Ritz-Based Static Analysis Method for Fiber Reinforced Plastic Rib Core Skew Bridge Superstructure

A Ritz-based static analysis procedure is described for fiber-reinforced plastic, skew bridge superstructure, or deck, with a parallel grid core. This is a simplified analysis method based on a transformed plate formulation and the classical Ritz method. The rib core bridge superstructure, or deck, is idealized as a homogeneous, orthotropic skew plate to which the Ritz method is applied to discretize the resultant, equivalent orthotropic skew plate. Three laminated skew plate examples are presented; the results are compared with finite-element solution to verify the validity of the simplified method. A practical demonstration of a rib core skew bridge superstructure is investigated using the simplified method. The procedure provides a useful analysis tool that can be used in the preliminary design stage without the use of finite-element analysis.     

Development and application of a Risk Assessment Tool

Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) is a powerful method for evaluating the safety of nuclear facilities. PSA models are the basis of risk monitors, which can be utilized for monitoring the plant risk. The objective of this work was to develop a risk monitoring software tool, which could match the requirements for a risk monitor, according to standard reference documents. We tried to implement all required features in a user-friendly interface. In this paper a newly developed risk monitor called Risk Assessment Tool (RAT) is presented, and its main features and capabilities are introduced. Some of these features are: graphical event/fault tree developing interface, a 30-day risk profile, performing importance analysis, different administrative levels, and handling time-dependent failure data. In order to have an actual application, a case study is performed for Tehran Research Reactor, and the results are compared to the results obtained from a well-known reliability software package. In most cases, the results from two software tools match well.     

Improvement of technology for treatment of spent radioactive ion-exchange resins at nuclear power stations

Results from tests of technology for decontaminating spent radioactive ion-exchange resins at the Balakovo and Kalinin nuclear power stations are presented. Versions of technological schemes with cleaning and repeated use of decontaminating solution are considered. The possibility of considerably reducing the volume of radioactive wastes is demonstrated.     

Case report: severe fibrosis in a patient with scleroderma and previous radiotherapy--a case report and literature review

Patients with scleroderma may develop marked local cutaneous fibrosis following radiation therapy. We describe one patient treated with wide local excision and radiation therapy, who subsequently developed scleroderma with severe fibrosis in the irradiated field.     

Formulation of a protein-rich vegetable mixture for prevention of protein-calorie malnutrition

Several mixtures of crushed decorticated groundnuts (Arachis hypogaea), lime-roasted chickpea (Cicer arietinum) and the white dregs of sesame (Sesamum indicum) are quantitatively and qualitatively compared with ‘standard’ proteins. Using a selection of both children and adults, a blend ratio 3 : 2 : 1 (groundnut-chickpea-sesame) was selected as being fully palatable and readily acceptable.     

Characteristics and evaluation of synthetic 13X zeolite from Yunnan’s natural halloysite

High purity microporous 13X zeolitic materials with octahedral microstructure were successfully synthesized by using Yunnan’s natural halloysite as silica and aluminum sources through hydrothermal method in alkaline media. The effects of various factors such as the molar ratio of SiO₂/Al₂O₃, alkalinity, crystallization time and crystallization temperature were investigated. In addition, the characteristics of its structure and porosity were studied. The optimum synthesis conditions were SiO₂/Al₂O₃ molar ratio of 4.3, NaOH solution concentration of 2 mol/L, aging time at room temperature 12 h and crystallization temperature of 100 °C/8 h. The optimum 13X zeolitic materials were fully characterized by chemical analysis, X-ray diffraction, field emission scanning electron microscopy, thermogravimetry and N₂ adsorption–desorption. The as-synthesized 13X zeolitic products exhibited high thermal stability and Langmuir surface area of up to 726 m²/g, value much higher than elsewhere reported.     

In-vehicle augmented reality TSR to improve driving safety and enhance the driver’s experience

In-vehicle contextual augmented reality (AR) has the potential to provide novel visual feedbacks to drivers for an enhanced driving experience. In this paper, we propose a new AR traffic sign recognition system (AR-TSR) to improve driving safety and enhance the driver’s experience based on the Haar cascade and the Bag-of-Visual-Words approach, using spatial information to improve accuracy and an overview of studies related to the driver’s perception and the effectiveness of the AR in improving driving safety. In the first step, the region of interest (ROI) is extracted using a scanning window with a Haar cascade detector and an AdaBoost classifier to reduce the computational region in the hypothesis generation step. Second, we proposed a new computationally efficient method to model global spatial distribution of visual words by taking into consideration the spatial relationships of its visual words. Finally, a multiclass sign classifier takes the positive ROIs and assigns a 3D traffic sign for each one using a linear SVM. Experimental results show that the suggested method could reach comparable performance of the state-of-the-art approaches with less computational complexity and shorter training time, and the AR-TSR more strongly impacts the allocation of visual attention during the decision-making phase.     

A provably secure code‐based short signature scheme and its nontransferable variant

Signatures with partially message recovery in which some parts of messages are not transmitted with signatures to make them shorter are helpful where bandwidth is one of the critical concern. This primitive is especially used for signing short messages in applications such as time stamping, certified email services, and identity‐based cryptosystems. In this paper, to have quantum‐attack‐resistant short signatures, the first signature scheme with partially message recovery based on coding theory is presented. Next, it is shown that the proposal is secure under Goppa Parametrized Bounded Decoding and the Goppa Code Distinguishing assumptions in the random oracle model. Relying on the partially message recovery property, the proposal is shorter than Dallot signature scheme, the only provably secure and practical code‐based signature scheme, while it preserves Dallot signature efficiency. We should highlight that our scheme can be used as a building block to construct short code‐based signature schemes with special properties. To show this, we present a provably secure short designated verifier signature scheme, a nontransferable form of short signatures, which is used in electronic voting and deniable authentication protocols.