Nodal DG-FEM solution of high-order Boussinesq-type equations

A discontinuous Galerkin finite-element method (DG-FEM) solution to a set of high-order Boussinesq-type equations for modelling highly nonlinear and dispersive water waves in one horizontal dimension is presented. The continuous equations are discretized using nodal polynomial basis functions of arbitrary order in space on each element of an unstructured computational domain. A fourth-order explicit Runge-Kutta scheme is used to advance the solution in time. Methods for introducing artificial damping to control mild nonlinear instabilities are also discussed. The accuracy and convergence of the model with both h (grid size) and p (order) refinement are confirmed for the linearized equations, and calculations are provided for two nonlinear test cases in one horizontal dimension: harmonic generation over a submerged bar, and reflection of a steep solitary wave from a vertical wall. Test cases for two horizontal dimensions will be considered in future work.     

Testing a Self-Determination Theory Process Model for Promoting Glycemic Control Through Diabetes Self-Management.

A longitudinal study tested the self-determination theory (SDT) process model of health behavior change for glycemic control within a randomized trial of patient activation versus passive education. Glycosylated hemoglobin for patients with Type 2 diabetes (n=159) was assessed at baseline, 6 months, and 12 months. Autonomous motivation and perceived competence were assessed at baseline and 6 months, and the autonomy supportiveness of clinical practitioners was assessed at 3 months. Perceptions of autonomy and competence were promoted by perceived autonomy support, and changes in perceptions of autonomy and competence, in turn, predicted change in glycemic control. Self-management behaviors mediated the relation between change in perceived competence and change in glycemic control. The self-determination process model fit the data well. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Some consequences of violating selection restrictions in concrete and abstract sentences.

Conducted 3 experiments with a total of 280 undergraduates in which content word constituents were reassigned arbitrarily to different sentences in lists of simple sentences. Original and substituted sentences were rated for imagery, comprehensibility, and sensibleness and, in Exps II and III, were tested also for incidental and intentional recall. Substitutions produced a greater ratings decrement for concrete than for abstract sentences, reversing in some cases a comprehensibility and sensibleness superiority found for the original concrete sentences. This finding supports the hypothesis that greater selection restrictions are associated with concrete than with abstract concepts. Consistent with the notion that imaginal coding is relatively insensitive to semantic constraint violations, smaller rating decrements were produced by substitutions under an imaginal coding set than under either a comprehension or a sensibleness set. Differences in constraints fail to account for concrete/abstract differences in recall as indicated by the finding of an unqualified recall superiority for concrete material under all conditions of substitution. (French summary) (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Correction to: A note on the three methods of item analysis

Behaviormetrika - In the original publication of the article, Appendix A was published incorrectly.     

Reduction of the Nitrate Content in Baby Spinach Leaves by Vacuum Impregnation with Sucrose

Vacuum impregnation (VI) has been widely utilized as a pre-treatment method prior to, e.g., the minimal processing, freezing, or drying of foods. In many cases, VI has been used to focus on the enrichment of fruits and vegetables with probiotics or micronutrients, texture enhancement, the modification of the sensory attributes, and extension of shelf life by pH reduction. However, little attention has been paid to the exploration of the metabolic consequences of VI that could lead to changes in the quality characteristics of plant tissues. Since nitrate has long been discussed as a compound that is harmful to human health, the aim of this investigation was to reduce the nitrate content in spinach leaves by feeding sucrose into the tissue using VI. The leaves, either non-treated or treated with VI, were stored under saturated humidity conditions and in darkness at 8 °C, for up to 72 h. VI-treated leaves showed a remarkable reduction in nitrate content as compared to the non-treated samples. Upon storage, sucrose was reduced, indicating that this sugar had been respired and had induced metabolization of the stored nitrate. The nitrite content of the treated leaves was unaffected, proving that this toxic compound was not accumulated in the baby spinach leaves upon external sucrose feeding.     

Analyzing the relationship between car generation and severity of motor-vehicle crashes in Denmark

While the number of fatalities on Danish roads has decreased in the last 40 years, research has not investigated the contribution of legislation changes, enforcement measures, technological enhancements, infrastructural improvements and human factors to this reduction. In the context of a Danish car market with remarkably high registration tax that causes potential buyers to hold longer onto old cars, the relationship between technological enhancements of vehicles and severity of crashes requires particular attention.     

The effects of applying electric fields on the mass spectrometric sampling of positive and negative ions from a flame at atmospheric pressure

Flames are plasmas, because they contain free electrons and both positive and negative ions. The concentrations of ions in a flat flame, burning at 1 bar, have been measured by continuously sampling the hot (2400 K) gas into a mass spectrometer at low pressure. The voltage, Δ?, between the metallic burner and the plate holding the metallic sampling nozzle was varied; also, the flame was seeded with an alkali metal and doped with much larger quantities (mole fraction ?1.7%) of chlorine. Currents of ions such as K⁺ and Cl⁻ were measured with the mass spectrometer for different Δ? and indicated that the sampling nozzle repels free electrons, when it is at a negative potential with respect to the burner (Δ? < 0); consequently the nozzle is then covered by a cathodic sheath of positive ions. Likewise, when Δ? ? 0, the inlet orifice is covered by charged species from the plasma, forming an anodic sheath, from which some electrons reach the nozzle; also some positive and negative ions follow them and so leave the sample. Because the sampled gas is accelerated to a Mach number of unity on entering the inlet orifice, some ions have enough momentum to pass through both a sheath and the entrance hole into the mass spectrometer. The measurements enabled the non-uniform, electric potential between the burner and the plate housing the sampling nozzle to be sketched. The thicknesses of the sheaths were also measured; a cathodic sheath of positive ions is much thicker than an anodic plasma sheath. Also, for Δ? between zero and ∼+30 V, the sheath around the inlet orifice is at its thinnest and the current detected for positive ions a maximum. This is when quantitative measurements of concentrations should be made for positive or negative ions. This study reveals the importance of the electron concentration, the diameter of the inlet orifice, the presence of a halogen, and Δ?, for determining the thicknesses of these sheaths, which do affect the sampling of ions. With chlorine in the flame, the equilibrium: H + C1⁻ = e⁻ + HC1 is sufficiently fast to be maintained, whilst the sampled gas passes through the inlet orifice. This equilibrium usually freezes at some point during the sample’s subsequent, supersonic expansion into the first vacuum chamber; freezing temperatures were deduced. Also the additional cooling of a sample by heat transfer to the sampling nozzle was estimated. It can be difficult to measure accurately the concentration of a negative ion in a flame, because negative ions, unlike positive ones, are often lost during sampling by participating with free electrons in such a chemical equilibrium, which shifts while the sample is cooled.     

Failure of Titanium Condenser Tubes After 24 Years Power Plant Service

The titanium condenser has been in operation for 24 years at Amager unit 3 power plant. In February 2012, the plant was contaminated by seawater due to a failed condenser tube and some tubes were plugged. A month later, the plant tripped again. Small leaks were found again and finally approx. 200 tubes were plugged before the condenser was in service again. A series of inspections, NDT, and destructive examinations were conducted to try and understand the cause of failure in the tubes within the condenser. After such investigations, degradation mechanisms such as inner fouling, steam impingement, and fretting/erosion around the supports could be discounted. Ductile cracks were found in the tube within the tubesheet. From circumstantial evidence, it was concluded that failure was caused by a semi-filled condenser which led to a mismatch in expansion coefficients of filled tubes and unfilled tubes during a plant trip. In addition, small amounts of titanium hydride were revealed to be present in the tubes within the tubesheet indicating that the carbon steel tubesheet was corroding due to ingress of salt water. Although this was not the reason for the failure, it indicated the need for repair of the epoxy coating in the waterbox.     

Mining knowledge from text repositories using information extraction: A review

There are two approaches to mining text form online repositories. First, when the knowledge to be discovered is expressed directly in the documents to be mined, Information Extraction (IE) alone can serve as an effective tool for such text mining. Second, when the documents contain concrete data in unstructured form rather than abstract knowledge, Information Extraction (IE) can be used to first transform the unstructured data in the document corpus into a structured database, and then use some state-of-the-art data mining algorithms/tools to identify abstract patterns in this extracted data. This paper presents the review of several methods related to these two approaches.