UPEC 2002 Preview

Exposure to pollutants in the air over a long period of time slowly degrades aluminum stranded conductors steel reinforced (ACSR) of overhead transmission lines. Presently, a large number of ACSR conductors have exceeded their forecast useful life. Therefore, it is required to assess the condition of most conductors to determine an economic maintenance schedule. This paper describes a method for evaluating the current condition of aged conductors based on dominant factors such as years in service, environment index, and conductor configuration. The paper presents a diagnostic tool with a fuzzy inference system (FIS) to predict the deterioration degree corresponding to the lifetime of aged conductors based on experts' knowledge. This system can be used as an effective guide to perform nondestructive diagnosis and maintenance of old ACSR conductors.     

Relation between hardness and compressive strength of polymer concrete

Experimental studies were made of the influence of mixing and casting techniques and of curing time upon the compressive strength and hardness of methyl methacrylate based polymer concrete. The Rockwell K and F scales were found to be suitable for the hardness determinations. Over a wide range of hardness and strength values, the average compressive strength (f_c) varied linearly with the average hardness (R_K) according to the relation f_c (psi) = 560 R_K - 12000, irrespective of casting and curing variables. The weaker materials exhibited greater variations in hardness. Hardness testing is found to provide a meaningful and convenient method for evaluating the quality of polymer concrete.     

A new alloy design concept for austenitic stainless steel with tungsten modification for bipolar plate application in PEMFC

The feasibility of a new alloy design concept utilizing the principle of ‘tungsten bronze effect’ is critically evaluated for the development of metallic bipolar plates for proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). An austenitic stainless steel (ASS) is modified with W and La to improve the stability of the passive film in an acidic environment as well as to reduce the contact resistance by the tungsten bronze effect. The experimental ASS containing W and La was evaluated in a simulated PEMFC environment of H₃PO₄ and H₂SO₄ solutions at 80 °C, and the electrical property was evaluated by performing a contact resistance test. The test results show that the ASS modified with W and La has good passive film stability for corrosion resistance and low contact resistance. The X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis clearly suggests the possibility of the tungsten bronze effect from the change in valency state of W⁶⁺ to W⁵⁺ in the passive film formed on the modified ASS. The feasibility of a new alloy design concept utilizing the ‘tungsten bronze effect’ is well demonstrated; however, more study is highly required for the development of metallic bipolar plates of PEMFC.     

Establishment of human parotid pleomorphic adenoma cells in culture: morphological and biochemical characterization

This study reports the establishment of alpha-amylase-producing human parotid pleomorphic adenoma cell lines (2HP and 2HP1) which have been maintained in culture for over 1 yr. The procedures required preparation of cellular clumps from tumor tissue and plating them on plasma clot or precoated dishes. During the initial phase of growth they required modified MCDB-153 medium without serum. When cells showed signs of degeneration they were changed to MCDB-153 medium containing first 2% and then 10% heat inactivated fetal bovine serum. Although cells grew well in MCDB-153 containing 10% serum, the epithelial cell morphology was not distinct. Therefore, the growth and morphology of cells grown in MCDB-10% serum were compared with those in RPMI growth medium containing 10% fetal bovine serum and F12 containing 10% agammaglobulin newborn bovine serum. Although the growth of cells was a little slower in F12 medium than those in MCDB and RPMI, the epithelial cell morphology was maintained better than in other growth media. The cells of 2HP and 2HP1 produce low levels of alpha-amylase and relatively high levels of alpha-amylase mRNAs of 1176 and 702 bp and contain neurofilament-160, a neuronal-specific marker. The cells of 2HP1 are tumorigenic when tested in athymic mice, but the cells of 2HP are not. The establishment of amylase-producing human parotid adenoma cell lines of different characteristics in culture provides a new opportunity to study the mechanisms of differentiation and transformation, and regulation of alpha-amylase in these cells.     

Synthesis and comparative molecular field analysis (CoMFA) of antitumor 3-arylisoquinoline derivatives

In this study a series of 3-arylisoquinoline derivatives were synthesized and cytotoxicity against human melanoma tumor cell evaluated, and a three dimensional quantitative structure-activity relationship was investigated using the comparative molecular field analysis (CoMFA). The results suggested that the electrostatic, steric and hydrophobic factors of 3-arylisoquinolines were strongly correlated with the antitumor activity. Considerable predictive ability (cross-validated r2 as high as 0.721) was obtained through CoMFA.     

Intracranial hemorrhage associated with idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura: report of seven patients and a meta-analysis

We present the results of a meta-analysis using clinical data obtained from seven of our patients and 24 previously reported patients with idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura complicated by intracranial hemorrhage. Twenty-four had an intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) and seven had a subdural hematoma (SDH). Mean age of the patients with ICH was significantly younger than those with SDH. The mortality rate of ICH associated with ITP was similar to that of spontaneous ICH. All seven patients with SDH improved without sequelae.     

Simple culling methods for continuous collision detection of deforming triangles

We present a simple and efficient approach for continuous collision detection of deforming triangles based on conservative advancement. The efficiency of our approach is due to a sequence of simple collision-free conditions for deforming triangles. In our experiment, we show that our CCD algorithm achieves 2-30 times performance improvement over existing algorithms for triangle primitives.     

Adaptive synthesis of distance fields

We address the computational resource requirements of 3D example-based synthesis with an adaptive synthesis technique that uses a tree-based synthesis map. A signed-distance field (SDF) is determined for the 3D exemplars, and then new models can be synthesized as SDFs by neighborhood matching. Unlike voxel synthesis approach, our input is posed in the real domain to preserve maximum detail. In comparison to straightforward extensions to the existing volume texture synthesis approach, we made several improvements in terms of memory requirements, computation times, and synthesis quality. The inherent parallelism in this method makes it suitable for a multicore CPU. Results show that computation times and memory requirements are very much reduced, and large synthesized scenes exhibit fine details which mimic the exemplars.     

Automated synthesis of multiple analog circuits using evolutionary computation for redundancy-based fault-tolerance

Analog circuits are one of the most important parts of modern electronic systems and the failure of electronic hardware presents a critical threat to the completion of modern aircraft, spacecraft, and robot missions. Compared to digital circuits, designing fault-tolerant analog circuits is a difficult and knowledge-intensive task. A simple but powerful method for robustness is a redundancy approach to use multiple circuits instead of single one. For example, if component failures occur, other redundant components can replace the functions of broken parts and the system can still work. However, there are several research issues to make the redundant system automatically. In this paper, we used evolutionary computation to generate multiple analog circuits automatically and then we combined the solutions to generate robust outputs. Evolutionary computation is a natural way to produce multiple redundant solutions because it is a population-based search. Experimental results on the evolution of the low-pass, high-pass and band-stop filters show that the combination of multiple evolved analog circuits produces results that are more robust than those of the best single circuit.