Evaluation of estimation methods for meiofaunal biomass from a meiofaunal survey in Bohai Bay

Studies in the coastal area of Bohai Bay,China,from July 2006 to October 2007,suggest that the method of meiofaunal biomass estimation affected the meiofaunal analysis.Conventional estimation methods that use a unique mean individual weight value for nematodes to calculate total biomass may cause deviation of the results.A modified estimation method,named the Subsection Count Method (SCM),was also used to calculate meiofaunal biomass.This entails only a slight increase in workload but generates results of greater accuracy.Results gained using each of these two methods were compared in the present study.The results show that the conventional method generally estimates a meiofaunal biomass.The difference between the two estimation methods was highly significant (P<0.01) for the spring and winter cruises.Furthermore,the estimation method for meiofaunal biomass affected the analysis of horizontal distribution and correlation with environmental factors.These findings highlight the importance of estimation methods for meiofaunal biomass and will hopefully stimulate further investigation and discussion of the topic.

Improved Data Processing of Loading Spectrum for Applications of Rainflow Counting Method

The rainflow counting method is a reasonable cyclecounting procedure for fatigue life calculation and simulation testing of structures.It defines cycles as closed stress /strain hysteresis loops.Application of the rainflow counting method requires a data processing of the loading spectrum,which consists of the elimination of non-peak value data points,load time histories adjustment and loop extraction.In the data processing of the loading spectrum,if a stress point is neither the peak nor the valley,it will be identified and eliminated from the loading spectrum.Generally,the loading process is idealized as a single peak-valley straight line.But in actually,there are polylines or nearly straight lines between peaks and valleys which can't be ignored.Therefore,in the process of eliminating such data points,it will produce error in method itself.To reduce the error produced by the traditional method itself,a new method which can well simplify the polylines in data processing of loading spectrum is proposed in this paper.Comparing with the original approximation method,the proposed method has higher precision.

ON THE LATTICE PATH METHOD IN CONVOLUTION-TYPE COMBINATORIAL IDENTITIES(Ⅱ)—THE WEIGHTED COUNTING FUNCTION METHOD ON LATTICE PATHS

An independent method for paper [10] is presented. Weighted lattice paths are enumerated by counting function which is a natural extension of Gaussian multinomial coefficient in the case of unrestricted paths. Convolutions for path counts are investigated, which yields some Vandcrmondc-type identities for multinomial and q-multinomial coefficients.

Fatigue Safety Assessment of Concrete Continuous Rigid Frame Bridge Based on Rain Flow Counting Method and Health Monitoring Data

The fatigue of concrete structures will gradually appear after being subjected to alternating loads for a long time,and the accidents caused by fatigue failure of bridge structures also appear from time to time.Aiming at the problem of degradation of long-span continuous rigid frame bridges due to fatigue and environmental effects,this paper suggests a method to analyze the fatigue degradation mechanism of this type of bridge,which combines long-term in-site monitoring data collected by the health monitoring system(HMS)and fatigue theory.In the paper,the authors mainly carry out the research work in the following aspects:First of all,a long-span continuous rigid frame bridge installed with HMS is used as an example,and a large amount of health monitoring data have been acquired,which can provide efficient information for fatigue in terms of equivalent stress range and cumulative number of stress cycles;next,for calculating the cumulative fatigue damage of the bridge structure,fatigue stress spectrum got by rain flow counting method,S-N curves and damage criteria are used for fatigue damage analysis.Moreover,it was considered a linear accumulation damage through the Palmgren-Miner rule for the counting of stress cycles.The health monitoring data are adopted to obtain fatigue stress data and the rain flow counting method is used to count the amplitude varying fatigue stress.The proposed fatigue reliability approach in the paper can estimate the fatigue damage degree and its evolution law of bridge structures well,and also can help bridge engineers do the assessment of future service duration.

Sensitivity of diagnosis of spontaneous bacterial peritonitis is higher with the automated cell count method

BACKGROUND Spontaneous bacterial peritonitis(SBP)is one of the most important complications of patients with liver cirrhosis entailing high morbidity and mortality.Making an accurate early diagnosis of this infection is key in the outcome of these patients.The current definition of SBP is based on studies performed more than 40 years ago using a manual technique to count the number of polymorphs in ascitic fluid(AF).There is a lack of data comparing the traditional cell count method with a current automated cell counter.Moreover,current international guidelines do not mention the type of cell count method to be employed and around half of the centers still rely on the traditional manual method.AIM To compare the accuracy of polymorph count on AF to diagnose SBP between the traditional manual cell count method and a modern automated cell counter against SBP cases fulfilling gold standard criteria:Positive AF culture and signs/symptoms of peritonitis.METHODS Retrospective analysis including two cohorts:Cross-sectional(cohort 1)and case-control(cohort 2),of patients with decompensated cirrhosis and ascites.Both cell count methods were conducted simultaneously.Positive SBP cases had a pathogenic bacteria isolated on AF and signs/symptoms of peritonitis.RESULTS A total of 137 cases with 5 positive-SBP,and 85 cases with 33 positive-SBP were included in cohort 1 and 2,respectively.Positive-SBP cases had worse liver function in both cohorts.The automated method showed higher sensitivity than the manual cell count:80%vs 52%,P=0.02,in cohort 2.Both methods showed very good specificity(>95%).The best cutoff using the automated cell counter was polymorph≥0.2 cells×10^(9)/L(equivalent to 200 cells/mm^(3))in AF as it has the higher sensitivity keeping a good specificity.CONCLUSION The automated cell count method should be preferred over the manual method to diagnose SBP because of its higher sensitivity.SBP definition,using the automated method,as polymorph cell count≥0.2 cells×10^(9)/L in AF would need to be considered in patients admitted with decompensated cirrhosis.

Fatigue damage reliability analysis for Nanjing Yangtze river bridge using structural health monitoring data

To evaluate the fatigue damage reliability of critical members of the Nanjing Yangtze river bridge, according to the stress-number curve and Miner’s rule, the corresponding expressions for calculating the structural fatigue damage reliability were derived. Fatigue damage reliability analysis of some critical members of the Nanjing Yangtze river bridge was carried out by using the strain-time histories measured by the structural health monitoring system of the bridge. The corresponding stress spectra were obtained by the real-time rain-flow counting method. Results of fatigue damage were calculated respectively by the reliability method at different reliability and compared with Miner’s rule. The results show that the fatigue damage of critical members of the Nanjing Yangtze river bridge is very small due to its low live-load stress level.

A low-power high-quality CMOS image sensor using 1.5 V 4T pinned photodiode and dual-CDS column-parallel single-slope ADC

This paper presents a low-power high-quality CMOS image sensor(CIS)using 1.5 V 4T pinned photodiode(4T-PPD)and dual correlated double sampling(dual-CDS)column-parallel single-slope ADC.A five-finger shaped pixel layer is proposed to solve image lag caused by low-voltage 4T-PPD.Dual-CDS is used to reduce random noise and the nonuniformity between columns.Dual-mode counting method is proposed to improve circuit robustness.A prototype sensor was fabricated using a 0.11μm CMOS process.Measurement results show that the lag of the five-finger shaped pixel is reduced by 80%compared with the conventional rectangular pixel,the chip power consumption is only 36 mW,the dynamic range is 67.3 dB,the random noise is only 1.55 e^(-)_(rms),and the figure-of-merit is only 1.98 e^(-)·nJ,thus realizing low-power and high-quality imaging.

Joint Rock Coefficient Estimation Based on Hausdorff Dimension

The strength of rock structures strongly depends inter alia on surface irregularities of rock joints. These irregularities are characterized by a coefficient of joint roughness. For its estimation, visual comparison is often used. This is rather a subjective method, therefore, fully computerized image recognition procedures were proposed. However, many of them contain imperfections, some of them even mathematical nonsenses and their application can be very dangerous in technical practice. In this paper, we recommend mathematically correct method of fully automatic estimation of the joint roughness coefficient. This method requires only the Barton profiles as a standard.

Research and application of uniform material counting method based on machine vision

Manufacturing and agricultural industries use manual methods to count materials. This leads to low accuracy and inefficiency. This paper proposes a secondary counting method that combines main and differential counting. The area-fill identification algorithm is applied to mark the counted materials. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed counting algorithm, numbers of countings are conducted for different materials, such as the screws, hole gaskets, beans, jujube, etc. The results show that the counting accuracy reaches 98% for materials with size of 2—20 mm. The method has delivered a high-efficiency and high-accuracy automatic intelligent counting, with a wide range of application prospects and reference value.

Investigation on experimental load spectrum for high and low cycle combined fatigue test

As the outfield load spectrum is so complicated that it cannot be used directly for test study in laboratory.This paper presents a method to determine load spectrum for high and low cycle combined fatigue of turbine mortise at elevated temperature through experimental and numerical method.First of all,the low cycle load spectrum with duration time is determined through cumulative damage rule.The rain flow counting method is applied to obtain main cycles and sub cycles,and then the stress cycle is converted into pulsation cycle(stress ratio=0)based on the S-N curve and the Goodman curve;Secondly,three groups of different amplitudes tests are established to determine the high cycle amplitude.Finally,another three groups of the high-low combined cycle fatigue(HLCCF)tests for turbine mortise of a certain type engine are carried out.The results show that the macro and micro failure modes are identical with outfield's,which verifies the accuracy of the conversion method.

Studies on New Steroidal Saponins from Allii macrostemonis Bulbus and Their Antitumor Activities

Two new steroidal saponms（2, 3） and two known compounds（1, 4） were isolated from 75% ethanol extract ofAllii macrostemonis bulbus by various spectral methods. The two new steroidal saponins were respectively elucidated as （25S）-26-O-β-D-glucopyranosyl-5α-furostanol-2α,3β,22,26-tetrol-3-O-β-D-glucopyranosyl（1→2）-[β-D- glucopyranosyl（1→3）]-β-D-glucopyranosyl（1→4 ）-β-D-galactopyranoside（2 ） and 26-O-β-D-glucopyranosyl-5α- furostanol-25（ 27）-ene-3β,22,26-tetrol-3-O-β-D-glucopyranosyl（ 1→2 ）-[β-D-glucopyranosyl（ 1→3 ）] -β-D-glucopyranosyl- （1→4）-β-D-galactopyranoside（3）. Compound 4 was obtained from this medical plant for the first time. The activity experiments of proliferation inhibition on tumor cells were performed by cell counting kit-8（CCK-8） method for compound 2（25S-configuration） and its isomer（compound 1, 25R-configttration）. The results show that compounds 1 and 2 have weak inhibition on lung cancer A549 cells, melanoma A375 cells and breast cancer MCF-7 cells as well as certain inhibitory effect on liver cancer HepG2 cells, and the inhibitory effect of compound 1 is stronger than that of compound 2.