Farm practices and their effects on farm earnings

Includes bibliographical references

Design, construction, and utilization of a space station assembled from 5-meter erectable struts

The primary characteristics of the 5-meter erectable truss is presented, which was baselined for the Space Station. The relatively large 5-meter truss dimension was chosen to provide a deep beam for high bending stiffness yet provide convenient mounting locations for space shuttle cargo bay size payloads which are approx. 14.5 ft (4.4 m) in diameter. Truss nodes and quick attachment erectable joints are described which provide for evolutionary three dimensional growth and for simple maintenance and repair. A mobile remote manipulator system is described which is provided to assist in station construction and maintenance. A discussion is also presented of the construction of the Space Station and the associated extravehicular active (EVA) time

Development of a Real-Time Single-Lead Single-Beat Frequency-Independent Myocardial Infarction Detector

The central aim of this research is the development and deployment of a novel multilayer machine learning design with unique application for the diagnosis of myocardial infarctions (MIs) from individual heartbeats of single-lead electrocardiograms (EKGs) irrespective of their sampling frequencies over a given range. To the best of our knowledge, this design is the first to attempt inter-patient myocardial infarction detection from individual heartbeats of single-lead (lead II) electrocardiograms that achieves high accuracy and near real-time diagnosis. The processing time of 300 milliseconds to a diagnosis is just at the time range in between extremely fast heartbeats of around 300 milliseconds, or 200 beats per minute. The design achieves stable performance metrics over the frequency range of 202Hz to 2.8kHz with an accuracy of 77.12%, positive predictive value (PPV) of 75.85%, and a negative predictive value (NPV) of 83.02% over the entire PTB database; 85.07%, 81.54%, 87.31% over the PTB-XL (the largest EKG database available for research) validation set, and 84.17%, 78.37%, 87.55% over the PTB-XL test set. Major design contributions and findings of this work reveal (1) a method for the realtime detection of ventricular depolarization events in the PQRST complex from 12-lead electrocardiograms using Independent Component Analysis (ICA), with a slightly different use of ICA proposed for electrocardiogram analysis and R-peak detection/localization; (2) a multilayer Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM) neural network design that identifies infarcted patients from a single heartbeat of a single-lead (lead II) electrocardiogram; (3) and integrated LSTM neural network with an algorithm that detects the R-peaks in real time for instantaneous detection of myocardial infarctions and for effective monitoring of patients under cardiac stress and/or at risk of myocardial infarction; (4) a fully integrated 12-lead real-time classifier with even higher detection metrics and a deeper neural architecture, which could serve as a near real-time monitoring tool that could gauge disease progression and evaluate benefits gained from early intervention and treatment planning; (5) a real-time frequency-independent design based on a single-lead single-beat MI detector, which is of pivotal importance to deployment as there is no standard sampling frequency for EKGs, making them span a wider frequency spectrum. vi

Mechanical end joint system for connecting structural column elements

A mechanical end joint system is presented that eliminates the possibility of free movements between the joint halves during loading or vibration. Both node joint body (NJB) and column end joint body (CEJB) have cylindrical engaging ends. Each of these ends has an integral semicircular tongue and groove. The two joint halves are engaged transversely - the tongue of the NJB mating with the groove of the CEJB and vice versa. The joint system employs a spring loaded internal latch mechanism housed in the CEJB. During mating, this mechanism is pushed away from the NJB and enters the NJB when mating is completed. In order to lock the joint and add a preload across the tongue and groove faces, an operating ring collar is rotated through 45 deg causing an internal mechanism to compress a Belleville washer preload mechanism. This causes an equal and opposite force to be exerted on the latch bolt and the latch plunger. This force presses the two joint halves tightly together. In order to prevent inadvertent disassembly, a secondary lock is also engaged when the joint is closed. Plungers are carried in the operating ring collar. When the joint is closed, the plungers fall into tracks on the CEJB, which allows the joint to be opened only when the operating ring collar and plungers are pushed directly away from the joining end. One application of this invention is the rapid assembly and disassembly of diverse skeletal framework structures which is extremely important in many projects involving the exploration of space

Linearly ordered covers, normality and paracompactness

AbstractIt is shown that a regular space is collectionwise normal and countably paracompact if every open cover has an open, order cushioned refinement. A sufficient condition for paracompactness, in terms of certain order locally finite covers, is given, and is applied to the problem of the paracompactness of product spaces