Estimation of Fetal Weight during Labor: Still a Challenge

Objective To evaluate the accuracy of fetal weight prediction by ultrasonography labor employing a formula including the linear measurements of femur length (FL) and mid-thigh soft-tissue thickness (STT). Methods We conducted a prospective study involving singleton uncomplicated term pregnancies within 48 hours of delivery. Only pregnancies with a cephalic fetus admitted in the labor ward for elective cesarean section, induction of labor or spontaneous labor were included. We excluded all non-Caucasian women, the ones previously diagnosed with gestational diabetes and the ones with evidence of ruptured membranes. Fetal weight estimates were calculated using a previously proposed formula [estimated fetal weight = [1] 1687.47 + (54.1 x FL) + (76.68 x STT). The relationship between actual birth weight and estimated fetal weight was analyzed using Pearson's correlation. The formula's performance was assessed by calculating the signed and absolute errors. Mean weight difference and signed percentage error were calculated for birth weight divided into three subgroups: < 3000 g; 3000-4000g; and > 4000 g. Results We included for analysis 145 cases and found a significant, yet low, linear relationship between birth weight and estimated fetal weight (p < 0.001; R2 = 0.197) with an absolute mean error of 10.6%. The lowest mean percentage error (0.3%) corresponded to the subgroup with birth weight between 3000 g and 4000 g. Conclusions This study demonstrates a poor correlation between actual birth weight and the estimated fetal weight using a formula based on femur length and mid-thigh soft-tissue thickness, both linear parameters. Although avoidance of circumferential ultrasound measurements might prove to be beneficial, it is still yet to be found a fetal estimation formula that can be both accurate and simple to perform.

Parameter estimation and use of gamma interferon assay for the diagnosis of bovine tuberculosis in Brazil

This study aimed to evaluate the interference of tuberculin test on the gamma-interferon (INFg) assay, to estimate the sensitivity and specificity of the INFg assay in Brazilian conditions, and to simulate multiple testing using the comparative tuberculin test and the INFg assay. Three hundred-fifty cattle from two TB-free and two TB-infected herds were submitted to the comparative tuberculin test and the INFg assay. The comparative tuberculin test was performed using avian and bovine PPD. The INFg assay was performed by the BovigamTM kit (CSL Veterinary, Australia), according to the manufacturer's specifications. Sensitivity and specificity of the INFg assay were assessed by a Bayesian latent class model. These diagnostic parameters were also estimate for multiple testing. The results of INFg assay on D0 and D3 after the comparative tuberculin test were compared by the McNemar's test and kappa statistics. Results of mean optical density from INFg assay on both days were similar. Sensitivity and specificity of the INFg assay showed results varying (95% confidence intervals) from 72 to 100% and 74 to 100% respectively. Sensitivity of parallel testing was over 97.5%, while specificity of serial testing was over 99.7%. The INFg assay proved to be a very useful diagnostic method.

Multi-axis solutions in packaging machines in Europe

The objective of this thesis was to examine the potential of multi-axis solutions in packaging machines produced in Europe. The definition of a multi-axis solution in this study is a construction that uses a common DC bus power supply for different amplifiers running the axes and the intelligence is centralized into one unit. The cost structure of a packaging machine was gained from an automation research, which divided the machines according to automation categories. The automation categories were then further divided into different sub-components by evaluating the ratio of multi-axis solutions compared to other automation components in packaging machines. A global motion control study was used for further information. With the help of the ratio, an estimation of the potential of multi-axis solutions in each country and packaging machine sector was completed. In addition to the research, a specific questionnaire was sent to five companies to gain information about the present situation and possible trends in packaging machinery. The greatest potential markets are in Germany and Italy, which are also the largest producers of packaging machinery in Europe. The greatest growth in the next few years will be seen in Turkey where the annual growth rate equals the general machinery production rate in Asia. The greatest market potential of the Nordic countries is found in Sweden in 35th position on the list. According to the interviews, motion control products in packaging machines will retain their current power levels, as well as the number of axes in the future. Integrated machine safety features together with a universal programming language are the desired attributes of the future. Unlike generally in industry, the energy saving objectives are and will remain insignificant in the packaging industry.

Model-based estimation of liquid flows in the blast furnace hearth and taphole

This thesis presents a set of methods and models for estimation of iron and slag flows in the blast furnace hearth and taphole. The main focus was put on predicting taphole flow patterns and estimating the effects of various taphole conditions on the drainage behavior of the blast furnace hearth. All models were based on a general understanding of the typical tap cycle of an industrial blast furnace. Some of the models were evaluated on short-term process data from the reference furnace. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model was built and applied to simulate the complicated hearth flows and thus to predict the regions of the hearth exerted to erosion under various operating conditions. Key boundary variables of the CFD model were provided by a simplified drainage model based on the first principles. By examining the evolutions of liquid outflow rates measured from the furnace studied, the drainage model was improved to include the effects of taphole diameter and length. The estimated slag delays showed good agreement with the observed ones. The liquid flows in the taphole were further studied using two different models and the results of both models indicated that it is more likely that separated flow of iron and slag occurs in the taphole when the liquid outflow rates are comparable during tapping. The drainage process was simulated with an integrated model based on an overall balance analysis: The high in-furnace overpressure can compensate for the resistances induced by the liquid flows in the hearth and through the taphole. Finally, a recently developed multiphase CFD model including interfacial forces between immiscible liquids was developed and both the actual iron-slag system and a water-oil system in laboratory scale were simulated. The model was demonstrated to be a useful tool for simulating hearth flows for gaining understanding of the complex phenomena in the drainage of the blast furnace.

Application of a Pid+fuzzy controller on the motion control system in machine tools

This work deals with an hybrid PID+fuzzy logic controller applied to control the machine tool biaxial table motions. The non-linear model includes backlash and the axis elasticity. Two PID controllers do the primary table control. A third PID+fuzzy controller has a cross coupled structure whose function is to minimise the trajectory contour errors. Once with the three PID controllers tuned, the system is simulated with and without the third controller. The responses results are plotted and compared to analyse the effectiveness of this hybrid controller over the system. They show that the proposed methodology reduces the contour error in a proportion of 70:1.

Estimation of aircraft aerodynamic derivatives using Extended Kalman Filter

Design of flight control laws, verification of performance predictions, and the implementation of flight simulations are tasks that require a mathematical model of the aircraft dynamics. The dynamical models are characterized by coefficients (aerodynamic derivatives) whose values must be determined from flight tests. This work outlines the use of the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) in obtaining the aerodynamic derivatives of an aircraft. The EKF shows several advantages over the more traditional least-square method (LS). Among these the most important are: there are no restrictions on linearity or in the form which the parameters appears in the mathematical model describing the system, and it is not required that these parameters be time invariant. The EKF uses the statistical properties of the process and the observation noise, to produce estimates based on the mean square error of the estimates themselves. Differently, the LS minimizes a cost function based on the plant output behavior. Results for the estimation of some longitudinal aerodynamic derivatives from simulated data are presented.

Inverse convection problem of simultaneous estimation of two boundary heat fluxes in parallel plate channels

This paper deals with the use of the conjugate gradient method of function estimation for the simultaneous identification of two unknown boundary heat fluxes in parallel plate channels. The fluid flow is assumed to be laminar and hydrodynamically developed. Temperature measurements taken inside the channel are used in the inverse analysis. The accuracy of the present solution approach is examined by using simulated measurements containing random errors, for strict cases involving functional forms with discontinuities and sharp-corners for the unknown functions. Three different types of inverse problems are addressed in the paper, involving the estimation of: (i) Spatially dependent heat fluxes; (ii) Time-dependent heat fluxes; and (iii) Time and spatially dependent heat fluxes.

Heat Source Estimation with the Conjugate Gradient Method in Inverse Linear Diffusive Problems

In this work, we present the solution of a class of linear inverse heat conduction problems for the estimation of unknown heat source terms, with no prior information of the functional forms of timewise and spatial dependence of the source strength, using the conjugate gradient method with an adjoint problem. After describing the mathematical formulation of a general direct problem and the procedure for the solution of the inverse problem, we show applications to three transient heat transfer problems: a one-dimensional cylindrical problem; a two-dimensional cylindrical problem; and a one-dimensional problem with two plates.

Seismic motion simulation based on Cassino Parallel Manipulator

In this paper we present a study of feasibility by using Cassino Parallel Manipulator (CaPaMan) as an earthquake simulator. We propose a suitable formulation to simulate the frequency, amplitude and acceleration magnitude of seismic motion by means of the movable platform motion by giving a suitable input motion. In this paper we have reported numerical simulations that simulate the three principal earthquake types for a seismic motion: one at the epicenter (having a vertical motion), another far from the epicenter (with the motion on a horizontal plane), and a combined general motion (with a vertical and horizontal motion).

Development of nano-meter motion control in Japan

Production machines for next generation LSIs such as 4G-DRAMs and for large liquid crystal displays such as 0.5mx0.5m size, and information equipment such as magnetic hard disks and DVDs must have the positioning accuracy of a nano-meter order. To realize such a high degree of the positioning accuracy, not only precision machine elements and mechanisms but also high precision sensors, actuators and controller design techniques becomes crucial. This paper introduces recent topics of precision positioning and motion control technology in Japan.

On state and parameter estimation in chaotic systems

State-of-the-art predictions of atmospheric states rely on large-scale numerical models of chaotic systems. This dissertation studies numerical methods for state and parameter estimation in such systems. The motivation comes from weather and climate models and a methodological perspective is adopted. The dissertation comprises three sections: state estimation, parameter estimation and chemical data assimilation with real atmospheric satellite data. In the state estimation part of this dissertation, a new filtering technique based on a combination of ensemble and variational Kalman filtering approaches, is presented, experimented and discussed. This new filter is developed for large-scale Kalman filtering applications. In the parameter estimation part, three different techniques for parameter estimation in chaotic systems are considered. The methods are studied using the parameterized Lorenz 95 system, which is a benchmark model for data assimilation. In addition, a dilemma related to the uniqueness of weather and climate model closure parameters is discussed. In the data-oriented part of this dissertation, data from the Global Ozone Monitoring by Occultation of Stars (GOMOS) satellite instrument are considered and an alternative algorithm to retrieve atmospheric parameters from the measurements is presented. The validation study presents first global comparisons between two unique satellite-borne datasets of vertical profiles of nitrogen trioxide (NO3), retrieved using GOMOS and Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III (SAGE III) satellite instruments. The GOMOS NO3 observations are also considered in a chemical state estimation study in order to retrieve stratospheric temperature profiles. The main result of this dissertation is the consideration of likelihood calculations via Kalman filtering outputs. The concept has previously been used together with stochastic differential equations and in time series analysis. In this work, the concept is applied to chaotic dynamical systems and used together with Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods for statistical analysis. In particular, this methodology is advocated for use in numerical weather prediction (NWP) and climate model applications. In addition, the concept is shown to be useful in estimating the filter-specific parameters related, e.g., to model error covariance matrix parameters.

Hand tracking in high-speed camera videos

Visual object tracking has been one of the most popular research topics in the field of computer vision recently. Specifically, hand tracking has attracted significant attention since it would enable many useful practical applications. However, hand tracking is still a very challenging problem which cannot be considered solved. The fact that almost every aspect of hand appearance can change is the fundamental reason for this difficulty. This thesis focused on 2D-based hand tracking in high-speed camera videos. During the project, a toolbox for this purpose was collected which contains nine different tracking methods. In the experiments, these methods were tested and compared against each other with both high-speed videos recorded during the project and publicly available normal speed videos. The results revealed that tracking accuracies varied considerably depending on the video and the method. Therefore, no single method was clearly the best in all videos, but three methods, CT, HT, and TLD, performed better than the others overall. Moreover, the results provide insights about the suitability of each method to different types and situations of hand tracking.

Probabilistic position and orientation estimation of rigid objects using an RGB-D sensor

The recent emergence of low-cost RGB-D sensors has brought new opportunities for robotics by providing affordable devices that can provide synchronized images with both color and depth information. In this thesis, recent work on pose estimation utilizing RGBD sensors is reviewed. Also, a pose recognition system for rigid objects using RGB-D data is implemented. The implementation uses half-edge primitives extracted from the RGB-D images for pose estimation. The system is based on the probabilistic object representation framework by Detry et al., which utilizes Nonparametric Belief Propagation for pose inference. Experiments are performed on household objects to evaluate the performance and robustness of the system.

Från plåtpolis till livräddare : Behovsanalys för automatisk trafiksäkerhetskontroll 2011 – 2015

I det här arbetet utformades en utvecklings- och investeringsplan för automatisk trafiksäkerhetsövervakning för åren 2011-2015 för landsvägsnätet i Egentliga Finland och Satakunta. Planen innehåller analys av den nuvarande verksamhetsmodellen och förslag hur verksamhetsmodellen kunde förbättras samt förslag om vilka vägavsnitt som ska få automatisk övervakning och vilka projekt som ska prioriteras under åren 2011-2015. Vidare beskrivs i planen den automatiska övervakningsteknik och verksamhetsmodell som används i Sverige samt åtgärdsförslag för att öka den automatiska trafikövervakningens acceptans. Den nuvarande verksamhetsmodellen och behovet av att utveckla den automatiska trafikövervakningen har utvärderats på basis av intervjuer med experter. Experterna ansåg att den nuvarande verksamhetsmodellen i huvudsak är funktionell och effektiv, eftersom man med relativt små kostnader har uppnått effektiva resultat. Den automatiska trafikövervakningen måste dock fortfarande utvecklas och Sveriges verksamhetsmodell ansågs vara en bra förebild och ett gott exempel. De viktigaste utvecklingsområdena ansågs vara utveckling av tekniken, snabbare informationsbehandling och automatisering, vilket skulle öka polisens resurser att verkställa övervakningen. Vägavsnitten som ska få automatisk övervakning under åren 2011-2015 prioriterades främst på basis av olycksfrekvens, antal olyckor, Tarva-beräkningsresultat, hastighetsdata och trafikmängder. Av olycksstatistiken har man främst uppmärksammat personskadeolyckor. Tarva-beräkningarna användes också för att utvärdera den automatiska trafikövervakningens inverkan och effektivitet. Enligt de intervjuade experterna är öppenhet kring övervakningen, synlig övervakningsapparatur och kontinuerlig informationsförmedling bland de viktigaste sätten att öka acceptansen. Genom att informera för man fram systemets fördelar och dess betydelse för trafiksäkerheten. Att förändra övervakningskamerans varumärke till säkerhetskamera enligt Sveriges modell ansågs även vara bra. I detta arbete presenteras en plan för att utveckla acceptansen för automatisk trafiksäkerhetsövervakning.

Greenhouse gas emissions from peat and biomass-derived fuels, electricity and heat — Estimation of various production chains by using LCA methodology

More discussion is required on how and which types of biomass should be used to achieve a significant reduction in the carbon load released into the atmosphere in the short term. The energy sector is one of the largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters and thus its role in climate change mitigation is important. Replacing fossil fuels with biomass has been a simple way to reduce carbon emissions because the carbon bonded to biomass is considered as carbon neutral. With this in mind, this thesis has the following objectives: (1) to study the significance of the different GHG emission sources related to energy production from peat and biomass, (2) to explore opportunities to develop more climate friendly biomass energy options and (3) to discuss the importance of biogenic emissions of biomass systems. The discussion on biogenic carbon and other GHG emissions comprises four case studies of which two consider peat utilization, one forest biomass and one cultivated biomasses. Various different biomass types (peat, pine logs and forest residues, palm oil, rapeseed oil and jatropha oil) are used as examples to demonstrate the importance of biogenic carbon to life cycle GHG emissions. The biogenic carbon emissions of biomass are defined as the difference in the carbon stock between the utilization and the non-utilization scenarios of biomass. Forestry-drained peatlands were studied by using the high emission values of the peatland types in question to discuss the emission reduction potential of the peatlands. The results are presented in terms of global warming potential (GWP) values. Based on the results, the climate impact of the peat production can be reduced by selecting high-emission-level peatlands for peat production. The comparison of the two different types of forest biomass in integrated ethanol production in pulp mill shows that the type of forest biomass impacts the biogenic carbon emissions of biofuel production. The assessment of cultivated biomasses demonstrates that several selections made in the production chain significantly affect the GHG emissions of biofuels. The emissions caused by biofuel can exceed the emissions from fossil-based fuels in the short term if biomass is in part consumed in the process itself and does not end up in the final product. Including biogenic carbon and other land use carbon emissions into the carbon footprint calculations of biofuel reveals the importance of the time frame and of the efficiency of biomass carbon content utilization. As regards the climate impact of biomass energy use, the net impact on carbon stocks (in organic matter of soils and biomass), compared to the impact of the replaced energy source, is the key issue. Promoting renewable biomass regardless of biogenic GHG emissions can increase GHG emissions in the short term and also possibly in the long term.