Effect of Heating Rates on the Formable Oxide Scale on a C-Steel Surface

Oxide scale formation on a C-steel surface has been investigated using linear heating rates ranging from 0.1℃/min to 10℃/min at high temperatures. The studies on the oxide scale formation at high temperature (650℃) at slower heating rate (0.1℃/min) shows that the kinetic regime is linear. X-ray diffraction measurements revealed that the scale constituents are significantly influenced by the heating rate. The adherence of the scale was improved by using slower heating rate (0.1℃/min-≤650℃), while above such degree the scale was susceptible to cracking and flaking out of the alloy surface. In fact, the development of oxide growth stresses can cause considerable scale cracking. As well, variation of the crystallite sizes under the aforementioned conditions might affect the scale stacking to the alloy surface. The secondary electron detector images of the oxide scale shows that the scale was imperfectly smooth and there were a number of voids and defects in the scale skin, especially at fast heating rate. This observation could be attributed to defects of the as-received alloy. In general, slower heating rate reduced the defects of the scale and improved its adherence.

Single-Channel Speech Enhancement Using Critical-Band Rate Scale Based Improved Multi-Band Spectral Subtraction

This paper addresses the problem of single-channel speech enhancement in the adverse environment. The critical-band rate scale based on improved multi-band spectral subtraction is investigated in this study for enhancement of single-channel speech. In this work, the whole speech spectrum is divided into different non-uniformly spaced frequency bands in accordance with the critical-band rate scale of the psycho-acoustic model and the spectral over-subtraction is carried-out separately in each band. In addition, for the estimation of the noise from each band, the adaptive noise estimation approach is used and does not require explicit speech silence detection. The noise is estimated and updated by adaptively smoothing the noisy signal power in each band. The smoothing parameter is controlled by a-posteriori signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). For the performance analysis of the proposed algorithm, the objective measures, such as, SNR, segmental SNR, and perceptual evaluations of the speech quality are conducted for the variety of noises at different levels of SNRs. The speech spectrogram and objective evaluations of the proposed algorithm are compared with other standard speech enhancement algorithms and proved that the musical structure of the remnant noise and background noise is better suppressed by the proposed algorithm.

Image Tamper Detection and Multi-Scale Self-Recovery Using Reference Embedding with Multi-Rate Data Protection

This paper proposes a multi-scale self-recovery(MSSR)approach to protect images against content forgery.The main idea is to provide more resistance against image tampering while enabling the recovery process in a multi-scale quality manner.In the proposed approach,the reference data composed of several parts and each part is protected by a channel coding rate according to its importance.The first part,which is used to reconstruct a rough approximation of the original image,is highly protected in order to resist against higher tampering rates.Other parts are protected with lower rates according to their importance leading to lower tolerable tampering rate(TTR),but the higher quality of the recovered images.The proposed MSSR approach is an efficient solution for the main disadvantage of the current methods,which either recover a tampered image in low tampering rates or fails when tampering rate is above the TTR value.The simulation results on 10000 test images represent the efficiency of the multi-scale self-recovery feature of the proposed approach in comparison with the existing methods.

Growth performance and scale insect infestation of Shorea leprosula in a common garden experimental plot

Many tree planting programmes have long been initiated to increase forest cover to mitigate the effects of global climate change.Successful planting requires careful planning at the project level,including using suitable species with favourable traits.However,there is a paucity of improvement data for tropical tree species.An experimental common garden of Shorea leprosula was established to study traits related to growth performance which are key factors in planting success.Seedlings of S.leprosula were collected from nine geographical forest reserves.To study the effects of genetic variation,seedlings were planted in a common environment following a randomized complete block design.From performance data collected 2017‒2019,one population showed the highest coefficient for relative height growth,significantly higher than most of the other populations.Interestingly,this population from Beserah also exhibited the lowest coefficient for scale insect infestation.This study provides preliminary results on growth performance and susceptibility to scale insect infestation in S.leprosula and the first common garden experiment site conducted on dipterocarp species.It lays a foundation for future genome-wide studies.

A Glimpse into a Potential Influencing Factor of China’s Exchange Rate: Social Financing Scale

The indicator of social financing scale(SFS)has become a new intermediate target for China’s socioeconomic regulation since 2011,which has a better tracking performance on important economic indicators such as CPI and is also the new intermediate target of monetary policy used by China’s central bank to replace M2 at present.So,is there an impact of the social financing scale on another important economic indicator,the RMB exchange rate?This paper conducted an OLS regression analysis of the time series data of social financing scale and the nominal effective exchange rate(NEER)of RMB for a total of 61 months from October 2016 to October 2021 and find that SFS has a significant positive impact on the exchange rate of RMB.This result means that the expansion of SFS will lead to the appreciation of RMB.In addition,the paper fills the research gap on the combination of SFS and RMB exchange rate,and suggests that mechanisms such as monetary policy or domestic interest rates may be responsible for this correlation at the theoretical level.

The laparoscopic rating scale for the evaluation of working conditions for surgical treatment of super-obesity

In this technical note,a novel rating scale(abdominal integral index)was introduced for assessing the conditions of the working laparoscopic space based on linear measurements to select the optimal one or two-stage surgical treatment for super-obesity.Patients with the same height and similar BMI values had different rating scale scores,reflecting different conditions of laparoscopic bariatric surgery.The rating scale helps surgeons and patients make a safe option for surgery,depending on the experience of the surgeon and technical laparoscopic conditions.

Synthesis and Evaluation of CQC-1—An Oil Field Scale Inhibitor

Most of the oil wells enter the middle and late stages of extraction. After one oil extraction, water injection is needed for secondary extraction. With a large amount of calcium and magnesium ions in the water, which is easy to form a large amount of insoluble scale, its formed barium sulfate and strontium sulfate scale are more difficult to handle than carbonate scale. In order to reduce the difficulty of oil production work, this paper mainly targeted the sulfate scale for experiments, and prepared the scale retardant agent CQC-1. Through orthogonal experimental screening, the mass ratio of itaconate acid:methacrylic acid:AMPS:sodium acrylic sulfonate was 2:1:1:1, increase the amount of evocating agent was 8% and the reaction time was 4h, the sulfate scale inhibitor synthesized at the temperature of 80°C had the best performance. Using scale resistance rate, degradation and salt-resistance, the experimental results showed that the scale resistance rate of CQC-1 reached 90.46%. In the four-week degradation experiment, the degradation rate reached over 71% and was maintained by 80.65% at 150°C, while the scale resistance rate still reached 80.35% in simulated saline. It has excellent scale resistance, temperature resistance, salt-resistance and degradation, and has good development prospects.

Comparison of diagnostic validity of two autism rating scales for suspected autism in a large Chinese sample

BACKGROUND Autism is the most common clinical developmental disorder in children.The childhood autism rating scale(CARS)and autistic autism behavior checklist(ABC)are the most commonly used assessment scales for diagnosing autism.However,the diagnostic validations and the corresponding cutoffs for CARS and ABC in individuals with suspected autism spectrum disorder(ASD)remain unclear.Furthermore,for suspected ASD in China,it remains unclear whether CARS is a better diagnostic tool than ABC.Also unclear is whether the current cutoff points for ABC and CARS are suitable for the accurate diagnosis of ASD.AIM To investigate the diagnostic validity of CARS and ABC based on a large Chinese sample.METHODS A total of 591 outpatient children from the ASD Unit at Beijing Children’s Hospital between June and November 2019 were identified.First,the Clancy autism behavior scale(CABS)was used to screen out suspected autism from these children.Then,each suspected ASD was evaluated by CARS and ABC.Receiver operating characteristic(ROC)curve analysis was used to compare diagnostic validations.We also calculated the area under the curve(AUC)for both CARS and ABC.RESULTS We found that the Cronbach alpha coefficients of CARS and ABC were 0.772 and 0.426,respectively.Therefore,the reliability of the CARS was higher than that of the ABC.In addition,we found that the correlation between CARS and CABS was 0.732.Next,we performed ROC curve analysis for CARS and ABC,which yielded AUC values of 0.846 and 0.768,respectively.The cutoff value,which is associated with the maximum Youden index,is usually applied as a decision threshold.We found that the cutoff values of CARS and ABC were 34 and 67,respectively.CONCLUSION This result indicated that CARS is superior to ABC in the Chinese population with suspected ASD.

围绝经期评定量表Menopause Rating Scale(MRS)中文版信度及效度分析

[目的]测定围绝经期评定量表(MRS)中文版的信度和效度。[方法]应用MRS中文版对126例围绝经期女性进行测量,对测定结果进行信度和效度分析。[结果]MRS中文版总的Cronbach′sα系数为0.890,3个维度的Cronbach′sα系数为0.731～0.868;总问卷的重测信度为0.887,3个维度的重测信度为0.661～0.883;探索性因子分析表明MRS中文版包括3个因子,共11个条目;3个因子可以解释总方差的73.68%;验证性因子分析显示数据拟合良好(χ2/df为1.170,近似误差均方根(RMSEA)为0.050,规范拟合指数(NFI)为0.894。[结论]MRS中文版具有良好的信度和效度,适合测量中国围绝经期妇女的生活质量。

Assessment of Stress Cognitive Control and Executive Function with Stress Control Rating Scale (ECOSTRESS) and Low Resolution Brain Electromagnetic Tomography (LORETA) (In Portuguese People in Situations of Unemployment and Economic Insufficiency)

This article reviews the constructs of stress, appraisal, coping, according to a transactional perspective, and executive function, and presents a stress control rating scale (ECOSTRESS), which design is founded in these constructs. This psychometric tool is useful in the assessment of cognitive control of stress, correlated with the function of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. It has been validated for its use in the assessment of Portuguese people in situations of stress related to unemployment and economic insufficiency. Also, within the context of the cognitive control of stress, it is highlighted the usefulness of low resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (LORETA).

Detecting dynamical complexity changes in time series using the base-scale entropy

Timely detection of dynamical complexity changes in natural and man-made systems has deep scientific and practical meanings. We introduce a complexity measure for time series： the base-scale entropy. The definition directly applies to arbitrary real-word data. We illustrate our method on a practical speech signal and in a theoretical chaotic system. The results show that the simple and easily calculated measure of base-scale entropy can be effectively used to detect qualitative and quantitative dynamical changes.

The Application of the Generalized Differential Formulation of the First Law of Thermodynamics for Evidence of the Tidal Mechanism of Maintenance of the Energy and Viscous-Thermal Dissipative Turbulent Structure of the Mesoscale Oceanic Eddies

The practical significance of the established generalized differential formula-tion of the first law of thermodynamics (formulated for the rotational coor-dinate system) is evaluated (for the first time and for the mesoscale oceanic eddies) by deriving the general (viscous-compressible-thermal) and partial (incompressible, viscous-thermal) local conditions of the tidal maintenance of the quasi-stationary energy and dissipative turbulent structure of the mesoscale eddy located inside of the individual fluid region of the ther-mally heterogeneous viscous (compressible and incompressible, respective-ly) heat-conducting stratified fluid over the two-dimensional bottom topog-raphy characterized by the horizontal coordinate x along a horizon-tal axis X. Based on the derived partial (incompressible) local condition (of the tidal maintenance of the quasi-stationary energy and viscous-thermal dis-sipative turbulent structure of the mesoscale eddy) and using the calculated vertical distributions of the mean viscous dissipation rate per unit mass and the mean thermal dissipation rate per unit mass in four regions near the observed mesoscale (periodically topographically trapped by nearly two-dimensional bottom topography h(x) eddy located near the northern region of the Yamato Rise in the Japan Sea, the combined analysis of the energy structure of the eddy and the viscous-thermal dissipative structure of turbulence is presented. The convincing evidence is presented of the tidal mechanism of maintenance of the eddy energy and viscous-thermal dissipa-tive structure of turbulence (produced by the breaking internal gravity waves generated by the eddy) in three regions near the Yamato Rise subjected to the observed mesoscale eddy near the northern region of the Yamato Rise of the Japan Sea.

Simulation of Grey Scale Ghost Imaging By Labview

In this paper,we present a simulation method to reconstruct the object's imaging in a ghost-imaging system.We use Laguerre-Gaussian(LG) beam as the light source which will produce the Orbital Angular Momentum(OAM) states.In the signal arm,the object spatial information is encoded as phase,and added to the phase of the signal light.In the idler arm,the phase of the idler light is changed according to the maximum coincidence rate in the receiver.We get each pixel matched phase of the object and reconstruct the object's imaging in the idle arm.We demostrate some examples of the reconstruction and compare with the other reported method.The results show that our method can improve the resoltuion of the image effectively.

Application of the Childhood Autism Rating Scale to Grasp Autistic Characteristics of the Trainees with Intellectual Disabilities in Agricultural Vocational Training

The purpose of this study was to propose indicators for grasping autistic characteristics of people with intellectual disabilities who were going to engage in agricultural vocational training. We analyzed the data of the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) of 44 students at the high school course of a special needs education school who participated in agricultural vocational training. The data were divided into two groups according to the scores of “General Impressions”, one of 15 question items of the CARS: one was the group whose score was 1 (usual), and the other was the group whose scores were 1.5 to 4 (unusual). The results of the Mann-Whitney U test showed significant differences between two groups in eight items including “Relating to People” (p Relating to People” with six other items. As a result, “Relating to People” was considered to be the most effective item to know the participant’s autistic characteristics at a very early stage of training. Eventually, adding two items, “Body Use” and “Imitation” which are necessary to master agricultural tasks, to “Relating to People”, we proposed three indicators.

Using dementia rating scales in the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease

Objective： To study the significance of dementia rating scales in the diagnosis of Alzheimer＇ s disease（AD）. Methods： Probable AD patients（118 cases） diagnosed according to NINCDS-ADRDA criteria and the normal controls（100 cases） were examined with a battery of neuropsychological tests and the dementia severity of AD patients was determined with clinical dementia rating （CDR）. Changed neuropsychological characteristics of different AD dementia severities were analyzed. The discriminant analysis and ROC curve analysis were perfomed to analyze the specificity, the sensitivity, and the general accuracy of various dementia rating scales in the diagnosis of AD, and the area under the ROC curve. Results： The total cognition function in mild （CDR = 1 ）, moderate（CDR = 2） and severe stages（CDR=3） of AD had an obvious trend of continuous decline, with the MMSE values 17.44±2.64, 13.90±4.32, and 5.50 ± 3.90 respectively. The trend of decline of the verbal fluency function in AD was same as that of total cognition function. The visuospatial function was reduced in early stage of AD （CDR = 1 ） and completely lost in moderate and severe AD. Delay memory function began to show decline in the early stage of AD, and the decline turned apparent in moderate and severe AD. Immediate memory function showed unchanged in early stage of AD, while showed decline in moderate AD, and the decline became very quick in severe AD. The impairment of daily living ability and social activity function developed with the severity degree of AD. But the decline of social activity function was very quick in moderate stage of AD. In general, the leading scale to diagnose AD was FOM, followed by RVR, POD, MMSE, BD,ADL and DS. When MMSE was combined with one or more of FOM, RVR, BD, DS, the general accuracy in distinguishing AD from the normal controls was improved. Conclusion： Neuropsychological test is useful in the diagnosis of AD, especially in the early stage. The validity is improved when dementia rating scales are combined correctly.

Development of a Scale to Evaluate the Depressive State among Elderly Patients in General Wards

This study aims to develop a scale to evaluate depressive states among elderly patients in general wards, and verify the reliability and validity of the scale. Based on the results of interviews with nurses, we developed a draft of a scale comprised of 48 questions (NDE48). The Geriatric Depression Scale short version (GDS15), and the Zung Self-rating Depression Scale (SDS) were administered to 54 elderly patients. Two groups of nurses completed the NDE48 on different days. After performing an explanatory factor analysis, the NDE48 was simplified to a 16 question item scale (NDE16), comprising three factors. The correlation coefficient between GDS15 and NDE16 was 0.41 (p = 0.00191), and between SDS and NDE16 was 0.30 (p = 0.02633). Alpha coefficient of the total score of NDE16 was 0.88. For inter-rater reliability, the correlation coefficient was 0.57 (p = 0.00005). The findings suggest that the NDE16 will be highly useful when nurses evaluate depressive states among elderly inpatients.

An Eco-Friendly High-Effective Scale Inhibitor for High Salt Brine

Now the mining of high salt underground brine has been an important aspect of salt lake mining,which is the necessary support to the development of national economy.With the change of underground geological

Development of a Scale to Evaluate Depressive States among Elderly Patients in General Wards —Verification of the Contents to Improve the Accuracy of the Scale

Purpose: This study aims to verify the validity of the contents of the Nurse Administered Depression Scale for Elderly Inpatients16 (NDE16) using the Delphi approach in order to further improve the accuracy of the NDE16, a scale for rating potential depressive states in elderly inpatients through the observations reported by nurses. Methods: Participants were nurses working in general wards for longer than 3 years and who expressed consent to the study participation. Data were collected using the Delphi method (3 times). Responses are scored from 1 to 5 (3 - 5 points as positive) using the Likert method. The standard criteria for inclusion in the further evaluation are “mean ≥ 3.0”, “standard deviation < 1.0”, “median ≥ 3.0”, and “IQR ≤ 1.0”. Items that meet all the criteria at the third survey are employed as question items in the final questionnaire. Results: The respondents were 139 females, 10 males, and 1 unknown, aged 25 to 65. The collection rates of the three surveys were 75% to 82%. Based on the results of the first survey, wordings of 9 questions were modified. Since Question 13 “Queries are not really responded to.” did not meet the criteria (IQR = 2) at the third survey, we excluded this question and named the revised scale NDE15. Discussion: The reason why Question 13 did not meet the criteria could be due to the difficulty in distinguishing “Expressing thought suppression” from the state of cognitive decline in dementia. Further studies are needed to determine cutoff points.

Diagnostic Analysis of Mechanical Conditions of Small-Scale Incinerators in the Healthcare Facilities in Tanzania

This paper provides analytical diagnosis of mechanical conditions of medical waste incinerators used for healthcare waste (HCW) treatment in Tanzania. The main features assessed were types of incinerators, features of incinerators and incinerator house. The assessment was conducted in three levels of health care facilities (HCFs), that is, Regional, district hospitals and health centers, existed in 26 regions of Tanzania. Questionnaires, interview and checklists were used as tools for data collection. It was observed that High-Tech incinerators are mainly used in regional hospitals, while district hospital and health center use both High-Tech and De-Montfort incinerators. About 60% of the incinerators have defective doors. More than 55% of incinerators are corroded in regional and district hospitals. The chimney, top plates and grate which are good condition are 55.6% and 60% in regional hospitals and health centers, respectively. The situation is below 50% in district hospitals. The leakage of the roof and loose structures were observed in district hospitals and health center to be more than 50% of the incinerator houses. On other hand, the performance of burners and incinerator housing cleanliness are generally good. It was concluded that the incinerators in the HCFs are in bad conditions, necessitating maintenance.