Impact of the ash deposits from coal combustion on thermal conditions of the furnace pipes

One of the problems of thermal power plants is the contamination of heating surfaces that arises during the boiler unit operation while combusting the solid fuel. The main part of the energy is consumed by pipes forming the furnace. Non-combustible mineral part of the fuel in the form of the ash and slag accumulates on the heating surfaces and thereby prevents heating of the working liquid. Therefore, boiler requires higher fuel consumption to maintain the operating conditions. Violation of the thermal conditions of heating surfaces in consequence of contamination causes the negative effects on metal pipes right up to failure. This problem is urgent due to the fact that information about the process of slagging and its effect on the thermal conditions of the heating surface operation enables the possibility to minimize the negative consequences. This possibility is achieved by adjusting the thermal conditions of the combustion process in the furnace with the periodic cleaning of the heating surfaces

Dynamics of history-dependent perceptual judgment

Identical physical inputs do not always evoke identical percepts. To investigate the role of stimulus history in tactile perception, we designed a task in which rats had to judge each vibrissal vibration, in a long series, as strong or weak depending on its mean speed. After a low-speed stimulus (trial n − 1), rats were more likely to report the next stimulus (trial n) as strong, and after a high-speed stimulus, they were more likely to report the next stimulus as weak, a repulsive effect that did not depend on choice or reward on trial n − 1. This effect could be tracked over several preceding trials (i.e., n − 2 and earlier) and was characterized by an exponential decay function, reflecting a trial-by-trial incorporation of sensory history. Surprisingly, the influence of trial n − 1 strengthened as the time interval between n − 1 and n grew. Human subjects receiving fingertip vibrations showed these same key findings. We are able to account for the repulsive stimulus history effect, and its detailed time scale, through a single-parameter model, wherein each new stimulus gradually updates the subject’s decision criterion. This model points to mechanisms underlying how the past affects the ongoing subjective experience

Direct contribution of the sensory cortex to the judgment of stimulus duration

Decision making frequently depends on monitoring the duration of sensory events. To determine whether, and how, the perception of elapsed time derives from the neuronal representation of the stimulus itself, we recorded and optogenetically modulated vibrissal somatosensory cortical activity as male rats judged vibration duration. Perceived duration was dilated by optogenetic excitation. A second set of rats judged vibration intensity; here, optogenetic excitation amplified the intensity percept, demonstrating sensory cortex to be the common gateway both to time and to stimulus feature processing. A model beginning with the membrane currents evoked by vibrissal and optogenetic drive and culminating in the representation of perceived time successfully replicated rats' choices. Time perception is thus as deeply intermeshed within the sensory processing pathway as is the sense of touch itself, suggesting that the experience of time may be further investigated with the toolbox of sensory coding

Long-term population fluctuations of small mammals at the UWM Field Station

Population sizes of four small mammals, Peromyscus leucopus, Microtus pennsylvanicus, Blarina brevicauda, and Sorex cinereus, were monitored for over twenty years at the UWM Field Station. P. leucopus had moderate fluctuations in size, but showed no evidence of cyclic or regular fluctuations. M. pennsylvanicus exhibited dramatic fluctuations with cycles of 3-5 years. Neither shrew species appeared to have cyclic fluctuations. The population sizes of the two shrew species were positively correlated with each other. No other significant correlations were found between species. Population sizes were probably influenced by a number of factors including predation, competition and weather

Oscillation Effects On Neutrinos From The Early Phase Of a Nearby Supernova

Neutrinos emitted during stellar core collapse leading to a supernova are primarily of the electron neutrino type at source which may undergo oscillation between flavor eigenstates during propagation to an earth-bound detector. Although the number of neutrinos emitted during the pre-bounce collapse phase is much smaller than that emitted in the post-bounce phase (in which all flavors of neutrinos are emitted), a nearby supernova event may nevertheless register a substantial number of detections from the pre-bounce phase at SuperKamiokande (SK) and the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO). The calorimetric measurement of the supernova neutrino fluence from this stage via the charge current and neutral current detection channels in SNO and the corresponding distortion of detected spectrum in SK over the no-oscillation spectrum, can probe information about neutrino mass difference and mixing which are illustrated here in terms of two- and three-flavor oscillation models

Driver behaviour with adaptive cruise control

This paper reports on the evaluation of adaptive cruise control (ACC) from a psychological perspective. It was anticipated that ACC would have an effect upon the psychology of driving, i.e. make the driver feel like they have less control, reduce the level of trust in the vehicle, make drivers less situationally aware, but workload might be reduced and driving might be less stressful. Drivers were asked to drive in a driving simulator under manual and ACC conditions. Analysis of variance techniques were used to determine the effects of workload (i.e. amount of traffic) and feedback (i.e. degree of information from the ACC system) on the psychological variables measured (i.e. locus of control, trust, workload, stress, mental models and situation awareness). The results showed that: locus of control and trust were unaffected by ACC, whereas situation awareness, workload and stress were reduced by ACC. Ways of improving situation awareness could include cues to help the driver predict vehicle trajectory and identify conflicts

A Missense Mutation in the Collagen Triple Helix of EDA Is Associated with X-Linked Recessive Hypohidrotic Ectodermal Dysplasia in Fleckvieh Cattle.

Mutations within the ectodysplasin A (EDA) gene have been associated with congenital hypotrichosis and anodontia (HAD/XHED) in humans, mice, dogs and cattle. We identified a three-generation family of Fleckvieh cattle with male calves exhibiting clinical and histopathological signs consistent with an X-linked recessive HAD (XHED). Whole genome and Sanger sequencing of cDNA showed a perfect association of the missense mutation g.85716041G>A (ss2019497443, rs1114816375) within the EDA gene with all three cases following an X-linked recessive inheritance, but normal EDAR and EDARADD. This mutation causes an exchange of glycine (G) with arginine (R) at amino acid position 227 (p.227G>R) in the second collagen triple helix repeat domain of EDA. The EDA variant was associated with a significant reduction and underdevelopment of hair follicles along with a reduced outgrowth of hairs, a complete loss of seromucous nasolabial and mucous tracheal and bronchial glands and a malformation of and reduction in number of teeth. Thermostability of EDA G227R was reduced, consistent with a relatively mild hair and tooth phenotype. However, incisors and canines were more severely affected in one of the calves, which correlated with the presence of a homozygous missense mutation of RNF111 (g.51306765T>G), a putative candidate gene possibly associated with tooth number in EDA-deficient Fleckvieh calves

Structural analysis of a genetically encoded fret biosensor by SAXS and MD simulations

Inspired by the modular architecture of natural signaling proteins, ligand binding proteins are equipped with two fluorescent proteins (FPs) in order to obtain Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET)-based biosensors. Here, we investigated a glucose sensor where the donor and acceptor FPs were attached to a glucose binding protein using a variety of different linker sequences. For three resulting sensor constructs the corresponding glucose induced conformational changes were measured by small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and compared to recently published single molecule FRET results (Höfig et al., ACS Sensors, 2018). For one construct which exhibits a high change in energy transfer and a large change of the radius of gyration upon ligand binding, we performed coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations for the ligand-free and the ligand-bound state. Our analysis indicates that a carefully designed attachment of the donor FP is crucial for the proper transfer of the glucose induced conformational change of the glucose binding protein into a well pronounced FRET signal change as measured in this sensor construct. Since the other FP (acceptor) does not experience such a glucose induced alteration, it becomes apparent that only one of the FPs needs to have a well-adjusted attachment to the glucose binding protein

A methodology based on profitability criteria for defining the partial defection of customers in non-contractual settings

The defection or churn of customers represents an important concern for any company and a central matter of interest in customer base analysis. An additional complication arises in non-contractual settings, where the characteristics that should be observed to saying that a customer has totally or partially defected are not clearly defined. As a matter of fact, different definitions of the churn situation could be used in this context. Focusing on non-contractual settings, in this paper we propose a methodology for evaluating the short-time economic effects that using a certain definition of churn would have on a company. With this aim, we have defined two efficiency measures for the economic results of a marketing campaign implemented against churn, and these measures have been computed using a set of definitions of partial defection. Our methodology finds that definition maximizing both efficiency measures and moreover, the monetary amount that the company should invest per customer in the campaign for achieving the optimal solution. This has been modelled as a multiobjective optimization problem that we solved using compromise programming. Numerical results using real data from a Spanish retailing company are presented and discussed in order to show the performance and validity of our proposal.Clemente Císcar, M.; San Matías Izquierdo, S.; Giner Bosch, V. (2014). A methodology based on profitability criteria for defining the partial defection of customers in non-contractual settings. European Journal of Operational Research. 239(1):276-285. doi:10.1016/j.ejor.2014.04.029S276285239

VEHICLE OCCLUSION REMOVAL FROM SINGLE AERIAL IMAGES USING GENERATIVE ADVERSARIAL NETWORKS

Removing occluding objects such as vehicles from drivable areas allows precise extraction of road boundaries and related semantic objects such as lane-markings, which is crucial for several applications such as generating high-definition maps for autonomous driving. Conventionally, multiple images of the same area taken at different times or from various perspectives are used to remove occlusions and to reconstruct the occluded areas. Nevertheless, these approaches require large amounts of data, which are not always available. Furthermore, they do not work for static occlusions caused by, among others, parked vehicles. In this paper, we address occlusion removal based on single aerial images using generative adversarial networks (GANs), which are able to deal with the mentioned challenges. To this end, we adapt several state-of-the-art GAN-based image inpainting algorithms to reconstruct the missing information. Results indicate that the StructureFlow algorithm outperforms the competitors and the restorations obtained are robust, with high visual fidelity in real-world applications. Furthermore, due to the lack of annotated aerial vehicle removal datasets, we generate a new dataset for training and validating the algorithms, the Aerial Vehicle Occlusion Removal (AVOR) dataset. To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first to address vehicle removal using deep learning algorithms to enhance maps