Capacitive frost depth indicator

ArticleThe depth of soil freezing , i.e., the depth at which water is frozen, is a significant factor in meteorology, as it affects many processes in agriculture, building, etc. Soil frost penetration is an important factor for overwintering organisms, but also for physical and chemical processes in soil, particularly for its mechanical properties. The de pth of freezing is normally determined directly, i.e. mechanically, using a special soil freezing meter, i.e., frost - depth indicator, according to the process of water freezing in the probe. Another method lies in determining the soil temperature by the in terpolation of the curves from the graph, as measured by soil thermometers according to the change in the resistivity of soil or water, when frozen. The principle of the frost - depth indicator function is to evaluate the temperature dependence of water perm ittivity, which decreases, when water is frozen, from ε r ~ 87 at 1 °C to ε r ~ 3.2 at - 1 °C , typical for ice. The water permittivity is evaluated by a measuring capacitor, which is adapted into the shape of the frost depth indicator probe, whose dielectric is deionized water. During freezing, the capacity is reduced in this area. The capacity of the partially frozen probe is directly proportional to the length of its non - frozen section. The measuring capacitor is a part of the resonant circuit of the oscilla tor. The frequency of the oscillator varies with the capacity of the probe and is further evaluated. The achievable measurement accuracy is approximately 2% for the probe of a 1m length and in direct evaluation by an autonomous counter. For the computer ev aluation, with the possibility to compensate the probe non - linearity, the measurement accuracy is approximately 0.5%

Effective control and battery charging system of an island PV power plant

ArticleThe paper presents a new concept of an autonomous PV power plant regulatory system with LiFePO4 batteries, which was functionally verified. The hardware system is significantly simpler and more operationally reliable. It also shows higher efficiency and lower acquisition costs than conventional commercial systems. The proposed control system was optimized for charging a multi-cell battery by PV electric energy. The system automatically maximizes the power supplied by the photovoltaic source and minimizes the power loss caused by balancing the individual cell charging processes. The problem of charge balancing is solved without the balancers. Battery cells are recharged from the separate converters supplying the PV power. The converters are controlled to observe a LiFePO4 battery charging mode while controlling the photovoltaic generator (PVG) load resistance based on an MPP monitoring. PVG power is not supplied to the charged cells, which are in this way protected from overcharging. The entire PVG power is fed to the cells to be charged. The transmission from the converters is controlled in order not to exceed the voltage and current limits at the terminals and to minimize the actual voltage deviation from the control voltage at the PVG output. The control voltage is generated as an MPP voltage approximation according to the load character-istics and the actual PVG operating conditions

Battery capacity drop during operation

ArticleA lithium - iron - phosphate ( LiFePO 4 ) battery is nowadays considered one of the best types of batteries. The paper deals with the evaluation of the drop in their capacity during operation. Based on the physical analysis of charging an d discharging processes, a mathematical model of the battery capacity has been developed during its lifetime. The decrease in capacity during battery operation is evaluated according to the loss of active material, which gradually diminishes due to a numbe r of different processes. The analysis of the loss of the active material is carried out, in particular, according to the depth of discharge, battery temperature, charging and discharging time, including the time when the battery is out of service. The tes ts were performed on the Winston Battery, Calb, Thunder Sky and Sinopoly batteries by cyclic discharging and charging at the 50%, 90% or 100% depth of discharge. Their real parameters were determined, compared to the model parameters and the parameters specified by the manufacturers and suppliers. Two automated systems were used for testing. During the test, in the tested battery with several cells, charging and discharging by a constant current were carried out automatically. Operating parameters of the te sted battery were continuously scanned, recorded and evaluated by the control computer. The capacity curves during the battery operation, determined by the type of models, were compared with the results of long - term real battery tests

Transforming and evaluating electronic health record disease phenotyping algorithms using the OMOP common data model: a case study in heart failure

Objective: The aim of the study was to transform a resource of linked electronic health records (EHR) to the OMOP common data model (CDM) and evaluate the process in terms of syntactic and semantic consistency and quality when implementing disease and risk factor phenotyping algorithms. Materials and Methods: Using heart failure (HF) as an exemplar, we represented three national EHR sources (Clinical Practice Research Datalink, Hospital Episode Statistics Admitted Patient Care, Office for National Statistics) into the OMOP CDM 5.2. We compared the original and CDM HF patient population by calculating and presenting descriptive statistics of demographics, related comorbidities, and relevant clinical biomarkers. Results: We identified a cohort of 502 536 patients with the incident and prevalent HF and converted 1 099 195 384 rows of data from 216 581 914 encounters across three EHR sources to the OMOP CDM. The largest percentage (65%) of unmapped events was related to medication prescriptions in primary care. The average coverage of source vocabularies was >98% with the exception of laboratory tests recorded in primary care. The raw and transformed data were similar in terms of demographics and comorbidities with the largest difference observed being 3.78% in the prevalence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Conclusion: Our study demonstrated that the OMOP CDM can successfully be applied to convert EHR linked across multiple healthcare settings and represent phenotyping algorithms spanning multiple sources. Similar to previous research, challenges mapping primary care prescriptions and laboratory measurements still persist and require further work. The use of OMOP CDM in national UK EHR is a valuable research tool that can enable large-scale reproducible observational research

An agenda-setting paper on data sharing platforms: euCanSHare workshop [version 1; peer review: awaiting peer review]

Various data sharing platforms are being developed to enhance the sharing of cohort data by addressing the fragmented state of data storage and access systems. However, policy challenges in several domains remain unresolved. The euCanSHare workshop was organized to identify and discuss these challenges and to set the future research agenda. Concerns over the multiplicity and long-term sustainability of platforms, lack of resources, access of commercial parties to medical data, credit and recognition mechanisms in academia and the organization of data access committees are outlined. Within these areas, solutions need to be devised to ensure an optimal functioning of platforms

Structural Modifications of the Brain in Acclimatization to High-Altitude

Adaptive changes in respiratory and cardiovascular responses at high altitude (HA) have been well clarified. However, the central mechanisms underlying HA acclimatization remain unclear. Using voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) with fractional anisotropy (FA) calculation, we investigated 28 Han immigrant residents (17–22 yr) born and raised at HA of 2616–4200 m in Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau for at least 17 years and who currently attended college at sea-level (SL). Their family migrated from SL to HA 2–3 generations ago and has resided at HA ever since. Control subjects were matched SL residents. HA residents (vs. SL) showed decreased grey matter volume in the bilateral anterior insula, right anterior cingulate cortex, bilateral prefrontal cortex, left precentral cortex, and right lingual cortex. HA residents (vs. SL) had significantly higher FA mainly in the bilateral anterior limb of internal capsule, bilateral superior and inferior longitudinal fasciculus, corpus callosum, bilateral superior corona radiata, bilateral anterior external capsule, right posterior cingulum, and right corticospinal tract. Higher FA values in those regions were associated with decreased or unchanged radial diffusivity coinciding with no change of longitudinal diffusivity in HA vs. SL group. Conversely, HA residents had lower FA in the left optic radiation and left superior longitudinal fasciculus. Our data demonstrates that HA acclimatization is associated with brain structural modifications, including the loss of regional cortical grey matter accompanied by changes in the white matter, which may underlie the physiological adaptation of residents at HA

Contextualising adverse events of special interest to characterise the baseline incidence rates in 24 million patients with COVID-19 across 26 databases: a multinational retrospective cohort study

BACKGROUND: Adverse events of special interest (AESIs) were pre-specified to be monitored for the COVID-19 vaccines. Some AESIs are not only associated with the vaccines, but with COVID-19. Our aim was to characterise the incidence rates of AESIs following SARS-CoV-2 infection in patients and compare these to historical rates in the general population. METHODS: A multi-national cohort study with data from primary care, electronic health records, and insurance claims mapped to a common data model. This study's evidence was collected between Jan 1, 2017 and the conclusion of each database (which ranged from Jul 2020 to May 2022). The 16 pre-specified prevalent AESIs were: acute myocardial infarction, anaphylaxis, appendicitis, Bell's palsy, deep vein thrombosis, disseminated intravascular coagulation, encephalomyelitis, Guillain- Barré syndrome, haemorrhagic stroke, non-haemorrhagic stroke, immune thrombocytopenia, myocarditis/pericarditis, narcolepsy, pulmonary embolism, transverse myelitis, and thrombosis with thrombocytopenia. Age-sex standardised incidence rate ratios (SIR) were estimated to compare post-COVID-19 to pre-pandemic rates in each of the databases. FINDINGS: Substantial heterogeneity by age was seen for AESI rates, with some clearly increasing with age but others following the opposite trend. Similarly, differences were also observed across databases for same health outcome and age-sex strata. All studied AESIs appeared consistently more common in the post-COVID-19 compared to the historical cohorts, with related meta-analytic SIRs ranging from 1.32 (1.05 to 1.66) for narcolepsy to 11.70 (10.10 to 13.70) for pulmonary embolism. INTERPRETATION: Our findings suggest all AESIs are more common after COVID-19 than in the general population. Thromboembolic events were particularly common, and over 10-fold more so. More research is needed to contextualise post-COVID-19 complications in the longer term. FUNDING: None

The alterations of tonus and movements through the interplay between the cerebral hemispheres and the cerebellum

This paper deals with the experimental production of involuntary movenients and abnormal tonus in macaques ( Macacu mulatta ) and their alterations in these animals and in children with cerebral palsy and other cerebral lesions. The first major subdivision of the paper has three parts. The first part describes the effects of lesions in the macaque cerebral hemispheres, ranging from a small destructive lesion in area 4 to an essentially complete bicortectomy. The case histories of a few patients document some of the results. The second part reports the effects of lesions in the macaque cerebellum ranging from small vermal injuries to complete cerebellectomies. The third part is concerned with successive lesions in the cerebellum and cerebral hemispheres of macaques and with planned cerebellar lesions in a few children with grave hypertonicity and marked involuntary movements. This subdivision is illustrated with photographs of the monkeys and the children at various stages of the procedures, photographs of many monkey brains at postmortem, and some photomicrographs showing lesions. The second major subdivision has a discussion of the anatomic and the physiologic bases for the experimental results obtained and for the operations on the children. It correlates the material presented with data from the literature and is illustrated with photomicrographs of degenerated tracts and with diagrams. The paper stresses the balancing of cerebral hemisphere and cerebellar discharges in the regulation of tonus and in the stabilizing of movements. It discusses the possibility of producing more effective tonus by making carefully planned lesions in cerebellar areas of animals or of children with highly handicapping hypertonicity.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/49991/1/901270502_ftp.pd

Model of storage of ERP protocols in EEG/ERP portal

The EEG/ERP (Electroencephalography/Even-Related Potentials) Portal serves for storage and management of ERP experiments. The protocols describing these experiments are designed and implemented using various software applications and/or hardware devices. Some protocols are kept in XML files and stored in the EEG/ERP portal database as LOB (Large Object) data types. Since it is important for researchers to directly find details about design of the ERP protocols in the related XML files and it is also hard to use LOB data for generating the semantic web output, storage types provided by the Oracle 11g database system were investigated and compared. Therefore a new model of storage of ERP protocols is introduced. This model is finally simplified after analysis of results of performance tests. © 2012 IEEE

Influence of Intermetallic Compounds on RF Resistance of Joints Soldered with Lead Free Alloys

During soldering process intermetallic compounds as a reaction between solder and substrate are created. Physical properties of those compounds are different to properties of solder and substrate. The influence of intermetallic compounds (IMC) on radio frequency resistance of soldered joint has been identified. Tested solders were lead free Sn-1Cu, Sn-4Ag and Sn-3.8Ag-0.7Cu and lead containing Sn-37Pb (all in weight percent). Samples were annealed up to 3000 hours at 150 °C to accelerated growing of IMC. Radio frequency measuring method has been developed and is described. Influence of IMC on resistance of joint is growing with growing frequency because IMC with slightly different resistivity to base solder is creating barrier to current. Resistance of joints has been measured up to 3 GHz