Pitting corrosion evaluation by computer image processing

Pitting corrosion of AISI 304L stainless steel in a solution of FeCl₃ is evaluated by computer image processing methods. Pitting probability and histograms of pit-areas are computed. Pitting probability is defined as the ratio of pitted area over the total area. The pitting probability in this work was found to be 9.73%. Computer image processing is shown to be a promising tool for statistical evaluation of pitting corrosion.     

Determinants of management styles in business and nonbusiness organizations.

B. M. Bass and E. R. Valenzi (1974) postulated that power and information are major factors in determining the extent to which 5 leadership styles are used and presented a set of hypotheses concerning the way power and information affect these styles. Management Styles Survey data from 224 Israeli executives were used to test the Bass-Valenzi hypothesis and to analyze the effects of aggregating data from business and nonbusiness organizations (BOs and NBOs). In BOs, direction and power were positively correlated, and in NBOs they were negatively correlated. When data from both types of organizations were aggregated, no correlation was found between power and direction. The methodological aspects of using aggregate data in tests of the Bass-Balenzi hypotheses, including regression and smallest space analysis, are discussed. It is shown that such procedures may cause aggregation bias, and it is suggested that the Bass-Valenzi hypotheses are more applicable to BOs than to NBOs. Ss from NBOs tended to employ more of the direction style and less of the participation style of leadership than executives in BOs. The results, however, also indicate that interorganizational differences in styles are mainly attributable to differences in organizational norms, climate, and structure, and not to differences in power and information. (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Bicoherence analysis of new cardiovascular spectral components observed in heart-transplant patients: statistical approach for bicoherence thresholding

Following heart transplant (HT), the patient's heart functions under complete cardiac denervation. As a result, the variability in physiologic signals is extremely reduced. We have previously reported that in addition to the typical spectral components (of very low amplitude), part of the HT patients (above 50%) demonstrated unexpected additional peaks in their heart rate and blood pressure spectra. These peaks may be a result of the development of compensatory mechanism induced by loss of parasympathetic control, or of increased importance of nonlinear control interactions. It is important to quantify these strange, unexpected very-high frequency (VHF) peaks, to understand their origin and their contribution to cardiac control in transplant patients. In this paper, we chose to examine these VHF peaks by applying the bicoherence approach. The reduced signal to noise ratio, occurring in these patients, results, however, in an extremely noisy bicoherence. We, therefore, developed several statistical tools in order to distinguish between "true" bicoherence peaks (reflecting true phase coupling) and spurious peaks. The outcome of these methods was an efficient and sensitive bicoherence thresholding procedure, able to identify most of the spurious peaks. Applying these tools to the bicoherence of cardiovascular signals which display VHF peaks, revealed several significant bicoherence peaks. Interestingly, these peaks consisted of two different types. The first type of VHF peaks simply reflects nonlinear cardiac-respiratory coupling, imposed by nonsinusoidal breathing. The second type, however, is clearly not induced by the respiratory system. We believe that these type-2 VHF peaks reflect the evolution of a new, yet unexplained, compensatory mechanism.     

Lipase Catalyzed Transesterification of Model Long-Chain Molecules in Double-Shell Cellulose-Coated Oil-in-Water Emulsion Particles as Microbioreactors

Lipase-catalyzed transesterification is prevalent in industrial production and is an effective alternative to chemical catalysis. However, due to lipases’ unique structure, the reaction requires a biphasic system, which suffers from a low reaction efficiency caused by a limited interfacial area. The use of emulsion particles was found to be an effective way to increase the surface area and activity. This research focuses on cellulose as a natural surfactant for oil-in-water emulsions and evaluates the ability of lipase, introduced into the emulsion’s aqueous phase, to integrate with the emulsion microparticles and catalyze the transesterification reaction of high molecular weight esters dissolved in the particles’ cores. Cellulose-coated emulsion particles’ morphology was investigated by light, fluorescence and cryogenic scanning electron microscopy, which reveal the complex emulsion structure. Lipase activity was evaluated by measuring the hydrolysis of emulsified p-nitrophenyl dodecanoate and by the transesterification of emulsified methyl laurate and oleyl alcohol dissolved in decane. Both experiments demonstrated that lipase introduced in the aqueous medium can penetrate the emulsion particles, localize at the inner oil core interface and perform effective catalysis. Furthermore, in this system, lipase successfully catalyzed a transesterification reaction rather than hydrolysis, despite the dominant presence of water.     

Corrosion behaviour of hot-pressed austenitic stainless steel in H2SO4 solutions at room temperature

The corrosion behavior of hot-pressed stainless steel (HPSS) of Type 316 was investigated. Samples of HPSS with porosity of 10–30% were prepared. The influence of the porosity factor on corrosion behaviour was investigated by potentiodynamic polarization, open circuit potential, identification of corrosion products by EDAX and SEM observation.It was found that porosity of the HPSS is the main factor affecting corrosion resistance. High porosity results in low corrosion resistance. The open circuit potential of the HPSS is about ? 200 mV (VSCE) as compared to 200 mV for the wrought 316 stainless steel. The potentiodynamic measurements indicate that cathodic concentration polarization is achieved at a relatively low current density and secondary active-passive transition is observed at a relatively high current density in HPSS as compared to wrought 316 stainless steel.It is suggested that the main mechanism affecting the low corrosion resistance of HPSS in H₂SO₄ is the evolution of hydrogen concentration cells due to electrolytic stagnation in the interconnected open pores. As a result the surfaces of the interconnected open pores act as an active anode and the engineering sample surface acts as an active cathode.     

Electrospun Ca3Co4−xO9+δ nanofibers and nanoribbons: Microstructure and thermoelectric properties

Oxide-based ceramics offer promising thermoelectric (TE) materials for recycling high-temperature waste heat, generated extensively from industrial sources. To further improve the functional performance of TE materials, their power factor should be increased. This can be achieved by nanostructuring and texturing the oxide-based ceramics creating multiple interphases and nanopores, which simultaneously increase the electrical conductivity and the Seebeck coefficient. The aim of this work is to achieve this goal by compacting electrospun nanofibers of calcium cobaltite Ca₃Co_4−xO_9+δ, known to be a promising p-type TE material with good functional properties and thermal stability up to 1200 K in air. For this purpose, polycrystalline Ca₃Co_4−xO_9+δ nanofibers and nanoribbons were fabricated by sol–gel electrospinning and calcination at intermediate temperatures to obtain small primary particle sizes. Bulk ceramics were formed by sintering pressed compacts of calcined nanofibers during TE measurements. The bulk nanofiber sample pre-calcined at 973 K exhibited an improved Seebeck coefficient of 176.5 S cm⁻¹ and a power factor of 2.47 μW cm⁻¹ K⁻² similar to an electrospun nanofiber-derived ceramic compacted by spark plasma sintering.     

One of the Bloodiest Days: A Comparative Analysis of Open and Closed Television News

This article analyzes television news reports, from five countries, dealing with an incident that took place in the West Bank village of Nahalin in April 1989 during the Palestinian uprising. The analysis of both the verbal and visual texts attempts to explicate "open" and "closed" presentations of the incident by referring to three dimensions: the rhetoric of balance, the rhetoric of facticity, and the rhetoric of neutrality. The analysis suggests that the stories by both Israel Television and CBS are relatively "closed," with the Israeli case being "defensive" while that of CBS being "offensive." The other versions are appraised as lying somewhere between poetic closure and journalistic openness.     

Chemical transformation of 3-bromo-2,2-bis(bromomethyl)-propanol under basic conditions

The mechanism of the spontaneous decomposition of 3-bromo-2,2-bis(bromomethyl)propanol (TBNPA) and the kinetics of the reaction of the parent compound and two subsequent products were determined in aqueous solution at temperatures from 30 to 70 degrees C and pH from 7.0 to 9.5. TBNPA is decomposed by a sequence of reactions that form 3,3-bis(bromomethyl)oxetane (BBMO), 3-bromomethyl-3-hydroxymethyloxetane (BMHMO), and 2,6-dioxaspiro[3.3]-heptane (DOH), releasing one bromide ion at each stage. The pseudo-first-order rate constant of the decomposition of TBNPA increases linearlywith the pH. The apparent activation energy of this transformation (98+/-2 KJ/mol) was calculated from the change of the effective second-order rate constant with temperature. The pseudoactivation energies of BBMO and BMHMO were estimated to be 109 and 151 KJ/mol, respectively. Good agreement was found between the rate coefficients derived from changes in the organic molecules concentrations and those determined from the changes in the Br- concentrations. TBNPA is the most abundant semivolatile organic pollutant in the aquitard studied, and together with its byproducts they posess an environmental hazard. TBNPA half-life is estimated to be about 100 years. This implies that high concentrations of TBNPA will persist in the aquifer long after the elimination of all its sources.     

On Learning Gene Regulatory Networks Under the Boolean Network Model

Boolean networks are a popular model class for capturing the interactions of genes and global dynamical behavior of genetic regulatory networks. Recently, a significant amount of attention has been focused on the inference or identification of the model structure from gene expression data. We consider the Consistency as well as Best-Fit Extension problems in the context of inferring the networks from data. The latter approach is especially useful in situations when gene expression measurements are noisy and may lead to inconsistent observations. We propose simple efficient algorithms that can be used to answer the Consistency Problem and find one or all consistent Boolean networks relative to the given examples. The same method is extended to learning gene regulatory networks under the Best-Fit Extension paradigm. We also introduce a simple and fast way of finding all Boolean networks having limited error size in the Best-Fit Extension Problem setting. We apply the inference methods to a real gene expression data set and present the results for a selected set of genes.