Development of Dynamic Constraint Models for a Model Based Transient Calibration Process

Model based calibration has gained popularity in recent years as a method to optimize increasingly complex engine systems. However virtually all model based techniques are applied to steady state calibration. Transient calibration is by and large an emerging technology. An important piece of any transient calibration process is the ability to constrain the optimizer to treat the problem as a dynamic one and not as a quasi-static process. The optimized air-handling parameters corresponding to any instant of time must be achievable in a transient sense; this in turn depends on the trajectory of the same parameters over previous time instances. In this work dynamic constraint models have been proposed to translate commanded to actually achieved air-handling parameters. These models enable the optimization to be realistic in a transient sense. The air handling system has been treated as a linear second order system with PD control. Parameters for this second order system have been extracted from real transient data. The model has been shown to be the best choice relative to a list of appropriate candidates such as neural networks and first order models. The selected second order model was used in conjunction with transient emission models to predict emissions over the FTP cycle. It has been shown that emission predictions based on air-handing parameters predicted by the dynamic constraint model do not differ significantly from corresponding emissions based on measured air-handling parameters.

[Liver transplantation - when and for whom it should be performed]

During the past two decades, orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT) emerged to the treatment of choice for patients with end-stage liver disease. In Switzerland, about 100 liver transplantations are performed every year, while the shortage of cadaveric organs considerably outmatches the demand. Common indications for OLT include cirrhosis due to alcoholic liver disease or chronic viral hepatitis related to hepatitis B or C, and hepatocellular carcinoma. With the advent of the new allocation policy in Switzerland in 2007, patients listed for OLT are mainly stratified based on the Model of End-stage Liver Disease (MELD) score. Using a patient's laboratory values for serum bilirubin, serum creatinin, and the international normalized ratio for prothrombin time (INR), the MELD score accurately predicts three-month mortality among patients on the waiting list. Compared to the pre-MELD era, patients with significantly higher MELD scores undergo transplantation which leads in turn to more complications and higher costs yet with a comparable outcome. Timely referral of potential candidates to a transplant center is crucial since thorough evaluation to rule out contraindications such as uncontrolled infection, extrahepatic malignancy or advanced cardiopulmonary disease is essential. Taken together, every patient presenting with acute liver failure, decompensated cirrhosis or suspected hepatocellular carcinoma should be evaluated in a center with liver transplantation capability.

A Method for Assessing the Sustainability of Design in Developing World Projects

Projects for the developing world usually find themselves at the bottom of an engineer’s priority list. There is often very little engineering effort placed on creating new products for the poorest people in the world. This trend is beginning to change now as people begin to recognize the potential for these projects. Engineers are beginning to try and solve some of the direst issues in the developing world and many are having positive impacts. However, the conditions needed to support these projects can only be maintained in the short term. There is now a need for greater sustainability. Sustainability has a wide variety of definitions in both business and engineering. These concepts are analyzed and synthesized to develop a broad meaning of sustainability in the developing world. This primarily stems from the “triple bottom line” concept of economic, social, and environmental sustainability. Using this model and several international standards, this thesis develops a metric for guiding and evaluating the sustainability of engineering projects. The metric contains qualitative questions that investigate the sustainability of a project. It is used to assess several existing projects in order to determine flaws. Specifically, three projects seeking to deliver eyeglasses are analyzed for weaknesses to help define a new design approach for achieving better results. Using the metric as a guiding tool, teams designed two pieces of optometry equipment: one to cut lenses for eyeglasses and the other to diagnose refractive error, or prescription. These designs are created and prototyped in the developed and developing worlds in order to determine general feasibility. Although there is a recognized need for eventual design iterations, the whole project is evaluated using the developed metric and compared to the existing projects. Overall, the success demonstrates the improvements made to the long-term sustainability of the project resulting from the use of the sustainability metric.

Treating intermittent claudication with Tibetan medicine Padma 28: does it work?

Herbal drugs are being increasingly used in medical practice, often without appropriate scrutiny of their safety and efficacy. The medicinal product Padma 28 is a fixed combination with Tibetan origin, used in Europe since the 1960s for the symptomatic treatment of circulatory disorders, including those of peripheral arterial occlusive disease (PAOD). We have conducted an analysis of all available data on this herbal drug from published literature as well as from original data we obtained from contacting the authors of published papers, reports and the manufacturer. A total of 19 trials have reported on 2084 patients to date, 444 of whom were in six controlled clinical studies on PAOD. A meta-analysis of five trials showed Padma 28 to increase walking distance by >100m in 18.2% of the patients with verum, versus 2.1% with placebo (P<0.001; odds ratio: 10 [95% CI 3.03, 33.33]; RR: 0.12; number needed to treat=6.2). The safety profile appears to be favourable. Available evidence shows that Padma 28 provides significant relief from PAOD-related symptoms (i.e. walking distance), probably of the same order of magnitude as other employed medications. However, larger confirmatory RCTs are desirable.

A case report of Clarkson's disease: If you don't know it, you'll miss it

The systemic capillary leak syndrome (SCLS), also known as Clarkson's disease, is a rare disorder characterized by paroxysmal capillary hyperpermeability with a shift of plasma fluid from the intravascular to the interstitial space. A 35-year-old previously healthy woman was admitted with rapidly developing hypovolemic shock syndrome, rhabdomyolysis, and diffuse edema. Laboratory analysis revealed a severe hemoconcentration, renal insufficiency, and paraproteinemia. After exclusion of infection, allergy, burning or drug-induced conditions, the clinical presentation was consistent with the diagnosis of SCLS. Though this is a rare entity, the substantial morbidity and mortality associated with it necessitate the physician's awareness in order to provide timely therapy. This report is meant to enhance awareness of SCLS.

Analysis of gene order data supports vertical inheritance of the leukotoxin operon and genome rearrangements in the 5' flanking region in genus Mannheimia

BACKGROUND: The Mannheimia subclades belong to the same bacterial genus, but have taken divergent paths toward their distinct lifestyles. For example, M. haemolytica + M. glucosida are potential pathogens of the respiratory tract in the mammalian suborder Ruminantia, whereas M. ruminalis, the supposed sister group, lives as a commensal in the ovine rumen. We have tested the hypothesis that vertical inheritance of the leukotoxin (lktCABD) operon has occurred from the last common ancestor of genus Mannheimia to any ancestor of the diverging subclades by exploring gene order data. RESULTS: We examined the gene order in the 5' flanking region of the leukotoxin operon and found that the 5' flanking gene strings, hslVU-lapB-artJ-lktC and xylAB-lktC, are peculiar to M. haemolytica + M. glucosida and M. granulomatis, respectively, whereas the gene string hslVU-lapB-lktC is present in M. ruminalis, the supposed sister group of M. haemolytica + M. glucosida, and in the most ancient subclade M. varigena. In M. granulomatis, we found remnants of the gene string hslVU-lapB-lktC in the xylB-lktC intergenic region. CONCLUSION: These observations indicate that the gene string hslVU-lapB-lktC is more ancient than the hslVU-lapB-artJ-lktC and xylAB-lktC gene strings. The presence of (remnants of) the ancient gene string hslVU-lapB-lktC among any subclades within genus Mannheimia supports that it has been vertically inherited from the last common ancestor of genus Mannheimia to any ancestor of the diverging subclades, thus reaffirming the hypothesis of vertical inheritance of the leukotoxin operon. The presence of individual 5' flanking regions in M. haemolytica + M. glucosida and M. granulomatis reflects later genome rearrangements within each subclade. The evolution of the novel 5' flanking region in M. haemolytica + M. glucosida resulted in transcriptional coupling between the divergently arranged artJ and lkt promoters. We propose that the chimeric promoter have led to high level expression of the leukotoxin operon which could explain the increased potential of certain M. haemolytica + M. glucosida strains to cause a particular type of infection.

Effect of high order interpolation in the stability and efficiency of the time-integration process in vorticity-velocity CFD algorithms

The numerical solution of the incompressible Navier-Stokes Equations offers an effective alternative to the experimental analysis of Fluid-Structure interaction i.e. dynamical coupling between a fluid and a solid which otherwise is very complex, time consuming and very expensive. To have a method which can accurately model these types of mechanical systems by numerical solutions becomes a great option, since these advantages are even more obvious when considering huge structures like bridges, high rise buildings, or even wind turbine blades with diameters as large as 200 meters. The modeling of such processes, however, involves complex multiphysics problems along with complex geometries. This thesis focuses on a novel vorticity-velocity formulation called the KLE to solve the incompressible Navier-stokes equations for such FSI problems. This scheme allows for the implementation of robust adaptive ODE time integration schemes and thus allows us to tackle the various multiphysics problems as separate modules. The current algorithm for KLE employs a structured or unstructured mesh for spatial discretization and it allows the use of a self-adaptive or fixed time step ODE solver while dealing with unsteady problems. This research deals with the analysis of the effects of the Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy (CFL) condition for KLE when applied to unsteady Stoke’s problem. The objective is to conduct a numerical analysis for stability and, hence, for convergence. Our results confirmthat the time step ∆t is constrained by the CFL-like condition ∆t ≤ const. hα, where h denotes the variable that represents spatial discretization.

Implementation of monotonic higher order upwind scheme in KIVA 4

KIVA is a FORTRAN code developed by Los Alamos national lab to simulate complete engine cycle. KIVA is a flow solver code which is used to perform calculation of properties in a fluid flow field. It involves using various numerical schemes and methods to solve the Navier-Stokes equation. This project involves improving the accuracy of one such scheme by upgrading it to a higher order scheme. The numerical scheme to be modified is used in the critical final stage calculation called as rezoning phase. The primitive objective of this project is to implement a higher order numerical scheme, to validate and verify that the new scheme is better than the existing scheme. The latest version of the KIVA family (KIVA 4) is used for implementing the higher order scheme to support handling the unstructured mesh. The code is validated using the traditional shock tube problem and the results are verified to be more accurate than the existing schemes in reference with the analytical result. The convection test is performed to compare the computational accuracy on convective transfer; it is found that the new scheme has less numerical diffusion compared to the existing schemes. A four valve pentroof engine, an example case of KIVA package is used as application to ensure the stability of the scheme in practical application. The results are compared for the temperature profile. In spite of all the positive results, the numerical scheme implemented has a downside of consuming more CPU time for the computational analysis. The detailed comparison is provided. However, in an overview, the implementation of the higher order scheme in the latest code KIVA 4 is verified to be successful and it gives better results than the existing scheme which satisfies the objective of this project.

Maximum principle preserving high order schemes for convection-dominated diffusion equations

The maximum principle is an important property of solutions to PDE. Correspondingly, it's of great interest for people to design a high order numerical scheme solving PDE with this property maintained. In this thesis, our particular interest is solving convection-dominated diffusion equation. We first review a nonconventional maximum principle preserving(MPP) high order finite volume(FV) WENO scheme, and then propose a new parametrized MPP high order finite difference(FD) WENO framework, which is generalized from the one solving hyperbolic conservation laws. A formal analysis is presented to show that a third order finite difference scheme with this parametrized MPP flux limiters maintains the third order accuracy without extra CFL constraint when the low order monotone flux is chosen appropriately. Numerical tests in both one and two dimensional cases are performed on the simulation of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations in vorticity stream-function formulation and several other problems to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Selecting control genes for RT-QPCR using public microarray data

BACKGROUND: Gene expression analysis has emerged as a major biological research area, with real-time quantitative reverse transcription PCR (RT-QPCR) being one of the most accurate and widely used techniques for expression profiling of selected genes. In order to obtain results that are comparable across assays, a stable normalization strategy is required. In general, the normalization of PCR measurements between different samples uses one to several control genes (e.g. housekeeping genes), from which a baseline reference level is constructed. Thus, the choice of the control genes is of utmost importance, yet there is not a generally accepted standard technique for screening a large number of candidates and identifying the best ones. RESULTS: We propose a novel approach for scoring and ranking candidate genes for their suitability as control genes. Our approach relies on publicly available microarray data and allows the combination of multiple data sets originating from different platforms and/or representing different pathologies. The use of microarray data allows the screening of tens of thousands of genes, producing very comprehensive lists of candidates. We also provide two lists of candidate control genes: one which is breast cancer-specific and one with more general applicability. Two genes from the breast cancer list which had not been previously used as control genes are identified and validated by RT-QPCR. Open source R functions are available at http://www.isrec.isb-sib.ch/~vpopovic/research/ CONCLUSION: We proposed a new method for identifying candidate control genes for RT-QPCR which was able to rank thousands of genes according to some predefined suitability criteria and we applied it to the case of breast cancer. We also empirically showed that translating the results from microarray to PCR platform was achievable.

Social Work and a New Social Order - Challenging Neo-liberalism's Erosion of Solidarity

The world in which social work operates today is a very different world from that in which most of us took their social work training, and the changes we are facing are profound. This paper argues that these changes are not merely a regime change in social policy but that they are essentially about a re-ordering of social relationships and attempt to model them on neo-liberal ideas. In view of these pressures it is understandable that social workers often try to ignore those changes and withdraw into a private world of therapeutic relationships in which the methods they trained in are made to be still valid, or they simply go along with new service delivery designs without asking too many questions. Both reactions fail to question what the "social" can still mean in the light of these changes and how social workers can fulfil their mandate to be responsible for the social dimension of public life. Nothing less than a head-on challenge of the basic presuppositions of neo-liberalism (Willke 2003) and their manifold applications to social service delivery systems will thereby suffice.

Metaheuristics for the Order Batching Problem in Manual Order Picking Systems

In manual order picking systems, order pickers walk or drive through a distribution warehouse in order to collect items which are requested by (internal or external) customers. In order to perform these operations efficiently, it is usually required that customer orders are combined into (more substantial) picking orders of limited size. The Order Batching Problem considered in this paper deals with the question of how a given set of customer orders should be combined such that the total length of all tours is minimized which are necessary to collect all items. The authors introduce two metaheuristic approaches for the solution of this problem: the first one is based on Iterated Local Search; the second on Ant Colony Optimization. In a series of extensive numerical experiments, the newly developed approaches are benchmarked against classic solution methods. It is demonstrated that the proposed methods are not only superior to existing methods but provide solutions which may allow distribution warehouses to be operated significantly more efficiently.

IT-KompetenzBarometer

Die kurzen Technologiezyklen in der IT-Industrie stellen Unternehmen vor das Problem, Mitarbeiter zeit- und themenadäquat weiter zu qualifizieren. Für Bildungsanbieter erwächst damit die Herausforderung, relevante Bildungsthemen möglichst frühzeitig zu identifizieren, ökonomisch zu bewerten und ausgewählte Themen in Form geeigneter Bildungsangebote zur Marktreife zu bringen. Zur Handhabung dieser Problematik wurde an der Hochschule für Telekommunikation Leipzig (HfTL), die sich in Trägerschaft der Deutsche Telekom AG befindet, ein innovatives Analyseinstrument entwickelt. Mit diesem Instrument, dem IT-KompetenzBarometer, werden Stellenanzeigen, die in Jobportalen online publiziert werden, ausgelesen und mithilfe von Text Mining-Methoden untersucht. Auf diese Weise können Informationen gewonnen werden, die differenzierte Auskunft über die qualitativen Kompetenzanforderungen zentraler Berufsbilder des IT-Sektors liefern. Dieser Beitrag stellt Ergebnisse vor, die durch Analyse von mehr als 40.000 Stellenanzeigen für IT-Fachkräfte aus Jobportalen im Zeitraum von Juni-September 2012 gewonnen werden konnten. Diese Ergebnisse liefern eine Informationsgrundlage, um marktrelevante Bildungsthemen zu identifizieren, sodass Bildungsangebote erfolgreich gestaltet und weiterentwickelt werden können.

Not for Designers: On the Inadequacies of EU Design Law and How to Fix It

Design rights represent an interesting example of how the EU legislature has successfully regulated an otherwise heterogeneous field of law. Yet this type of protection is not for all. The tools created by EU intervention have been drafted paying much more attention to the industry sector rather than to designers themselves. In particular, modern, digitally based, individual or small-sized, 3D printing, open designers and their needs are largely neglected by such legislation. There is obviously nothing wrong in drafting legal tools around the needs of an industrial sector with an important role in the EU economy, on the contrary, this is a legitimate and good decision of industrial policy. However, good legislation should be fair, balanced, and (technologically) neutral in order to offer suitable solutions to all the players in the market, and all the citizens in the society, without discriminating the smallest or the newest: the cost would be to stifle innovation. The use of printing machinery to manufacture physical objects created digitally thanks to computer programs such as Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software has been in place for quite a few years, and it is actually the standard in many industrial fields, from aeronautics to home furniture. The change in recent years that has the potential to be a paradigm-shifting factor is a combination between the opularization of such technologies (price, size, usability, quality) and the diffusion of a culture based on access to and reuse of knowledge. We will call this blend Open Design. It is probably still too early, however, to say whether 3D printing will be used in the future to refer to a major event in human history, or instead will be relegated to a lonely Wikipedia entry similarly to ³Betamax² (copyright scholars are familiar with it for other reasons). It is not too early, however, to develop a legal analysis that will hopefully contribute to clarifying the major issues found in current EU design law structure, why many modern open designers will probably find better protection in copyright, and whether they can successfully rely on open licenses to achieve their goals. With regard to the latter point, we will use Creative Commons (CC) licenses to test our hypothesis due to their unique characteristic to be modular, i.e. to have different license elements (clauses) that licensors can choose in order to adapt the license to their own needs.”

An efficient simulation algorithm for the generalized von Mises distribution of order two

In this article we propose an exact efficient simulation algorithm for the generalized von Mises circular distribution of order two. It is an acceptance-rejection algorithm with a piecewise linear envelope based on the local extrema and the inflexion points of the generalized von Mises density of order two. We show that these points can be obtained from the roots of polynomials and degrees four and eight, which can be easily obtained by the methods of Ferrari and Weierstrass. A comparative study with the von Neumann acceptance-rejection, with the ratio-of-uniforms and with a Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms shows that this new method is generally the most efficient.