Closely correlating lower and upper bound plastic analysis of real slabs

An engineer assessing the load-carrying capacity of an existing reinforced concrete slab is likely to use elastic analysis to check the load at which the structure might be expected to fail in flexure or in shear. In practice, many reinforced concrete slabs are highly ductile in flexure, so an elastic analysis greatly underestimates the loads at which they fail in this mode. The use of conservative elastic analysis has led engineers to incorrectly condemn many slabs and therefore to specify unnecessary and wasteful flexural strengthening or replacement. The lower bound theorem is based on the same principles as the upper bound theorem used in yield line analysis, but any solution that rigorously satisfies the lower bound theorem is guaranteed to be a safe underestimate of the collapse load. Jackson presented a rigorous lower bound method that obtains very accurate results for complex real slabs.

Heterogeneous reconfigurable system for adaptive particle filters in real-time applications

This paper presents a heterogeneous reconfigurable system for real-time applications applying particle filters. The system consists of an FPGA and a multi-threaded CPU. We propose a method to adapt the number of particles dynamically and utilise the run-time reconfigurability of the FPGA for reduced power and energy consumption. An application is developed which involves simultaneous mobile robot localisation and people tracking. It shows that the proposed adaptive particle filter can reduce up to 99% of computation time. Using run-time reconfiguration, we achieve 34% reduction in idle power and save 26-34% of system energy. Our proposed system is up to 7.39 times faster and 3.65 times more energy efficient than the Intel Xeon X5650 CPU with 12 threads, and 1.3 times faster and 2.13 times more energy efficient than an NVIDIA Tesla C2070 GPU. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.

Diesel smoke transient control using a real-time smoke sensor

A novel real time smoke sensor is described, which is mounted in the exhaust manifold and detects the smoke by virtue of the natural electrical charge which is carried on the smoke. The somewhat obscure origin of the charge on the smoke is briefly considered, as well as the operation of the sensor itself. The use of the sensor as part of a feedback control shows that it can be very effective in reducing smoke puffs. Copyright © 1987 Society of Automotive Engineers, Inc.

Frequency locked micro disk resonator for real time and precise monitoring of refractive index.

We experimentally demonstrate a frequency modulation locked servo loop, locked to a resonance line of an on-chip microdisk resonator in a silicon nitride platform. By using this approach, we demonstrate real-time monitoring of refractive index variations with a precision approaching 10(-7) RIU, using a moderate Q factor of 10(4). The approach can be applied for intensity independent, dynamic and precise index of refraction monitoring for biosensing applications.

Superradiance: exploiting quantum phase transition in the real world

Superradiance (SR), or cooperative spontaneous emission, has been predicted by R. Dicke before the invention of the laser. During the last few years one can see a renaissance of both experimental and theoretical studies of the superradiant phase transition in a variety of media, ranging from quantum dots and Bose condensates through to black holes. Until recently, despite of many years of research, SR has been considered as a phenomenon of pure scientific interest without obvious potential applications. However, recent investigations of the femtosecond SR emission generation from semiconductors have opened up some practical opportunities for the exploitation of this quantum optics phenomenon. Here we present a brief review of some features, advantages and potential applications of the SR generation from semiconductor laser structures

Difterentially expressed genes of Tetrahymena thermophila in response to tributyltin (TBT) identified by suppression subtractive hybridization and real time quantitative PCR

Tributyltin (TBT) is widely used as antifouling paints, agriculture biocides, and plastic stabilizers around the world, resulting in great pollution problem in aquatic environments. However, it has been short of the biomonitor to detect TBT in freshwater. We constructed the suppression subtractive hybridization library of Tetrahymena thermophila exposed to TBT, and screened out 101 Expressed Sequence Tags whose expressions were significantly up- or down-regulated with TBT treatment. From this, a series of genes related to the TBT toxicity were discovered, such as glutathione-S-transferase gene (down-regulated), plasma membrane Ca2+ ATPase isoforms 3 gene (up-regulated) and NgoA (up-regulated). Furthermore, their expressions under different concentrations of TBT treatment (0.5-40 ppb) were detected by real time fluorescent quantitative PCR. The differentially expressed genes of T thermophila in response to TBT were identified, which provide the basic to make Tetrahymena as a sensitive, rapid and convenient TBT biomonitor in freshwater based on rDNA inducible expression system. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

100 Gb/s PAM4-CAP2 real-time modulation of a single optical source for next-generation datacommunication links

100 Gb/s PAM4-CAP2 modulation is demonstrated for next-generation datacommunication links. Simulation studies indicate a power budget advantage of 2.5 dBo relative to PAM8 modulation. A real-time experimental demonstration is performed. © OSA 2014.

Real-time studies on microalgae under microgravity

Using remote sensing technique, we investigated real-time Nostoc sphaeroides Kiltz (Cyanobacterium) in Closed System under microgravity by SHENZHOU-2 spacecraft in January 2001. The experiments had 1g centrifuges in space for control and ground control group experiments were also carried out in the same equipments and under the same controlled condition. The data about the population growth of Nostoc sp. of experiments and temperature changes of system were got from spacecraft every minute. From the data, we can find that population growth of Nostoc sp. in microgravity group was higher than that of other groups in space or on ground, even though both the control I g group in space and I g group on ground indicated same increasing characteristics in experiments. The growth rate of 1.4g group (centrifuged group on ground) was also promoted during experiment. The temperature changes of systems are also affected by gravity and light. Some aspects about those differences were discussed. From the discussion of these results during experiment, it can be found that gravity is the major factor to lead to these changes. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A programmable SIMD vision chip for real-time vision applications

A programmable vision chip for real-time vision applications is presented. The chip architecture is a combination of a SIMD processing element array and row-parallel processors, which can perform pixel-parallel and row-parallel operations at high speed. It implements the mathematical morphology method to carry out low-level and mid-level image processing and sends out image features for high-level image processing without I/O bottleneck. The chip can perform many algorithms through software control. The simulated maximum frequency of the vision chip is 300 MHz with 16 x 16 pixels resolution. It achieves the rate of 1000 frames per second in real-time vision. A prototype chip with a 16 x 16 PE array is fabricated by the 0.18 mu m standard CMOS process. It has a pixel size of 30 mu m x 40 mu m and 8.72 mW power consumption with a 1.8 V power supply. Experiments including the mathematical morphology method and target tracking application demonstrated that the chip is fully functional and can be applied in real-time vision applications.