Degradation assessment of nuclear power plant extraction steam piping after long term service

Degradation due to ageing in a Nuclear Power Plant’s Extraction Steam Piping has been assessed. Samples of twelve years old seamless carbon steel SA 106B pipe have been taken and subjected to metallographic examination, hardness testing, radiographic examination and ultrasonic thickness measurement to investigate and analyze ageing in piping material. Metallographic examination of aged sample revealed irregularly distributed graphite nodules in ferrite grains and on grain boundaries as well, the reduction in pearlite phase has also been observed from 40% to 25%. This Transformation in microstructure has reduced hardness of steel. Reduction in hardness has found 20.4% and 0.7% on inner and outer layer of the pipe material respectively. Corrosion pits having average depth of 0.07 mm have been found on external surface. Radiograph of aged pipe revealed material removal and wall thinning due to erosion on inner surface of pipe. The extent of erosion had been checked, which has found 8.7%

Optical Myography Using Convolutional Neural Networks for Estimating Finger Poses

A plethora of techniques exist to rehabilitate an amputee’s lost limb. Active Hand Prosthesis (AHP) is one such tool which promises aid to an amputee to gain control over daily activities. Translating the user’s intent into appropriate movement of the prosthetic device, especially that of the hand is still a target to be attained by the various methods which try to acquire and interpret these biological signals. One such novel modality, known as Optical Myography (OMG) laid the proof of concept of mapping deformations on the surface of the forearm caused by muscle movement to estimate finger poses for an artificial hand. The surface movements were tracked using AprilTags stuck the surface of the forearm and by strapping the forearm to a frame in order to suppress external movement. Misdetection and missed detection of these tags can cause noise in the data acquired for the machine learning algorithm. This thesis aims to develop OMG for the estimation of finger poses by using computer vision to observe the muscle movements on the surface of the forearm thus obviating the need to rely on precisely detected tags. In order to do so, the machine learning algorithm used is a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) trained on images of the forearm captured during the execution of the desired finger poses. Various feature extraction sources are studied before choosing the most practically applicable source to test on intact subjects

Diagnostic Yield of Blood Cultures among Patients Admitted with Non-Focal Pyrexias

OBJECTIVES To establish the diagnostic yield of blood cultures among patients admitted with non-focal pyrexias. METHODOLOGY This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted in the Department of Medicine, Khyber Teaching Hospital, Peshawar, from August 2020 to April 2021. One hundred ninety-seven patients with non-focal pyrexia were recruited. Data about age, gender, presence of other illnesses like diabetes and hypertension, history of smoking and duration of fever were noted. A thorough clinical evaluation was done. Under aseptic conditions, 2 blood culture sets were taken. The final blood culture report was collected after 5 days of incubation in culture media. The culture was labelled positive if any organism was isolated from the sample. All data was entered in specially designed proforma. Patients with positive blood cultures were managed as per hospital protocols. Confidentiality of data was ensured. RESULTSOur study shows that among 197 patients, 18(9%) had positive cultures, while 179(91%) did not yield any pathogen on blood culture. Escherichia coli was the most commonly grown organism among the positive blood cultures. CONCLUSION The yield of blood culture was 9% in febrile patients admitted to the medical ward of a tertiary care hospital

Modeling Sustainable Traffic Behavior: Avoiding Congestion at a Stationary Bottleneck

Sustainable traffic behaviour is increasing in importance as traffic volume rises due to population growth. In this paper, a model for traffic flow at a stationary bottleneck is developed to determine the parameters that cause congestion. Towards this goal, traffic density, speed, and delay were acquired during peak and off-peak periods in the morning and afternoon at a stationary bottleneck in Peshawar, KPK, Pakistan. The morning and afternoon peak periods have high densities, low speeds, and considerable delays. Regression models are developed using this data. These results indicate that there is a linear relationship between density and time at the stationary bottleneck and a negative linear relationship between density and speed. Thus, an increase in density increases the time delay and reduces the speed. I comprehensive traffic delay model is characterized by a stationary bottleneck. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) test and P-values were used to identify the best-fit distribution for speed and density. The binomial and generalized extreme values are considered the best fits for density and speed. The results presented can be used to develop accurate simulation models for stationary bottlenecks to reduce congestion. Doi: 10.28991/CEJ-2022-08-11-02 Full Text: PD

Carveol a Naturally-Derived Potent and Emerging Nrf2 Activator Protects Against Acetaminophen-Induced Hepatotoxicity

Acetaminophen (N-acetyl p-aminophenol or APAP) is used worldwide for its antipyretic and anti-inflammatory potential. However, APAP overdose sometimes causes severe liver damage. In this study, we elucidated the protective effects of carveol in liver injury, using molecular and in silico approaches. Male BALB/c mice were divided into two experimental cohorts, to identify the best dose and to further assess the role of carveol in the nuclear factor E2-related factor; nuclear factor erythroid 2; p45-related factor 2 (Nrf2) pathway. The results demonstrated that carveol significantly modulated the detrimental effects of APAP by boosting endogenous antioxidant mechanisms, such as nuclear translocation of Nrf2 gene, a master regulator of the downstream antioxidant machinery. Furthermore, an inhibitor of Nrf2, called all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA), was used, which exaggerated APAP toxicity, in addition to abrogating the protective effects of carveol; this effect was accompanied by overexpression of inflammatory mediators and liver = 2ltoxicity biomarkers. To further support our notion, we performed virtual docking of carveol with Nrf2-keap1 target, and the resultant drug-protein interactions validated the in vivo findings. Together, our findings suggest that carveol could activate the endogenous master antioxidant Nrf2, which further regulates the expression of downstream antioxidants, eventually ameliorating the APAP-induced inflammation and oxidative stress

Review A Review on the Vibration Analysis of Laminated Composite Plate

Composites have played a vital role ranging in the marine structures to agriculutural products. Therefore, proper attention should be given before deploying of composite structures in the service and vibration is one of the most critical factor in the assessment of the structural properties. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature studies on the effect of vibration on composite structures. The literature studies have been focused on the vibration analysis of composite structures without considering the crack or delamination presence in the structure. Literature review is further classified on the basis of methodology i.e experimental, analytical and finite element methods. The work already conducted using these three methods have been discussed. It would be concluded that the vibration is a critical factor to focus.</jats:p

Finite Element Analysis to Investigate the Influence of Delamination Size, Stacking Sequence and Boundary Conditions on the Vibration Behavior of Composite Plate

Composite structures are widely used in many applications ranging from, but not limited to, aerospace industry, automotive, and marine structures due to their attractive mechanical properties like high strength to weight ratios. However composite structures needs utmost care during structures manufacturing and working conditions should be assessed prior to installation. One of the important defect in composite structures is delamination. Present work is focused on investigation of delamination effects on the natural frequencies of composite plate using commercial finite element software, ABAQUS. Analytical results were also analyzed using MATLAB code. Different stacking sequences and boundary conditions are considered for study in both analytical formulation and finite element analysis. Finite element results are compared with analytical results to validate the perfect composite plate. The natural frequency of the composite plate reduced with an increase in delamination size. Additionally, all-sides clamped composite plate showed higher values of natural frequency than other constraints in lower modes for symmetrical laminates. Natural frequency in cross ply laminates are higher for the simply supported composite plates. On comparison, results from both the techniques, finite element analysis and analytical analysis, were in good agreement

A Review on the Effect of Delamination on the Performance of Composite Plate

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