Studies on synthesis,characterization, and metal adsorption of mimosa and valonia tannin resins

A few thermosetting wood adhesive tannin resin system from formaldehyde reaction with both condensed and hydrolysable tannin has been developed. Polymerization of formaldehyde with mimosa tannin and valonia tannin was carried out at optimal conditions obtained from literature to establish the adhesive resin formulation. Formed reaction products were characterized by FTIR spectroscopy. The possible adsorption mechanisms for the adsorption of various metal ions onto tannin‐formaldehyde resins were proposed. Also, thermal analysis were studied and discussed by differential scanning calorimetry and thermogravimetry. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 102: 786–797, 2006     

Effects of hue,saturation, and brightness on preference

A study was done to investigate preference responses for foreground–background color relationships. To do this, 123 university undergraduates in Ankara, Turkey, were asked to view eight background colors selected from HSB color space on which color squares of differing hues, saturations, and brightnesses were presented. Subjects were asked to show the color square they preferred on the presented background color. Findings showed that colors having maximum saturation and brightness were most preferred. Blue was the most preferred hue regardless of background. The findings for preferences for foreground–background color relationships are also included in this article. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 27, 199–207, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/col.10051     

Reflex sympathetic dystrophy syndrome due to arteriovenous fistula

A patient with end-stage renal disease presented with reflex sympathetic dystrophy syndrome (RSDS) on her left hand 1 month after arteriovenous fistula (AVF) surgery. Magnetic resonance angiography revealed steal syndrome at the AVF level. Bone scintigraphy revealed early-stage RSDS. We considered that arterial insufficiency because of steal phenomenon following AVF surgery and underlying occlusive arterial disease triggered RSDS development.     

A Practical Space-Code Correlator Receiver for DSP Based Software Radio Implementation in CDMA2000

Development of practical algorithms for beamforming in 3G CDMA systems and their software radio implementations are still a challenging task, which will facilitate upgrading of traditional base stations into smart antenna capable 3G base stations. In this paper, we propose a practical space-code correlator (SCC) receiver structure for its software radio implementation a DSP. SCC’s advantage comes from the fact that it doesn’t require any training sequence or learning parameter as in other algorithms (LMS or CM). DSP implementations of the SCC are performed using Texas Instruments C67xx family platforms. In the simulations, reverse link base band signal format of CDMA2000 is used and the effects of different array topologies (uniform linear array-ULA or uniform circular array-UCA) are considered. The implementation results regarding beamforming accuracy, weight vector computation time (execution time), search resolution effect on DOA estimation accuracy, DSP resource utilization, and received SINR are presented. The results show that DSP based SCC beamformer can estimate weight vectors within less than 10 ms with DOA search resolution of 2° especially when C6713 DSP is used. With faster DSPs and larger search resolutions, execution time could be significantly reduced as well. It provides comparable SINR performance with LMS and CM algorithms.

Sensitivity and specificity of infrared thermography in detection of subclinical mastitis in dairy cows

The objectives of this experiment were to determine interrelationships among mastitis indicators and evaluate the subclinical mastitis detection ability of infrared thermography (IRT) in comparison with the California Mastitis Test (CMT). Somatic cell count (SCC), CMT, and udder skin surface temperature (USST) data were compiled from 62 Brown Swiss dairy cows (days in milk = 117 ± 51, milk yield = 14.7 ± 5.2 kg; mean ± SD). The CORR, REG, and NLIN procedures of Statistical Analysis System (SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC) were employed to attain interrelationships among mastitis indicators. The diagnostic merit of IRT as an indirect measure of subclinical mastitis was compared with CMT using the receiver operating characteristics curves. The udder skin surface temperature was positively correlated with the CMT score (r = 0.86) and SCC (r = 0.73). There was an exponential increase in SCC (SCC, ×10³ cells/mL = 22.35 × e^{1.31 × CMT score}; R² = 0.98) and a linear increase in USST (USST, °C = 33.45 + 1.08 × CMT score; R² = 0.75) as the CMT score increased. As SCC increased, USST increased logarithmically [USST, °C = 28.72 + 0.49 × ln(SCC, ×10³ cells/mL); R² = 0.72]. The USST for healthy quarters (SCC ≤400,000 cells/mL; n = 94) was different from that for subclinical mastitic quarters (SCC >400,000 cells/mL; n = 135) (mean ± SE; 33.45 ± 0.09 vs. 35.80 ± 0.08°C). The sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio, negative likelihood ratio, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value were 95.6, 93.6, 14.97, 0.05, 95.0, and 93.6, respectively, for IRT and 88.9, 98.9, 83.56, 0.11, 99.2, and 86.1, respectively, for CMT. The area under the receiver operating characteristics curve for IRT and CMT was not different. In conclusion, as a noninvasive and quick tool, IRT can be employed for screening subclinical mastitis via measuring USST, with a high predictive diagnostic ability similar to CMT when microbiological culturing is unavailable. However, the reliability of IRT among cows with different characteristics and those living under various environmental conditions remains to be determined.     

Flocculation of fine particles in ceramic wastewater using new types of polymeric flocculants

It appears to be quite a few national and international studies were reported regarding flocculation and settling properties of ceramic industry wastewater containing various mineral matters. Cleaning of ceramic industry wastewaters with ever increasing environmental standards needs effective and economical solid–liquid separation processes. In this study, quantity and type of optimum flocculant concentration were investigated for solid–liquid separation of Umpac ceramic plant (located at Usak, Turkey) wastewaters. A new generation of flocculants namely unique molecular architecture (UMA) are used to obtain high settling velocity along with high solid content waste and circulation water with low turbidity values. Zeta potential of the tailings including quartz, feldspar, clorite, and mica was also measured at different pH values. The flocculation tests were performed in the presence of different types of polymers at different polymer dosages. It seems that Magnafloc 5250 shows higher performance than the anionic flocculant SPK 508 and other anionic UMA flocculants Magnafloc 6260 and Magnafloc 3230. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2009     

A new method for the simultaneous determination of Fe(III), Cu(II), Pb(II), Zn(II), Cd(II), and Ni(II) in wine using differential pulse polarography

A new and simple differential pulse polarographic method for the analysis of wine has been established. With this method, it was possible to determine simultaneously six trace elements in wine. There was no need for time consuming extraction and separation procedures with danger of contamination. The polarogram of wet digested wine was taken initially in pH 2 acetate buffer and Pb, Cd, and Zn were determined by standard additions. Ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid (EDTA) was added and pH was increased to six by addition of NaOH. Fe and Cu were determined subsequently. The ammonia buffer, pH 9.5, was identified as the best medium for separation and determination of Ni and Zn. The quantities of trace elements were found as Cu 290 ± 20 μg L⁻¹, Fe 8960 ± 50 μg L⁻¹, Pb 148 ± 17 μg L⁻¹, Cd 16 ± 8 μg L⁻¹, Zn 460 ± 25 μg L⁻¹, and Ni 78 ± 17 μg L⁻¹.     

Phase transformation kinetics and microstructure of NiTi shape memory alloy: effect of hydrostatic pressure

The effect of hydrostatic pressure on the behaviour of reverse and forward transformation temperatures and physical properties of NiTi shape memory alloy has been investigated. The transformation temperatures and physical properties of the alloy change with applied pressure. It has been clearly seen from differential scanning calorimetry that with the increase of applied pressure, while \(A_\mathrm{s},\, A_\mathrm{f}\) and \(M_\mathrm{f}\) transformation temperatures decrease, \(M_\mathrm{s}\) value increases. Moreover, it is obvious that with the increase of applied pressure, Gibbs free energy increases by 5.2883 J, while elastic energy increases by 1.4687 J. In addition, entropy of the alloys decreases by 0.2335 J \((\hbox {g }{^{\circ }}\!\hbox { C})^{-1}\) with applied pressure. Additionally, it is evident from the scanning electron microscopy images of the samples that there is an obvious difference in the grain sizes of the unpressured sample and the samples on which pressure is applied, the sizes being 10–100 and 30–150 \(\upmu \!\hbox {m}\), respectively.     

PointProNets: Consolidation of Point Clouds with Convolutional Neural Networks

With the widespread use of 3D acquisition devices, there is an increasing need of consolidating captured noisy and sparse point cloud data for accurate representation of the underlying structures. There are numerous algorithms that rely on a variety of assumptions such as local smoothness to tackle this ill‐posed problem. However, such priors lead to loss of important features and geometric detail. Instead, we propose a novel data‐driven approach for point cloud consolidation via a convolutional neural network based technique. Our method takes a sparse and noisy point cloud as input, and produces a dense point cloud accurately representing the underlying surface by resolving ambiguities in geometry. The resulting point set can then be used to reconstruct accurate manifold surfaces and estimate surface properties. To achieve this, we propose a generative neural network architecture that can input and output point clouds, unlocking a powerful set of tools from the deep learning literature. We use this architecture to apply convolutional neural networks to local patches of geometry for high quality and efficient point cloud consolidation. This results in significantly more accurate surfaces, as we illustrate with a diversity of examples and comparisons to the state‐of‐the‐art.     

Semantic Segmentation for Line Drawing Vectorization Using Neural Networks

In this work, we present a method to vectorize raster images of line art. Inverting the rasterization procedure is inherently ill‐conditioned, as there exist many possible vector images that could yield the same raster image. However, not all of these vector images are equally useful to the user, especially if performing further edits is desired. We therefore define the problem of computing an instance segmentation of the most likely set of paths that could have created the raster image. Once the segmentation is computed, we use existing vectorization approaches to vectorize each path, and then combine all paths into the final output vector image. To determine which set of paths is most likely, we train a pair of neural networks to provide semantic clues that help resolve ambiguities at intersection and overlap regions. These predictions are made considering the full context of the image, and are then globally combined by solving a Markov Random Field (MRF). We demonstrate the flexibility of our method by generating results on character datasets, a synthetic random line dataset, and a dataset composed of human drawn sketches. For all cases, our system accurately recovers paths that adhere to the semantics of the drawings.