A robust approach to design a single facility layout plan in dynamic manufacturing environments using a permutation-based genetic algorithm

During the past few decades, developing efficient methods to solve dynamic facility layout problems has been focused on significantly by practitioners and researchers. More specifically meta-heuristic algorithms, especially genetic algorithm, have been proven to be increasingly helpful to generate sub-optimal solutions for large-scale dynamic facility layout problems. Nevertheless, the uncertainty of the manufacturing factors in addition to the scale of the layout problem calls for a mixed genetic algorithm–robust approach that could provide a single unlimited layout design. The present research aims to devise a customized permutation-based robust genetic algorithm in dynamic manufacturing environments that is expected to be generating a unique robust layout for all the manufacturing periods. The numerical outcomes of the proposed robust genetic algorithm indicate significant cost improvements compared to the conventional genetic algorithm methods and a selective number of other heuristic and meta-heuristic techniques.

Chemical phytotoxicity testing facility for warm-season turfgrasses

The registration of new agricultural chemicals (particularly herbicides) for turf use requires supporting data on their possible phytotoxic effects across a representative range of turfgrass species and cultivars. This process has been streamlined by the establishment of dedicated phytotoxicity testing site. This facility has enabled phytotoxicity screening of new chemicals to be conducted more quickly, thoroughly and economically than the previous piecemeal ad hoc approach. During the three years of this project, 39 products were screened on the site.

Extension of Chemical Phytotoxicity Testing Facility for Warm-Season Turfgrasses

The turf industry needs to access a range of more selective, effective and environmentally acceptable pesticides, which will help to address environmental concerns while maintaining the industry's internationally competitive status. This includes both new pesticides being developed globally for turf use and older generic chemicals previously registered for other agricultural purposes and now requiring extension of that registration for use in turf.

TU10025 Erosion control - turf research and development facility

The aim of this project is to construct a large-scale erosion control education and demonstration facility at Redland Research Station. This will be done in collaboration with the Australian turf industry (as members of the steering committee) and consultant researcher Dr Rob Loch (project partner). The project will employ a part-time industry development officer (IDO) for Turf Australia to increase engagement with the project by the target audience. The project’s main strategy is to extend the research results from HAL funded project Optimising Turf Use to Minimise Soil Erosion on Construction Sites TU08033 so that the maximum return on investment can be derived for the turf levy payers and HAL from that study.

A multisite managed environment facility for targeted trait and germplasm phenotyping

Field evaluation of germplasm for performance under water and heat stress is challenging. Field environments are variable and unpredictable, and genotype x environment interactions are difficult to interpret if environments are not well characterised. Numerous traits, genes and quantitative trait loci have been proposed for improving performance but few have been used in variety development. This reflects the limited capacity of commercial breeding companies to screen for these traits and the absence of validation in field environments relevant to breeding companies, and because little is known about the economic benefit of selecting one particular trait over another. The value of the proposed traits or genes is commonly not demonstrated in genetic backgrounds of value to breeding companies. To overcome this disconnection between physiological trait breeding and uptake by breeding companies, three field sites representing the main environment types encountered across the Australian wheatbelt were selected to form a set of managed environment facilities (MEFs). Each MEF manages soil moisture stress through irrigation, and the effects of heat stress through variable sowing dates. Field trials are monitored continuously for weather variables and changes in soil water and canopy temperature in selected probe genotypes, which aids in decisions guiding irrigation scheduling and sampling times. Protocols have been standardised for an essential core set of measurements so that phenotyping yield and other traits are consistent across sites and seasons. MEFs enable assessment of a large number of traits across multiple genetic backgrounds in relevant environments, determine relative trait value, and facilitate delivery of promising germplasm and high value traits into commercial breeding programs.

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in Finland: recent changes in the epidemiology, long-term facility aspects, and phenotypic and molecular detection of isolates

Staphylococcus aureus is one of the most important bacteria that cause disease in humans, and methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) has become the most commonly identified antibiotic-resistant pathogen in many parts of the world. MRSA rates have been stable for many years in the Nordic countries and the Netherlands with a low MRSA prevalence in Europe, but in the recent decades, MRSA rates have increased in those low-prevalence countries as well. MRSA has been established as a major hospital pathogen, but has also been found increasingly in long-term facilities (LTF) and in communities of persons with no connections to the health-care setting. In Finland, the annual number of MRSA isolates reported to the National Infectious Disease Register (NIDR) has constantly increased, especially outside the Helsinki metropolitan area. Molecular typing has revealed numerous outbreak strains of MRSA, some of which have previously been associated with community acquisition. In this work, data on MRSA cases notified to the NIDR and on MRSA strain types identified with pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), multilocus sequence typing (MLST), and staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) typing at the National Reference Laboratory (NRL) in Finland from 1997 to 2004 were analyzed. An increasing trend in MRSA incidence in Finland from 1997 to 2004 was shown. In addition, non-multi-drug resistant (NMDR) MRSA isolates, especially those resistant only to methicillin/oxacillin, showed an emerging trend. The predominant MRSA strains changed over time and place, but two internationally spread epidemic strains of MRSA, FIN-16 and FIN-21, were related to the increase detected most recently. Those strains were also one cause of the strikingly increasing invasive MRSA findings. The rise of MRSA strains with SCCmec types IV or V, possible community-acquired MRSA was also detected. With questionnaires, the diagnostic methods used for MRSA identification in Finnish microbiology laboratories and the number of MRSA screening specimens studied were reviewed. Surveys, which focused on the MRSA situation in long-term facilities in 2001 and on the background information of MRSA-positive persons in 2001-2003, were also carried out. The rates of MRSA and screening practices varied widely across geographic regions. Part of the NMDR MRSA strains could remain undetected in some laboratories because of insufficient diagnostic techniques used. The increasing proportion of elderly population carrying MRSA suggests that MRSA is an emerging problem in Finnish long-term facilities. Among the patients, 50% of the specimens were taken on a clinical basis, 43% on a screening basis after exposure to MRSA, 3% on a screening basis because of hospital contact abroad, and 4% for other reasons. In response to an outbreak of MRSA possessing a new genotype that occurred in a health care ward and in an associated nursing home of a small municipality in Northern Finland in autumn 2003, a point-prevalence survey was performed six months later. In the same study, the molecular epidemiology of MRSA and methicillin-sensitive S. aureus (MSSA) strains were also assessed, the results to the national strain collection compared, and the difficulties of MRSA screening with low-level oxacillin-resistant isolates encountered. The original MRSA outbreak in LTF, which consisted of isolates possessing a nationally new PFGE profile (FIN-22) and internationally rare MLST type (ST-27), was confined. Another previously unrecognized MRSA strain was found with additional screening, possibly indicating that current routine MRSA screening methods may be insufficiently sensitive for strains possessing low-level oxacillin resistance. Most of the MSSA strains found were genotypically related to the epidemic MRSA strains, but only a few of them had received the SCCmec element, and all those strains possessed the new SCCmec type V. In the second largest nursing home in Finland, the colonization of S. aureus and MRSA, and the role of screening sites along with broth enrichment culture on the sensitivity to detect S. aureus were studied. Combining the use of enrichment broth and perineal swabbing, in addition to nostrils and skin lesions swabbing, may be an alternative for throat swabs in the nursing home setting, especially when residents are uncooperative. Finally, in order to evaluate adequate phenotypic and genotypic methods needed for reliable laboratory diagnostics of MRSA, oxacillin disk diffusion and MIC tests to the cefoxitin disk diffusion method at both +35°C and +30°C, both with or without an addition of sodium chloride (NaCl) to the Müller Hinton test medium, and in-house PCR to two commercial molecular methods (the GenoType® MRSA test and the EVIGENETM MRSA Detection test) with different bacterial species in addition to S. aureus were compared. The cefoxitin disk diffusion method was superior to that of oxacillin disk diffusion and to the MIC tests in predicting mecA-mediated resistance in S. aureus when incubating at +35°C with or without the addition of NaCl to the test medium. Both the Geno Type® MRSA and EVIGENETM MRSA Detection tests are usable, accurate, cost-effective, and sufficiently fast methods for rapid MRSA confirmation from a pure culture.

Design of a climate-responsive BIPV research facility in Bangalore

This paper describes the design and erection of a climate-responsive Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) structure in Bangalore, (12.58 N, 77.38 E) in the state of Karnataka, India. Building Integrated Photovoltaics integrate solar panels as part of a building structure (roofs and walls) with an aim to achieve self-sufficiency in the operation and occupant-comfort energy requirements. A joint collaboration between the Centre for Sustainable Technologies, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) is setting up a 70,000 US$ facility for research in BIPV structures. The structure utilizes low energy building materials like Stabilized Mud Blocks (SMB) integrated with a PV roof. Numerous challenges were overcome in the design of the BIPV roof including mechanisms for natural thermal comfort in response to Bangalore's climatic conditions. The paper presents the challenges overcome in the design and construction of a low energy, climate-responsive BIPV structure.

The high speed water tunnel facility at the Indian Institute of Science

The present article about the high speed water tunnel facility at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, provides a general description of the tunnel circuit, and brief reports on the performance of the facility and some typical results from investigations carried out in it. A unique aspect of the facility is that it has a horizontal resorber in the form of a large cylindrical tank located in the lower leg of the circuit. The facility has been used, among other things, for flow visualization studies, and investigations on marine propeller hydrodynamics and “synthetic cavitation”. The last topic has been primarily developed at the Indian Institute of Science and shows considerable promise for basic work in cavitation inception and noise.

Air Fleet and Facility Planning via Optimal Control Models

A study is presented which is aimed at developing techniques suitable for effective planning and efficient operation of fleets of aircraft typical of the air force of a developing country. An important aspect of fleet management, the problem of resource allocation for achieving prescribed operational effectiveness of the fleet, is considered. For analysis purposes, it is assumed that the planes operate in a single flying-base repair-depot environment. The perennial problem of resource allocation for fleet and facility buildup that faces planners is modeled and solved as an optimal control problem. These models contain two "policy" variables representing investments in aircraft and repair facilities. The feasibility of decentralized control is explored by assuming the two policy variables are under the control of two independent decisionmakers guided by different and not often well coordinated objectives.

Air-fleet and maintenance facility planning

This paper describes the use of simulation in the planning and operation of a small fleet of aircraft typical of the air force of a developing country. We consider a single flying base, where the opera tionally ready aircraft are stationed, and a repair depot, where the planes are overhauled. The measure of effectiveness used is "system availability, the percentage of airplanes that are usable. The system is modeled in GPSS as a cyclic queue process. The simulation model is used to perform sensitivity analyses and to validate the principal assumptions of the analytical model on which the simulation model is based.

Air Fleet and Facility Planning via Optimal Control Models

A study is presented which is aimed at developing techniques suitable for effective planning and efficient operation of fleets of aircraft typical of the air force of a developing country. An important aspect of fleet management, the problem of resource allocation for achieving prescribed operational effectiveness of the fleet, is considered. For analysis purposes, it is assumed that the planes operate in a single flying-base repair-depot environment. The perennial problem of resource allocation for fleet and facility buildup that faces planners is modeled and solved as an optimal control problem. These models contain two "policy" variables representing investments in aircraft and repair facilities. The feasibility of decentralized control is explored by assuming the two policy variables are under the control of two independent decisionmakers guided by different and not often well coordinated objectives.

DESIGN OF AN EXPERIMENTAL TEST FACILITY FOR SUPERCRITICAL CO2 BRAYTON CYCLE

A supercritical CO2 test facility is currently being developed at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India to analyze the performance of a closed loop Brayton cycle for concentrated solar power (CSP) generation. The loop has been designed for an external heat input of 20 kW a pressure range of 75-135 bar, flow rate of 11 kg/min, and a maximum cycle temperature of 525 degrees C. The operation of the loop and the various parametric tests planned to be performed are discussed in this paper The paper addresses various aspects of the loop design with emphasis on design of various components such as regenerator and expansion device. The regenerator design is critical due to sharp property variations in CO2 occurring during the heat exchange process between the hot and cold streams. Two types of heat exchanger configurations 1) tube-in-tube (TITHE) and 2) printed circuit heat exchanger (PCHE) are analyzed and compared. A PCHE is found to be similar to 5 times compact compared to a TITHE for identical heat transfer and pressure drops. The expansion device is being custom designed to achieve the desired pressure drop for a range of operating temperatures. It is found that capillary of 5.5 mm inner diameter and similar to 2 meter length is sufficient to achieve a pressure drop from 130 to 75 bar at a maximum cycle temperature of 525 degrees C.