Investigation of texture effect on visual colour difference evaluation

The texture effect on visual colour difference evaluation was investigated in this study. Five colour centers were selected and textured colour pairs were generated using scanned textile woven fabrics and colour‐mapping technique. The textured and solid colour pairs were then displayed on a characterized cathode ray tube (CRT) monitor for colour difference evaluation. The colour difference values for the pairs with texture patterns are equal to 5.0 CIELAB units in lightness direction. The texture level was represented by the half‐width of histogram, which is called texture strength in this study. High correlation was found between texture strength and visual colour difference for textured colour pairs, which indicates that an increasing of 10 units of texture strength in luminance would cause a decreasing of 0.25 units visual difference for the five colour centers. The ratio of visual difference between textured and solid colour pairs also indicates a high parametric effect of texture. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 30, 341–347, 2005; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/col.     

Nutrient removal performance of an anaerobic–anoxic–aerobic process as a function of influent C/P ratio

The laboratory scale anaerobic–anoxic–aerobic (A²O) process fed with synthetic brewage wastewater was designed to investigate the effects of changing feed C/P ratio on the performance of biological nutrient removal (BNR) processes. In the experiment, the influent chemical oxygen demand (COD) concentration was kept at approximately 300 mg L^?1 while the total phosphorus concentration was varied to obtain the desired C/P ratio. Results showed that when the C/P ratio was lower than 32, phosphorus removal efficiency increased as C/P ratio increased linearly, while when the C/P ratio was higher than 32, the P removal efficiency was maintained at 90–98%, and effluent P concentration was lower than 0.5 mg L^?1. However, regardless of the C/P ratio, excellent COD removal (90% or higher) and good total nitrogen removal (75–84%) were maintained throughout the experiments. It was also found that very good linear correlation was obtained between COD uptake per unit P released in the anaerobic zone and C/P ratio. In addition, the P content in the wasted activated sludge increased with the decrease in the C/P ratio. Based on the results, it was recommended that the wastewater C/P ratio and its effects be incorporated into BNR design and operational procedures, appropriate C/P ratios were used to achieve the effluent treatment goals. Copyright © 2005 Society of Chemical Industry     

Automatic ultrastructure segmentation of reconstructed cryoEM maps of icosahedral viruses.

We present an automatic algorithm to segment all the local and global asymmetric units of a three-dimensional density map of icosahedral viruses. This approach is readily applicable to the structural analysis of a broad range of virus structures that are reconstructed using cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) technique. Our algorithm includes three major steps operating on the three dimensional density map: the detection of critical points of the volumetric density function, the detection of global and local symmetry axes, and, finally, the boundary segmentation of all the asymmetric units. We demonstrate the efficacy of our algorithm and report our results on several experimental volumetric datasets, consisting of both reconstructed cryo-EM molecular density maps taken from the European Bioinformatics Institute archive, as well our own synthetically generated (blurred) maps calculated from X-ray resolution molecular structural data taken from the Protein Data Bank.     

Analysis of ATSC field test results in Taiwan

Field tests of the transmission performance of the ATSC DTV system have been conducted in Taiwan. The test results as well as comparisons against the NTSC system performance are reported and analyzed. From the measured results the reception characteristics of the DTV can be deduced and can provide guidelines for television stations to design the transmission system, schedule equipment deployment, plan service coverage areas, and improve the reception quality of the digital signal     

Effect of specimen size and loading conditions on spalling of concrete

Different qualities of concrete have been fire tested using different geometries of the specimens as well as different load levels and load configurations. The main objective with the study was to examine a test methodology consisting of a full‐scale test and different small scale‐tests for determining the probability of spalling and the amount of spalling of fire exposed concrete structures. A reference specimen was defined as a one‐sided fire exposed slab with the dimensions 1800 × 1200 mm² giving an exposed area of 1500 × 1200 mm². A number of concrete qualities with different probabilities for spalling, were tested using the reference specimen. These tests showed that the reference specimens worked well giving the expected test results. Small specimens were manufactured in different shapes with the same concrete as the one used in the reference tests. These small specimens were tested either at the same time as the reference specimens in the large furnace or afterwards on a small‐scale furnace where the fire exposed surface was 450 × 360 mm². The test results clearly show the increased probability and the increased amount of spalling by using external compressive loading. The results also show that by using pre‐stress through bars or wires the load can be lost due to heating of the bars/wires which results in a decreased amount of spalling. The boundary of the specimen also affects the amount of spalling. The spalling around the edges was in all tests less than the spalling on the central parts of the exposed area. It could also be noted that the spalling did not pass completely through any of the specimens. The reason for this is probably that the water/vapour could migrate out from the unexposed surface of the specimen. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Investigation of the initial stage of borating tantalum

The results of investigation of initial stage of the tantalum borating as well as the effect of oxygen and hydrogen on it are presented. The scheme of the initial stage of tantalum boron saturation is proposed.     

External heat transfer in infiltrated granular beds. Experimental study

Experimental data was obtained on external heat transfer in infiltrated granular beds of coarse particles. It was determined that calcualtions with the proposed model agree satisfactorily with the experimental results.Translated from Inzhenerno-Fizicheskii Zhurnal, Vol. 53, No. 6, pp. 919–923, December, 1988.