Annual and regional variations of aflatoxin B1 levels seen in grains and feed coming from Croatian dairy farms over a 5-year period

The aim of the study was to investigate annual and regional differences in the level of aflatoxin B₁ (AFB₁) in grains and dairy cattle feed. Maize (n = 972), wheat (n = 201), barley (n = 147), oat (n = 136), grain mixtures (n = 168), and dairy cattle feed (n = 325) were sampled from 2009 to 2013 on different farms and in different farm factories situated in four Croatian regions. The samples were analysed for AFB₁ using the validated ELISA immunoassay. AFB₁ was determined in 16.4% of all investigated samples, among which maize was proven to be the most contaminated, with 21.7% of the samples recovered during 2013 harbouring AFB₁ in concentrations over the permissible ones. Levels higher than permitted were observed in 17.9% and 12.3% of grain mixtures and dairy cattle feed, respectively, whereas concentrations of AFB₁ determined in other crops throughout the investigated period met the stipulated requirements. The results revealed the AFB₁ occurrence to be significantly (p < 0.05) dependent on the cultivation region, with the highest levels generally found in maize harvested in 2013 and consequently in grain mixtures and cattle feed that can most likely be associated with climatic conditions as the most critical factor for mould formation, and thus also AFB₁ production.     

PREDICTING THE TIMING AND CHARACTERISTICS OF PETROLEUM FORMATION USING TAR MATS AND PETROLEUM ASPHALTENES: A CASE STUDY FROM THE NORTHERN NORTH SEA

The Northern Viking Graben area in the Norwegian North Sea was studied in order to investigate the petroleum formation characteristics of the Upper Jurassic Draupne Formation. In this area, the organofacies of the Draupne Formation, and consequently its petroleum generation characteristics, show significant variations. These variations represent a major risk, particularly in the context of basin modelling studies. Therefore, tar‐mat asphaltenes, oil asphaltenes and source‐rock samples from this area were studied in order to evaluate the use of migrated asphaltenes from petroleum reservoirs and tar mats in basin modelling. The samples were studied using bulk kinetic analysis, open‐system pyrolysis‐gas chromatography and elemental analyses, and the results were integrated into a basin modelling study. The results from these different sample materials were compared both to each other and to natural petroleum, in order to assess their significance for future petroleum exploration activities. We show that in cumulative petroleum systems, the transformation characteristics of the asphaltenes incorporate those of the individual source rock intervals which have contributed to the relevant reservoir system. Thus, the petroleum formation window predicted by the use of asphaltene kinetics is broad, and covers the majority of the formation windows predicted from the individual source rock samples. In addition, the molecular characteristics of asphaltene‐derived hydrocarbons show that compositional characteristics, such as aromaticity, correspond more closely to natural oils than to the respective source‐rock products. Our results confirm that the heterogeneous nature of the Draupne Formation results in a significantly broader petroleum formation window than is conventionally assumed. We propose that oil and tar‐mat asphaltenes from related reservoirs represent macromolecules which account for this heterogeneity in the source rock, since they represent mixtures of charges from the different organofacies. One conclusion is that the use of oil and tar‐mat asphaltenes in kinetic studies and compositional predictions may significantly improve definitions of petroleum formation characteristics in basin modelling.     

Quality Control for Scalable Media Processing Applications

Many media processing applications create a load that varies significantly over time. Hence, if such an application is assigned a lower processing-time budget than needed in its worst-case load situation, deadline misses are likely to occur. This problem can be dealt with by designing media processing applications in a scalable fashion. A scalable media processing application can run in multiple qualities, leading to correspondingly different resource demands. The problem we consider is to find an accompanying quality control strategy, which minimizes both the number of deadline misses and the number of quality changes, while maximizing the quality of processing. We present an initial approach to the above problem by modeling it as a Markov decision process (MDP). Our model is based on measuring relative progress at milestones. Solving the MDP results in a quality control strategy that can be applied during runtime with only little overhead. We evaluate our approach by means of a practical example, which concerns a scalable MPEG-2 decoder.     

Effect of ionic content,solid content,degree of neutralization,and chain extension on aqueous polyurethane dispersions prepared by prepolymer method

There are many variables in the preparation of aqueous polyurethane (PU) dispersions. Carboxylic acid content, solid content, degree of pre/postneutralization of the carboxylic acids, and chain extension all impact dispersion particle size, viscosity, pH, molecular weights, and glass transition temperature. This study evaluated the impact of these variables on a given PU dispersion formulation prepared from isophorone diisocyanate, an aliphatic polyester polyol, dimethylol propionic acid, and hexamethylene diamine with triethyl amine as the neutralizing base and N‐methyl pyrrolidone as the cosolvent. Changes in carboxylic acid content, degree of preneutralization, and chain extension were found to have the expected impacts on dispersions properties. Increased ionic content in the dispersion step led to lower particle size and higher viscosity, increased chain extension with its concurrent increase in molecular improved subsequent film properties. Surprising results were obtained by varying the amount of postneutralization and from increased solids content at the time of dispersion. Unexpectedly, both of these variations led to much higher dispersion viscosities and particle size in solution. To have these changes take place, it is theorized that there is a major change in solution morphology caused by these modifications. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 98: 2514–2520, 2005     

Least-squares integration of one-dimensional codistributions with application to approximate feedback linearization

We study the problem of approximating one-dimensional nonintegrable codistributions by integrable ones and apply the resulting approximations to approximate feedback linearization of single-input systems. The approach derived in this paper allows a linearizable nonlinear system to be found that is close to the given system in a least-squares (L ₂) sense. A linearly controllable single-input affine nonlinear system is feedback linearizable if and only if its characteristic distribution is involutive (hence integrable) or, equivalently, any characteristic one-form (a one-form that annihilates the characteristic distribution) is integrable. We study the problem of finding (least-squares approximate) integrating factors that make a fixed characteristic one-form close to being exact in anL ₂ sense. A given one-form can be decomposed into exact and inexact parts using the Hodge decomposition. We derive an upper bound on the size of the inexact part of a scaled characteristic one-form and show that a least-squares integrating factor provides the minimum value for this upper bound. We also consider higher-order approximate integrating factors that scale a nonintegrable one-form in a way that the scaled form is closer to being integrable inL ₂ together with some derivatives and derive similar bounds for the inexact part. This allows a linearizable nonlinear system that is close to the given system in a least-squares (L ₂) sense together with some derivatives to be found. The Sobolev embedding techniques allow us to obtain an upper bound on the uniform (L _∞) distance between the nonlinear system and its linearizable approximation. This research was supported in part by NSF under Grant PYI ECS-9396296, by AFOSR under Grant AFOSR F49620-94-1-0183, and by a grant from the Hughes Aircraft Company.     

Zooplankton population in the river tigris: Effects of samarra impoundment

The influences of the Samarra impoundment on the ecology of the downstream sector of the river Tigris are investigated. Zooplankton were collected monthly from July 1987 to July 1988. It was found that zooplankton were most abundant during high river discharges in March. During the month of low river discharge, September, the zooplankton population was greatly reduced immediately below the barrage and remained so to the last downstream station. Several factors seem to explain such differences. The high discharge from the impoundment was found to be the dominating factor and may flush the small backwaters in which zooplankton were abundant, thus increasing the population in the river. Zooplankton species vary in their ability to sustain populations in the river, variations which are due mainly to species-specific characteristics.     

Probability densities for conditional statistics in the cubic sensor problem

This paper applies the techniques of Malliavin’s stochastic calculus of variations to Zakai’s equation for the one-dimensional cubic sensor problem in order to study the existence of densities of conditional statistics. Let {X _t} be a Brownian motion observed by a cubic sensor corrupted by white noise, and let denote the unnormalized conditional estimate of φ(X _i ). If φ₁,...,φ _n are linearly independent, and if , it is shown that the probability distribution of admits a density with respect to Lebesgue measure for anyn. This implies that, at any fixed time, the unnormalized conditional density cannot be characterized by a finite set of sufficient statistics. Research supported in part by NSF Grant No. MCS-8301880 and by the Institute for Mathematics and It Applications, Minneapolis, Minnesota.     

On the robust control of stable minimum phase plants with large uncertainty in a time constant. A fractional-order control approach

This paper addresses the problem of designing controllers that are robust to a great uncertainty in a time constant of the plant. Plants must be represented by minimum phase rational transfer functions of an arbitrary order. The design specifications are: (1) a phase margin for the nominal plant, (2) a gain crossover frequency for the nominal plant, (3) zero steady state error to step commands, and (4) a constant phase margin for all the possible values of the time constant (T$T$): 0<T<∞$0<T<\infty$. We propose a theorem that defines the structure of the set of controllers that fulfil these specifications and show that it is necessary for these robust controllers to include a fractional-order PI$PI$ term. Examples are developed for both stable and unstable plants, and the results are compared with a standard PI$PI$ controller and a robust controller designed using the QFT$QFT$ methodology.     

带阻尼项的二阶强迫非线性微分方程解的振动性

提出了一类带阻尼项的二阶强迫非线性微分方程,讨论了此类方程的振动性质.这类方程具有更强的普遍性,是对已有方程的推广和延伸,得出的方程的振动性质推广了已有结论.最后给出一个例子说明定理的应用.     

对称叠层板稳定计算的一种新方法

无单元法是一种新的数值算法,它信息处理简单,其基本思想是在计算域上用一些离散的点由最小二乘法来拟合场函数,从而摆脱了单元的限制,因为它应用了滑动最小二乘法,所以与有限元不同,它的近似场函数不一定精确通过计算点。这会使计算略为复杂,但与这种方法带来的方便性相比,这点缺陷是微不足道的,因此这种方法愈来愈引起人们的关注．笔者将无单元法用于对称叠层板的屈曲问题,通过计算不同边界条件下各向同性板和对称叠层板的屈曲荷载参数,验证了该法的有效性,且精度较高,有着广泛的工程应用前景．