Fiber Bragg grating sensor interrogation system using a CCD side detection method with superimposed blazed gratings

We present, for the first time to our knowledge, experimental evidence showing that superimposed blazed fiber Bragg gratings may be fabricated and used to extend the dynamic range of a grating-based spectrometer. Blazed gratings of 4° and 8° were superimposed in germanosilicate fiber by ultraviolet inscription and used in conjunction with a coated charged-coupled device array to interrogate a wavelength-division-multiplexing sensor array. We show that the system can be used to monitor strain and temperature sensors simultaneously with an employable bandwidth which is extendedable to 70 nm.

Numerical implementation of the coarse step method with a varying differential group delay

The effect of having a fixed differential-group delay term in the coarse-step method results in a periodic pattern in the autocorrelation function. We solve this problem by inserting a varying DGD term at each integration step, according to a Gaussian distribution. Simulation results are given to illustrate the phenomenon and provide some evidence, about its statistical nature.

Solving Differential Equations by Parallel Laplace Method with Assured Accuracy

The paper has been presented at the 12th International Conference on Applications of Computer Algebra, Varna, Bulgaria, June, 2006

Complexation in composite solutions of melanin with 2,4,7-trinitrofluorenone

A feasibility of formation of donor-acceptor charge-transfer (CT) complexes between melanin and 2,4,7-trinitrofluorenone (TNF) being good electron acceptor has been studied in solutions by means of the absorption and photoluminescence (PL) spectra. The model of electronic transitions in a melanin-TNF composite solution has been proposed. © 2014 Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Nonlinear limit of alternative method to 2 × 2 MIMO for LTE RoF system

Owing to the limited cell size of eNodeB (eNB), the relay node has emerged as an attractive solution for the long-term evolution (LTE) system. The nonlinear limit of the alternative method to multipleinput and multiple-output (MIMO) based on frequency division multiplexing (FDM) for orthogonal FDM (OFDM) is analysed over varying transmission spans. In this reported work, it is shown that the degradation pattern over the linear, intermixing and nonlinear propagation regions is consistent for the 2 and the 2.6 GHz bands. The proposed bands experienced a linear increase in the error vector magnitude (EVM) for both the linear and the nonlinear regions proportional to the increasing transmission spans. In addition, an optical launch power between -2 and 2 dBm achieved a significantly lower EVM than the LTE limit of 8% for the 10-60 km spans. © The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2014.

An Alternative Goodness-of-fit Test for Normality with Unknown Parameters

Goodness-of-fit tests have been studied by many researchers. Among them, an alternative statistical test for uniformity was proposed by Chen and Ye (2009). The test was used by Xiong (2010) to test normality for the case that both location parameter and scale parameter of the normal distribution are known. The purpose of the present thesis is to extend the result to the case that the parameters are unknown. A table for the critical values of the test statistic is obtained using Monte Carlo simulation. The performance of the proposed test is compared with the Shapiro-Wilk test and the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. Monte-Carlo simulation results show that proposed test performs better than the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test in many cases. The Shapiro Wilk test is still the most powerful test although in some cases the test proposed in the present research performs better.

A Component Based Heuristic Search Method with AdaptivePerturbations for Hospital Personnel Scheduling

Nurse rostering is a complex scheduling problem that affects hospital personnel on a daily basis all over the world. This paper presents a new component-based approach with adaptive perturbations, for a nurse scheduling problem arising at a major UK hospital. The main idea behind this technique is to decompose a schedule into its components (i.e. the allocated shift pattern of each nurse), and then mimic a natural evolutionary process on these components to iteratively deliver better schedules. The worthiness of all components in the schedule has to be continuously demonstrated in order for them to remain there. This demonstration employs a dynamic evaluation function which evaluates how well each component contributes towards the final objective. Two perturbation steps are then applied: the first perturbation eliminates a number of components that are deemed not worthy to stay in the current schedule; the second perturbation may also throw out, with a low level of probability, some worthy components. The eliminated components are replenished with new ones using a set of constructive heuristics using local optimality criteria. Computational results using 52 data instances demonstrate the applicability of the proposed approach in solving real-world problems.

Losses from Horizontal Merger: an Extension to a Successive Oligopoly Model with Product Differentiation

This paper generalizes the model of Salant et al. (1983; Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 98, pp. 185–199) to a successive oligopoly model with product differentiation. Upstream firms produce differentiated goods, retailers compete in quantities, and supply contracts are linear. We show that if retailers buy from all producers, downstream mergers do not affect wholesale prices. Our result replicates that of Salant's, where mergers are not profitable unless the size of the merged firm exceeds 80 per cent of the industry. This result is robust to the type of competition.

Numerical studies on quasilinear and linear elliptic equations

We explore here the acceleration of convergence of iterative methods for the solution of a class of quasilinear and linear algebraic equations. The specific systems are the finite difference form of the Navier-Stokes equations and the energy equation for recirculating flows. The acceleration procedures considered are: the successive over relaxation scheme; several implicit methods; and a second-order procedure. A new implicit method—the alternating direction line iterative method—is proposed in this paper. The method combines the advantages of the line successive over relaxation and alternating direction implicit methods. The various methods are tested for their computational economy and accuracy on a typical recirculating flow situation. The numerical experiments show that the alternating direction line iterative method is the most economical method of solving the Navier-Stokes equations for all Reynolds numbers in the laminar regime. The usual ADI method is shown to be not so attractive for large Reynolds numbers because of the loss of diagonal dominance. This loss can however be restored by a suitable choice of the relaxation parameter, but at the cost of accuracy. The accuracy of the new procedure is comparable to that of the well-tested successive overrelaxation method and to the available results in the literature. The second-order procedure turns out to be the most efficient method for the solution of the linear energy equation.

An assessment to pathogenicity of Streptococcus iniae obtained from rainbow trout fish in Fars Province

In order to evaluating Streptoccocus iniae pathogenicity recovered from trout in Fars province a total number of 400 healthy (15-20g) fingerling fish specimens which were kept in 1000 liters ponds and after spending compatibility (adaptation) period in new environment and desired condition as aspect of temperature, pH, food and density relative to accomplish disease experiments in interamusclar injection method with 3 × 10 3 , 3 × 10 4, 3 × 10 5, 3 × 10 6 ,3 × 10 7 bacterium cell dilutions per each fish, interaperitonal method with 2 × 10 3 , 2 × 10 4, 2 × 10 5, 2 × 10 6 ,2 × 10 7 dilutions of bacterium cell and in water bath method with 2 × 10 3 , 2 × 10 4, 2 × 10 5, 2 × 10 6 2 × 107 dilutions in 20 degree centigrade temperature were used. Control groups according to above (mentioned) method with 0.1cc sterile physiological serum per each fish were injected. Clinical and autopsy signs that observed in injected groups were includes: body darkness, swelling of abdomen, exophthalmy sometime with eye ocular haemorrhagy, anal (rectal) prolaps, blood congestion and petechia in muscles and congestion and haemorrhagy in intestines. Infectious results in interamusclar injection shown that, mortality 22 hours after injection begans and in 3 × 107 cells dilution per each fish 30 hours pass the injection was reached above 50 percent, so that the amount of LD50/ 30h in 3 × 10 7 cells per each fish was estimated. In interaperitonal injection method was shown those 20 hours after injection mortality begins and up to maximum 80 hours after continued and 32 hours after injection in 2 × 10 7 cells dilution mortality was reached above 50 percent, so that LD50 /32 hour in 2 × 10 7 cell dilution per each fish estimated. In water bath method even after sparing 15 days mortality had been too low which indicating long process of disease. By microscopic study of tissues, dilatation of bowman capsule, shrinkage of glomerols, increasing of melano macrophage centers, degeneration, necrosis of urine tubules in kidney tissue, dilatation of sinusoids, congestion of hepatic vessels, increasing of melanoma macrophages and hepatocite vacuolization in liver tissue, spleen congestion, heart pericardit, ocular haemorrhagy, congestion, edema and separating of basement membrane from gill secondary lamellae can be referred.

Studies on interaction of bovine serum albumin with indo-1 by fluorescence spectroscopic method

The binding-site number was calculated by using fluorescence spectroscopic method with bovine serum albumin(BSA) and Indo-1 as protein and ligand models, respectively. The method for calculating binding-site number in BSA for Indo-1 was developed based on the relationships between the changes of Indo-1 fluorescence intensity and the analytical concentration of BSA. And the interaction of BSA with Indo-1 was investigated comprehensively by using fluorescence techniques as well as fluorescence resonance energy transfer, and the thermodynamic parameters were calculated according to the changes of enthalpy on temperature.,

Estimating parameters in Markov models for longitudinal studies with missing data or surrogate outcomes

The discrete-time Markov chain is commonly used in describing changes of health states for chronic diseases in a longitudinal study. Statistical inferences on comparing treatment effects or on finding determinants of disease progression usually require estimation of transition probabilities. In many situations when the outcome data have some missing observations or the variable of interest (called a latent variable) can not be measured directly, the estimation of transition probabilities becomes more complicated. In the latter case, a surrogate variable that is easier to access and can gauge the characteristics of the latent one is usually used for data analysis. ^ This dissertation research proposes methods to analyze longitudinal data (1) that have categorical outcome with missing observations or (2) that use complete or incomplete surrogate observations to analyze the categorical latent outcome. For (1), different missing mechanisms were considered for empirical studies using methods that include EM algorithm, Monte Carlo EM and a procedure that is not a data augmentation method. For (2), the hidden Markov model with the forward-backward procedure was applied for parameter estimation. This method was also extended to cover the computation of standard errors. The proposed methods were demonstrated by the Schizophrenia example. The relevance of public health, the strength and limitations, and possible future research were also discussed. ^

A Petrov-Galerkin method for a singularly perturbed ordinary differential equation with non-smooth data

In this paper, a singularly perturbed ordinary differential equation with non-smooth data is considered. The numerical method is generated by means of a Petrov-Galerkin finite element method with the piecewise-exponential test function and the piecewise-linear trial function. At the discontinuous point of the coefficient, a special technique is used. The method is shown to be first-order accurate and singular perturbation parameter uniform convergence. Finally, numerical results are presented, which are in agreement with theoretical results.

Stiffness-damping matching method of an ECAS system based on LQG control

A novel method of matching stiffness and continuous variable damping of an ECAS (electronically controlled air suspension) based on LQG (linear quadratic Gaussian) control was proposed to simultaneously improve the road-friendliness and ride comfort of a two-axle school bus. Taking account of the suspension nonlinearities and target-height-dependent variation in suspension characteristics, a stiffness model of the ECAS mounted on the drive axle of the bus was developed based on thermodynamics and the key parameters were obtained through field tests. By determining the proper range of the target height for the ECAS of the fully-loaded bus based on the design requirements of vehicle body bounce frequency, the control algorithm of the target suspension height (i.e., stiffness) was derived according to driving speed and road roughness. Taking account of the nonlinearities of a continuous variable semi-active damper, the damping force was obtained through the subtraction of the air spring force from the optimum integrated suspension force, which was calculated based on LQG control. Finally, a GA (genetic algorithm)-based matching method between stepped variable damping and stiffness was employed as a benchmark to evaluate the effectiveness of the LQG-based matching method. Simulation results indicate that compared with the GA-based matching method, both dynamic tire force and vehicle body vertical acceleration responses are markedly reduced around the vehicle body bounce frequency employing the LQG-based matching method, with peak values of the dynamic tire force PSD (power spectral density) decreased by 73.6%, 60.8% and 71.9% in the three cases, and corresponding reduction are 71.3%, 59.4% and 68.2% for the vehicle body vertical acceleration. A strong robustness to variation of driving speed and road roughness is also observed for the LQG-based matching method.