Highly efficient and versatile one-pot synthesis of substituted thienylidene compounds

A novel, efficient, and very mild one-pot synthesis of methyl 2-[(Z)-4-aryl-5-morpholino-3-oxo-2,3-dihydrothiophen-2-ylidene]acetate derivatives under kinetic control has been developed. The title compounds were prepared by the reaction of thioacetomorpholides with dimethyl acetylene-dicarboxylate (DMAD) in the presence of K₂CO₃ in a non-polar solvent with excellent yields.     

Modeling Transient Evaporation from Descending Shallow Groundwater Table Based on Brooks–Corey Retention Function

In arid and semi-arid regions a large amount of rainfall and irrigation water that enters into the soil is lost through soil surface via evaporation. In such regions, there are some areas with shallow groundwater table, evaporating huge amounts of water and accumulating salts at the soil surface. Thus, the evaporation phenomenon not only is responsible for water loss but also is a major reason for soil salinization. The objective of this study was to develop and verify an analytical model for one dimensional transient unsaturated upward flow from water table to soil surface. Consequently, an analytical solution was developed based on the Richards equation with initial and boundary conditions governing evaporation phenomenon. The parametric Brooks and Corey retention function was used to describe water status in the vadose zone. Based on the proposed model, the saccumulative evaporation is estimated as function of water table drawdown and soil retention parameters. To collect the data required for model verification, nine large lysimeters were constructed and packed with sandy loam, silty clay loam, and silty clay soil textures. The results indicated reasonable agreements between the experimental data and those predicted with the proposed model. Although the overall predicted results were well resemble the real conditions, there were some underestimations for a certain period. This can be attributed to evaporation from side gap of columns, upward flow due to vapor phase movement of moisture, and the collapse of macropores resulting from soil packing.     

Broadband amplifier and high performance tunable laser with an extinction ratio of higher than 60 dB using bismuth oxide-based erbium-doped fiber

A Bi₂O₃-based erbium-doped fiber (Bi-EDF) ring laser with a 70?nm tunable range is demonstrated with a 49?cm long Bi-EDF in which tuning range can be extended to larger than 100?nm using an optical switch to alter the length of Bi-EDF in the laser cavity. With an extinction ratio of better than 60?dB throughout the entire tuning range, the measured FWHM of laser lines are measured to be 0.09?nm. In addition, the common amplification parameters are measured and studied in detail for various pumping configurations.     

Characterization of a New Structured Packing by Computational Fluid Dynamics

The novel wire gauze structured packing PACK‐1300Y with high specific surface area was characterized by computational fluid dynamics. The main features of PACK‐1300Y were investigated including the dry and wet pressure drop as well as the height equivalent to a theoretical plate (HETP). Moreover, the flow structure of this packing was described via numerical simulations. To evaluate the amount of HETP and dry and wet pressure drop, 3D computational fluid dynamic modeling with respect to the Eulerian‐Eulerian multiphase approach was applied. The average relative errors were determined between the findings achieved from computational fluid dynamic simulation and experimental findings for mass transfer efficiency and wet and dry pressure drop, respectively.     

Recent basic findings in support of excitatory amino acid hypotheses of schizophrenia

1. Several clinical and post-mortem tissue findings have suggested a role for excitatory amino acid neuronal systems in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. 2. These include the ability of NMDA antagonists, phencyclidine and ketamine, to cause both negative and positive symptoms in healthy subjects, and abnormalities in the densities of some types of excitatory amino acid receptors in the postmortem tissue of schizophrenic brains. 3. The present review describes recent basic findings that have examined the involvement of excitatory amino acids in the mechanism of action of antipsychotic drugs. These include studies on the functional links between glutamatergic and dopaminergic systems, effect of acute and chronic antipsychotic drug treatment on excitatory amino acid function, and stress-induced activation of excitatory amino acid release, in particular in the prefrontal cortex.     

Analysis of scattering mechanisms in SAR imagery over borealforest: results from BOREAS '93

As part of the intensive field campaign (IFC) for the Boreal forest ecosystem-atmosphere research (BOREAS) project in August 1993, the NASA/JPL AIRSAR covered an area of about 100 km×100 km near the Prince Albert National Park in Saskatchewan, Canada. At the same time, ground-truth measurements were made in several stands which have been selected as the primary study sites. This paper focuses on an area including jack pine stands in the Nipawin area near the park. Upon examining the AIRSAR data from stands of old and young jack pine (OJP and YJP), distinct signatures are observed for each of the forest types at various frequencies and polarizations, in particular, at P-band HH. The authors use a forest scattering model in conjunction with the ground-truth measurements to explain such behavior. The forest model includes the major scattering mechanisms by taking the forest component interactions into account. The contribution from each of the scattering mechanisms to the total backscatter is calculated and their differences for OJP and YJP stands are evaluated. The results are used to discuss the effect of the physical properties of the forest components in each stand on radar backscatter. They are also used to show that it is not only the backscatter level but also the relative contribution from various scattering mechanisms that will help in quantitative interpretation of SAR data. This work is mainly intended as a precursor to the authors ongoing work which uses a mechanism-specific inversion technique to retrieve forest parameters from SAR data for these BOREAS sites     

Video spatiotemporal mapping for human action recognition by convolutional neural network

Pattern Analysis and Applications - In this paper, a 2D representation of a video clip called video spatiotemporal map (VSTM) is presented. VSTM is a compact representation of a video clip which...     

Impacts of prior parameter distributions on Bayesian evaluation of groundwater model complexity

This study used the marginal likelihood and Bayesian posterior model probability for evaluation of model complexity in order to avoid using over-complex models for numerical simulations. It focused on investigation of the impacts of prior parameter distributions (involved in calculating the marginal likelihood) on the evaluation of model complexity. We argue that prior parameter distributions should define the parameter space in which numerical simulations are made. New perspectives on the prior parameter distribution and posterior model probability were demonstrated in an example of groundwater solute transport modeling with four models, each simulating four column experiments. The models had different levels of complexity in terms of their model structures and numbers of calibrated parameters. The posterior model probability was evaluated for four cases with different prior parameter distributions. While the distributions substantially impacted model ranking, the model ranking in each case was reasonable for the specific circumstances in which numerical simulations were made. For evaluation of model complexity, it is thus necessary to determine the parameter spaces for modeling, which can be done by conducting numerical simulation and using engineering judgment based on understanding of the system being studied.     

Classification of welding defects in radiographic images

Welding defects detection and classification is very important to guarantee the welding quality. Over the last 30 years, there has been a large amount of research attempting to develop an automatic (or semiautomatic) system for the detection and classification of weld defects in continuous welds using radiography. In this paper, we describe an automatic system for classification of welding defects from radiographic images and compare with KNN and SVM classifiers. We classify and recognize the linear defects such as lack of penetrations, incomplete fusion and external undercut. Experimental results have shown the classification method is useful for the lengthy defects and obtained through our method is better than the two classifiers methods.