Sizing of Wastewater Particles Using the Electrozone Sensing Technique

Electrozone sensing is a rapid and effective method that has been widely used for particle size analysis. This method is based on the Coulter principle, which provides a measure of the solid volume of particles. However, for wastewater particles, due to the high porosity of these particles, the measured Coulter size is significantly less than the physical dimension of these particles. To quantify this effect, the size distribution curves of the sieved wastewater particles were measured using the Coulter particle sizing method, microscopy technique, and sieving methods. A theoretical model was developed by accounting for the porosity of wastewater particles to correlate the physical size of these particles to Coulter size measurement. However, this theoretical model underestimated the size of wastewater particles smaller than 100 μm. Instead, the wastewater particles size (D) for both primary and activated sludge samples was found to be linearly related to the Coulter particle size measurement (d) according to: D = 2.14d with r² = 0.98.     

Sequential interval motif search: unrestricted database surveys of global MS/MS data sets for detection of putative post-translational modifications

Tandem mass spectrometry is the prevailing approach for large-scale peptide sequencing in high-throughput proteomic profiling studies. Effective database search engines have been developed to identify peptide sequences from MS/MS fragmentation spectra. Since proteins are polymorphic and subject to post-translational modifications (PTM), however, computational methods for detecting unanticipated variants are also needed to achieve true proteome-wide coverage. Different from existing "unrestrictive" search tools, we present a novel algorithm, termed SIMS (for Sequential Motif Interval Search), that interprets pairs of product ion peaks, representing potential amino acid residues or "intervals", as a means of mapping PTMs or substitutions in a blind database search mode. An effective heuristic software program was likewise developed to evaluate, rank, and filter optimal combinations of relevant intervals to identify candidate sequences, and any associated PTM or polymorphism, from large collections of MS/MS spectra. The prediction performance of SIMS was benchmarked extensively against annotated reference spectral data sets and compared favorably with, and was complementary to, current state-of-the-art methods. An exhaustive discovery screen using SIMS also revealed thousands of previously overlooked putative PTMs in a compendium of yeast protein complexes and in a proteome-wide map of adult mouse cardiomyocytes. We demonstrate that SIMS, freely accessible for academic research use, addresses gaps in current proteomic data interpretation pipelines, improving overall detection coverage, and facilitating comprehensive investigations of the fundamental multiplicity of the expressed proteome.     

A Novel Design of a Metacarpal/MetatarsaI-Phalangeal Total Joint Replacement

Arthritis, most notably rheumatoid arthritis, can destroy the surfaces of the bones; the ideal solution for this is T JR （total joint replacement）, which would restore joint functionality, maintain correct aesthetics and eradicate pain for the patient. Current metacarpophalangeal TJR do not provide the normal biomechanical range of motion and functionality. The proposed design attempts to correct this through the use of design geometry and functional anatomy. Numerical analysis is used in conjunction with computational solid modeling to compare a one-piece silicone implant with the proposed T JR. Peak stresses during flexion for the proposed design did not exceed 1.2 MPa, where as soft implants approach 100 MPa to 1,000 MPa for peak stress values. The proposed design, due to high stress tolerances with low deformation, along with functionality and biomechanics, seems to be an appropriate replacement for one-piece silicone implant.     

Investigation of the safety of the product "Rialam."

The data on safety investigation of product "Rialam", which is proposed as biologically active food supplement are presented. Chronic experiment and single generation experiment were made on Wistar rats. It is shown that diet "Rialam" in dose 100 mg/kg of body weight didn't influence negatively on growth and development of rats blood parameters, immune status, internal organs morphology, metabolism, hadn't embryotoxic, gonadotoxic and teratogenic action.     

Incorporation of statistical length scale into Weibull strength theory for composites

In this paper an extension of Weibull theory by the introduction of a statistical length scale is presented. The classical Weibull strength theory is self-similar; a feature that can be illustrated by the fact that the strength dependence on structural size is a power law (a straight line on a double logarithmic graph). Therefore, the theory predicts unlimited strength for extremely small structures. In the paper, it is shown that such a behavior is a direct implication of the assumption that structural elements have independent random strengths. By the introduction of statistical dependence in the form of spatial autocorrelation, the size dependent strength becomes bounded at the small size extreme. The local random strength is phenomenologically modeled as a random field with a certain autocorrelation function. In such a model, the autocorrelation length plays the role of a statistical length scale. The focus is on small failure probabilities and the related probabilistic distributions of the strength of composites. The theoretical part is followed by applications in fiber bundle models, chains of fiber bundle models and the stochastic finite element method in the context of quasibrittle failure.     

Optical properties of TiO2 nanorods modified by electron-donating stabilizers

A significant change in the UV-vis absorption of TiO₂ nanorods (NRs) was induced by changing electrondonating stabilizer from oleic acid (OA) to acrylic acid (AcA). When TiO₂ NRs with an average size of 2.5 nm in diameter and 30 nm in length were dispersed in an aqueous AcA solution, a red shift in the optical absorption (0.73 eV at the band edge and 0.55 eV at the onset) was observed. The red shift was attributed to an increase in the electron density inside the TiO₂ NRs. The applicability of the AcA-exchanged TiO₂ NRs for the photocatalyst as well as a UV sensor was evaluated. The AcA-exchanged TiO₂ NRs showed significant photocatalytic activity on the degradation of toluene in the visible light region. Moreover, thin film of the AcA-exchanged TiO₂ NRs on a quartz plate was tested as a UV sensor and it exhibited a good response to a wide range of the UV light.     

Phase Equilibria in the Fe-Nb System

A review of the literature revealed that recently published phase diagrams of the Fe-Nb system show considerable discrepancies regarding phase equilibria with the melt and the homogeneity ranges of the intermetallic phases, specifically of the Laves phase Fe₂Nb. Therefore the system has been reinvestigated by metallography, electron probe microanalysis (EPMA), and differential thermal analysis (DTA). Temperatures of invariant reactions were determined and the homogeneity ranges of the two intermetallic phases, Fe₂Nb Laves phase and Fe₇Nb₆ μ phase, which both exist within a wide composition range, were established.     

On a backward problem for the Kirchhoff’s model of parabolic type

We study for the first time the backward problem for nonlocal nonlinear boundary value problem of Kirchhoff’s model of parabolic type. First, we show that the problem is severely ill-posed in the sense of Hadamard. We propose two methods: the Fourier truncation method for stabilizing the problem with homogeneous source and the quasi-reversibility method for regularizing the problem with nonlinear source. Under some priori assumptions on the exact solution, we establish some stability estimates in the $H_0^1$ norm.