Detection of Internal Defects in Concrete and Evaluation of a Healthy Part of Concrete by Noncontact Acoustic Inspection Using Normalized Spectral Entropy and Normalized SSE

Non-destructive testing, with non-contact from a remote location, to detect and visualize internal defects in composite materials such as a concrete is desired. Therefore, a noncontact acoustic inspection method has been studied. In this method, the measurement surface is forced to vibrate by powerful aerial sound waves from a remote sound source, and the vibration state is measured by a laser Doppler vibrometer. The distribution of acoustic feature quantities (spectral entropy and vibrational energy ratio) is analyzed to statistically identify and evaluate healthy parts of concrete. If healthy parts in the measuring plane can be identified, the other part is considered to be internal defects or an abnormal measurement point. As a result, internal defects are detected. Spectral entropy (SE) was used to distinguish between defective parts and healthy parts. Furthermore, in order to distinguish between the resonance of a laser head and the resonance of the defective part of the concrete, spatial spectral entropy (SSE) was also used. SSE is an extension of the concept of SE to a two-dimensional measuring space. That is, based on the concept of SE, SSE is calculated, at each frequency, for spatial distribution of vibration velocity spectrum in the measuring plane. However, these two entropy values were used in unnormalized expressions. Therefore, although relative evaluation within the same measurement surface was possible, there was the issue that changes in the entropy value could not be evaluated in a unified manner in measurements under different conditions and environments. Therefore, this study verified whether it is possible to perform a unified evaluation for different defective parts of concrete specimen by using normalized SE and normalized SSE. From the experimental results using cavity defects and peeling defects, the detection and visualization of internal defects in concrete can be effectively carried out by the following two analysis methods. The first is using both the normalized SE and the evaluation of a healthy part of concrete. The second is the normalized SSE analysis that detects resonance frequency band of internal defects.     

Development of a liquid–chromatography tandem mass spectrometry and ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography high-resolution mass spectrometry method for the quantitative determination of zearalenone and its major metabolites in chicken and pig plasma

A sensitive and specific method for the quantitative determination of zearalenone (ZEN) and its major metabolites (α-zearalenol (α-ZEL), β-zearalenol (β-ZEL), α-zearalanol (α-ZAL), β-zearalanol (β-ZAL) and zearalanone (ZAN)) in animal plasma using liquid chromatography combined with heated electrospray ionization (h-ESI) tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS) and high-resolution Orbitrap^® mass spectrometry ((U)HPLC–HR–MS) is presented. The sample preparation was straightforward, and consisted of a deproteinization step using acetonitrile. Chromatography was performed on a Hypersil Gold column (50 mm × 2.1 mm i.d., dp: 1.9 μm, run-time: 10 min) using 0.01% acetic acid in water (A) and acetonitrile (B) as mobile phases.     

MSE/SSE discrimination methods of the PC-HPGe detector

Having advantages of low capacitance and low energy threshold, the PC-HPGe (Point-Contact High Purity Germanium) detector has found its application in the direct detection of WIMP(Weak Interaction Massive Particle) in CDEX (China Darkmatter Experiment). The MSE (Multi-Site Event) and SSE(Single-Site Event) discrimination methods of the PC-HPGe detector are introduced in this article, including their physical basis, the electronics system and the algorithms to implement them. Behaviors of the PC-HPGe detector are studied intensively through this research and finally the experimental results of the LE discrimination method are presented.