Comparison of Displacement and Mixing Diffusers

In order to cumpare the peformance of different supply diffuers of ventilation air, the airflow passern, temperature stratifiation and contaminant dispersion in a furnitured office ventilated by three kinds of air diffuer were numerically investigated. The air diffuers studied in this paper are a quarter-cylinder displacement diffuer on the floor and mixing diffuers (linear and vortex diffuers) on the ceiling. The heat sources in the of-fice are considered to be 50% convective and 50% radiative. The k-? two-equatwn model of turbulence is employed to predict the turbulent diffusion. The results show that the displacement diffuser provides a rather uniform flow field with low velocify in most areas, and the vertical temperature difference from floor to ceiling is as high as 6 K. With the linear diffuser, the air velociry is high, and the temperature is uniform both horizontally and vertically. The air velocity generated by the vortex diffuser is moderate. The distributions of the temperature and the contaminant are rather uniform.     

Pullout tests of epoxy-coated reinforcement in concrete

The bond strength and slip of epoxy-coated reinforcing bars in concrete have been evaluated by carrying out single pullout and double pullout tests. In extended single pullout tests, slip measurements were made while tensile force was applied to reinforcing bars embedded in concrete. In double pullout tests, 20 cycles of load were applied at levels of steel stress between zero and 0·5 times characteristic steel strength. Strains were measured by electrical resistance strain gauges glued inside the bars. Both epoxy-coated and uncoated bars were used in the investigation, to obtain comparative results. The strain gradient along the bar was found to be less for the coated reinforcement. In general, the epoxy coating was found to increase slip in bond and thereby reduce the bond performance of coated bars.     

Analysis of a resonant-cavity enhanced GaAs/AlGaAs MSMphotodetector

The authors have developed a 2-D device simulator for heterostructure metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) photodetectors. They have incorporated a model of multilayer optics into the simulator and used it to analyze the temporal response of a resonant-cavity enhanced heterostructure with a confining buffer layer and a distributed Bragg reflector (DBR). The authors show that through fine tuning the layer thicknesses, optical resonance enhancement of the light absorption can be obtained     

A specific antidote for the treatment of digitalis poisoning in uremic patients

Two chronic haemodialyzed patients with digitalis intoxication are reported. One of them took digoxin 0.25 mg three times daily for an unknown period and the other took digitoxin 0.1 mg twice daily for two weeks. The symptoms of intoxication were mainly concealed by uremic syndrome. The diagnosis was established by noticed sinus bradycardia, first- and second-degree atrioventricular block in ECG and the determination of sera levels of glycosides (serum digoxin concentration was 7.36 ng/ml, serum digitoxin concentration was 46.5 ng/ml) in both cases. Considering the probable long elimination period of digitalis and the potentially life-threatening situation the patients were given digoxin-specific antibody (Fab) fragments with potassium replacement therapy. The symptoms disappeared within a few hours after therapy, side effects and rebound toxicity did not develop. In connection with these cases the aim of this report is to publish a method which can reverse the life-threatening digitalis intoxication in patients suffering from renal failure as well. As to the above method, the authors have not found any similar case reports in the Hungarian medical literature.     

Characterization of expression of phosphofructokinase isoforms in isolated rat pancreatic islets and purified beta cells and cloning and expression of the rat phosphofructokinase-A isoform

We prepared polymers having a phospholipid polar group, poly [omega-methacryloyloxyalkyl phosphorylcholine (MAPC)-co-n-butyl methacrylate(BMA)], as new biomedical materials and evaluated their blood compatibility with attention to protein adsorption and platelet adhesion. The total amount of proteins adsorbed on the polymer surface from human plasma was determined, and the distribution of adsorbed proteins on the plasma-contacting surface was analyzed. The amount of proteins adsorbed on every poly (MAPC-co-BMA) was small compared with that observed on polymers without the phospholipid polar group. However, there was no significant difference in the amount of adsorbed proteins on the poly(MAPC-co-BMA) even when the methylene chain length between the phospholipid polar group and the backbone in the MAPC moiety was altered. Platelet adhesion on the polymer surface from a platelet suspension in a buffered solution was evaluated with and without plasma treatment on the surface. When a rabbit platelet suspension was brought into contact with the poly(BMA) surface after treatment with plasma, many platelets adhered and aggregated. However, a reduced amount of platelet adhered on the poly(BMA) was found in the case of direct contact with the platelet suspension. On the other hand, the poly(MAPC-co-BMA)s could inhibit platelet adhesion under both conditions. Based on these results, it can be concluded that the proteins adsorbed on the surface play an important role in determining the platelet adhesion and suppression of the protein adsorption on the surface, which is one of the most significant ways of inhibiting platelet adhesion.     

Improving power factor in the presence of harmonics usinglow-voltage tuned filters

The development of a simplified approach for sizing and placement of tuned filters for power factor correction of nonlinear loads is outlined. This approach has been successfully applied to industrial power distribution systems ranging in size from 550 to 10000 kVA. Six case studies that illustrate different aspects of the approach are presented. In all instances, power factor was improved to meet the goal, and in many cases, harmonic distortion was significantly reduced     

Neurocomputing strategies in structural design — on analysing weights of feedforward neural networks

The sequel of two papers explores the applicability of selected neurocomputing strategies in the optimization of structural systems. The present paper describes the use of interconnection weights of a multilayer, feedforward neural network to extract information pertinent to a design space modelled by such a network. It is shown that aweights analysis provides a technique to assess the effect of all input quantities on a given output. Such dependencies are expressed in the form of atransition matrix, and their evaluation is reduced to the inspection of elements of a matrix row. Explicit formulae are derived for networks with one and two hidden layers and can easily be generalized to networks with an arbitrary number of hidden layers. In addition to its use as a tool to partition design spaces, the weights analysis may be employed to assist in determining the size of hidden layers and an adequate number of training patterns (input-output pairs). Several numerical examples from the field of structural analysis are provided, and the paper underscores the utility of the present technique in decomposition driven optimal design; such optimization is treated in full in the companion paper.     

Design of optimum signals for the simultaneous estimation of timedelay and Doppler shift

The problem of joint estimation of time delay and Doppler shift is considered from the point of view of the Wigner distribution of the signal. A very efficient method of obtaining the optimum signal with minimum estimation error based on the convexity of the design region is developed. Practical applications, however, require the signal to satisfy other constraints which present complications in acquiring the optimum signal. A design approach based on the method of simulated annealing is suggested to solve for the optimum signal under constraints. The performance of the signals so obtained is evaluated and compared with that of signals obtained by synthesis