of a short-span bridge structural concept, adapted to the material properties of commercially available glass FRP (GFRP) pultruded products, are presented. A 4.8-m span prototype was built from GFRP sections, bonded throughout to form a tapered box beam, with a width of 1.2?m and a height at midspan of approximately 0.5?m. The box beam represents a single trackway of a double-trackway bridge, whose trackways could be connected by light structural elements. The quasi-static and dynamic behavior of the prototype box beam was investigated in ambient laboratory and field conditions to assess the design and construction techniques used, with a view to designing a full-scale 10-m GFRP bridge. Laboratory testing of the prototype box beam used single and pairs of patch loads to simulate wheel loading. These tests confirmed that the box beam had sufficient stiffness and strength to function effectively as a single trackway of a small span bridge. Field testing of the structure was undertaken using a Bison vehicle (13,000?kg), driven at varying speeds over the structure to establish its response to realistic vehicle loads and the effects of their movement across the span.     

In-situ Mössbauer spectroscopic study of the behaviour of tin(II) chloride during coal hydrogenation

In-situ Mössbauer spectroscopy has been used to study the catalytic role of SnCl₂ and its interaction with the IL6 coal during hydrogenation. The measurements have been recorded under three different atmospheres of nitrogen, hydrogen, and hydrogen in the presence of a heavy distillate solvent SRC-II. The study has shown that both tin and chlorine can enter the coal structure at an early stage of hydrogenation. The presence of chlorine has been shown to cause the cleavage of ether-oxygen linkages in the coal. Tin (II) sulphide is the predominant form of the catalyst after the hydrogenation and is the product of the scavenging of coal sulphur by tin. The study has also shown the formation of FeCl₂ · xH₂0 (x = 1, 2) as a result of the reaction between pyrrhotites (Fe_(1?x)S, formed by the decomposition of FeS₂) and hydrochloric acid in the nitrogen and the hydrogen atmospheres.     

Formation and properties of SnO–MgO–P<Subscript>2</Subscript>O<Subscript>5</Subscript> glasses

A new glass system SnO–MgO–P₂O₅ with low viscosity has been developed by a melt-quenching method. Formation, thermal properties, and chemical durability of these glasses have been investigated. For a constant P₂O₅ concentration, the glass formation ability is enhanced with the increasing Sn/(Sn + Mg) ratio. The glasses exhibit low glass transition temperature (T _g = 270–400 °C), low dilatometric softening temperature (T _DS = 290–420 °C), and high thermal expansion coefficient (CTE = 110–160 × 10⁻⁷ K⁻¹). With the increasing Sn/(Sn + Mg) ratio, T _g and T _DS decrease, and CTE increases. When Sn/(Sn + Mg) ratio is varied, the relationship between chemical durability and thermal properties of the present glasses is not consistent with what expected in general cases. It is noted that the glasses with 32–32.5 mol% P₂O₅ exhibit excellent chemical durability and tunable T _g, T _DS, and CTE (by varying Sn/(Sn + Mg) ratio).     

Knowledge-driven multidimensional indexing structure for biomedical media database retrieval.

Today, biomedical media data are being generated at rates unimaginable only years ago. Content-based retrieval of biomedical media from large databases is becoming increasingly important to clinical, research, and educational communities. In this paper, we present the recently developed entropy balanced statistical (EBS) k-d tree and its applications to biomedical media, including a high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT) lung image database and the first real-time protein tertiary structure search engine. Our index utilizes statistical properties inherent in large-scale biomedical media databases for efficient and accurate searches. By applying concepts from pattern recognition and information theory, the EBS k-d tree is built through top-down decision tree induction. Experimentation shows similarity searches against a protein structure database of 53 363 structures consistently execute in less than 8.14 ms for the top 100 most similar structures. Additionally, we have shown improved retrieval precision over adaptive and statistical k-d trees. Retrieval precision of the EBS k-d tree is 81.6% for content-based retrieval of HRCT lung images and 94.9% at 10% recall for protein structure similarity search. The EBS k-d tree has enormous potential for use in biomedical applications embedded with ground-truth knowledge and multidimensional signatures.     

Moment-based alignment for shape prior with variational B-spline level set

This paper presents a new shape prior-based implicit active contour model for image segmentation. The paper proposes an energy functional including a data term and a shape prior term. The data term, inspired from the region-based active contour approach, evolves the contour based on the region information of the image to segment. The shape prior term, defined as the distance between the evolving shape and a reference shape, constraints the evolution of the contour with respect to the reference shape. Especially, in this paper, we present shapes via geometric moments, and utilize the shape normalization procedure, which takes into account the affine transformation, to align the evolving shape with the reference one. By this way, we could directly calculate the shape transformation, instead of solving a set of coupled partial differential equations as in the gradient descent approach. In addition, we represent the level-set function in the proposed energy functional as a linear combination of continuous basic functions expressed on a B-spline basic. This allows a fast convergence to the segmentation solution. Experiment results on synthetic, real, and medical images show that the proposed model is able to extract object boundaries even in the presence of clutter and occlusion.     

Thermal performance of flat vapor chamber heat spreader

Experiments were performed to examine the spreading thermal resistance of centrally positioned heat sources and the thermal performance of a water charged, gravity assisted flat vapor chamber to be used for electronic cooling. Parametric studies including different heat fluxes and operating temperatures were conducted, and the effect of the relevant parameters on the cooling performance in terms of the spreading resistance was presented and discussed. The present vapor chamber heat spreader showed a heat removal capacity of 220 W/cm² with a thermal spreading resistance of 0.2 °C/W.     

Lack of effect of food on the steady state pharmacokinetics of BMS-181101, an antidepressant, in healthy subjects

An annual atmospheric pollen survey was performed for 14 consecutive years in the autumn at Sakado city, Saitama prefecture. The survey was performed on the transition of pollen dispersion of major allergen plants: ragweed (Ambrosia spp.), Humulus japonicus, Artemisia spp. and Gramineae. 1. Annual total pollen count of ragweed showed marked increases beginning from 1991. Total pollen count in 1991 was 8.8 times and that in 1996 was 18.6 times that in 1983. This increase is probably caused by marked proliferation of giant ragweed which is left without mowing as it is on a dry riverbed, and consequently produces much more pollen than short ragweed. 2. Annual increases in total pollen counts of other major plants which disperse their pollen in the same season as ragweed were 0.95 times in 1991 and 0.5 times in 1996 that in 1983 for Humulus japonicus, 0.68 times in 1991 and 1.5 times in 1996 that in 1983 for Artemisia spp. and 1.3 times in 1991 and 1.4 times in 1996 that in 1983 for Gramineae. None of these species showed a marked increase of pollen dispersion although they showed some annual variation. The above findings suggest that changes in the proliferous state of various allergenic plants due to environmental change should be considered with respect to characteristics of pollen allergy.