Simultaneously Improve Transferability and Discriminability for Adversarial Domain Adaptation

Although adversarial domain adaptation enhances feature transferability, the feature discriminability will be degraded in the process of adversarial learning. Moreover, most domain adaptation methods only focus on distribution matching in the feature space; however, shifts in the joint distributions of input features and output labels linger in the network, and thus, the transferability is not fully exploited. In this paper, we propose a matrix rank embedding (MRE) method to enhance feature discriminability and transferability simultaneously. MRE restores a low-rank structure for data in the same class and enforces a maximum separation structure for data in different classes. In this manner, the variations within the subspace are reduced, and the separation between the subspaces is increased, resulting in improved discriminability. In addition to statistically aligning the class-conditional distribution in the feature space, MRE forces the data of the same class in different domains to exhibit an approximate low-rank structure, thereby aligning the class-conditional distribution in the label space, resulting in improved transferability. MRE is computationally efficient and can be used as a plug-and-play term for other adversarial domain adaptation networks. Comprehensive experiments demonstrate that MRE can advance state-of-the-art domain adaptation methods.

Separation of Emulsified Oil from Industrial Wastewater Using Poly Silicate Ferro-Aluminum Sulphate (PSFAS): A Novel Methodology for the Attainment of Very High Separation Efficiency

The large amount of wastewater generated from textile industries, petroleum industries, chemical industries contains heavy metals, suspended solids, hazardous waste, oils, fatty acids, dyes, pigment etc. It is very important to improve the quality of contaminated water before it discharges into the water sources or use. In the current work, an efficient methodology has been developed to separate emulsified oil from wastewater. The emulsified oil is tried to separate by using poly silicate Ferro aluminium sulphates, a flocculent. In addition to the above, the maximum separation efficiency for the devolved process is also revealed. Using PSFA, up to 93.5 % separation efficiency is achieved, and the discussed methodology can separate emulsified forms of the oil without altering the efficiency. The dissolved solid and metal content are also considered as the controlling parameters for the separation efficiency. The optimum TDS and the metal content must be maintained at 560 mg/L and 2 mg/L, respectively, to attain maximum separation efficiency.

Experimental testing of the effectiveness of novel hydrocyclones for separation of impurities in biofuels

This paper investigates the potential sources of renewable energy, in particular biofuels. Biofuels tend to contain multiple harmful impurities that need to be separated if the biofuel is to have good energy performance, and the systems that run on it to produce electricity or heat are to operate more reliably. The paper discusses use of hydrocyclones as the most productive and reliable biofuel purification method. It dwells upon the factors that negatively affect separation of mixtures in a hydrocyclone, which are attributable to the complex hydrodynamics of the flow in such a unit. In order to eliminate these factors, the authors hereof have developed two hydrocyclone designs. An experimental test bench was designed and made to test these designs. Parts of the units were 3D printed from an environmentally friendly material. For testing, we used a biodiesel made from waste cooking oil with an impurity content of 23%. Experiments showed a maximum separation rate of 94.2%. The proposed solutions did improve the effectiveness of biodiesel mixture separation. These designs can be effectively used to separate non-homogeneous mixtures.

​Discriminant Analysis to Characterize Mastitis Resistant and Susceptible Karan Fries Cows and Response Operating Characteristics Curve for Comparing Regression/ Discriminant Model

Background: The profitability in the dairy enterprises is strongly affected by udder health and, to a minor extent, by morphometry. The present study was conducted to differentiate mastitis susceptible and resistant animals based on udder and teat type traits infrequently exist. Methods: The study was undertaken in ICAR-NDRI, Karnal of Haryana. A discriminate model was applied to differentiate mastitis susceptible and resistant Karan Fries cows for the study. For meeting the objective; 123 Karan Fries cows were subjected to developing a reliable mathematical function/equation (discriminant functions) for the provision of maximum separation among the mastitis resistant and susceptible animals. The hypothesis was designed to know if these udder and type traits appeal to mastitis-resistant and susceptible animals. The hypothesis for testing the equality of covariance matrices was depicted as: H0: ∑1 = ∑2 Vrs H1: At least one pair of sigma’s ∑ is different. Result: The model included contributory factors such as fore udder length, central ligament, udder balance, shortest distance of floor from fore teat (SDFT), shortest distance of floor from rear teat (SDRT), fore udder attachment (FUA), teat direction, Rear legs rearview, Hock development, udder depth, and udder width constructed and was found to demonstrate 69.1 per cent accuracy with p less than 0.001 and the Karan Fries functions at group centroids are -0.169 and 0.443 respectively for mastitis resistant and mastitis infected animals. The model will facilitate 92.1 per cent of the cases to correctly classify for mastitis resistant animals and the remaining 7.9 per cent being misclassified into the mastitis group.

Physics-constrained deep learning for ground roll attenuation

We propose a method to combine unsupervised and supervised deep learning approaches for seismic ground roll attenuation. The method consists of three components that have physical meaning and motivation. The first component is a convolutional neural network to separate a seismic record into ground roll and signal, while minimizing the residual between the sum of the generated signal and ground roll from two sub-networks and the input seismic record. The second component creates a maximum separation of signal and ground roll in the FK domain, by training a supervised classifier. The third component is a convolutional neural network mapping signal to ground roll, which overcomes the problem of finding appropriate masks in traditional methods. Each component in our method is closely related to and motivated by the wave characteristics of the ground roll. Test results on field seismic records demonstrate the effectiveness of combining these components in preventing signal leakage and removing ground roll from seismic data.

The structural transformation and reburning characteristics of gas coal in Ningwu coalfield fire

With the expansion of the scale of coal mining, the safety problems caused by the reburning of coal are becoming more and more serious. In this paper, the pyrolysis characteristics of gas coal and the exothermic characteristics of reoxidation of residues were studied by using a synchronous thermal analyzer. The functional groups of pyrolysis residues were tested, and the group content and characteristic structural parameters were calculated based on quantum chemistry method. The results show that with the increase of pyrolysis temperature, Volatile maximum separation rate (Vmax) and the change in the residual weight of the coal sample (ΔWvp) increase. The increase of temperature will lead to the decrease of hydroxyl and aliphatic hydrocarbon content in coal, and the increase of aromatic hydrocarbon. With the deepening of pyrolysis, the ignition point temperature of coal samples decreases first and then rises, the combustion intensity and combustion concentration are strengthened. The pyrolysis results show that 462.8°C is the critical temperature for the transition during pyrolysis. The ignition point of the residue is less affected by the pyrolysis conditions, and the ignition temperature of the raw coal and the pyrolysis residue varies within 330.57°C–334.98°C.

Soret and Diffusion Coefficients Measurement for Binary and Ternary Mixtures on Board the International Space Station Using SODI Apparatus

Thermodiffusion or Soret effect is a heat and mass transfer phenomenon in a non-isothermal liquid and gas mixtures. This phenomenon is more pronounced in oil fields, usually due to the porous environment. A precise and better understanding of the thermodiffusion phenomena in multi-component mixtures results in a more accurate modeling of oil reservoirs. Accordingly, the main objective of this study is to investigate the thermodiffusion phenomenon in the multicomponent mixtures. In order to achieve this objective, two series of thermodiffusion experiments conducted on board the International Space Station (ISS) using the SODI (Selectable Optical Diagnostics Instrument) facility were analyzed. The first series of experiments aimed to study the effects of the forced vibration on the Soret phenomena. The experimental mixture was water and isopropanol with different compositions subjected to various temperature gradients normal to the vibrations. Results revealed maximum separation for the case with the minimum vibration and the lower temperature gradient; however, a linear relationship between Gershuni number and maximum separation was not found. On the other hand, the second series of experiment was aimed to the measurement of the diffusion coefficients of selected ternary mixtures. Mixtures of tetrahydronaphthalene-isobutylbenzene-dodecane at five different compositions were hosted in the DSC (Diffusion and Soret Coefficient) cell array. Thus, the Soret diffusion coefficients and the molecular diffusion coefficients of the mentioned hydrocarbon mixture at five different compositions have been reported. To process the results of these experiments an advance image processing technique was developed and implemented in an application with GUI (Graphical User Interface) for the Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI). Then, the application of the windowed Fourier transformation (WFT) to analyze the heat and mass transfer problem using the MZI setup is proposed. Results show that the WFT noticeably improves the measurement of concentration. This improvement is more evident for the ternary. It was shown that about 10% underestimation of the Soret coefficient would be resulted; if an accurate determination of the thermal time for the MZI is not used. The reliability and the repeatability of the MZI apparatus on board ISS to study thermodiffusion for binary and ternary mixtures were shown.

Soret and Diffusion Coefficients Measurement for Binary and Ternary Mixtures on Board the International Space Station Using SODI Apparatus

Thermodiffusion or Soret effect is a heat and mass transfer phenomenon in a non-isothermal liquid and gas mixtures. This phenomenon is more pronounced in oil fields, usually due to the porous environment. A precise and better understanding of the thermodiffusion phenomena in multi-component mixtures results in a more accurate modeling of oil reservoirs. Accordingly, the main objective of this study is to investigate the thermodiffusion phenomenon in the multicomponent mixtures. In order to achieve this objective, two series of thermodiffusion experiments conducted on board the International Space Station (ISS) using the SODI (Selectable Optical Diagnostics Instrument) facility were analyzed. The first series of experiments aimed to study the effects of the forced vibration on the Soret phenomena. The experimental mixture was water and isopropanol with different compositions subjected to various temperature gradients normal to the vibrations. Results revealed maximum separation for the case with the minimum vibration and the lower temperature gradient; however, a linear relationship between Gershuni number and maximum separation was not found. On the other hand, the second series of experiment was aimed to the measurement of the diffusion coefficients of selected ternary mixtures. Mixtures of tetrahydronaphthalene-isobutylbenzene-dodecane at five different compositions were hosted in the DSC (Diffusion and Soret Coefficient) cell array. Thus, the Soret diffusion coefficients and the molecular diffusion coefficients of the mentioned hydrocarbon mixture at five different compositions have been reported. To process the results of these experiments an advance image processing technique was developed and implemented in an application with GUI (Graphical User Interface) for the Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI). Then, the application of the windowed Fourier transformation (WFT) to analyze the heat and mass transfer problem using the MZI setup is proposed. Results show that the WFT noticeably improves the measurement of concentration. This improvement is more evident for the ternary. It was shown that about 10% underestimation of the Soret coefficient would be resulted; if an accurate determination of the thermal time for the MZI is not used. The reliability and the repeatability of the MZI apparatus on board ISS to study thermodiffusion for binary and ternary mixtures were shown.

Relation between the size of patent foramen ovale and the volume of acute cerebral ischemic lesion in young patients with cryptogenic ischemic stroke

Background Patent foramen ovale (PFO) closure is superior to medical therapy alone to prevent stroke recurrence in selected patients. Small cortical infarcts and large right to left shunts seem to identify patients who will benefit most from closure. We aimed to study the correlation between the size of the PFO and the volume of cerebral ischemic lesions in young patients with cryptogenic ischemic stroke. Methods PFO dimensions and acute ischemic lesion volume of 20 patients, aged<55 years, were analyzed with transesophageal echocardiography and brain magnetic resonance imaging, respectively. The association between the volume of ischemic lesions with the length of PFO, maximum separation between septum primum and septum secundum, and the combination of the twos was explored. Results A direct statistically significant correlation was found between cerebral lesion volume and maximum separation of septum primum and septum secundum (p=0.047). Length of PFO showed a non-significant trend towards an inverse correlation with lesion volume (p=0.603). Multiple linear regression analysis showed that cerebral lesion volume was dependent directly on maximum separation and inversely on length of PFO (regression coeff. −0,837; p= 0.057; 2,536, p=0.006, respectively). Conclusions These data suggest that even small PFO might be pathogenetic in case of small cerebral infarcts and that large cerebral infarcts might be PFO related if the shunt is large. If confirmed, the combination of detailed characteristics of PFO with the volume of cerebral infarct could be integrated in a new score to select patients who would take real advantage from a percutaneous closure.

Investigation of thermodiffusion phenomenon under influence of vibration using image processing approach

Thermodiffusion is the appearance of concentration gradient in a mixture when subjected to a temperature gradient. Thermodiffusion or Soret effect plays an important role in the underground reservoir distribution. Consequently, a majority of petroleum research is focused on understanding this phenomenon. There are may experimental measurements of thermodiffusion. However, measurements conducted in a microgravity environment minimize the effect of gravity and leads to accurate results. This study demonstrates the influence of vibration on thermodiffusion measurement in a microgravity environment. The aim is to show how the variation of certain parameters such as the frequency and amplitude of translational vibration as well as the temperature would impact the composition of components in the mixture of Water-Isopropanol. The Fast Fourier Transform image processing technique is used to analyse the data obtained from optical digital interferometry. Moreover, two sets of experimental runs with negative and positive Soret coefficients are tested. The analysis shows the maximum separation of components for the case without any forced vibration. Furthermore, it is shown the increase in Rayleigh number corresponds to decrease in separation of components.