Evaluation of Serum Volume Losses During Long-Term Storage

Aliquots of serum collected in a large case-control study of cervical cancer were stored at −70°C for up to 4 years during implementation of the study. When 500 μL serum aliquots were thawed in preparation for carotenoid and vitamin A assays, volumes were noticeably variable and fell below 500 μL in the majority of the samples. We were concerned about evaporation/sublimation during storage of the samples because loss of water would concentrate the analytes of interest. We evaluated the use of density and sodium ion concentration measurements to confirm its occurrence. We found that serum density was an unreliable indicator of extent of volume loss since the anticipated increases in density due to evaporation were of the same magnitude as inter-individual variation in serum density. In contrast, Na⁺ concentration is tightly regulated and would rise if water had been lost from the samples. In a representative sample of serum aliquots from the case-control study, 24 of 25 vials contained less than 500 μL of serum. The mean sodium ion concentration (138.1 ± 3.6 mmol/L) was within the normal range for human serum of 136–145 mmol/L, and no correlation was observed between serum volume and Na⁺ concentration. These results strongly suggest that the observed low volumes were not due to evaporative losses. Instead, the variably low volumes of serum aliquots were probably due to pipetting errors in the initial aliquotting resulting from the use of air-displacement pipettes.     

Optimisation of metallic pigments in coatings by an electrochemical technique and an investigation of manganese powder as pigment for metal rich primers

Zinc dust and manganese powder as pigments were incorporated in epoxy-polyamide and butyl titanate medium, with different pigment volume concentration (PVC) ranging from 20 to 74. These protective coatings were coated on sand blasted mild steel substrates and immersed in 3 wt.% sodium chloride solution and the corrosion current was measured by the Tafel extrapolation method. From the corrosion current produced by these primers, the optimum level of the pigments in these binders was identified. Thus the protective performance of optimised primers was evaluated on a sand blasted mild steel surface by the Tafel polarisation method in 3 wt.% sodium chloride solution, over different periods of time. The results were found to be comparable with the salt spray test and galvanic current measurements. The manganese powder used for this investigation showed that it could be used as an alternative to zinc powder for metal rich primers.     

隆德县大水沟饮水工程建设与管理措施分析

隆德县在大水沟农村饮水工程建设管理中，科学规划，优化设计方案，完善政策措施，创新管理体制和运行机制，尤其是用水户全过程参与工程建设管理、实行“两部制”水价、实施工程定期检查养护制度、建立工程管理单位目标责任考核制度、执行水费统一管理和提留统筹费等一系列做法．确保了国家投资效益的充分发挥和工程的可持续利用．     

Viscous behaviour of glass-forming liquids: a thermodynamic approach

The temperature dependence of the viscosity of the undercooled melts exhibits an important role in the study of nucleation, crystal growth and the glass-forming ability of materials. Several attempts have been made to study the viscous behaviour of the glass-forming melts and these investigations are mainly based on free volume theory as well as on the configurational entropy model. In the present investigation, an attempt has been made to correlate the thermodynamic parameters with the viscosity of the glass-forming melts and to study the temperature dependence of the viscosity of undercooled liquids on the basis of the free volume theory as well as on the basis of the configurational entropy model of Adam and Gibbs. The entire study is confined on the expression for thermodynamic parameters reported by the authors recently. The expression obtained has been successfully applied to study the temperature dependence of the viscosity of the metallic, molecular and oxide glass-forming liquids.     

浅谈原油顺序输送过程中混油量的计算

针对原油顺序输送工艺的特点,分析了原油顺序输送产生混油量的原因,给出了混油量计算公式。指出混油的形成与输送距离、油品种类、输量、停输时间、地形等有关。举例对东黄复线顺序输送所产生的混油量进行分析计算,给出了顺序输送过程中减少混油量的措施。     

VHF-PECVD制备微晶硅材料的均匀性及其结构特性的分析

采用VHF-PECVD技术在多功能系统(cluster tool)中制备了系列硅薄膜，研究薄膜的均匀性及电学特性和结构特性。结果表明：气压和功率的合理匹配对薄膜的均匀性有很大的影响；材料的喇曼测试和电学测试结果表明微晶硅薄膜存在着纵向的结构不均匀，在将材料应用于器件上时，必须要考虑优化合适的工艺条件；硅烷浓度大，相应制备薄膜的晶化程度减弱，即薄膜中非晶成分增多。     

泡沫铝的声频内耗

研究了泡沫Ａｌ的声频内耗，结果表明：泡沫Ａｌ的内耗值比普通Ａｌ大一个量级以上，且随测量频率的增加而减小。出现了正常振幅效应。用平面波动方程，推导了泡沫Ａｌ的内耗与频率，孔隙率和孔径的关系，较好地解释了实验结果。     

A method for quantifying cell size from differential interference contrast images: validation and application to osmotically stressed chondrocytes

An automatic image analysis method was developed to determine the shape and size of spheroidal cells from a time series of differential interference contrast (DIC) images. The program incorporates an edge detection algorithm and dynamic programming for edge linking. To assess the accuracy and working range of the method, results from DIC images of different focal planes and resolutions were compared to confocal images in which the cell membrane was fluorescently labelled. The results indicate that a 1‐µm focal drift from the in‐focus plane can lead to an overestimation of cell volume up to 14.1%, mostly due to shadowing effects of DIC microscopy. DIC images allow for accurate measurements when the focal plane lies in a zone slightly above the centre of a spherical cell. In this range the method performs with 1.9% overall volume error without taking into account the error introduced by the representation of the cell as a sphere. As a test case, the method was applied to quantify volume changes due to acute changes of osmotic stress.     

稀土永磁及磁记录材料的矫顽力与有效激活体积

指出了文献 [1]中的一个错误。给出了不同模型的稀土永磁材料以及磁记录材料的矫顽力 Hc和有效激活体积υ之间的正确关系 ,这样的关系被表示成一个复杂的函数关系 ,同时指出 ,对不同模型的稀土磁性材料 ,这个函数关系是不同的     

Ray-cast volume rendering accelerated by incremental trilinear interpolation and cell templates

Two related ideas for improving the speed of ray-cast volume rendering are studied in this paper. The first is an incremental algorithm for trilinear interpolation, a method commonly used in ray-cast volume rendering to calculate sample values. The incremental algorithm can expedite trilinear interpolation when many samples along a ray are located in one cell. The second is an efficient hybrid volume rendering restricted to parallel projection. In the preprocessing stage, acell template is created to store the information used by the incremental trilinear interpolation. When a cell is parallel projected, the information is retrieved from the template to compute the cell contribution. Because the algorithm with only one template may cause aliasing, an antialiasing technique exploiting multiple cell templates is proposed. With our method, ray-cast volume rendering can be accelerated considerably.