•Critical shoot and tuber N dilution curves are established for potato.•Cultivar differences in N dilution are explained by biomass partitioning to tubers.•Shoot and tuber N nutrition indices assess ...adequately the potato N status.•Tuber N nutrition index at harvest is related to two attributes of potato quality.
Critical nitrogen (N) dilution curves describe the critical N concentration in plant tissues during crop growth and they are used to estimate the N nutriton status of whole plants in potato. Little is known, however, about the critical N dilution curves in specific plant parts such as shoots and tubers. Our objectives were (i) to determine critical shoot and tuber N dilution curves; (ii) to compare these curves with critical N dilution curves determined on whole plants (shoot + tubers); and (iii) to assess the possibility of using the critical shoot and tuber N dilution curves to estimate the N nutrition status of potato and tuber quality. Seven potato cultivars were assessed under different N supplies and environmental conditions in Canada and Argentina. Shoot biomass (leaves + stems) and tuber biomass along with their N concentrations were measured at regular intervals during the growing season. Tuber yield, dry matter concentration, and nitrate (N-NO3−) concentration were measured at harvest. We determined the coefficients of the critical N dilution curves expressed as N = a × W-b with N as the N concentration in shoot or tuber biomass, and W their respective biomass. Among cultivars, coefficients a and b for shoot biomass ranged from 5.08 to 5.68 and from 0.18 to 0.28, respectively, while coefficients a and b for tubers ranged from 1.54 to 1.87 and from 0.17 to 0.21, respectively. The shoot (NNIsh) and tuber (NNIt) N nutrition indices were both highly related to the N nutrition index in whole plants (R2 = 0.88; R2 = 0.98; P < 0.05; respectively) and to relative tuber yields (R2 = 0.61; R2 = 0.53; P < 0.05; respectively). For a NNIsh or NNIt ≥ 1.00, the relative yield was near 95 %, while it decreased with decreasing NNIsh or NNIt below 1.00. The tuber N nutrition index at harvest was related to tuber dry matter concentration and tuber N-NO3- concentration (R2 = 0.30; R2 = 0.53; P < 0.05; respectively). Our results demonstrate that shoot and tuber N nutrition indices identified adequately the N status in potato cultivars and tuber quality and, therefore, they have potential as plant diagnostic tools to estimate the N status of potato crops across different cultivars and environmental conditions.
Gas-path diagnostics is an essential part of gas turbine (GT) condition-based maintenance (CBM). There exists extensive literature on GT gas-path diagnostics and a variety of methods have been ...introduced. The fundamental limitations of the conventional methods such as the inability to deal with the nonlinear engine behavior, measurement uncertainty, simultaneous faults, and the limited number of sensors available remain the driving force for exploring more advanced techniques. This review aims to provide a critical survey of the existing literature produced in the area over the past few decades. In the first section, the issue of GT degradation is addressed, aiming to identify the type of physical faults that degrade a gas turbine performance, which gas-path faults contribute more significantly to the overall performance loss, and which specific components often encounter these faults. A brief overview is then given about the inconsistencies in the literature on gas-path diagnostics followed by a discussion of the various challenges against successful gas-path diagnostics and the major desirable characteristics that an advanced fault diagnostic technique should ideally possess. At this point, the available fault diagnostic methods are thoroughly reviewed, and their strengths and weaknesses summarized. Artificial intelligence (AI) based and hybrid diagnostic methods have received a great deal of attention due to their promising potentials to address the above-mentioned limitations along with providing accurate diagnostic results. Moreover, the available validation techniques that system developers used in the past to evaluate the performance of their proposed diagnostic algorithms are discussed. Finally, concluding remarks and recommendations for further investigations are provided.
•A comprehensive review of researches on gas starvation issue of PEM fuel cell.•Include causes, severe consequences, diagnostic methods and mitigation measures.•Summarize the variable methods and ...compare their performance in different aspects.•Provide guidance to the diagnose methods, system control strategy and structure design.
The short service life of fuel cell is a key problem that restricts the commercialization of fuel cell vehicles. Many scholars have found that gas starvation is one of the most important causes of the proton exchange membrane fuel cell lifetime decay, which leads to a series of severe consequences such as carbon support corrosion, cell reversal and output performance degradation. However, accurate diagnosis and effective mitigation of fuel cell gas starvation are not achieved currently. Gas starvation is a condition that the reaction gas of proton exchange membrane fuel cell working in the sub-stoichiometric state. In this paper, we will study the causes, severe consequences, diagnostic methods and mitigation measures of the gas starvation in proton exchange membrane fuel cells through previous literature review. This research is aim to provide guidance to the diagnose methods, to optimize the system control strategy and structure design and to contribute to the studies which are focus on prolong the proton exchange membrane fuel cell lifetime.
Significant progress and new insights have been gained in the 4 years since the first Maastricht Consensus Report, necessitating an update of the original guidelines. To achieve this, the European ...Helicobacter Pylori Study Group organized a meeting of specialists and experts from around the world, representatives from National Gastroenterology Societies and general practitioners from Europe to establish updated guidelines on the current management of Helicobacter pylori infection. The meeting took place on 21–22 September 2000.
A ‘test and treat’ approach is recommended in adult patients under the age of 45 years (the age cut‐off may vary locally) presenting in primary care with persistent dyspepsia, having excluded those with predominantly gastro‐oesophageal reflux disease symptoms, non‐steroidal anti‐inflammatory drug users and those with alarm symptoms. Diagnosis of infection should be by urea breath test or stool antigen test.
As in the previous guidelines, the eradication of H. pylori is strongly recommended in all patients with peptic ulcer, including those with complications, in those with low‐grade gastric mucosa‐associated lymphoid tissue lymphoma, in those with atrophic gastritis and following gastric cancer resection. It is also strongly recommended in patients who are first‐degree relatives of gastric cancer patients and according to patients’ wishes after full consultation.
It is advised that H. pylori eradication is considered to be an appropriate option in infected patients with functional dyspepsia, as it leads to long‐term symptom improvement in a subset of patients. There was consensus that the eradication of H. pylori is not associated with the development of gastro‐oesophageal reflux disease in most cases, and does not exacerbate existing gastro‐oesophageal reflux disease. It was agreed that the eradication of H. pylori prior to the use of non‐steroidal anti‐inflammatory drugs reduces the incidence of peptic ulcer, but does not enhance the healing of gastric or duodenal ulcer in patients receiving antisecretory therapy who continue to take non‐steroidal anti‐inflammatory drugs.
Treatment should be thought of as a package which considers first‐ and second‐line eradication therapies together. First‐line therapy should be with triple therapy using a proton pump inhibitor or ranitidine bismuth citrate, combined with clarithromycin and amoxicillin or metronidazole. Second‐line therapy should use quadruple therapy with a proton pump inhibitor, bismuth, metronidazole and tetracycline. Where bismuth is not available, second‐line therapy should be with proton pump inhibitor‐based triple therapy. If second‐line quadruple therapy fails in primary care, patients should be referred to a specialist. Subsequent failures should be handled on a case‐by‐case basis by the specialist. In patients with uncomplicated duodenal ulcer, eradication therapy does not need to be followed by further antisecretory treatment. Successful eradica‐ tion should always be confirmed by urea breath test or an endoscopy‐based test if endoscopy is clinically indicated. Stool antigen test is the alternative if urea breath test is not available.
AdmissionIn human medicine, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is one of the leading and most popular diagnostic methods. In veterinary medicine, initially, MRI was treated mainly as a research tool, ...but with the development of veterinary specializations, an increase in the number of specialists, reference clinics, but also an increase in awareness and expectations of animal owners, MRI began to play a key role in the clinical practice of small animals - dogs and cats , exotic animals and horses.Aim The aim of the study is the analysis of magnetic resonance as a diagnostic method.Material and method Review of the available literature on the subject.ResultsMagnetic resonance imaging is based on the phenomenon of nuclear magnetic resonance, characteristic of the nuclei of elements with an odd number of protons or neutrons, and therefore having a momentum (spin) and a magnetic moment. The most commonly used element is the hydrogen atom, thanks to its richness in living organisms. The general scheme of how MRI works is a five-step process involving the following phenomena:Placing the patient in a constant homogeneous electromagnetic fieldRadio frequency (RF) signal emissionInterruption in RF signal emissionRF feedback by the bodyProcessing of the emitted signal and image reconstruction.Currently, the most popular areas of research are the central nervous system (brain and spine) and the musculoskeletal system. The test allows you to diagnose intracranial diseases such as: birth defects, inflammatory changes in the brain tissue, demyelinating diseases or cancer. Conclusions The versatility of magnetic resonance imaging, both in terms of species diversity (small animals, horses, exotic animals) and imaging areas (central and peripheral nervous system, bones with their joints, muscle tissue) has made MRI a very important method diagnostic used in clinical veterinary medicine. The other advantages of magnetic resonance imaging include imaging in three planes, enabling subsequent three-dimensional reconstruction, no harmful X-rays and the possibility of using contrast agents.
As it has been widely and wrongly believed that noises at any frequency of permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) are positively correlated with subjective annoyance, reducing sound pressure level ...or sound power level of PMSM is mostly regarded as the only optimisation goal of sound quality (SQ). This study presents a sensitive critical band (SCB) diagnostic method for SQ of PMSM for electric vehicles (EV). First, a new acquisition method of near-field noises without sound attenuation of PMSM was proposed and a neural network model for SQ evaluation was established to determine the specific operating condition with the worst SQ. Second, the band-pass filter of CB (BPFCB) and band-stop filter of CB (BSFCB) were designed to diagnose positive SCBs or negative SCBs in which noises were positively or negatively correlated with the subjective annoyance, respectively. Finally, the major excitation sources of abnormal noises in SCBs were diagnosed by using the analytical calculation. An 8-pole-48-slot PMSM was considered as a case study to testify to the effectiveness and practicability of the proposed method. It may provide a new route for the precise SQ optimisation of PMSM.
Mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) is a technique that visualizes the distribution of molecules by ionizing the components on the surface of a sample and directly detecting them. Previously, MSI using ...hair has primarily been used in the forensic field to detect illegal drugs. On the other hand, there are few examples of using this technology for health monitoring. In this study, hair and clinical data were collected from 24 subjects, and the correlation between blood cholesterol levels and cholesterol detected from cross-sectional hair slices was analyzed. As a result, a positive correlation with a correlation coefficient of 0.43 was observed between blood cholesterol and cholesterol detected from hair. Furthermore, when comparing the results of fluorescence staining (FS) of hair cholesterol with Filipin III and the MSI results, it was found that while FS could visualize detailed hair structures, there were cases where the results differed from MSI, possibly due to some cholesterol loss during the staining process. In the future, if various disease biomarkers can be detected using hair MSI, it could potentially become a non-invasive diagnostic method.Mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) is a technique that visualizes the distribution of molecules by ionizing the components on the surface of a sample and directly detecting them. Previously, MSI using hair has primarily been used in the forensic field to detect illegal drugs. On the other hand, there are few examples of using this technology for health monitoring. In this study, hair and clinical data were collected from 24 subjects, and the correlation between blood cholesterol levels and cholesterol detected from cross-sectional hair slices was analyzed. As a result, a positive correlation with a correlation coefficient of 0.43 was observed between blood cholesterol and cholesterol detected from hair. Furthermore, when comparing the results of fluorescence staining (FS) of hair cholesterol with Filipin III and the MSI results, it was found that while FS could visualize detailed hair structures, there were cases where the results differed from MSI, possibly due to some cholesterol loss during the staining process. In the future, if various disease biomarkers can be detected using hair MSI, it could potentially become a non-invasive diagnostic method.
Structural health monitoring (SHM) techniques have been studied for several years. An effective approach for SHM is to choose the parameters that are sensitive to the damage occurring in the ...structure but not sensitive to operational or environmental damages. This paper deals with a comparative study among the different vibration-based damage detection methods: fundamental modal examination, local diagnostic method, non-probabilistic methodology and the time series method. All these strategies contemplate different parameters of a structure to recognize damage. Out of the study made, time series analysis proves to more successfully in damage identification than the rest of the methods.
Acanthamoeba keratitis is a devastating infectious disease of the cornea caused by an opportunistic amoeba, Acanthamoeba castellanii. It is poorly recognized, and diagnostic delays can lead to ...irreversible damage to the vision. The gold standard for diagnosis has been a sample culture that lasts approximately 2 weeks. Nevertheless, the essence of time has led to the need for an accurate and fast technique to detect A. castellanii from a sample. We developed both traditional and quantitative real-time-PCR-based methods to detect A. castellanii in less than 3 hours and with the sensitivity of one amoeba. Diagnostic laboratories can select the best-suited method for their purposes from 2 comparable methods. The correct treatment can be initiated from the emergency room when the diagnosis has been made quickly within a few hours, hence saving the patient from long-term complications.
Urban shrinkage, increasingly prevalent in fast-developing countries like China, is a complex phenomenon deeply influenced by globalization and localized factors. This study focuses on the ...Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle, a high-growth region in China, to explore urban shrinkage and its driving factors. Adopting a physical city perspective and utilizing a two-step diagnostic method, the research precisely identifies shrinking cities within the circle and employs a geo-detector model for empirical analysis of influencing factors. Findings reveal a significant developmental imbalance within the circle, with sustainable and transitional growth cities located in core areas, whereas significantly shrinking and potential shrinking cities are found in peripheral zones. This pattern underscores the endogenous challenges of rapid urbanization. The study highlights that urban shrinkage results from interplay between demographic and economic changes, with fiscal autonomy, consumption levels, public service provision, per capita GDP, and industrial structure being key factors. Addressing urban shrinkage effectively requires a shift from traditional balanced development paradigms towards fostering regional coordinated growth, emphasizing the construction of a multi-core urban network and integrating small and medium-sized cities into the developmental process. This innovative approach not only enriches urban shrinkage research but also offers practical insights for sustainable urban governance.
•Investigates urban shrinkage within China's Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle using a novel two-step diagnostic method.•Employs a geo-detector model to analyze the socio-economic and demographic factors influencing urban shrinkage.•Identifies four types of cities: sustainable, transitional, potential, and significantly shrinking cities.•Fiscal autonomy, consumption levels, public service provision, per capita GDP, and industrial structure are key influencing factors.•Offers insights for urban governance and sustainable development strategies applicable globally.
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