[en] It has long been realized that the equation of motion of a mass particle in the gravitational field has no covariant meaning under the general coordinate transformation. This important fact is a direct consequence of the principle of equivalence in the general theory of relativity. It has been shown that a stable orbit of a star can be made spiral inward by a transformation of the time coordinate. This means that a damping force is introduced in the equation of motion of the star by the transformation of coordinates. The inverse transformation will make the orbit spiral outward, thus introducing an anti-damping in motion. The author calculates the damping force due to emission of gravitational radiation under the physical requirement that there should be no outgoing longitudinal waves at infinity. (Auth.)

[en] Red pine sapwood transverse and radial surfaces were exposed to ultraviolet (UV) light for 3 to 40 days. Effect of UV irradiation on ultrastructural changes of cell walls were studied by scanning (SEM) and transmission (TEM) electron microscopy. SEM study of transverse sections showed that during initial stages of UV irradiation, lignin in cell corners and in the compound middle lamellae was preferentially degraded and that the radial middle lamellae substained a greater rate of UV degradation than did the tangential middle lamellae. Massive cell wall degradation, as indicated by cell wall thinning, did not occur until surfaces were exposed to UV light for more than 10 days. TEM study of radial cell wall surfaces indicated that lignin lining the warty layer was removed by UV irradiation in 3 days and that warts were destroyed by a UV irradiation in 7 days. UV irradiation of cell wall surfaces produced a substantial amount of water-soluble degradation products. After 30 days of UV irradiation, the S3 layer was totally removed and revealed the very fragile S2 layer. (author)

[en] It is shown that the asymptotic freedom is not relevant in order to obtain scaling for the deep inelastic scattering process. By assuming that the quarks perform simple harmonic oscillations inside the hadron, reasonable pion and nucleon structure functions can be obtained. (orig.)

[en] A portable urine analyzer, based on a novel optical structure, a high-performance 32-bit microcontroller STM32F103VE and a WiFi module, is put forward for urine dry-chemistry analysis in this paper. In the analyzer, the optical structure, made up of optical fiber bundles, is helpful to control the spread path of light and to reduce influence of ambient light on test results effectively. Meanwhile, through our designed optical structure, the intensity of both irradiating light from white LED and reflected light from urine reagent strip can be measured synchronously by two color sensors. And this is useful to enhance the degree of automation availably and to further improve test accuracy of the urine analyzer. Furthermore, a temperature sensor is also used to measure environment temperature for calibrating the test results of the analyzer. In addition, a high-precision reference voltage chip, LM4132A-3.0, which provides a reference voltage for analog-digital and digital-analog converters integrated in STM32F103VE, is adopted to improve both the measurement precision of light intensity and the control accuracy of outputted analog signals. Consequently, by the 14-item urinalysis reagent strip, the analyzer is able to obtain fourteen indexes of human urine, to display and print the composite reflectivity or semi-quantitative result of each test item. Besides, it also can output all results, covering above mentioned two kinds of results, each color-component reflectivity and all original data of the latest tested strip through WiFi module. To validate the performance of the analyzer, 200 real human urine samples were tested by our designed analyzer and a commercial one simultaneously. The results show that the urine analyzer has a good stability and a great consistency with the commercial one. Therefore, our designed analyzer has a good application prospect in the communities and families.

[en] The leaching process of uraninite ore was divided into the acidification and bacterial leaching stages, and the two stage leaching experiments and the control were conducted with 3 columns, each being charged with 20 kg uraninite ore. The ore contained 0.113% uranium, 1.859% iron and large amounts of silica and alumina. In the acidification stage, high to low concentration sulfuric acid solutions were used to acidify the uranium ore in each column until the pH of the pregnant leach solution from each column was maintained at 2.0. The acidification lasted for 18 d and the uranium recoveries for the three columns reached about 70%. In the bacterial leaching stage, column 1, as the control, continued to be leached with sulfuric acid solution with pH=2.0, column 2, with the bacterial solution based on the indirect leaching mechanism, and column 3, with the bacterial solution based on the direct leaching mechanism. The leaching in this stage was continued until the concentrations of the uranium in the pregnant leach solutions from the three columns amounted to less than 50 mg/L. This stage lasted for 20 d and the final uranium recoveries for columns 1, 2 and 3 reached 73.72%, 78.97% and 75.79%, respectively. (authors)

[en] In order to extract decision rules for fault diagnosis from incomplete historical test records for knowledge-based damage assessment of helicopter power train structure. A method that can directly extract the optimal generalized decision rules from incomplete information based on GrC was proposed. Based on semantic analysis of unknown attribute value, the granule was extended to handle incomplete information. Maximum characteristic granule (MCG) was defined based on characteristic relation, and MCG was used to construct the resolution function matrix. The optimal general decision rule was introduced, with the basic equivalent forms of propositional logic, the rules were extracted and reduction from incomplete information table. Combined with a fault diagnosis example of power train, the application approach of the method was present, and the validity of this method in knowledge acquisition was proved.

[en] This article presents a metal-dielectric hybrid structure, namely a hexagonal periodic structure formed by self-assembly silica microsphere deposited on thin metal film substrate. Theoretical simulation and experimental results indicate that this structure can achieve strong (greater than 90 %) and broad absorption at atmospheric transparency window from 8 to 13μm. (paper)

[en] Highlights: • Use of silicon microdosimeters for BNCT dosimetry is proposed. • Optimisation of boron converter thickness is necessary. • Detector geometry affects the calculated microdosimetric spectrum. • A 2 µm thick silicon microdosimeter was found to be the optimum thickness. • Measurements will be conducted to verify the results once KUR is operational. - Abstract: This paper presents the feasibility study of a novel 3D mesa bridge microdosimeter and its use for BNCT dosimetry. The performance of the microdosimeter was studied using Monte Carlo simulation. The clinical BNCT field at Kyoto University Reactor (KUR) using both thermal and epithermal irradiation modes were used in this study. Results show that this microdosimeter can be utilised as an effective tool to measure microdosimetric spectrum in the BNCT field and experimental validation will follow once KUR is operational.

[en] Boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) is an emerging radiotherapy modality using a neutron beam collectively with boron-10 containing pharmaceutical to treat patients with cancer. In contrast to conventional radiotherapy, the types of radiation present in BNCT consists of many distinct radiation components, each having a different biological weighting factor. Microdosimetry is an effective dosimetry technique in a mixed radiation environment. Using this technique, it is possible to derive the relative contributions of different radiation modalities. This paper presents the feasibility study of a novel 3D mesa bridge microdosimeter in BNCT, developed by University of Wollongong (UOW)

[en] This paper investigates the nonlinear vibro-acoustic modulation technique for damage detection in metallic structures. Surface-bonded, low-profile piezoceramic actuators are used to introduce a high-frequency ultrasonic wave and low-frequency modal vibration into an aluminium specimen. The response of the vibro-acoustic interaction is monitored by a third low-profile piezoceramic transducer. In contrast to previous applications analysing the response in the frequency domain, current investigations focus on the instantaneous characteristics of the response using the Hilbert–Huang transform. The study shows that both modulations, i.e. amplitude and frequency, are present in the acoustical responses when the aluminium plate is cracked. The intensity of amplitude modulation correlates far better with crack lengths than the intensity of frequency modulations