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No index for non-invasive diagnosis of subclinical pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) is available at this time. Here we carried out a plasma metabolomic study to search for potential biomarkers to facilitate its non-invasive diagnosis.The metabolites in plasma were detected by using an LC-Q-TOF-MS method. The metabolic profiles of subclinical PID patients and healthy controls were discriminated by multivariate analysis. 30 patients and 28 controls were enrolled for PLS-DA model construction, and further 8 patients and 8 controls were employed for model validation. Univariate analysis was performed to evaluate potential biomarkers.The metabolic profiles of subclinical PID patients were different from those of healthy controls in a PLS-DA model, and this model was validated by permutation test and could accurately classify further 16 samples in T-prediction. Eleven differentiating metabolites, with the variable importance in the project1 and corrected P 0.05, were found as potential biomarkers. These metabolites included eight lipids, p-cresol, 3-indolepropionic acid and indoxylsulfuric acid. Among them, lysophosphatidic acid (16,0/0:0) showed a highest AUC value of receiver operating characteristic curve (0.855), with sensitivity of 89.3% and specificity of 73.3%.Through an LC-Q-TOF-MS based metabolomic analysis on subclinical PID, this study reports the potential plasma biomarkers which may be helpful for its non-invasive diagnosis.

Offshore wind power is becoming an important topic of the world's renewable energy research. Regarding the grounding of offshore wind turbines, a simulation model of the jacket structure as the grounding device is established in this paper. Every conductor of this model is divided into several segments, and the Green's function of each segment is solved with complex image method. Finally, the grounding resistance can be obtained on the basis of the principle of superposition. Moreover, this paper also analyzes several factors that affect the performance of this grounding electrode, including the depth of sea water, the resistivity of sea water and the soil resistivity of seabed. The results show that using the jacket structure as a natural grounding electrode is satisfactory for the safe grounding of offshore wind turbines.

Offshore wind power is becoming an important topic of the world's renewable energy research. Regarding the grounding of offshore wind turbines, a simulation model of the jacket structure as the grounding device is established in this paper. Every conductor of this model is divided into several segments, and the Green's function of each segment is solved with complex image method. Finally, the grounding resistance can be obtained on the basis of the principle of superposition. Moreover, this paper also analyzes several factors that affect the performance of this grounding electrode, including the depth of sea water, the resistivity of sea water and the soil resistivity of seabed. The results show that using the jacket structure as a natural grounding electrode is satisfactory for the safe grounding of offshore wind turbines.

The breakage equation for roller milling allows prediction of the output particle size distribution from the feed particle size distribution in terms of a breakage function. Breakage functions were determined for First Break milling of hard and soft wheats under four roll dispositions: Sharp-to-Sharp (S-S), Sharp-to-Dull (S-D), Dull-to-Sharp (D-S) and Dull-to-Dull (D-D). The breakage functions were then used to predict the particle size distribution resulting from milling whole wheat samples at different roll gaps, for comparison with experimental results. First Break milling of both hard and soft wheat samples under a SS disposition gave an even distribution of particle sizes over the range 250-2000 μm, which could be described by linear breakage functions. The effect of changing roll gap was to change the slope of the line i.e. to change the balance between small and large particles, with larger roll gaps giving a greater proportion of large panicles. Milling under S-D, D-S and D-D dispositions gave progressively more 'U-shaped' distributions; these were described by quadratic functions that indicated large quantities of small and large particles, but fewer in the middle size range. Again, increasing roll gap changed the balance towards more large particles, but had little effect on the quantity of particles in the middle size range. Predictions of output cumulative particle size distributions using the breakage equation gave excellent agreement with independently derived experimental results, with R2 in excess of 0.99 in all cases. The trend in wheat quality, testing is to measure distributions of single kernel parameters. The breakage equation approach allows the link to be made between distributions of single kernel parameters and milling performance. © 2003 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.