Textile reinforced cementitious composite board was produced using a sprinkling water hardening technique. Test measured the effect of the textile ratio and textile location on the flexural performance of the board. The results show that the flexural behavior of the board made with the sprinkling water hardening technique was greatly improved by adding the glass fibers. As the textile ratio increases, the flexural strength and ultimate deflection of the textile glass reinforced cementitious board are greatly increased. The flexural strength of boards with 1.0% textile ratio can reach 10.64 MPa, which is 3 times higher than the boards without textiles, and the ultimate deflection is 6.74 mm, which is 8 times higher than that of the boards without textiles. The sprinkling water hardening technique may solve construction problems where there is no way to directly mix cement with water.
The effect of the preload on the axial capacity of a CFST encased concrete column was modeled using a finite element model. The influence of the preload on the axial strength of the column was analyzed for various factors such as the section size, steel strength and concrete strength. The results show that the load versus deformation curve for the column with a preload move back with a slight increase in the axial strength. The preload ratio and the ratio of the outer concrete strength to the inner concrete strength significant affect the axial strength. Formulas are given to calculate the axial strength with a preload that considers the influence of these parameters as well as the confinement effect.
Tensile stresses develop in restrained concrete slabs with shrinkage deformation. The appropriate creep or relaxation functions are crucial for assessing the stress development and the associated cracking potential. Existing creep models were found not suitable for such stress evaluations. This study investigates restrained slabs stress-strain characteristics and tensile creep behavior in axially restrained concrete specimens which represent field conditions of actual structures. A modified tensile creep compliance function is used to account for the high viscous effect with restrained conditions for accurate predictions of the stress and cracking potential in structures.
Retinal fundus image registration is a key step in clinical eye disease diagnosis and treatment. Targeting the difficulties in dealing with pair of images with large field of view differences or with great structural noises caused by over-segmentation, this paper presents an improved graph-based algorithm to match retinal vessel networks by utilizing higher-order relations constructed from the vessel structural graphs whose nodes represent vascular bifurcations with the edges describing relations between feature points. The method performs in a fully automatic fashion, with a multi-scale Gabor filter first employed for detection and extraction of retinal vessels and with the correspondences then recovered between two pathwise hyper-edge graphs using an efficient pairwise spectral matching scheme. Experimental evaluation shows that the developed method is effective and accurate in terms of the feature recall rate and the vascular CEM distance.
Computing accuracy in large CFD problems is restricted by the computation cost. A hydraulic modelling platform (HydroMP) was constructed using computing cloud to reduce costs and to provide a uniform interface between the dataset and the model for hydraulic models. This paper gives a generic integration method for hydraulic models and a scheduling mode for the cloud computing. The system includes the models and computing resources, including the data interface, model calls and interactions and computations of resource allocation using Web Services, XML(Extensible Markup Language) and OpenMI(Open Model Interface). This design assures that the cloud computing platform can conveniently call the models, exchange data between the servers and the clients, and dynamically allocate the computing resources including multiple cores and multiple nodes. The platform with the integrated flow model is used to analyze the hydraulic response to a change in the discharge of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project, which is a multi-client, multi-level and multi-scheme simulation. The results indicate that this model improves the computational efficiency and compatibility. This hydraulic computing model based on cloud computing theory allows multiple schemes be solved simultaneously using multiple clients in a WAN Internet and multiple users. The cloud computing model lowers the threshold for using HPC resources and improves the utilization efficiency of computation resources.
The Xiaojiang River basin is a typical dry-hot valley, characterized by high temperatures, little rain and serious soil erosion. The ecology is very fragile there. The ecology was evaluated using field measurements, sampling and indoor identification. Macroinvertebrates were used as indicators to assess the ecology of rivers with different riverbed-structure strengths in this basin using the Shengou River, Diaoga River and Jiangjia River with field investigations conducted from 2005 to 2011. The main purpose was to study the ecology functions of the riverbed structures with different strengths. Shengou River had 56 macroinvertebrate taxa, followed by Diaoga River with 36 taxa and Jiangjia River with 18 taxa. The results show that there is no clear relation between the macroinvertebrate density and riverbed-structure strengths but the biodiversity and the aquatic ecology improve with increasing riverbed-structure strengths, the predator density and biomass also increased to some extent.
The downward long-wave radiation has an important impact on the surface energy balance and surface evaporation. This paper compares six methods for estimating the downward long-wave radiation. These formulae modify the atmospheric emissivity for clear skies for cloudy skies according to the daily solar radiation ratio (defined as the ratio of the measured incoming solar radiation to the solar radiation received with clear skies). The estimates from these methods are compared with measurements from the Weishan Echo-Hydrology Experimental Station in Shandong Province and the Luancheng Agro-Ecosystem Experimental Station in Hebei Province in the North China Plain. The results show that the Marshunova equation gives the best estimates with a correlation coefficient (R2) larger than 0.97, a mean bias error (MBE) less than 4 W/m2, and a root mean square error (RMSE) less than 11 W/m2. The correlation slope is 1.00±0.05 and the intercept is less than 15 W/m2. Thus, this equation can accurately estimate the downward long-wave radiation for climate change models.
The purpose of this paper is to describe how equity constraints influence housing prices in rising markets through theoretical analysis and simulation. Existing models are modified by adding a coefficient for the household mobility blocking to simulate the demand with changing market prices. The result shows that increasing prices have little effect on demand for down payments proportions of 0.3, but have great effect on demand when the down payment proportion drops to 0.1. Less non-performing loans lead to more demand released by rising prices. Thus, when suffering from the blocking effect, equity constrained sellers list and finally receive a higher price in rising markets, resulting in the sale prices of completed deals increasing more quickly. Subsequent entrants then set higher listing prices for the purpose of increasing house size, which results in self-reinforcing price rises.
Housing information diffusion was measured to evaluate housing information transmission in Beijing. The information was measured based on Beijing's resale housing transactions. The results indicate that the degree of information diffusion for resale housing shows that the average variation of the predicted housing price was 15,200 experimental Yuan, of the offering price was 24,100 experimental Yuan and of the trading price was 6,700 experimental Yuan. The results also showed that the housing information diffused into all uninformed traders by the end of the resale housing's residual service life. The direction of the information diffusion varied and its degrees fluctuates, but the fluctuations tended to remain stable.
The disinfection by-product (DBP) formation of high-bromide water was evaluated before and after ozone and biological activated carbon (O3-BAC) treatment. The objective is to remove trihalomethanes (THMs) and haloacetic acids (HAAs) formed by adding chlorine. The results showed that the O3-BAC treatment reduced the total trihalomethanes (TTHM) and nine haloacetic acid (HAA9) by 20 μg/L. The inhibitory rate was above 30%. Precursors of chloro-byproducts (Cl-DBPs) like chloroform, dichloroacetic acid and tichloroacetic acid were also removed. Chloriation of high-bromide water increases the proportion of bromo-byproducts (Br-DBPs) such as bromform, bromoacetic acid and dibromoacetic acid after the pre-ozonation. The BAC treatment reduces the Br-DBP less than that of Cl-DBPs, which resulted in further increases of the Br-DBP proportion.
Weak acidic iron coagulation sedimentation and filtration were used to treat molybdenum containing wastewater and drinking water. The solution pH was adjusted to study the influence of pH on molybdenum removal. The rule of iron coagulant to remove molybdenum use various pH and iron concentrations to study the removal efficiency. The results show that the molybdenum removal mechanism is a surface electrochemical adsorption process that could be fit by a Langmuir adsorption isotherm. The solution pH controls the process and the optimum pH ranges from 4.0 to 4.5. This process, which can be combined with conventional water plant treatments, can protect drinking water safety when the raw water contains trace molybdenum pollution. The molybdenum concentration of the effluent water will exceed the standards using only process for high concentration wastewater. Thus, secondary treatment is needed because there is equilibrium between the adsorption capacity and the effluent concentration. This process can be conducted in a simple treatment structure with limited coagulant dosage.
The lattice Boltzmann pseudo-potential model has few parameters for real fluids. In this study, the volume translated Peng-Robinson equation of state (MPR) was incorporated into the lattice Boltzmann pseudo-potential model with two parameters, the acentric factor and the critical compressibility, used to determine the real fluid parameters. The MPR was used to calculate the dimensionless liquid and vapor saturated densities of eight kinds of fluids with the results compared with the Peng-Robinson(PR) equation of state and experimental data. Both the MPR and the PR equation of state can accurately describe the dimensionless saturated vapor density. The simulation results for the saturated liquid density given by the MPR agree well with experimental data for simple non-polar fluids such as Ar, N2 and O2. For more complex fluids, the saturated liquid density simulated by both the MPR and the PR equation of state were not good, but the MPR result was better than the PR equation of state result. Generally speaking,the MPR gives better predictions than the PR equation of state for simulations of fluid saturated densities.
The pebbles flowing in a pebble bed high temperature gas cooled reactor (HTR) mix between channels as they flow through the reactor, which may affect the reactor parameters such as the power peak factor. This paper describes a method to model the pebble mixing. This mixing model is added to the VSOP code to model the pebble mixing in the pebble bed. This new code package can simulate the pebble mixing between flow channels with a specified mixing coefficient in a coupled model of the pebble flow, physics, thermal hydraulics and burnup. Therefore, the model can be used to investigate the effect of pebble mixing on the core burnup distribution, power distribution and other characteristics. This code is a powerful tool for analyzing HTR operating characteristics and uncertainty.
Quasi-monodispersed aerosols can be generated by an evaporation-condensation generator. The aerosol characteristics and the differences between models and experiments need to be understood for testing the use of high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters to get both high measurement speeds and wide ranges of filters efficiencies. The size distributions of the aerosol particles generated by the evaporation-condensation generator are analyzed for various spring parameters through numerical simulations using the Euler-Lagrange modeling method and experimental measurements using a scanning mobility particle sizes (SMPS). The results show that the simulations are quite consistent with the experimental data, so the Euler-Lagrange modeling method can be applied to simulate aerosol growth in the condensation tube. Different sizes of high-concentration, quasi-monodisperse aerosols can be generated by changing the generator operating parameters. The size distribution not only meets the HEPA filter media efficiency testing standard but can also be used for ultra low penetration air (ULPA) filter media efficiency testing.
The ballistocardiogram (BCG) is an innovative noninvasive cardiac activity monitoring method. A Ballistocardiogram-Electrocardiography (BCG-ECG) measurement system was used here to collect BCG and ECG signals of 48 healthy subjects (male: 38; female: 10) with no history of cardiovascular diseases and 77 subjects (male: 33; female: 44) with coronary heart disease (CHD). Preoperative and postoperative BCG signals were also measured for some subjects. The temporal features, including the time intervals, amplitudes and energy were extracted from these subjects with the differences of these features examined using the independent Student's t-test. The results showed that the tIJ, tJK, IntHK and IntBCG features had significant differences between healthy subjects and subjects with CHD. Some features including the RR interval, tHI, tIJ, HI, IJ and IntBCG showed significant differences between preoperative BCG and postoperative BCG signals of a subject with CHD while the amplitudes of BCG decreasing during premature ventricular contraction (PVC).
Before tumor thermoseed mediated magnetic induction hyperthermia can be used, in vivo 3-D treatment models and temperature distributions in the target region should be numerically simulated to ensure the curative efficacy and to prevent overheating of normal tissues. This paper uses Ni-Cu alloy thermoseeds as the implanted medium in a heating model using the Pennes equation discretized by the finite volume method to study the steady-state temperature distributions for different thermoseed arrangements. The model predicts the temperature fluctuation and effective treatment areas for different blood perfusions. These results show that the preoperative thermoseed arrangement planning and the bio-tissue blood perfusion rate are both key factors to determine the steady-state temperature distributions. This paper provides guidelines for reasonable preoperative treatment planning for magnetic induction hyperthermia.
Decision-making in fuel ethanol production faces many uncertainties arising from raw material and product price fluctuations, and process parameter changes. This study analyzes how to reduce the costs and improve the overall efficiency even with these system uncertainties using two types of system uncertainty optimization models with these factors. The research uses a cellulosic ethanol system as a sample case to analyze the design margin problems in the design phase and the raw-material structural problems in the operating phase. The analysis uses stochastic chance-constrained programming model. The results show that uncertainty optimization is more reasonable than certainty optimization, and that the model can reduce costs as well as enhance the system risk resistance.
Information about a company' micro-blog is often spread by word-of-mouth. This paper uses a company micro-blog word-of-mouth model to analyze the factors affecting the number of retweets of a micro-blog, based on word-of-mouth marketing theory and a product type model. The number of retweets of a company micro-blog information is affected by the number of fans and the product type. This study uses crawled data of a company micro-blog to estimate the correlation coefficients using a panel data model. This study shows that not only do the number of fans and the increasing number of an enterprise micro-blogs influence the number of retweets, but they also have positive autocorrelation. The product type also influences the number of retweets, with greater influence for products the user has personally used than for products seen in searches.
Innovations in China's stock market have created an increasing demand for understanding the determinants of stock volatility. This paper documents the correlation between investor sentiment and idiosyncratic volatility. Principal component analysis is used to construct an investor sentiment index and to analyze data for 2 454 different stocks from 2003 to 2011 to test whether investor sentiment affects stock market volatility. The study shows that investor sentiment significantly impacts stock volatility with significant evidence that investor sentiment affects stock volatility through its impact on the turnover ratio.
This paper examines the influence of customer psychological perception on the enhancement of relationship benefits. Consumption emotions, perceived control, and psychological contract were introduced as important psychological variables to investigate the psychological influence of customer participation on relationship benefits based on cognitive theory. An empirical investigation was conducted using a structural equation model from the personal development industry to obtain empirical results. The results show that consumption emotions and psychological contract significantly influence confidence benefits and social benefits, while perceived control only has significant influence on confidence benefits. In addition, consumption emotions, perceived control and psychological contract play partly intermediary roles in customer participation and relationship benefits.
The locations of manufacturers and the agglomeration of industries steady affect the entire economic system and the individual agents in this system. This study uses the footloose capital (FC) model with a new economic geography to extend the two-region model into a more generalized three-region model to analyze the economic effects of industry transfers. This model gives explicit equations for the industry shares in each region when the overall economics turn from positive to negative with market equilibrium. The impact of industry transfers on the economics of the entire economy and of single individuals is investigated numerically. This paper provides a better understanding of the disparities in economic improvements caused by cross-region industry transfers.
Auditory nerve compound action potential (CAPs) threshold curves reflects the sensitivity of sound intensity while tuning curves reflects the frequency in the auditory nerve system. A CAPs detection system was developed based on an external multimedia sound card and the C# language to simplify data extraction for the auditory nerve system and to obtain more comprehensive and objective information. CAPs, threshold curves and tuning curves were acquired using sound stimulation to study the condition of the auditory nerve system. The system provides a comprehensive and objective analysis platform for detection and research of auditory nerve compound action potentials.
This article describes the rules of motion of a human cervical disc after a 3-level hybrid construct. 7 cadaveric cervical spines (C2-T1) were initially tested in intact condition. Then, all patients had a 1-level (C4-C5) total disc replacement (TDR) followed by a 2-level (C3-C4 and C5-C6 segments) anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF). The movement differences among the 3-level hybrid construct, the intact disc and the 1-level TDR were compared with the 3-level hybrid construct and previous 3-level fusion data (dynamic and static plating systems). The comparisons show that the 3-level hybrid construct performs better than 3-level fusion.
Existing cervical disc pressure measurement methods have limited accuracy. This paper presents a method to measure the pressure without damaging the disc via indirect measurements. The interior strain condition and the tiny motion of the cervical disc are measured by placing a strain gauge on the front surface of the disc. The mechanical property of the disc can then be used to calculate the disc pressure. The tests showed that the measurement error was less than 15% and the correlation coefficient with invasive direct measurements was 0.79. The precision and repeatability of the surface strain method are better than the traditional method. So, this provides a noninvasive way to measure the disc pressure.