Since hydraulic fractures exhibit a strong tendency to propagate in a plane normal to the least principal stress, the preferred plane of propagation under thrust stress regime (Sh > Sv) conditions is horizontal. This can lead to complications in applying the hydrofracture stress measurement technique as horizontal fractures do not directly sample the horizontal stress field. Recent experiences ...

Aiming at the production scheduling problem in the hull block production, this study investigates the maximum use of the assembly blocks working platform. By transforming the scheduling problem into two-dimensional bin packing problem, this study explores the effective block spatial layout under the condition of spatial constraints. In order to improve the drawbacks of the lowest horizontal lin...

An oblique line translating vertically behind a horizontal rectangular aperture is perceived as moving in the horizontal direction, i.e., in the line-ending's direction. When a feature is added on the line, and thus provides a vertical unambiguous motion signal, the line's perceived direction is still horizontal. In parallel, the feature appears to slide obliquely along the line (Wallach, 1935)...

We present a new signal processing method that extracts the reference spectrum information from an acquired optical coherence tomography (OCT) image without a separate calibration step of reference spectrum measurement. The reference spectrum is used to remove the fixed-pattern noise that is a characteristic artifact of Fourier-domain OCT schemes. It was found that the conventional approach bas...

Although the neural underpinning of bipolar disorder (BD) is still unknown, recent research suggests that the right fronto-parietal cortex is particularly affected in BD patients. If this were true, we would expect atypical functional cerebral asymmetries in allocation of visuospatial attention. To test this hypothesis, euthymic BD patients and age- and gender-matched healthy controls were comp...

This paper presents an original device to enhance dielectrophoresis (DEP) effects through novel geometry of the electrodes. Implemented with a simple single-layer metal process, our microchip device consists of individually triangular-shaped electrodes in a parallel array. When activated with DEP waveforms, the novel-shaped electrodes generate horizontal bands of increasing electric fields. Wit...

We present a method, based on functional equations, to enumerate paths on the square lattice that avoid a horizontal half-line. The corresponding generating functions are algebraic, and sometimes remarkably simple: for instance, the number of paths of length 2n + 1 going from (0; 0) to (1; 0) and avoiding the nonpositive horizontal axis (except at their starting point) is C2n+1 , the (2n + 1)th...

Extended Kalman Filtering (EKF) is a nonlinear dynamic data reconciliation (NDDR) method. One of its main advantages is its suitability for on-line applications. This paper presents an on-line NDDR method using EKF. It is implemented for two case studies, temperature measurements of a distillation column and concentration measurements of a CSTR. In each time step, random numbers with zero m...

BACKGROUND A quantitative and accurate measurement of the range of hip joint flexion (RHF) is necessarily required in the evaluation of disordered or artificial hip joint function. This study aimed to assess a novel method to measure RHF more accurately and objectively. METHODS Lateral radiographs were taken of 31 supine men with hip joints extended or flexed. Relevant angles were measured di...