A new model for transformer saturation characteristics by includinghysteresis loops

A simplified analytical expression in polynomial form to determine the transformer saturation and hysteresis characteristics without field test data is presented. Higher-order approximations are simulated for comparison with transformers of various capacities. The results are compared with experiments and simulations and show very good agreement. It is possible to determine accurate transformer saturation and hysteresis characteristics with this simplified procedure     

In utero exchange transfusion in homozygous alpha-thalassaemia: a case report

We report a case of homozygous alpha-thalassaemia with hydrops fetalis presenting at 22 weeks of gestation. In utero exchange transfusion was performed with maternal blood at 23 weeks. 25 weeks and 29 weeks of gestation. The fetus was delivered at 29 weeks of gestation without significant neonatal complication. Post-transfusion haemoglobin pattern after transfusion suggested that a total haematocrit of 0.52 may be the desired post-exchange transfusion haematocrit to aim for and the total haematocrit of haemoglobin A and haemoglobin Portland dropped approximately one percent per day.     

Clinical outcome of patients infected with hepatitis C virus infection on survival after primary liver transplantation under tacrolimus

In 1994, as a result of both programme evaluations which identified students' fears and apprehensions about their practical ability, and a review of the literature on skill acquisition, experiential skills teaching was resumed within the faculty. Having invested considerable finance into the reconstruction of a skills centre to teach skills, it is now imperative that its use be formally evaluated. Part of the evaluative process includes a review of the empirical literature on the acquisition of psychomotor skills in nursing. This paper summarizes this review.     

Double blind, randomised, placebo controlled study of oral vancomycin in prevention of necrotising enterocolitis in preterm, very low birthweight infants

AIMS: To evaluate the effectiveness of oral vancomycin in the prophylaxis of necrotising enterocolitis in preterm, very low birthweight infants. METHODS: A prospective, double blind, randomised, placebo controlled study in a tertiary referral centre of a university teaching hospital was conducted on 140 very low birthweight infants consecutively admitted to the neonatal unit. The babies were randomly allocated to receive oral vancomycin (15 mg/kg every 8 hours for 7 days) or an equivalent volume of placebo solution. Prophylaxis was started 24 hours before the start of oral feeds. All suspected cases of necrotising enterocolitis were investigated with a full sepsis screen and serial abdominal radiographs. Necrotising enterocolitis was diagnosed and staged according to modified Bell's criteria. RESULTS: Nine of 71 infants receiving oral vancomycin and 19 of 69 infants receiving the placebo solution developed necrotising enterocolitis (p = 0.035). Infants with necrotising enterocolitis were associated with a significant increase in mortality (p = 0.026) and longer duration of hospital stay (p = 0.002). CONCLUSIONS: Prophylactic oral vancomycin conferred protection against necrotising enterocolitis in preterm, very low birthweight infants and was associated with a 50% reduction in the incidence. However, widespread implementation of this preventive measure is not recommended, as it would only be effective in necrotising enterocolitis caused by Gram positive organisms and could increase the danger of the emergence of vancomycin resistant or dependent organisms. Its use should be restricted to a high prevalence nursery for a short and well defined period in a selected group of high risk patients.     

Locality-preserving hash functions for general purpose parallel computation

Consider the problem of efficiently simulating the shared-memory parallel random access machine (PRAM) model on massively parallel architectures with physically distributed memory. To prevent network congestion and memory bank contention, it may be advantageous to hash the shared memory address space. The decision on whether or not to use hashing depends on (1) the communication latency in the network and (2) the locality of memory accesses in the algorithm.We relate this decision directly to algorithmic issues by studying the complexity of hashing in the Block PRAM model of Aggarwal, Chandra, and Snir, a shared-memory model of parallel computation which accounts for communication locality. For this model, we exhibit a universal family of hash functions having optimal locality. The complexity of applying these hash functions to the shared address space of the Block PRAM (i.e., by permuting data elements) is asymptotically equivalent to the complexity of performing a square matrix transpose, and this result is best possible for all pairwise independent universal hash families. These complexity bounds provide theoretical evidence that hashing and randomized routing need not destroy communication locality, addressing an open question of Valiant.This work was started when the author was a student at Oxford University, supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship and a Rhodes Scholarship. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the Rhodes Trust.     

Consequences of the formation of Cooper-pairs near oxygen-deficient sites

In this investigation we consider the formation of Cooper pairs near the oxygen-deficient sites in Y-Ba-Cu-O ceramic superconductors which would give rise to an energy-dependent potential as seen by conduction charge carriers. It is shown that Cooper pairs could be formed under such conditions, resulting in a supercurrent. We use the Bogoliubov transformation technique to calculate the energy gap, the energy difference, and the transition temperature of the model superconductor using certain data obtained from previous experiments. Numerical analysis shows that the superconducting current can be explained by the presence of such oscillating Cooper pairs.     

The implementation of technical practices and human factors of the toyota production system in different industries

The Toyota Production System (TPS) can result in huge benefits for companies and has been widely implemented around the world. Nevertheless, most adopters emphasize only the technical practices of the TPS, but neglect the critical role of human factors in the implementation of the TPS. Therefore, this study aims at developing an integrated TPS model that fully integrates the technical elements and human elements of the TPS with Total Quality Management (TQM) practices. An empirical study was conducted to confirm the causal relationships among these constructs. In the empirical study, questionnaires were mailed and e‐mailed to 620 companies that had implemented the TPS, and 151 of the completed questionnaires were valid. These 151 respondents were divided into eight categories. The results revealed that the implementation level of each construct was significantly different in each industry. The automobile and motorcycle industries have put a great deal of effort into the application of Humanity, Human Resource Management (HRM), and TQM practices and obtained good results. Other industries, however, ignored the implementation of HRM practices. The results also revealed that the early adopters enjoyed significant benefits from the implementation of the TPS, which led high‐tech companies to start adopting TPS practices and become lean enterprises. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Intelligent control of doubly‐fed induction generator systems using PIDNNs

An intelligent control for a stand‐alone doubly‐fed induction generator (DFIG) system using a proportional‐integral‐derivative neural network (PIDNN) is proposed in this study. This system can be applied as a stand‐alone power supply system or as the emergency power system when the electricity grid fails for all sub‐synchronous, synchronous, and super‐synchronous conditions. The rotor side converter is controlled using field‐oriented control to produce 3‐phase stator voltages with constant magnitude and frequency at different rotor speeds. Moreover, the grid side converter, which is also controlled using field‐oriented control, is primarily implemented to maintain the magnitude of the DC‐link voltage. Furthermore, the intelligent PIDNN controller is proposed for both the rotor and grid side converters to improve the transient and steady‐state responses of the DFIG system for different operating conditions. Both the network structure and online learning algorithm are introduced in detail. Finally, the feasibility of the proposed control scheme is verified through experimentation. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley and Sons Asia Pte Ltd and Chinese Automatic Control Society     

Optically pumped submillimeter gas lasers and the prospects for constructing space-qualifiable LO systems

An optically pumped submillimeter laser operating in the 500 μm (600 GHz) to 100 μm (3 THz) spectral range is the primary and, at present, the only available local oscillator (LO) source for laboratory and astronomical heterodyne applications for this wavelength region. A short review of the state-of-the-art of submillimeter lasers as LO sources, with an emphasis given to receiver systems designed for airborne heterodyne observations, will be presented. The characteristics and prospects for constructing a spacequalifiable laser LO system will also be given.     

An improved algorithm for finding the median distributively

Given two processes, each having a total-ordered set ofn elements, we present a distributed algorithm for finding median of these 2n elements using no more than logn +O(logn) messages, but if the elements are distinct, only logn +O(1) messages will be required. The communication complexity of our algorithm is better than the previously known result which takes 2 logn messages.