Ceramics from mining by-products and alumina production wastes

The possibility of obtaining chemically stable ceramics in plastic molding from pastes based on comprehensive use of mining by-products (plagioporphyry, quartz-biotite shale), alumina production wastes (red mud), and polymineral clay was demonstrated. The mechanism of enhancing paste sintering on addition of finely disperse grog-flux and increasing the alkali resistance of the material (to 95%) in molding of the crystalline hematite-anorthite-quartz system was examined. __________ Translated from Steklo i Keramika, No. 2, pp. 17–20, February, 2007.     

Biochemical quality assessment of broiler production using a hydrogen bacteria biomass in the diet

The authors studied the biochemical composition of the meat of broilers, eggs, liver and muscles of laying hens of 3 generations on a 5, 10, 25, 50 and 100% (broilers), 10 and 20% (laying hens) replacement of the animal protein quota in the diet by protein obtained from the hydrogen bacteria Alcaligenes eutrophus L-1. No deterioration of the quality of the produce was found from the standpoint of the main biochemical parameters.     

Reliability Modeling and Analysis of Communication Networks with Dependent Failures

This paper presents a new model to study the reliability of communication networks in which link failures are statistically dependent. The approach tries to identify and model explicitly the events that cause communication link failures. No conditional probabilities are needed, and so two major difficulties inherent to them, namely, an exponential number of conditional probabilities to deal with and a consistency requirement to satisfy, are avoided. For reliability computations, some existing algorithms for finding network reliability can be used with minor modifications and no significant increase in computational complexity.     

Yeast exo-β-glucanases can be used as efficient and readily detectable reporter genes in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Yeast exo-1,3-β-glucanases are secretable proteins whose function is basically trophic and may also be involved in cell wall glucan hydrolytic processes. Since fluorescein di(β-D -glucopyranoside) is a fluorogenic substrate detectable and quantifiable by flow cytometry, it was used for testing the ability of the EXG1 gene product of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and its homologous gene in Candida albicans to function as reporter genes. These open reading frames were coupled to different promoters in multicopy plasmids, and exoglucanase activity quantified at flow cytometry. Exoglucanases were found to be useful tools for the study of promoter regions in S. cerevisiae. This technique has the advantage over other reporter gene systems—such as β-galactosidase fusions—that it does not require permeabilization of yeast cells and therefore it allows the recovery of viable cells—by sorting—after flow cytometry analysis.     

Ultimate stiffnesses of frames in shell strength problems

Stiffness criteria are proposed for circular frames in problems of the stress-strain state of thin-walled cylindrical structural orthotropic shells. On the basis of the results of a computation experiment and actual test data the author establishes limiting values for stiffness criteria with which frames may be assumed to be absolutely stiff or absolutely compliant for a given shell. It is shown that for frames in the case of axisymmetric strains it is necessary to consider elasticity and that it is possible to use the idea of an absolutely stiff frame with nonaxisymmetric shell strains.Translated from Problemy Prochnosti, No. 7, pp. 76–83, July, 1994.     

Raising the accuracy of operative monitoring by using a variable pressure differential of the flow rate of material and energy carriers in the liquid and gaseous states

Means are considered for reducing the systematic errors in calculating the flow rate of material. For operative monitoring of the day- to- day flow rate, a comparative analysis is made of the numerical solution of the mass flow rate equation and the structure- generalized method for solving the equation.Translated from Izmeritel'naya Tekhnika, No. 5, pp. 37–39, May, 1994.     

Numerical differentiation of the radical artery sphygmogram by Tikhonov regularization

A method is proposed and substantiated for determining the characteristic points of the pulse wave (sphygmogram) of the human radial artery, by numerical differentiation with the aid of the Tikhonov regularization algorithm. The results are given of experiments made to test the stability, to evaluate the accuracy of recovering the first and second derivatives, and to establish the sensitivity of the method to random distortions of the original data. Based on this method, we have solved one of the chief technical problems in the objectivization and automatization of the pulse diagnostics of Tibetan medicine, by the development and construction of an information-computing Tibetan medicine diagnostic complex, for processing medicobiological information in real time.Translated from Izmeritel'naya Tekhnika, No. 11, pp. 60–62, November, 1994.     

The thermoelastic behaviour of semicrystalline and of glassy poly(ether-ether-ketone)

A thermoelastic evaluation, based on simultaneous measurements of the mechanical work and of the concomitant heat of deformation by a stretching micro calorimeter, was performed on semicrystalline and glassy PEEK. The objective of this study was to utilize the sensitive technique to detect differences that would account for observed effects of micro structure on mechanical performance. A clear difference was detected beyond a 0.6% strain, where the behaviour of glassy PEEK began to exhibit inelastic features such as yielding and plastic deformation. This difference between the glassy and the semicrystalline polymers was considered the reason for the superior mechanical fatigue and fracture properties produced by the latter micro structure.     

Differential calorimeter for studying composites

The novel design of the DK-600/K differential thermal-flux calorimeter, with a cell volume of 6.5 cm³, is intended for the study of materials in the temperature range 300–900 K. The sensitivity of the calorimeter is 22 μV/mW at 300 K and 8 μV/mW at 900 K; the reaction threshold is 80 μW in the temperature scanning mode and 7 μW in the isothermal mode. Comparison of some characteristics of the DK-600/K with analogs from a number of foreign firms shows that it is competitive. Translated from Izmeritel'naya Tekhnika, No. 3, pp. 41–43, March, 1994.