10,437 research outputs found
Feasibility Study of Tractor-Test Vehicle Technique for Practical Structural Condition Assessment of Beam-Like Bridge Deck
The tractor-test vehicle technique of non-destructive testing for indirect measurement of the modal properties of a bridge deck is revisited in this paper with several improvements for possible practical application to the structural condition assessment of a beam-like bridge deck. The effect of damping of the vehicle-bridge system is considered and the modal properties from only the first vibration mode of the structure will be used for a quick and simple assessment. The two test vehicles are designed to have the same modal frequency and damping ratio but with parameters in the follower No.2 test vehicle proportional to those in the follower No.1 test vehicle. This effectively removes the effect of road surface roughness in the response of an equivalent vehicle such that the error in the subsequent condition assessment is reduced. Through data collected on-site transmitted to the remote computer platform, a simple technique based on the moment-curvature relationship acceptable to practical engineers is adopted for the condition assessment with improvements in the estimation of the element bending stiffness of the deck. Scenarios with different damping, vehicle speed, road surface roughness, and local damages in the bridge structure are studied with or without temperature effect in the measurement. Through numerical simulations and field tests, the tractor-test vehicle technique of non-destructive testing with the proposed modifications and improvements has been demonstrated to give consistently accurate estimates of the element bending stiffness of the bridge deck but with a small error close to the end of the deck
Cooling effect in emissions of 103mRh excited by bremsstrahlung
Nonlinear characteristic emissions of K alpha, K beta and gamma with a
significant triplet splitting at room temperature are observed from the
long-lived nuclear state of 103mRh excited by bremsstrahlung irradiation. A
pronounced phase-transition-like narrowing of the emission profiles occurs
immediately after the sample is cooled down to 77 K. The room temperature
profiles reappear again abruptly and almost reversibly as the temperature
drifts freely back to approximately the ice point after the filling of liquid
nitrogen is stopped. These emission properties at 300 K and at low temperature
may indicate that the 103mRh nuclei are in collective states
Numerical approximation of the Euler-Poisson-Boltzmann model in the quasineutral limit
This paper analyzes various schemes for the Euler-Poisson-Boltzmann (EPB)
model of plasma physics. This model consists of the pressureless gas dynamics
equations coupled with the Poisson equation and where the Boltzmann relation
relates the potential to the electron density. If the quasi-neutral assumption
is made, the Poisson equation is replaced by the constraint of zero local
charge and the model reduces to the Isothermal Compressible Euler (ICE) model.
We compare a numerical strategy based on the EPB model to a strategy using a
reformulation (called REPB formulation). The REPB scheme captures the
quasi-neutral limit more accurately
Anchoring Bias in Online Voting
Voting online with explicit ratings could largely reflect people's
preferences and objects' qualities, but ratings are always irrational, because
they may be affected by many unpredictable factors like mood, weather, as well
as other people's votes. By analyzing two real systems, this paper reveals a
systematic bias embedding in the individual decision-making processes, namely
people tend to give a low rating after a low rating, as well as a high rating
following a high rating. This so-called \emph{anchoring bias} is validated via
extensive comparisons with null models, and numerically speaking, the extent of
bias decays with interval voting number in a logarithmic form. Our findings
could be applied in the design of recommender systems and considered as
important complementary materials to previous knowledge about anchoring effects
on financial trades, performance judgements, auctions, and so on.Comment: 5 pages, 4 tables, 5 figure
Development and clinical deployment of a smartphone-based visual field deep learning system for glaucoma detection
By 2040, ~100 million people will have glaucoma. To date, there are a lack of high-efficiency glaucoma diagnostic tools based on visual fields (VFs). Herein, we develop and evaluate the performance of ‘iGlaucoma’, a smartphone application-based deep learning system (DLS) in detecting glaucomatous VF changes. A total of 1,614,808 data points of 10,784 VFs (5542 patients) from seven centers in China were included in this study, divided over two phases. In Phase I, 1,581,060 data points from 10,135 VFs of 5105 patients were included to train (8424 VFs), validate (598 VFs) and test (3 independent test sets—200, 406, 507 samples) the diagnostic performance of the DLS. In Phase II, using the same DLS, iGlaucoma cloud-based application further tested on 33,748 data points from 649 VFs of 437 patients from three glaucoma clinics. With reference to three experienced expert glaucomatologists, the diagnostic performance (area under curve [AUC], sensitivity and specificity) of the DLS and six ophthalmologists were evaluated in detecting glaucoma. In Phase I, the DLS outperformed all six ophthalmologists in the three test sets (AUC of 0.834–0.877, with a sensitivity of 0.831–0.922 and a specificity of 0.676–0.709). In Phase II, iGlaucoma had 0.99 accuracy in recognizing different patterns in pattern deviation probability plots region, with corresponding AUC, sensitivity and specificity of 0.966 (0.953–0.979), 0.954 (0.930–0.977), and 0.873 (0.838–0.908), respectively. The ‘iGlaucoma’ is a clinically effective glaucoma diagnostic tool to detect glaucoma from humphrey VFs, although the target population will need to be carefully identified with glaucoma expertise input
Prediction of Anisotropic Single-Dirac-Cones in BiSb Thin Films
The electronic band structures of BiSb thin films can be
varied as a function of temperature, pressure, stoichiometry, film thickness
and growth orientation. We here show how different anisotropic
single-Dirac-cones can be constructed in a BiSb thin film for
different applications or research purposes. For predicting anisotropic
single-Dirac-cones, we have developed an iterative-two-dimensional-two-band
model to get a consistent inverse-effective-mass-tensor and band-gap, which can
be used in a general two-dimensional system that has a non-parabolic dispersion
relation as in a BiSb thin film system
Physics at BES-III
This physics book provides detailed discussions on important topics in
-charm physics that will be explored during the next few years at \bes3 .
Both theoretical and experimental issues are covered, including extensive
reviews of recent theoretical developments and experimental techniques. Among
the subjects covered are: innovations in Partial Wave Analysis (PWA),
theoretical and experimental techniques for Dalitz-plot analyses, analysis
tools to extract absolute branching fractions and measurements of decay
constants, form factors, and CP-violation and \DzDzb-oscillation parameters.
Programs of QCD studies and near-threshold tau-lepton physics measurements are
also discussed.Comment: Edited by Kuang-Ta Chao and Yi-Fang Wan
New Fe-based superconductors: properties relevant for applications
Less than two years after the discovery of high temperature superconductivity
in oxypnictide LaFeAs(O,F) several families of superconductors based on Fe
layers (1111, 122, 11, 111) are available. They share several characteristics
with cuprate superconductors that compromise easy applications, such as the
layered structure, the small coherence length, and unconventional pairing, On
the other hand the Fe-based superconductors have metallic parent compounds, and
their electronic anisotropy is generally smaller and does not strongly depend
on the level of doping, the supposed order parameter symmetry is s wave, thus
in principle not so detrimental to current transmission across grain
boundaries. From the application point of view, the main efforts are still
devoted to investigate the superconducting properties, to distinguish intrinsic
from extrinsic behaviours and to compare the different families in order to
identify which one is the fittest for the quest for better and more practical
superconductors. The 1111 family shows the highest Tc, huge but also the most
anisotropic upper critical field and in-field, fan-shaped resistive transitions
reminiscent of those of cuprates, while the 122 family is much less anisotropic
with sharper resistive transitions as in low temperature superconductors, but
with about half the Tc of the 1111 compounds. An overview of the main
superconducting properties relevant to applications will be presented. Upper
critical field, electronic anisotropy parameter, intragranular and
intergranular critical current density will be discussed and compared, where
possible, across the Fe-based superconductor families
Field-effect transistors assembled from functionalized carbon nanotubes
We have fabricated field effect transistors from carbon nanotubes using a
novel selective placement scheme. We use carbon nanotubes that are covalently
bound to molecules containing hydroxamic acid functionality. The functionalized
nanotubes bind strongly to basic metal oxide surfaces, but not to silicon
dioxide. Upon annealing, the functionalization is removed, restoring the
electronic properties of the nanotubes. The devices we have fabricated show
excellent electrical characteristics.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure
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