No abstract

No abstract

Self-poisoning with pesticides accounts for approximately one-third of all suicides worldwide. To expedite rescue in the emergency department, it is essential to develop a point-of-care analytical method for rapid identification of ingested pesticides. In this study, five of the most common pesticides ingested by self-poisoning patients in Taiwan were analyzed from oral fluid samples. Pesticide-oral fluid mixtures were applied on a cotton swab and then transferred into methanol. A metallic probe was used to sample the methanol solution for subsequent thermal desorption-electrospray ionization mass spectrometry analysis. Altogether, pesticide sampling, transfer, desorption, ionization, and detection took less than 1 min. The reproducibility of this method (n = 6) was shown in the observed low-relative standard deviation (<7%) in the detection of pesticide in oral fluid. The detection limits of the pesticides in oral fluid obtained from four human subjects by thermal desorption-electrospray ionization mass spectrometry were between 1-10 ppb with relative standard deviation 10.7%. Moreover, in this study, linear responses of five pesticides in oral fluid with concentrations between 1 ppb-1 ppm (R2 between 0.9938 and 0.9988) were observed. As the whole analytical process is extremely short, this technique allows for early non-invasive point-of-care identification of pesticides in the oral fluid of self-poisoning patients in the emergency room, providing important toxicological information for decision-making during critical resuscitation.

Thermoelastic data are combined with an Airy stress function to determine the individual stresses on and near the boundary of a circular hole which is located below a concentrated edge-load in a plate. Coefficients of the stress function are evaluated from the measured temperatures and the local traction-free conditions are satisfied by imposing s rr ¼ t rq ¼ 0 analytically on the edge of the hole. The latter has the advantage of reducing the number of coefficients in the stress function series. The method simultaneously smoothes the measured input data, satisfies the local boundary conditions and evaluates individual stresses on, and in the neighbourhood of, the edge of the hole. Attention is paid to how many coefficients to retain in the stress function series. Although the presence of high stress concentration factors, together with a hole-diameterto-plate-thickness ratio of only two, result in some threedimensional effects, these are relatively small and the agreement between the thermoelastic values, those from recorded strains and FEM-predicted surface stresses is good.

No abstract

Thermoelastic stress analysis (TSA) is a contemporary full‐field, non‐contacting method of experimental stress analysis. In a cyclically loaded structure which experiences adiabatic and reversible conditions, the measured local change in temperature is proportional to the change in stress. Under isotropy, the technique measures information on the sum of the principal stresses. As engineering analyses often necessitate knowing the individual components of stress, additional experimental methods or information are frequently required to ‘separate the stresses’. The ability to evaluate individual stresses reliably in a uniaxially loaded finite plate with a central circular hole from TSA‐recorded information without supplementary experimental data is demonstrated here. Measured temperature data are combined with an Airy stress function and some limited traction‐free conditions. The present inverse technique does not presuppose knowledge of the external geometry or boundary conditions, overcomes the traditional difficulties of unreliable edge data, and reduces the number of coefficients needed by satisfying the traction‐free conditions analytically on the edge of the hole. Particular attention is paid to determining a realistic value for the needed number of Airy coefficients.

No abstract

Excessive solar energy can significantly increase interior temperatures and yield great energy demands for air conditioning. Whereas reducing energy consumptions is very crucial today, this article employs patterned glass technology which incorporates linear patterns throughout the exterior surface of glass to attenuate the solar effect on the interior thermal field based on theoretical and experimental studies. By periodically imposing linearly three-dimensional patterns over the outer surface of window glass, the analytical results indicate that the interior solar heat is able to be reduced, as the surface patterns increase the incident angle and/or decrease the solar energy loading on the patterned glass material. Moreover, the interior solar heat can be strongly affected by the pattern design. According to thermally measured results, the trapezoidal patterned glass having 3-mm-top-edged patterned members yields lower temperature on the interior surface of glass comparing with that for the trapezoidal patterns having 6-mm-top edges. Therefore, making the least non-sloped feature or flat plane appearing on the patterned glass helps decrease the interior temperature resulting from solar energy.