Application of foam assisted water-alternating-gas flooding and quantification of resistivity and water saturation by experiment and simulation to determine foam propagation in sandstone.

Foam flooding by Foam Assisted Water-Alternating-Gas (FAWAG) is an important enhanced oil recovery method that has proven successful in experimental and pilot studies. The present study is carried out to monitor the movement of the foam front once injected into the porous medium. This study aims to investigate applications of resistivity waves to monitor foam propagation in a sandstone formation.

Risk assessment of marine oil spills using dynamic Bayesian network analyses.

Oil spills are serious threats to the marine ecosystem. Especially when an oil spill is faced with extreme weather, the consequences might be more severe. Until now, no such researches focus on the risk of these extreme scenarios.

A complex-valued slow independent component analysis based incipient fault detection and diagnosis method with applications to wastewater treatment processes.

Multivariate statistical process monitoring are the essential approaches to achieve better prognostics and health management (PHM) of process industries. However, incipient faults and complex behaviors (such as nonlinearity and dynamics) always render the traditional multivariate statistical process monitoring approaches inadequate. Thus, a complex-valued slow independent component analysis (CSICA) is proposed, which is able to extract optimized features from a complex-valued matrix containing both of raw data and their changing rates by resorting to a complex-valued independent component analysis operation and a batch of phase shifts.

Artificial Intelligence Enhanced Reliability Assessment Methodology With Small Samples.

Due to the high price of the product and the limitation of laboratory conditions, reliability tests often get a small number of failed samples. If the data are not handled properly, the reliability evaluation results will incur grave errors. In order to solve this problem, this work proposes an artificial intelligence (AI) enhanced reliability assessment methodology by combining Bayesian neural networks (BNNs) and differential evolution (DE) algorithms.

circ_0044516 functions in the progression of gastric cancer by modulating MicroRNA-149-5p/HuR axis.

Circular RNAs (circRNAs) have emerged as a multifunctional class of RNAs, while there is limited knowledge on their functions in the development of cancers. Herein, we performed the current study to probe into the regulatory mechanism of circ_0044516 in malignant behaviors of gastric cancer (GC) cells with the involvement of microRNA (miR)-149-5p/human antigen R (HuR) axis. Firstly, the expression levels of circ_0044516 in GC cell lines and normal gastric mucosal epithelial cells were determined by qRT-PCR, and GC cell lines with the highest expression of circ_0044516 were screened for further cell experiments.

Reliability evaluation of auxiliary feedwater system by mapping GO-FLOW models into Bayesian networks.

Bayesian network (BN) is a widely used formalism for representing uncertainty in probabilistic systems and it has become a popular tool in reliability engineering. The GO-FLOW method is a success-oriented system analysis technique and capable of evaluating system reliability and risk. To overcome the limitations of GO-FLOW method and add new method for BN model development, this paper presents a novel approach on constructing a BN from GO-FLOW model.

Real-time reliability evaluation methodology based on dynamic Bayesian networks: A case study of a subsea pipe ram BOP system.

A novel real-time reliability evaluation methodology is proposed by combining root cause diagnosis phase based on Bayesian networks (BNs) and reliability evaluation phase based on dynamic BNs (DBNs). The root cause diagnosis phase exactly locates the root cause of a complex mechatronic system failure in real time to increase diagnostic coverage and is performed through backward analysis of BNs. The reliability evaluation phase calculates the real-time reliability of the entire system by forward inference of DBNs.

A Fault Diagnosis Methodology for Gear Pump Based on EEMD and Bayesian Network.

This paper proposes a fault diagnosis methodology for a gear pump based on the ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) method and the Bayesian network. Essentially, the presented scheme is a multi-source information fusion based methodology. Compared with the conventional fault diagnosis with only EEMD, the proposed method is able to take advantage of all useful information besides sensor signals.

Application of Petri nets to performance evaluation of subsea blowout preventer system.

This paper presents an application of deterministic and stochastic Petri nets (DSPN) to evaluate the performance of subsea blowout preventer (BOP) system. The overall subsea BOP system is comprised of five mechanical subsystems and five electrical subsystems, which can be viewed as a series-parallel system. In regard to common cause failures, TimeNET 4.

Reliability analysis of the electrical control system of subsea blowout preventers using Markov models.

Reliability analysis of the electrical control system of a subsea blowout preventer (BOP) stack is carried out based on Markov method. For the subsea BOP electrical control system used in the current work, the 3-2-1-0 and 3-2-0 input voting schemes are available. The effects of the voting schemes on system performance are evaluated based on Markov models.

Influence of electrical resistivity and machining parameters on electrical discharge machining performance of engineering ceramics.

Engineering ceramics have been widely used in modern industry for their excellent physical and mechanical properties, and they are difficult to machine owing to their high hardness and brittleness. Electrical discharge machining (EDM) is the appropriate process for machining engineering ceramics provided they are electrically conducting. However, the electrical resistivity of the popular engineering ceramics is higher, and there has been no research on the relationship between the EDM parameters and the electrical resistivity of the engineering ceramics.

Investigation of the charging characteristics of micrometer sized droplets based on parallel plate capacitor model.

The charging characteristics of micrometer sized aqueous droplets have attracted more and more attentions due to the development of the microfluidics technology since the electrophoretic motion of a charged droplet can be used as the droplet actuation method. This work proposed a novel method of investigating the charging characteristics of micrometer sized aqueous droplets based on parallel plate capacitor model. With this method, the effects of the electric field strength, electrolyte concentration, and ion species on the charging characteristics of the aqueous droplets was investigated.

Nesfatin-1 in newborns: relationship with endocrine and metabolic and anthropometric measures.

Objective: To explore the relationship between nesfatin-1 and growth and development in newborns.

Methods: Blood samples for nesfatin-1, ghrelin, insulinlike growth factor-1 (IGF-1), insulin and glucose were obtained from preterm (n = 53) and term infants (n = 60), including appropriate for gestational age (AGA) (n = 32) and small for gestational age (SGA) infants (n = 28). The relationship between nesfatin-1 and other metabolic hormones or anthropometric parameters was evaluated.

Application of Bayesian networks in quantitative risk assessment of subsea blowout preventer operations.

This article proposes a methodology for the application of Bayesian networks in conducting quantitative risk assessment of operations in offshore oil and gas industry. The method involves translating a flow chart of operations into the Bayesian network directly. The proposed methodology consists of five steps.

[Relationship of plasma ghrelin, IGF-1 and insulin with the growth and development of 2 -7 year-old children with small for gestational age at birth].

Objective: To explore the relationship of Ghrelin, insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) and insulin with the growth and development of 2 -7 year-old children with small for gestational age (SGA) at birth.

Methods: The levels of ghrelin, IGF-1, IGFBP-3, insulin and glucose were measured in the children with preterm SGA and term SGA and compared with the children with preterm appropriate for gestational age (AGA) and term AGA. The correlation of ghrelin with IGF-1, IGFBP-3 and insulin was analyzed.

Development of an automatic subsea blowout preventer stack control system using PLC based SCADA.

An extremely reliable remote control system for subsea blowout preventer stack is developed based on the off-the-shelf triple modular redundancy system. To meet a high reliability requirement, various redundancy techniques such as controller redundancy, bus redundancy and network redundancy are used to design the system hardware architecture. The control logic, human-machine interface graphical design and redundant databases are developed by using the off-the-shelf software.

Nuclear factor-kappa B expression in alveolar macrophages of mechanically ventilated neonates with respiratory distress syndrome.

Background: Inflammatory reaction and injury in mature lungs are associated with activation of nuclear factor-kappaB (NF-kappaB) to trigger proinflammatory cytokine release. In preterm infants with immature lungs, this mechanism is not yet fully understood, therefore we investigated this mechanism in mechanically ventilated neonates with respiratory distress syndrome (RDS).

Methods: Serial samples of the airway aspirates (AA) were obtained during mechanical ventilation from 21 preterm infants with RDS, of which 12 were survivors (birth weight 1.