Effect of hypoxemia on the erythropoietic activity of organs during perfusion

Hypoxemia (45-minute) influence in vivo on erythropoietic activity of the kidney, liver, spleen, and sternum was studied by normoxemic perfusion of the isolated organs. The erythropoietic activity proved to increase after 6-hour perfusion of the liver; this confirmed the participation of this organ in the extrarenal secretion of the erythropoietic factor.     

Choledocholithiasis after cholecystectomy

Concrements were found in the ducts of 172 patients subjected to secondary surgical interventions on bile ducts. The detailed analysis of the data failed to answer the question whether the stones could be formed immediately in the ducts without such conditions as a mechanical obstacle for the outflow of bile, the presence of foreign bodies and a big stump of the cystic duct. Such a formation of stones can take place in very few cases. The authors have shown that control cholangiography and especially choledochoscopy can reduce the danger to leave the stones in the ducts, but does not eliminate the danger completely. Nevertheless they think that now it is possible to lessen the indications for biliodigestive anastomoses in choledocholithiasis since the retained stones can be revealed within the first days after surgery and, as a rule, removed with instruments or by other methods using the drainage left in the ducts.     

Multichannel Strain and Temperature Measurement System for Structural Elements

he paper describes a 32-channel system for studying full-scale structures developed with the use of the state-of-the-art components. It provides continuous long-term measurement of strains and temperatures up to + 350°C and accumulation and storage of measurement data. The system was used to record the elastic strains and temperatures of a welded joint of the hot collector to the PGV-1000 steam generator nozzle in the period between the preventive maintenances. The measurement results reveal a complex pattern of strain and temperature distribution different from the axisymmetric one.     

The complexity of mean flow time scheduling problems with release times

We study the problem of preemptive scheduling of n} jobs with given release times on m identical parallel machines. The objective is to minimize the average flow time. In this paper, show that when all jobs have equal processing times then the problem can be solved in polynomial time using linear programming. Our algorithm can also be applied to the open-shop problem with release times and unit processing times. For the general case (when processing times are arbitrary), we show that the problem is unary NP-hard. P. Baptiste and C. Dürr: Supported by the NSF/CNRS grant 17171 and ANR/Alpage. P. Brucker: Supported by INTAS Project 00-217 and by DAAD PROCOPE Project D/0427360. M. Chrobak: Supported by NSF grants CCR-0208856 and INT-0340752. S. A. Kravchenko: Supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.     

Exchange of experience

Phosphorus and trace impurities in aluminum phosphate powders and coatings are identified with glow-discharge mass spectrometry (GDMS), atom emission spectrometry (AES), x-ray fluorescence (XRF), and chemical analysis. Alumina powders with particles 60 to 40 µm in size that are covered with Al(PO₃)₃ and AlPO₄ with TiO₂ additives are sprayed using a supersonic air plasmatron. The distribution of elements across the coating on a steel substrate is examined with GDMS. The effect of polyatomic clusters is taken into account in determining Mg, P, S, and Ti by mathematical simulation. Phosphorus is identified with AES in a dc air arc controlled to produce similar conditions for exciting PI lines in the evaporation of test and reference (Ca₃(PO₄)₂) samples. Comparing the results obtained by different methods shows that x-ray fluorescence reveals the concentration from the surface of nucleus-shell particles. Measurements show that some part of phosphorus is lost in spraying because orthophosphates transform into metaphosphates.     

Full-scale experimental estimation of “Radial stretching ratio” of radiolocation image of sea craft

Applying full-scale experimental data of sea craft steering, obtained at regional radiolocation posts at Azov-Black sea Ukraine coastline, we estimate the limits of radial stretching ratio of RL image of sea crafts with different geometrical dimensions in case of different observation angles. Experimental data basically has proven values of modification of radial stretching ratio of radiolocation image of the sea craft, which was obtained by means of computer simulation.     

Analysis of antiscoring properties of hydraulic oils

The paper discusses findings of the experimental study of the tribological characteristics of hydraulic oils HVLP-46, MGE-46d, MGE-46l, VO, ZF-46, and HLP-46. A technique is developed for studying the antiscoring properties of hydraulic oils based on measurements of contact resistance for the shaft-partial insert geometry (multiple contact). It is shown that contact resistance is a more sensitive parameter compared to the coefficient of friction.     

Water resource quality monitoring using heterogeneous data and high-performance computations

This article presents the architecture of a system that is used for regional water resource quality monitoring of environmental parameters using heterogeneous data sources such as remote sensing data, model data, and data of in-situ observations. The system’s architecture and components are developed that are reusable and can be applied to solving various monitoring problems. The monitoring of the aquatic environment of the Dnieper estuary is selected as an example of such a problem. The distinctive features of this system consist of using a Grid approach to the distribution of complex computations and also the realization of computationally complicated computations on supercomputers of the SKIT family. Typical components of the monitoring system are presented, namely, those of data acquisition, data processing, modeling, and result representation. The development of the described monitoring system is partially supported by the UNTTs-NANU grant “Development of efficient Grid technologies of ecological monitoring on the basis of satellite data” (project No. 3872) and also joint INTAS-CNES-NSAU grant No. 06-1000024-9154 “Data Fusion Grid Infrastructure.” __________ Translated from Kibernetika i Sistemnyi Analiz, No. 4, pp. 179–188, July–August 2008.