Propagating belief functions in AND-trees

We describe a simple method for propagating belief functions in AND-trees. We exploit the properties of AND-trees to make our method simpler than the general method discussed by Shenoy and Shafer, and Dempster and Kong. We illustrate our method for aggregation of evidence in a financial audit. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Growth and characterization of calcium pyrophosphate dihydrate grown in silica gel

Calcium pyrophosphate dihydrate crystals, which are responsible for various arthritic diseases, were grown in sodium metasilicate gel. Variations in gel density, pH value and concentration of the reactants were found to have profound effect on the growth of the crystals. The grown crystals were characterized using IR, XRD, TGA and optical microscopy.     

COMPARATIVE STUDY BETWEEN THE KINETICS OF RETORTING OF OHIO ANO COLORADO SHALE

A comparative study between the kinetics of oil generation from Ohio and Colorado shales has been done. To facilitate comparison and to eliminate systematic errors, the same retorting system was used to study the kinetics of both Ohio and Colorado shales. Temperatures ranging to 923° K and nitrogen and carbon dioxide as sweep gases were used for this study. Both the isothermal and non-isothermal retorting techniques were employed for the kinetic measurement and the results obtained compared favorably with each other. The pyrolysis of Ohio shale was also found to comply with first order kinetics within the limits of experimental error. The study gave an apparent activation energy of 149.1 ± 2.8 KJ/mol for Ohio shale (25 cm³/kg) and 182.5 ± 3.5 KJ/mol for Colorado shale (110  cm³/kg).     

Structure and stability of Pb-Sb liquid alloys

This investigation reports the structure and stability of liquid lead-antimony alloys determined with the help of the Kumar-Samarin technique of centrifuging liquid metals. It shows that liquid lead-antimony alloys in the composition ranges 0 to 35 and 65 to 100 at. % antimony are stable and can be regarded as a colloidal dispersion of lead- and antimony-rich clusters in monatomic matrices; the cluster size is minimum at the eutectic composition. The paper suggests that solutions in the intermediate composition range corresponding to the inflection in the liquidus curve are incipiently immiscible and shows that they can be separated into conjugate phases.     

Detection of photothermal deflection signals with conjugate masks

A new detection technique for photothermal deflection spectroscopy and photoacoustic deflection spectroscopy is presented. The technique uses a pair of matched multiple slits placed in the path of the probe beam and oriented to block the probe light from the detector in the absence of a deflection signal. Significant improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio and in the frequency bandwidth compared with those available with current techniques is demonstrated.     

Non-linear analysis of EEG signals at various sleep stages

Application of non-linear dynamics methods to the physiological sciences demonstrated that non-linear models are useful for understanding complex physiological phenomena such as abrupt transitions and chaotic behavior. Sleep stages and sustained fluctuations of autonomic functions such as temperature, blood pressure, electroencephalogram (EEG), etc., can be described as a chaotic process. The EEG signals are highly subjective and the information about the various states may appear at random in the time scale. Therefore, EEG signal parameters, extracted and analyzed using computers, are highly useful in diagnostics. The sleep data analysis is carried out using non-linear parameters: correlation dimension, fractal dimension, largest Lyapunov entropy, approximate entropy, Hurst exponent, phase space plot and recurrence plots. These non-linear parameters quantify the cortical function at different sleep stages and the results are tabulated.     

Entropies for detection of epilepsy in EEG

The electroencephalogram (EEG) is a representative signal containing information about the condition of the brain. The shape of the wave may contain useful information about the state of the brain. However, the human observer cannot directly monitor these subtle details. Besides, since bio-signals are highly subjective, the symptoms may appear at random in the time scale. Therefore, the EEG signal parameters, extracted and analyzed using computers, are highly useful in diagnostics. The aim of this work is to compare the different entropy estimators when applied to EEG data from normal and epileptic subjects. The results obtained indicate that entropy estimators can distinguish normal and epileptic EEG data with more than 95% confidence (using t-test). The classification ability of the entropy measures is tested using ANFIS classifier. The results are promising and a classification accuracy of about 90% is achieved.     

The effect of gelation on statically and dynamically freeze-cast structures

Freeze-casting is a technique used to produce structures with anisotropic porosity in the form of well-defined microchannels throughout a sample. Here, this technique is used on the magnetocaloric ceramic La_0.66Ca_0.26Sr_0.07 Mn_1.05O₃. We show that a dynamic freezing profile, where the temperature is decreased continuously at −10 K/min, results in homogeneous, lamellar channels with widths of ∼15 µm, while static freezing, where the temperature is kept constant at 177 K, results in channels of increasing size away from the initial ice crystal nucleation site. The effect of gelation before freeze-casting is also investigated. Gelation inhibits ice crystal growth, which significantly changes the morphology by making channel cross sections less elongated, while additionally introducing more dendrites and ceramic bridges in the structure. The latter significantly dominates the flow path through the gelated structures, affecting the calculated tortuosity, which increases to τ ≈ 4 when compared to non-gelated samples where calculated tortuosities are in the range of ∼1.3 to ∼3. Finally, we present a systematic and automatic approach for evaluating channel and wall sizes and calculating tortuosities. This is based on analysis of images obtained by scanning electron microscopy using a continuous particle size distribution method and the TauFactor application in MATLAB^®.     

Allergenic responses of red kidney bean (Phaseolus vulgaris cv chitra) polypeptides in BALB/c mice recognized by bronchial asthma and allergic rhinitis patients

Allergenicity potential of red kidney beans (Phaseolus vulgaris cv chitra) was assessed and attempts were made to identify the responsible proteins by pepsin digestibility assay and IgE immunoblotting. To evaluate allergenic potential, BALB/c mice were sensitized with red kidney bean proteins and levels of specific immunoglobulin, histamine, mast cell protease-1, cytokines and CCL-2 were measured. To confirm our findings in BALB/c, the studies were also extended to human subjects. Human sera collected from control subjects and allergic patients after skin prick test were used for IgE immunoblotting, measuring the levels of total and specific IgE and determining cross reactivity of red kidney bean with other legumes. Red kidney bean allergenic potential was evident by significant increase in specific IgE, IgG1, histamine, mast cell protease-1 and Th2 cytokine levels in comparison to control. Enhanced level of eosinophils in jejunum, prominent anaphylactic symptoms, and eruptive histopathological changes give indication towards red kidney beans allergenicity. IgE immunoblotting detected five protein components with molecular weights of approximately 170, 100, 43, 34 and 20 kDa. Red kidney bean proteins showed cross reactivity with peanut, soybean, chickpea and black gram. Finally, this work demonstrated that red kidney beans may induce allergic response in mice similar to human subjects, with identification of five clinically relevant allergenic protein components.