The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 gives a brief introduction to the wire bonding procedure and the function of transducer systems. In Section 3, the analytical modeling techniques and the iteration design method for the transducer are presented. In Section 4, the FEM simulation results are presented and discussed. Finally, the conclusions are drawn in Section 5.2.?The System Configuration and PerformancesWire bonding is the most commonly used interconnect technology in the microelectronics manufacturing industry [2]. In this interconnection method, bonding wires carry power and signals between the active semiconductor circuits and the lead frame or substrate metallization.

Gold wire is usually used because of its easy handling and strong bond with the bond pad metal.

Shown in Figure 1 are the steps involved in thermosonic bonding.Figure 1.Simplified procedure for making a ball-stitch wire interconnection with a capillary.The main steps are as follows [2]: (1) Gold wire is threaded through the capillary and electric flame-off (EFO) is used to form a ball on the end of the wire. (2) The capillary descends and presses the gold ball onto an aluminum terminal set on the surface of an IC chip or die. (3) Ultrasonic bursts of energy are applied with the capillary, creating a weld using atomic interdiffusion between the gold ball and bonding pad. (4) The capillary ascends vertically to play out sufficient wire to form a loop as it moves toward the second bond site.

(5) The capillary descends to make the second bond (crescent bond) onto the substrate or leadframe with ultrasonic energy, pressure and heat applied.

Batimastat (6) The wire clamp is closed and the capillary moves vertically to break the wire at the heel of the second bond. (7) The capillary rises to EFO height and can start a new bond cycle. Once a bonding cycle is completed, a precisely shaped wire connection called a wire loop is created as the capillary descends to a target position for the second bond.The schematic setup for electrical interconnect packaging GSK-3 is shown through a schematic drawing in Figure 2. Elastic gold wires were soldered to an IC chip/die or printed circuit board (PCB). The chip or PCB was clamped via clamping plates.

Wires were soldered to the chip or PCB and connected to the substrate or leadframe. During automatic loading of the substrate, the clamping plate is in an upper position. As soon as the bonding chip or PCB has reached the bonding area, the clamping plate moves to the lower position in order to clamp the substrate to the heater stage, as shown in Figure 2. Simultaneously, the alignment process will be prepared after the loading is finished.

2 using Ca2 phos phate precipitation and harvested for experiments 36 48 h after transfection. Preparation of tissue and cell extracts Visceral epidydimal fat pads and livers were harvested, washed in ice cold saline and dissected rapidly into 3 5 mg pieces, followed by pre incubation for 20 minutes in Krebs Ringer HEPES Buffer at 95%O2 5%CO2 at 37 C. Samples were maintained at 95%O2 5% CO2 at 37 C for the duration of the experiments. Sam ples from individual mice were each assayed as separate experimental groups so that a given PAR2 stimulated AMPK response could be attributed to a single mouse. For cell culture studies, cells were used at 80% conflu ence and complete media was exchanged for serum free media 2 hours prior to the experiments.

Tissues or cells were treated with or without 100nM of 2fAP at 37 C and then homogenized in ice cold lysis buffer containing TBS pH 7. 4 supplemented Anacetrapib with 1 mM EGTA, with pro teinase and phosphatase inhibitors and either 1%Triton X 100 and 0. 1% SDS or 1% NP 40, followed by cen trifugation for 10 min at 14,000 rpm at 4 C. Adenine Nucleotide Measurement by LC MS MS NIH3T3 cells were incubated with 100 nM of 2f AP for 0 2 hrs, washed in cold PBS and 5% of perchloric acid was added to the cells. Acid insoluble material was removed by centrifu gation, and perchloric acid was extracted from the supernatant by three washes with 10% excess of a 1,1 mixture of tri n octylamine and 1,1,2 trichlorotrifluoroethane. The nucleotide mixture was subjected to online LC ESI MS MS analysis using an Agilent 1100 capillary HPLC pump interfaced with an LCQ Deca XP ion trap mass spectrometer.

The mass spectrometer was set up for monitoring the fragmentation of the ions of AMP and ATP. A 0. 5 �� 250 mm Zorbax SB C18 column was used, and the flow rate was 8. 0 uL min. A 5 min gradient of 0 20% methanol in 400 mM 1,1,1,3,3,3 hexa fluoro 2 propanol, followed by a 25 min gradient of 20 50% methanol in 400 mM HFIP was employed for the separation. The ratio of AMP over ATP was calculated by comparing the integrated areas of AMP to ATP from selected ion chromatograms with the considera tion of the differences in ionization and fragmentation efficiencies of the two nucleotides.

Protein analysis and immunoblotting Lysates from cells and liver or fat tissue were subjected to 8% SDS PAGE gel and transfer to PVDFfl membranes, followed by Western blotting with the following antibodies, Rabbit polyclonal anti phosphor AMPK Thr172 or anti phosphor ACC Ser79, mouse mono clonal anti AMPKa1 2, rabbit anti Flag, rabbit anti b arrestin or rabbit anti CAMKKb. Blots were imaged with Alexa680 con jugated rabbit and IR800 conjugated mouse secondary antibodies using the LICOR Odyssey imaging system, and LICOR soft ware was used to calculate integrated intensities of bands, phospho AMPK and ACC levels were normalized total AMPK and actin respectively. Fold increases in phosphorylation were determined by dividing the band density observed with treatment by

0 mg of lyophilized cell pellet were resuspended in 600 ul extraction buffer 1 pro panesulfonate 40 mM dithiothreitol]. Protease inhibitor cocktail and glass beads were added to the cell suspension. Cells were disrupted by vor texing six times 60 s. The cell extract was transferred to a fresh tube and centrifuged at 20,000 �� g for 10 min at 4 C. The supernatant was transferred AV-951 completely to a fresh microcentrifuge tube and recovered as Fraction 1. The insoluble fractions were suspended in 400 ul SDS buffer by thorough vortexing and pipetting up and down with a 200 ul pipette tip for 10 times. The sample was boiled for 10 min and subsequently cooled on ice. After centrifugation for 10 min, the supernatant was then transferred to a fresh microcentrifuge tube and mixed with Fraction 1.

Subsequently, 75 ul of a DNase and RNase solution were added and the combined fractions were incubated on ice. The mixed protein extract was then purified by using a 2 D Clean Up Kit, and the purified protein sample was dissolved in rehydration solu tion supplemented with 2% 3 10 NL IPG buffer and 5. 4 mg ml dithio threitol. Total protein concentration was determined using the 2 D Quant Kit. Aliquots of extracellular protein samples were stored at ?80 C before proteomic assays. Western blot analysis of Yap1 protein The crude protein extracts were separated by SDS PAGE after adding 5�� Laemmli sample buffer and boil ing. The separated proteins were transferred onto a PVDF membrane by semi dry blotting and probed with a rabbit polyclonal antibody directed against amino acid residues 351 650 at the C terminus of S.

cerevisiae Yap1p. Goat anti rabbit IgG HRP was used as secondary antibody. Bound antibodies were detected by the ECL Prime western blotting detection reagent using a CCD based imager. 2 D gel electrophoresis For the first dimension, an amount of 200 ug of protein prepared as described in section Protein Extraction and Purification was loaded on a 13 cm Immobiline Dry Strip pH 3 10 NL, and the IPG strips were rehydrated overnight at room temperature. Isoelectric focusing was performed with a Multiphor II system at 20 C with a 3 phase gradient program, 500 V for 0. 25 kVh, 3500 V for 5. 25 kVh, and 3500 V for 45 kVh. Prior to the second dimension, the IPG strips were incubated for 15 min in equilibration buffer contain ing 1% dithiothreitol, followed by 15 min incu bation in equilibration buffer containing 2.

5% iodoacetamide. Second dimension electrophoresis was performed on PROTEINTM II electrophoresis system. The IPG strips were placed on top of 12. 5% polyacrylamide gels and sealed with a solution of 1% agarose containing a trace of bromophenol blue. The vertical gels were run at 10 mA per gel for 30 min followed by 25 mA per gel until the bromophenol blue had migrated to the bot tom of the gel. The temperature was maintained at 15 C using MultiTemp III system. Proteins were visualized using SYPRO Ruby Protein Gel Stain. The SYPRO Ruby stained gels were scann

FRZB, WNT3, 5A, 10 were changed to a lesser e tent by IgM. This is an important observation because Wnt5a produced by fol licular dendritic cells affects the B cell differentiation program of germinal centre B cells. The e pression of FZD6 and WNT5a are modulated by IL21 and TLE3 by LPS. In addition, CD40L modulates the e pression of FRZB, KREMEN2, TCF7, TLE3 and WNT5A. Therefore, we conclude that IgM stimulation affects major signature genes such as MYC and LEF1 defining the inde of Burkitt likeness. IL21, CD40L, IgM, BAFF and LPS affected gene e pression changes similarity and uniqueness In order to describe similarities in gene e pression the global responses to the stimuli were analysed by the Ordered List approach. In this approach, genes were ranked according to their fold change in re sponse to respective stimulation.

Pairwise comparisons of top and bottom ranks of lists representing IL21, CD40L, IgM, BAFF and LPS responses were plotted. We observed a high overlap of genes responding in the same manner for each Batimastat pairwise comparison. This can be seen in Figure 3 by the difference between the blue line, representing the number of overlapping genes at the corresponding position of the gene lists given and the orange area giving the e pected size of a random overlap. The gene lists are also compared in reversed order represented by the green line. The genes are summarized within the supplementary information. The strongest overlap was observed for IL21 and IgM.

This is somehow surprising since it was sug gested that the shared NF��B driven gene e pression changes mediated by LPS, CD40L, IgM or BAFF would be dominant in defining the major pattern of gene e pres sion changes. However, the strong overlap of IL21 with IgM is also reflected in the GO analysis, showing that IL21 and IgM gene e pression changes are enriched for positive regulation of the I��B kinase NF ��B cascade, RNA metabolic processes or immune system processes but also DNA repair. The shared functions of CD40L and IgM affected genes are for e ample characterized by immune response, antigen processing and presentation or positive regulation of B cell activation, BMP signalling pathway and phosphate meta bolic processes. In addition, we describe genes that are specifically affected only by one of the utilized stimuli.

Interestingly, those genes which are dominantly affected by IgM treatment are part of biological processes such as nucleic acid binding, PI3K regulator activity, regulation of cell cycle or meta bolic processes, Wnt receptor signalling pathways and response to hypo ia. Therefore, our data now provide a comprehensive col lection of gene e pression changes induced by different physiological stimuli. These data sets can be used for a better understanding of gene e pression changes in B cell signalling and lymphoma as we will show below. An in vitro model system will be tested to investigate path way activations in individual DLBCL. Coherent gene e pression of IgM affected g

Application of the electronic nose allows differentiation between ill and healthy patients based on holistic analysis of the volatile fraction of different biological samples, including exhaled air. Recently medicine has witnessed an increasing interest in cheap, non-invasive and simple diagnostic tests [1,4�C13,15�C18,20�C22,24,25,27,28,37], and for this reason many researchers look for solutions utilizing new diagnostic tools based exclusively on human breath analysis. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) present in exhaled air may contain information on the internal biochemistry of the human body, which may be useful in terms of identification and description of many diseases. The literature provides information [14,38�C40] on applications of the electronic nose technique to diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which employed a commercial model Cyranose 320 nose.

These investigations confirmed that due to its advantages the technique could be useful and effective as far as breath analysis and differentiation between ill and healthy patients are concerned. COPD is a syndrome revealed as a progressive restriction of air flow through the respiratory system due to malfunction of the lower respiratory system and destruction of the lung parenchyma. The most frequent cause of COPD is exposure to tobacco smoke and to all types of irritant chemical substances during a lifetime [14]. COPD is an incurable disease and treatment is only symptomatic. All treatment activities are aimed at slowing the progression of the disease.

This disease can divided into four stages: in the first stage a chronic cough is the predominant symptom, while the second stage is characterized by dyspnoea on exercise. The third stage is deemed a serious one, with escalated dyspnoea and decreased breathing endurance, and finally, in the fourth stage dyspnoea at rest and respiratory distress occur. The main causes of death of patients suffering from COPD are malfunction of the cardiovascular system, lung cancer and respiratory distress. The aforementioned facts illustrate how important early identification of COPD is, so patients’ life comfort can be improved as well as disease progress inhibited (disease retardation). Statistical data show the scale of the problem. For instance, in the United States of America COPD is the fourth on the list of death causes due to diseases.

This paper presents model studies on mixtures of reference substances based on the volatile organic compounds that are components of human breath. Some of these compounds, Drug_discovery namely N,N-dimethyl-formamide and N,N-dimethylacetamide, were mentioned in the literature as potential COPD markers [5,41,42]. A 6-sensor electronic nose prototype was utilized in the investigations. The set of sensors comprised cheap semiconductor sensors manufactured by Figaro Co.

The excellent merits of TFM will be beneficial to the effectiveness of the proposed method in vibration data denoising and fault diagnosis.In the rest of the paper, the basic TFM analysis theory of vibration signal is introduced in Section 2. In Section 3, the principle and procedure of the TFM-based data denoising method is presented, and the effectiveness of this method in denoising effects and fault diagnosis is further evaluated. Then, the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by application to a set of practical bearing vibration sensor data in Section 4. Finally, conclusions are drawn in Section 5.2.?TFM Analysis of Vibration SignalThe TFM is embedded on the time-frequency distribution (TFD, which can be achieved by various TFA methods such as STFT, Continuous WT and Wigner-Ville distribution) of a non-stationary signal as an intrinsic nonlinear manifold structure in the time-frequency domain.

For different vibration signals, the TFM displays different time-frequency patterns that can be extracted by a technique which addresses manifold learning on a series of TFDs in the reconstructed phase space [17]. The TFM combines non-stationary information and nonlinear information. It has a similar 2-D appearance to the TFD but possesses the advantages of noise suppression and resolution enhancement in the time-frequency domain. For details on the TFM technique readers can refer to [17]. The following provides a brief description on main steps to obtain the TFM for a vibration signal x(t).

The TFM learning requires firstly reconstructing the manifold of signal x(t) in a high-dimensional phase space by the phase space reconstruction (PSR) technique. For a signal x(t) with N data points, the ith phase point vector in an m-dimensional phase Carfilzomib space is given as:Xim=[xi,xi+��,��,xi+(m?1)��](1)where xi is the ith data point in x(t), m is the embedding dimension, and �� is the time delay. In this study, the embedding dimension is calculated to satisfy a sufficient but not necessary condition by Cao’s method [19] and the time delay is set to be one in order to keep a high time resolution [17]. The purpose of conducting PSR is to reconstruct the underlying manifold embedded in the given signal x(t) so that the manifold learning algorithm can be followed to extract the manifold. When aligning the vectors Xim in the order of time, a time-dependent data matrix P ? Rm��n (�� = 1, n = N ? m + 1) is constructed in the phase space with its elements having the following relationship with the data of x(t):P(j,k)=xk+(j?1)��(2)where j ? [1, m], k ? [1, N ? (m ? 1)�� ].The TFM is then calculated in the reconstructed phase space.

Hybridizations were performed as suggested by Bruant [15]. An amount of 500 ng of labelled DNA was dried under vacuum in a rotary desiccator (Savant SpeedVac?, ArrayIt, Holbrook, NY, USA) and resuspended in a hybridization buffer (Dig Ease Buffer, Roche Diagnostics spa, Milan, Italy). Before hybridization, microarrays were pre-hybridized for at least one hour at 42 ��C in a pre-heated pre-hybridization solution containing 5X SSC, 0.1% SDS (Sigma Aldrich spa, Milan, Italy) and 1.0% BSA (Sigma Aldrich spa). After pre-hybridization, the microarrays were hybridized mixing a solution of Dig Easy Hyb buffer (Roche Diagnostics), Bakers Yeast tRNA (10 mg/ml) (Sigma Aldrich spa), Sonicated Salmon Sperm DNA (10 mg/mL) (Sigma Aldrich spa) with previously denatured labelled DNA.

Microarrays were hybridized overnight at 42 ��C in a SlideBooster (Advalytix, ABI, Milan, Italy). After hybridization, the slides were washed with increasing stringency washes (1X SSC, 0.1% SDS preheated to 42 ��C; 1X SSC and 0.1X SSC at room temperature). Microarray slides were scanned using a ScanArray Lite fluorescent microarray analysis system (Perkin Elmer, Milan, Italy) at excitation wavelengths of 532 nm (Cy3) and 635 (Cy5) and then analysed with the ScanArray Gx software (Perkin Elmer). Images were examined using the QuantArray software version 3.1 (Packard Bioscience, Boston, MA, USA).The data were normalized as described previously [17]. For each subarray, after subtraction of local background intensity, the median value for each set of triplicate spotted probes was divided by the empty signal and then logarithmically transformed.

The data file was then elaborated with Cluster software [18,19]. Strains were clustered by hierarchical clustering using the algorithm Centered Pearson Dacomitinib Correlation Distance and Pairwise Maximum Linkage method. For visualization of the elaborated data, Java TreeView, an Open Source program, was utilised [18�C20].3.?Results and DiscussionMultiplex PCR identified 62.75% of the isolates as C. jejuni and 37.24% as C. coli (Table 1). In this study the antimicrobial resistance and two methods (PFGE and microarray) for genome analysis of C. jejuni and C. coli strains were evaluated.The antibiotic resistance profiles of the isolates are shown in Table 2. In particular, 100 (68.97%) isolates were resistant to at least one antibiotic, whereas the remaining strains (31.03%) were susceptible to all antibiotics tested. The highest levels of resistance were found for ciprofloxacin (62.76%), tetracycline (55.86%) and nalidixic acid (55.17%). In contrast, only 19 (13.10%) strains were resistant to erythromycin, 7 (4.83%) strains to streptomycin and only one (0.69%) isolate to chloramphenicol.

Algorithms such as the narrow-band algorithm [9], fast marching algorithm [10] and the two-cycle fast algorithm [11] have been developed to make this process more efficient.Based upon our previous work using a level set for image segmentation [7], this paper proposes a more efficient, three-component based level set algorithm for noisy SAR image segmentation. Firstly, it operates in a grid domain, which updates the adjoining pixels around the zero level set, and only the boundary and neighboring pixels in the propagation direction are considered in the computation process. Next, a single list is selected to track the interface’s properties by keeping pace with the propagation boundary to shorten time complexity. At last, the complicated partial differential equations are simplified into a local up-wind scheme to reduce numerical computation time.

Moreover, an intensity model and a curvature model are applied for noise removal and simultaneous trouble-free extraction of surface slicks. To illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, experiments were conducted on extracting surface slick features from ERS-2 SAR ocean images. In addition the proposed techniques were evaluated against other level set methods such as fast marching, and the results confirmed the efficiency gains of the proposed method.2.?Background of Level Set2.1. Level set methodLevel set is an efficient numerical technique for interface propagation. A brief introduction of this method is given here. The detailed explanation can be found in Sethian (1999)[10].

In the level set method, a scalar Lipschitz function, ?(x, t) (also known as level set function), defines the embedding of an n-dimensional Drug_discovery surface in an Rn+1 space surface, where x Rn+1, and t = time t (Figure 1). The set of points on the surface, S, are mapped by ? such that:S=x�O?(x,t)=k(1)where k is an arbitrary scalar value, namely S is the k level set of ?.Figure 1.Illustration of level sets.The essential idea of the level set is to represent the moving front ?? as the zero level set of the time-dependent level set function ? (x, t = 0) = 0.Moreover, the level set is supposed to be topology free, since different topologies of the zero level set do not imply the different topologies of a level set ?.

In accordance with the propagation of the front, the first order partial differential equation (PDE) of the level set is represented as:???t=F|??|(2)where F is a scalar function that defines the speed in the outward direction normal to ?, |?| represents some appropriate finite different operators for the spatial derivative, and ?t the time step.The speed term in which the front propagates is defined by the function F:F=Fprop+Fcurv+Fadv(3)where Fprop is the propagation expansion speed, Fcurv = ?�� is the dependence of speed on the curvature, and Fadv is the advection speed.

Consequently, the step size is increased, slightly reducing the accuracy. The thicknesses of the layers are chosen to cause zenith path delays nearly equivalent to those from a standard refractivity atmosphere (see Equation 2 and [12]). The b
Glucose oxidase (GOx) electrodes have been extensively studied as a foundation for constructing biosensors, biomedical devices, enzymatic bioreactors and biofuel cells [1-6]. The most critical challenge in these applications is to immobilize the GOx so that it retains its enzymatic activity and permits fast and efficient electron transfer from the catalytic center to the electrode [7-10]. In order to achieve this, suitable electrode materials such as nanomaterials and special techniques for immobilizing enzymes on the electrode surface have been developed.

Carbon nanotubes were first introduced by Iijima in 1991 [11] and they have come to be regarded as being a very attractive nanomaterial for a wide range of applications [5-6, 12]. Many experiments have been carried out to exploit the unique properties of SWCNTs that can lead to the preservation of catalytic activity and to the achievement of direct electron transfer with the redox active center of the adsorbed oxidoreductase in SWCNT-modified electrodes [5, 13-14]. It had been found that GOx complex and FAD coenzymes can spontaneously adsorb onto annealed carbon nanotubes with an armchair chirality to improve their bioelectrochemical performance respectively while these complexes are cast onto glassy carbon electrodes (GCEs) [5, 13-14].

Moreover, in a cyclic voltammogram experiment, the peak current of intact GOx on a SWCNT-modified GCE was found to be almost 10 times greater than that on an unmodified GCE, but still less than that of the electroactive FAD directly on SWCNT-modified GCE [13]. At one time, Wohlfahrt et al. reported that Glu412 bound to His559 was capable of modulating powerfully its catalytic activity by affecting all the rate constants in the reductive and the oxidative half-reaction of the catalytic cycle while those amino acid residues of apo-GOx along with FAD are in the active site of enzyme [29]. From these cases, it can be apparent that the conformation of FAD in apo-GOx could determine the activity of intact enzyme by influencing on the active structure of redox site.

Consequently, in order to recognize what are about the change of activity with GOx complex adsorbed on SWCNTs, it would be worthy of exploring the conformational mobility mechanism of FAD coenzyme while GOx complex GSK-3 is non-covalently adsorbed on SWCNTs with multiple orientations. Of cause, those experiments on SWCNT-modified electrodes have proven to be an essential experimental base for gaining a fundamental understanding of biological redox reactions and for evaluating potential denaturation mechanisms due to the interaction with SWCNTs [13-14].

In 2000, a Bluebird? dispenser was reported to improve accuracy by using a pressure feed-back loop [15]. In 2005, Carsten Haber tried to integrate a MEMS flow sensor in the Seyonic system, and first proposed a residual volume compensation strategy to constantly monitor and correct the dispensing process for accurate fluid delivery during dispensing cycles [16]. Integrating the sensors make it possible to dispense the desired volumes of liquids with different viscosities accurately by closed-loop control.In this paper, an adaptive precise liquid dispensing system with a more intelligent control approach was developed. It consists of a syringe pump, syringe valve, pressurized reagent bottle, pressure regulator, microsolenoid valves, and sensors, etc, as shown in Figure 1.

A MEMS flow sensor was designed, fabricated, and integrated in the liquid dispensing system. Besides, an advanced compound fuzzy control strategy was introduced to control the valve open time in each dispensing cycle. With feedback information from the flow sensor, the dispensing system could self-adjust the open time of the solenoid valve automatically so as to dispense the desired volumes of reagents over a large range of viscosities, as well as detect air bubbles or nozzle clogs in real time. First, the design, fabrication, and calibration of the key component in dispensing system (the flow sensor) are introduced in detail. Then, the compound fuzzy control strategy is expounded. Finally, the experimental results are given to show the precision of this liquid dispensing system.Figure 1.

The schematic of the non-contact adaptive precise liquid dispensing system.2.?The MEMS flow sensor2.1. Design and FabricationsIn the proposed liquid dispensing instrument, an integrated high-speed liquid flow sensor based on the measurement of pressure difference across a flow restriction is presented. It provides closed-loop control for accurately dispensing liquids over a large range of viscosities, as well as detecting air bubbles or nozzle clogs in real time. The functional layout of the sensor chip is shown in Figure 2.Figure 2.The layout of the sensor chip.The sensor chip consists of two piezo-resistive sensor dies and a micro-machined channel. By use of anodic bonding process, the glass wafer is mounted on the silicon wafer.

The pressure drop induced by liquid flow across the micro-machined channel at Anacetrapib low Reynolds numbers is expressed as in (1) [17]:��P=Qv��C��L2ADh2(1)where ��P is the pressure drop (Pa), Qv is the volumetric flow rate (m3/s), C is a dimensionless friction factor [1], �� is fluid dynamic viscosity (Pa.s), L is the channel length (m), A is the channel cross section (m2), and Dh is the equivalent hydraulic diameter (m).Based on (1), the flow rate can be obtained from the pressure drop.