Evaluation of the spot urine sampling technique to assess urinary pseudouridine excretion in lactating dairy cows

Selostus: Mahdollisuus lyhytaikaisen virtsankeruun käyttöön lypsylehmien virtsan pseudouridiinin erityksen määrittämisessä

Multivariable regression analysis and hot-spot stress approach into fatigue life estimations of welded joints

Kolmen eri hitsausliitoksen väsymisikä arvio on analysoitu monimuuttuja regressio analyysin avulla. Regression perustana on laaja S-N tietokanta joka on kerätty kirjallisuudesta. Tarkastellut liitokset ovat tasalevy liitos, krusiformi liitos ja pitkittäisripa levyssä. Muuttujina ovat jännitysvaihtelu, kuormitetun levyn paksuus ja kuormitus tapa. Paksuus effekti on käsitelty uudelleen kaikkia kolmea liitosta ajatellen. Uudelleen käsittelyn avulla on varmistettu paksuus effektin olemassa olo ennen monimuuttuja regressioon siirtymistä. Lineaariset väsymisikä yhtalöt on ajettu kolmelle hitsausliitokselle ottaen huomioon kuormitetun levyn paksuus sekä kuormitus tapa. Väsymisikä yhtalöitä on verrattu ja keskusteltu testitulosten valossa, jotka on kerätty kirjallisuudesta. Neljä tutkimustaon tehty kerättyjen väsymistestien joukosta ja erilaisia väsymisikä arvio metodeja on käytetty väsymisiän arviointiin. Tuloksia on tarkasteltu ja niistä keskusteltu oikeiden testien valossa. Tutkimuksissa on katsottu 2mm ja 6mm symmetristäpitkittäisripaa levyssä, 12.7mm epäsymmetristä pitkittäisripaa, 38mm symmetristä pitkittäisripaa vääntökuormituksessa ja 25mm/38mm kuorman kantavaa krusiformi liitosta vääntökuormituksessa. Mallinnus on tehty niin lähelle testi liitosta kuin mahdollista. Väsymisikä arviointi metodit sisältävät hot-spot metodin jossa hot-spot jännitys on laskettu kahta lineaarista ja epälineaarista ekstrapolointiakäyttäen sekä paksuuden läpi integrointia käyttäen. Lovijännitys ja murtumismekaniikka metodeja on käytetty krusiformi liitosta laskiessa.

Analysis of outliers in electricity spot prices with exampleof New England and New Zealand markets

Electricity spot prices have always been a demanding data set for time series analysis, mostly because of the non-storability of electricity. This feature, making electric power unlike the other commodities, causes outstanding price spikes. Moreover, the last several years in financial world seem to show that ’spiky’ behaviour of time series is no longer an exception, but rather a regular phenomenon. The purpose of this paper is to seek patterns and relations within electricity price outliers and verify how they affect the overall statistics of the data. For the study techniques like classical Box-Jenkins approach, series DFT smoothing and GARCH models are used. The results obtained for two geographically different price series show that patterns in outliers’ occurrence are not straightforward. Additionally, there seems to be no rule that would predict the appearance of a spike from volatility, while the reverse effect is quite prominent. It is concluded that spikes cannot be predicted based only on the price series; probably some geographical and meteorological variables need to be included in modeling.

Highly functional binding surface for miniaturised solid-phase immunoassays. - A spot story -

Several bioaffinity assays are based on the detection of an analyte which is bound on a solid substrate via biochemical interaction. These so called solid phase assays are based on the adhesion of the primary binding partner on a solid surface, which then binds the analyte to be detected. In this thesis work a novel solid phase based assay technology, known as spot technology, was developed. The spot technology is based on combination of high-capacity solid phases, concentrated in a spot format, utilising modified streptavidin molecules and recombinant antibody fragments. The reduction of the solid phase binding surface to a size of a spot enabled denser binding of the target molecules, providing improved signal intensities and signal-to-background ratio when applied in different solid phase immunoassays. Streptavidin-biotin interactions are commonly utilised in numerous different bioaffinity assays and the ultimate nature of streptavidin to bind biotin is among the strongest non-covalent interaction reported between two biomolecules. In this study native core streptavidin was chemically modified to provide polymerised streptavidin molecules with altered adsorption properties. These streptavidin conjugates, when coated onto polystyrene surface, provided enhanced biotin binding capacity and surface stability when compared to a reference coating constructed with native streptavidin. Furthermore, the combination of chemically modified streptavidin, sitespecifically biotinylated antibody fragments and the spot coating technology provided highly dense solid phase coating with improved binding properties. The performance of the spot assay technology was further demonstrated in different immunoassay configurations. Human thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) and human cardiac troponin I (cTnI) were used as model analytes to show the applicability of the highly sensitive spot-based solid-phase immunoassay for detection of very low levels of analytes. It was demonstrated that the spot technology provided an assay concept with enhanced sensitivity and short turn-around times, characteristics that are highly suitable for point-of-care applications.

Prognosis of after spot volumes at the Scandinavian electricity market

The Thesis is dedicated to development of an operative tool to support decision making in after spot trading on the Nordic electricity market. The basics of the Nordic electricity market, trading mechanisms on the spot and after spot markets are presented in the Thesis. Mathematical equations that describe electricity balance condition in the power system are offered. The main driving factors that impact deviation of actual electricity balance from the scheduled one (object) in the power system have been explored and mathematically defined. The behavioral model of the object and principal trends in change of state of the object under an impact of the driving factors are determined with the help of regression analysis made in Microsoft Office Excel. The behavioral model gives an indication for the total regulation volume (Elbas trades volume, volume of regulation market, balance power) for a certain hour that serves as the base input in estimating prices on the after spot markets. Proposals for development of methodologies of forecasting the after spot electricity prices are offered.

A comparison of electricity spot prices simulation using ARMA-GARCH and mean-reverting models

The aim of this work is to compare two families of mathematical models for their respective capability to capture the statistical properties of real electricity spot market time series. The first model family is ARMA-GARCH models and the second model family is mean-reverting Ornstein-Uhlenbeck models. These two models have been applied to two price series of Nordic Nord Pool spot market for electricity namely to the System prices and to the DenmarkW prices. The parameters of both models were calibrated from the real time series. After carrying out simulation with optimal models from both families we conclude that neither ARMA-GARCH models, nor conventional mean-reverting Ornstein-Uhlenbeck models, even when calibrated optimally with real electricity spot market price or return series, capture the statistical characteristics of the real series. But in the case of less spiky behavior (System prices), the mean-reverting Ornstein-Uhlenbeck model could be seen to partially succeeded in this task.

Analysis of Patterns in Electricity Spot Market Time Series

Due to its non-storability, electricity must be produced at the same time that it is consumed, as a result prices are determined on an hourly basis and thus analysis becomes more challenging. Moreover, the seasonal fluctuations in demand and supply lead to a seasonal behavior of electricity spot prices. The purpose of this thesis is to seek and remove all causal effects from electricity spot prices and remain with pure prices for modeling purposes. To achieve this we use Qlucore Omics Explorer (QOE) for the visualization and the exploration of the data set and Time Series Decomposition method to estimate and extract the deterministic components from the series. To obtain the target series we use regression based on the background variables (water reservoir and temperature). The result obtained is three price series (for Sweden, Norway and System prices) with no apparent pattern.

A cell spot microarray method for high-throughput biology

High-throughput screening of cellular effects of RNA interference (RNAi) libraries is now being increasingly applied to explore the role of genes in specific cell biological processes and disease states. However, the technology is still limited to specialty laboratories, due to the requirements for robotic infrastructure, access to expensive reagent libraries, expertise in high-throughput screening assay development, standardization, data analysis and applications. In the future, alternative screening platforms will be required to expand functional large-scale experiments to include more RNAi constructs, allow combinatorial loss-of-function analyses (e.g. genegene or gene-drug interaction), gain-of-function screens, multi-parametric phenotypic readouts or comparative analysis of many different cell types. Such comprehensive perturbation of gene networks in cells will require a major increase in the flexibility of the screening platforms, throughput and reduction of costs. As an alternative for the conventional multi-well based high-throughput screening -platforms, here the development of a novel cell spot microarray method for production of high density siRNA reverse transfection arrays is described. The cell spot microarray platform is distinguished from the majority of other transfection cell microarray techniques by the spatially confined array layout that allow highly parallel screening of large-scale RNAi reagent libraries with assays otherwise difficult or not applicable to high-throughput screening. This study depicts the development of the cell spot microarray method along with biological application examples of high-content immunofluorescence and phenotype based cancer cell biological analyses focusing on the regulation of prostate cancer cell growth, maintenance of genomic integrity in breast cancer cells, and functional analysis of integrin protein-protein interactions in situ.

Modelling Long-Run Relationship between Spot and Future Prices of Different Commodities

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether there exists any kind of relationship between the spot and future prices of the different commodities or not. Commodities like cocoa, coffee, crude oil, gold, natural gas and silver are considered from January 3, 2000 to December 31, 2012. For this purpose, ADF test and KPSS test are used in testing the stationarity whereas Johansen Cointegration test is used in testing the long-run relationship. Johansen co-integration test exhibits that there at least 5 co-integrating pairs out of 6 except crude oil. Moreover, the result of Granger Causality supports the fact that if two or more than two time series tend to be co-integrated there exists either uni-directional or bi-directional relationship. However, our results reveled that although there exists the co-integration between the variable, one might not granger causes another .VAR model is also used to measure the proportion of effects. These findings will help the derivative market and arbitragers in developing the strategies to gain the maximum profit in the financial market.

Forecasting financial weather - can we foresee market sentiment? Quantitative analysis of nodal prices in the New Zealand Electricity Spot Market

Time series of hourly electricity spot prices have peculiar properties. Electricity is by its nature difficult to store and has to be available on demand. There are many reasons for wanting to understand correlations in price movements, e.g. risk management purposes. The entire analysis carried out in this thesis has been applied to the New Zealand nodal electricity prices: offer prices (from 29 May 2002 to 31 March 2009) and final prices (from 1 January 1999 to 31 March 2009). In this paper, such natural factors as location of the node and generation type in the node that effects the correlation between nodal prices have been reviewed. It was noticed that the geographical factor affects the correlation between nodes more than others. Therefore, the visualisation of correlated nodes was done. However, for the offer prices the clear separation of correlated and not correlated nodes was not obtained. Finally, it was concluded that location factor most strongly affects correlation of electricity nodal prices; problems in visualisation probably associated with power losses when the power is transmitted over long distance.

Hydrologisen tilanteen ja tuulivoimatuotannon muutosten vaikutus vesiarvoihin pohjoismaisilla sähkön spot-markkinoilla

Vesivoimalla on merkittävä rooli pohjoismaisessa sähköntuotantojärjestelmässä. Spot-markkinoille tarjottavan vesivoiman hinta riippuu vaihtoehtoisen tuotannon hinnasta ja odotetusta vesivoimantuottajien käytettävissä olevasta veteen sitoutuneen potentiaalienergian määrästä. Hydrologisella tilanteella tarkoitetaan tässä tämän potentiaalienergian poikkeamaa normaalitasostaan. Viime vuosina tuulivoimatuotanto pohjoismaisella sähkömarkkina-alueella on kasvanut voimakkaasti, ja on tullut aiheelliseksi tarkastella, millaisia vaikutuksia tällä on vesivoimantuottajien toimintaan. Työssä määritellään vesivoimalle vaihtoehtoisen sähköntuotannon tuotantokustannus, joka pitkällä aikavälillä toimii vertailutasona, jonka perusteella vesivoimantuottajat määrittävät markkinoilla tarjontahinnan tuotannolleen. Tarkastellaan, kuinka hydrologisen tilanteen ja vaihtoehtoisen tuotannon tuotantokustannusten muutokset vaikuttavat vesiarvoon, joka on hinta, jolla hintariippuvaista eli säätyvää vesivoimaa tarjotaan spot-markkinoille. Todetaan, että hydrologisen tilanteen vahvistuminen ja vaihtoehtoisen tuotantokustannuksen aleneminen alentavat vesiarvoja. Todetaan lisäksi, että tuulivoima vaikuttaa sähkön hinnanmuodostukseen markkinoilla samankaltaisesti kuin hintariippumaton vesivoimatuotanto. Esitetään aikasarjamalli vesivoimatuotannon hintariippuvuuden mallintamiseksi. Vertaillaan vesivoimatuottajien toimintaa kahdella vesivoimatuotantoa sisältävällä hinta-alueella, joista toisella tuulivoimatuotanto on kasvanut voimakkaammin kuin toisella. Havaitaan, että molemmilla hinta-alueilla hydrologisen tilanteen vahvistuminen on alentanut ja heikkeneminen nostanut vesiarvoja. Lisäksi havaitaan, että alueella, jonka tuulivoimatuotanto on kasvanut enemmän, vesiarvot ovat laskeneet suhteessa alueen, jolla tuulivoimatuotanto on kasvanut vähemmän, vesiarvoihin. Tuulivoiman voidaan todeta syrjäyttäneen markkinoilta tuotantokustannuksiltaan kalliimpaa tuotantoa.

Sähkön omatuotannon kannattavuustarkastelu

Tässä diplomityössä tutkitaan sähkön omatuotannon kannattavuutta M-realin Simpeleen tehtaiden voimalaitoksella. Erityisesti työssä arvioidaan lauhdesähköntuotannon kannattavuutta polttoaine- ja päästökustannuksista muodostuvien marginaalikustannusten osalta. Koska voimalaitoksen rakennusaste on varsin alhainen,sähköntuotannon kannattavuutta on tarkasteltu arvioimalla sähkön ja lämmön yhteistuotannon kustannuksia ja jakamalla syntyneet kustannukset suhdemenetelmän avulla eri tuotteille. Diplomityössä etsitään kustannustehokkain seospolttosuhde annettujen reunaehtojen puitteissa muodostamalla polttoaineista aiheutuvista kustannuksista laskentamalli, jota optimoidaan Microsoft Excelin Solver-toiminnolla. Lauhdesähköntuotannon marginaalikustannuksia verrataan Nord Poolin SPOT-tuntihintaan. Lauhdesähköntuotanto voimalaitoksella on kannattavaa, mikäli SPOT-tuntihinnan vuorokautinen keskiarvo ylittää lauhdesähköntuotannon marginaalikustannukset.

Puutavaranosturin teleskooppipuomin kehittäminen ultralujilla teräksillä toteutettavaksi

Diplomityössä on tutkittu ultralujien terästen käyttömahdollisuuksia puutavaranosturin puomirakenteissa. Työn tavoitteena on ollut suunnitella uusi puomikonstruktio, joka on kevyempi kuin aiemmat ratkaisut, mutta täyttää kuitenkin sovellettavien standardien asettamat vaatimukset väsymisen, staattisen kestävyyden ja stabiliteetin suhteen. Työ on tehty vertailemalla erilaisten uusien profiilien ja rakenneyksityiskohtien ominaisuuksia toisiinsa ja vanhaan rakenteeseen. Vertailukriteereinä on käytetty elastista taivutuskapasiteettia, kriittistä lommahduskuormaa, väsymislujuutta sekä hitsaus- ja materiaalikustannuksia. Työn lopputuloksena saatiin ehdotus uudeksi teleskooppipuomiksi, joka on noin 8 % kevyempi kuin nykyinen ratkaisu.