Relationship between final temperature, thaw rate, and quality of bovine semen

Relationships between thaw rate, thaw bath time, and initial bath and final seminal temperature with coefficients of determination .99 and .97 were: bath time = -.01 + 220.25(1/thaw rate); initial bath temperature = final seminal temperature - 7.29 + 390.05 (1/bath time). Ejaculates from 10 bulls were split and processed in egg yolk-citrate-glycerol, egg yolk-Tris-glycerol, and whole milk-glycerol. All semen was packaged and frozen in .5-ml French straws at -196 degrees C. Sixteen thaw treatments consisted of factorial combinations of four final seminal temperatures and four thaw rates. Treatments were assessed by post-thaw acrosomal integrity after 3-h 37 degrees C incubation. Seminal quality improved with increasing final seminal temperature up to 31 degrees C and did not differ between 31 and 44 degrees C for any of the extenders. A slow thaw rate (3 degrees C/s) resulted in inferior quality for all extenders, and rates 11, 19, and 27 degrees C/s resulted in similar quality for citrate and milk extended semen. Acrosomal integrity was most for 19 degrees C/s in Tris extended semen. A significant factorial interaction existed for Tris and milk extended semen. Predicted acrosomal response of 57.7% across all extenders was at optimum final seminal temperature and thaw rate 37 degrees C and 18 degrees C/s. Bath temperature and bath time determine optimum thaw rate and final temperature of semen packaged in French straws and thus maximize seminal quality.     

Particle-Swarm Optimization in Antenna Design: Optimization of Log-Periodic Dipole Arrays

This paper presents a short tutorial and overview of optimization algorithms based on particle-swarm schemes, and their application to solving electromagnetic problems. As a practical example, a particle-swarm optimization (PSO) tool has been applied in conjunction with the Numerical Electromagnetics Code (NEC) to get the design curves of optimized log-periodic dipole arrays (LPDAs). The graphs show the performance of several radiation parameters (directive gain, front-to-back ratio, bandwidth, SWR, and half-power beamwidth in the E and H planes) as a function of typical design parameters of log-periodic dipole arrays (geometrical parameters and characteristics of the feed). Examples of optimized antennas are given, and their performance is compared to that of standard log-periodic dipole arrays.     

Star-shaped hexaaryltriindoles small molecules: Tuning molecular properties towards solution processed organic light emitting devices

We present a series of differently substituted star-shaped hexaaryltriindoles with tunable light-emitting properties. The deep blue emission is unchanged by donor peripheral substituents while an increasing acceptor character produces a reduction of the optical gap, an increased Stokes shift and eventually leads to the appearance of a new electronic level and to the simultaneous deep blue (413 nm) and green (552 nm) emission in solution. Quenching by concentration increases with the acceptor character but is lower as the tendency of these compounds to aggregate is stronger. Solution processed thin films present optical and morphological qualities adequate for device fabrication and similar electronic structure compared to solutions with an emission range from 423 nm up to 657 nm (red), demonstrating the possibility of tuning the energy levels by chemical functionalization. We have fabricated and characterized single-layer solution processed organic light emitting diodes (OLED) to investigate the influence on transport and emission properties of the substituting species. We analyzed the I–V response using a single-carrier numerical model that includes injection barriers and non-uniform electric-field across the layer. As a result, we obtained the electric field dependence of the mobility for each device. Best results are obtained on the most electron rich derivative functionalized with six donor methoxy groups. This material shows the highest emission efficiency in solid state, due to aggregation-induced enhancement, and better transport properties with the highest mobility and a very low turn-on voltage of 2.8 V. The solution processed OLED devices produce stable deep blue (CIE coordinates (0.16, 0.16)) to white (CIE coordinates (0.33, 0.3)) emission with similar luminous efficiencies.     

Effect of constrained fast power control on cellular DS-CDMAsystems with base station diversity

An approach is presented for determining the effect of limiting the power transmitted by a mobile user in a cellular DS-CDMA system with fast power control under multipath fading. It is shown that the system capacity can be increased if very deep fades are not compensated     

Beacon-less geographic multicast routing in a real-world wireless sensor network testbed

We study the problem of geographic multicast routing (GMR) in a wireless sensor network. In particular, we are interested in geographic routing solutions with a very limited control overhead and overall bandwidth consumption. Existing GMR protocols require nodes to periodically exchange beacon messages to gather information about the position of their neighbors. These beacons represent a waste of resources, specially in areas of the network with no active communications. Beacons also induce significant problems in real deployments such as interferences and collisions that cause inconsistencies in neighboring tables. In this paper we propose a new beacon-less geographic multicast routing protocol called BRUMA. Unlike previous solutions, BRUMA uses the propagation of data packets to opportunistically select next hops among those that are reachable from the sending node. In addition, we contribute a novel next hop selection function by which candidate next hops schedule their responses based on their progress along each of the branches of the multicast tree. This allows the protocol to overcome most of the issues of beacon-based solutions in real deployments such as collisions, low-quality links, etc. The results of our empirical tests in a real testbed as well as in simulations show that BRUMA achieves a higher packet delivery ratio and a lower overall bandwidth consumption than GMR, which is the protocol performing best among existing geographic multicast solutions.     

Mining statistically significant associations for exploratory analysis of human sleep data.

We introduce a specialized association rule mining technique that can extract patterns from complex sleep data comprising polysomnographic recordings, clinical summaries, and sleep questionnaire responses. The rules mined can describe associations among temporally annotated events and questionnaire or summary data; e.g., the likelihood that an occurrence of a rapid eye movement (REM) sleep stage during the second 100 sleep epochs of the night is associated with moderate caffeine intake. We use chi2 analysis to ensure statistical significance of the mined rules at the level P < 0.05. Our results, obtained by mining sleep-related data from 242 human subjects, reveal clinically interesting associations among the polysomnographic and summary variables. Our experience suggests that association mining may also be useful for selection of variables prior to using logistic regression.     

A metaheuristic-based downlink power allocation for LTE/LTE-A cellular deployments

The explosive growth of cellular networks makes their deployment and maintenance more and more complex, time consuming, and expensive. Self-Organizing Networks have been recognized as a promising way to alleviate this problem by minimizing human intervention in such processes. This paper introduces a novel multiobjective framework, based on evolutionary optimization, aiming at improving network performance and users Quality of Service. By tuning the transmitted power at each cell, average intercell interference levels are minimized. The design of the proposed scheme is feasible for distributed implementations in Long Term Evolution (LTE) and LTE-Advanced networks and its operation is compatible with current specifications. The framework is able to provide effective network-specific optimization and obtained results show that gains in terms of network capacity and cell edge performance are 5 and 10 %, respectively. Energy savings always accompanied such enhancements with reductions up to 35 %.     

Analytical study of apple liqueurs

In the present work the composition of apple liqueurs has been analysed, since the consumption of these beverages in Spain has increased during the last years. Twenty-five samples, belonging to the most representative five brands of the Spanish market have been analysed. The following determinations were carried out: alcoholic grade, total acidity, methanol, furfurol, dry extract, reducing sugars, sucrose, ash contact, macroelements (Na, K, Ca, Mg) and microelements (Cu, Fe, Mn, Zn). These parameters enable the quality evaluation of these beverages and contribute to their characterization with respect to the fruit used in their elaboration. To complete the experimental study, a BMDP 7M discriminant statistical analysis has been applied to the results obtained. The variables that best discriminate the groups have been determined and all the samples have been classified and differentiated.

---

Analytisches Studium der Apfelsaftliköre

Zusammenfassung Es wurde die Zusammensetzung von Apfelsaftlikören analysiert, weil diese Getränke öfter in Spanien getrunken werden. Fünfundzwanzig Proben von fünf bestimmten, spanischen Markengetränken wurden analysiert. Es wurden folgende Bestimmungen ausgeführt: Alkoholkonzentration, Gehalt an Säure, Methanol, Extrakt, Zucker, Sucrose, Asche, Macroelemente (Na, K, Ca, Mg) und Mikroelemente (Cu, Fe, Mn, Zn). Diese Parameter erlauben die Qualität dieser Getränke zu schätzen und ihre Charakterisierung auf Grund des Fruchtgehaltes. Weiterhin wurde eine BMDP 7M diskriminant-statistische Analyse der Resultate angewandt. Die diskriminant-Variablen der Gruppe wurden bestimmt und alle Proben konnten klassifiziert und unterschieden werden.

     

Comparison of different separative techniques in the quantitative determination of active compound enclosed in liposomal systems

The suitability of three different separative techniques, dialysis, gel filtration and centrifugation, for determining the percentage of active compound included (PAI) in liposomal systems was assessed. Two model compounds, glucose and vitamin E acetate were encapsulated in dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC), soybean lecithin (SL) and hydrogenated soybean lecithin (HSL) multilamellar vesicles (MLV). Vitamin E acetate PAI values from DPPC MLV liposomes obtained by dialysis, gel filtration and centrifugation, were compared with those determined by differential scanning calorimetry. Glucose PAI values from DPPC MLV liposomes, obtained using the same separative techniques, were compared with that calculated by taking into account the glucose content of the liposome internal aqueous phase on the basis of liposome mean size determined by light scattering.
Vitamin E acetate and glucose PAI values from SL and HSL liposomes were compared with those obtained for DPPC liposomes. Dialysis proved suitable for PAI determination for both lipophilic and hydrophilic compounds, centrifugation was found to be suitable only for the determination of lipophilic compound PAI values while gel filtration using Sephadex G-25M proved inadequate for the determination of PAI values for both lipophilic and hydrophilic compounds in the experimental conditions used in this study.     

Numerical modelling in wave energy conversion systems

This paper deals with a numerical modelling devoted to predict the flow characteristics in the components of an oscillating water column (OWC) system used for the wave energy capture. In the present paper, the flow behaviour is modelled by using the FLUENT code. Two numerical flow models have been elaborated and tested independently in the geometries of an air chamber and a turbine, which is chosen of a radial impulse type. The flow is assumed to be three-dimensional (3D), viscous, turbulent and unsteady. The FLUENT code is used with a solver of the coupled conservation equations of mass, momentum and energy, with an implicit time scheme and with the adoption of the dynamic mesh and the sliding mesh techniques in areas of moving surfaces. Turbulence is modelled with the k–ε model. The obtained results indicate that the developed models are well suitable to analyse the air flows both in the air chamber and in the turbine. The performances associated with the energy transfer processes have been well predicted. For the turbine, the numerical results of pressure and torque were compared to the experimental ones. Good agreements between these results have been observed.