Search results for: bilobate short cell

Authors: S. MacDougall-Davis, S. Wysling, R. Willmore

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Background: The application of good non-technical skills, also known as crew resource management (CRM), is central to the delivery of safe, effective healthcare. The authors have been running remote trauma courses for over 10 years, primarily focussing on developing participants’ CRM in time-critical, high-stress clinical situations. The course has undergone an iterative process over the past 10 years. We employ a number of experiential learning techniques for improving CRM, including small group workshops, military command tasks, high fidelity simulations with reflective debriefs, and a ‘flipped classroom’, where participants are asked to create their own simulations and assess and debrief their colleagues’ CRM. We created a randomised simulation study to assess the impact of our course on UK medical students’ CRM, both at an individual and a teams level. Methods: Sixteen students took part. Four clinical scenarios were devised, designed to be of similar urgency and complexity. Professional moulage effects and experienced clinical actors were used to increase fidelity and to further simulate high-stress environments. Participants were block randomised into teams of 4; each team was randomly assigned to one pre-course simulation. They then underwent our 5 day remote trauma CRM course. Post-course, students were re-randomised into four new teams; each was randomly assigned to a post-course simulation. All simulations were videoed. The footage was reviewed by two independent CRM-trained assessors, who were blinded to the before/after the status of the simulations. Assessors used the internationally validated team emergency assessment measure (TEAM) to evaluate key areas of team performance, as well as a global outcome rating. Prior to the study, assessors had scored two unrelated scenarios using the same assessment tool, demonstrating 89% concordance. Participants also completed pre- and post-course questionnaires. Likert scales were used to rate individuals’ perceived NTS ability and their confidence to work in a team in time-critical, high-stress situations. Results: Following participation in the course, a significant improvement in CRM was observed in all areas of team performance. Furthermore, the global outcome rating for team performance was markedly improved (40-70%; mean 55%), thus demonstrating an impact at Level 4 of Kirkpatrick’s hierarchy. At an individual level, participants’ self-perceived CRM improved markedly after the course (35-70% absolute improvement; mean 55%), as did their confidence to work in a team in high-stress situations. Conclusion: Our study demonstrates that with a short, cost-effective course, using easily reproducible teaching sessions, it is possible to significantly improve participants’ CRM skills, both at an individual and, perhaps more importantly, at a teams level. The successful functioning of multi-disciplinary teams is vital in a healthcare setting, particularly in high-stress, time-critical situations. Good CRM is of paramount importance in these scenarios. The authors believe that these concepts should be introduced from the earliest stages of medical education, thus promoting a culture of effective CRM and embedding an early appreciation of the importance of these skills in enabling safe and effective healthcare.

Keywords: crew resource management, non-technical skills, training, simulation

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Authors: Anwar Beg, Sireetorn Kuharat, Rashid Mehmood, Rabil Tabassum, Meisam Babaie

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Nano-polymeric solar paints and sol-gels have emerged as a major new development in solar cell/collector coatings offering significant improvements in durability, anti-corrosion and thermal efficiency. They also exhibit substantial viscosity variation with temperature which can be exploited in solar collector designs. Modern manufacturing processes for such nano-rheological materials frequently employ stagnation flow dynamics under high temperature which invokes radiative heat transfer. Motivated by elaborating in further detail the nanoscale heat, mass and momentum characteristics of such sol gels, the present article presents a mathematical and computational study of the steady, two-dimensional, non-aligned thermo-fluid boundary layer transport of copper metal-doped water-based nano-polymeric sol gels under radiative heat flux. To simulate real nano-polymer boundary interface dynamics, thermal slip is analysed at the wall. A temperature-dependent viscosity is also considered. The Tiwari-Das nanofluid model is deployed which features a volume fraction for the nanoparticle concentration. This approach also features a Maxwell-Garnet model for the nanofluid thermal conductivity. The conservation equations for mass, normal and tangential momentum and energy (heat) are normalized via appropriate transformations to generate a multi-degree, ordinary differential, non-linear, coupled boundary value problem. Numerical solutions are obtained via the stable, efficient Runge-Kutta-Fehlberg scheme with shooting quadrature in MATLAB symbolic software. Validation of solutions is achieved with a Variational Iterative Method (VIM) utilizing Langrangian multipliers. The impact of key emerging dimensionless parameters i.e. obliqueness parameter, radiation-conduction Rosseland number (Rd), thermal slip parameter (α), viscosity parameter (m), nanoparticles volume fraction (ϕ) on non-dimensional normal and tangential velocity components, temperature, wall shear stress, local heat flux and streamline distributions is visualized graphically. Shear stress and temperature are boosted with increasing radiative effect whereas local heat flux is reduced. Increasing wall thermal slip parameter depletes temperatures. With greater volume fraction of copper nanoparticles temperature and thermal boundary layer thickness is elevated. Streamlines are found to be skewed markedly towards the left with positive obliqueness parameter.

Keywords: non-orthogonal stagnation-point heat transfer, solar nano-polymer coating, MATLAB numerical quadrature, Variational Iterative Method (VIM)

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Authors: Jiazhi Zeng, Leiyu Shi, Xia Zou, Wen Chen, Li Ling

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Background: China is facing the unprecedented challenge of rapidly increasing rural-to-urban migration. Due to the household registration system, migrants are in a vulnerable state when they attempt to access to primary care services. A strong primary care system can reduce health inequities and mitigate socioeconomic disparities in healthcare utilization. Literature indicated that migrants were more reliant on the primary care system than local residents. Although the Chinese government has attached great importance to creating an efficient health system, primary care services are still underutilized. The referral system between primary care institutions and hospitals has not yet been completely established in China. The general populations often go directly to hospitals instead of primary care institutions for their primary care. Primary care institutions generally consist of community health centers (CHCs) and community health stations (CHSs) in urban areas, and township health centers (THCs) and rural health stations (THSs) in rural areas. In addition, primary care services are also provided by the outpatient department of municipal hospitals and tertiary hospitals. A better understanding of migrants’ experiences with primary care in the above-mentioned medical institutions is critical for improving the performance of primary care institutions and providing indications of the attributes that require further attention. The purpose of this pioneering study is to explore rural-to-urban migrants’ experiences in primary care, compare their primary care experiences in four types of medical institutions in Guangzhou, China, and suggest implications for targeted interventions to improve primary care for the migrants. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study conducted with 736 rural-to-urban migrants in Guangzhou, China, in 2014. A multistage sampling method was employed. A validated Chinese version of Primary Care Assessment Tool - Adult Short Version (PCAT-AS) was used to collect information on migrants’ primary care experiences. The PCAT-AS consists of 10 domains. Analysis of covariance was conducted for comparison on PCAT domain scores and total scores among migrants accessing four types of medical institutions. Multiple linear regression models were used to explore factors associated with PCAT total scores. Results: After controlling for socio-demographic characteristics, migrant characteristics, health status and health insurance status, migrants accessing primary care in tertiary hospitals had the highest PCAT total scores when compared with those accessing primary care THCs/ RHSs (25.49 vs. 24.18, P=0.007) and CHCs/ CHSs(25.49 vs. 24.24, P=0.006). There was no statistical significant difference for PCAT total scores between migrants accessing primary care in CHCs/CHSs and those in municipal hospitals (24.24 vs. 25.02, P=0.436). Factors positively associated with higher PCAT total scores also included insurance covering parts of healthcare payment (P < 0.001). Conclusions: This study highlights the need for improvement in primary care provided by primary care institutions for rural-to-urban migrants. Migrants receiving primary care from THCs, RHSs, CHSs and CHSs reported worse primary care experiences than those receiving primary care from tertiary hospitals. Relevant policies related to medical insurance should be implemented for providing affordable healthcare services for migrants accessing primary care. Further research exploring the specific reasons for poorer PCAT scores of primary care institutions users will be needed.

Keywords: China, PCAT, primary care, rural-to-urban migrants

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Authors: Till Fehlauer, Blanche Collin, Bernard Angeletti, Andrea Somogyi, Claire Lallemand, Perrine Chaurand, Cédric Dentant, Clement Levard, Jerome Rose

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Over the last decades, yttrium (Y) has gained importance in high-tech applications. It is an essential part of alloys and compounds used for lasers, displays, or cell phones, for example. Due to its chemical similarities with the lanthanides, Y is often considered a rare earth element (REE). Despite their increased usage, the environmental behavior of REEs remains poorly understood. Especially regarding their interactions with plants, many uncertainties exist. On the one hand, Y is known to have a negative effect on root development and germination, but on the other hand, it appears to promote plant growth at low concentrations. In order to understand these phenomena, a precise knowledge is necessary about how Y is absorbed by the plant and how it is handled once inside the organism. Contradictory studies exist, stating that due to a similar ionic radius, Y and the other REEs might be absorbed through Ca²⁺-channels, while others suspect that Y has a shared pathway with Al³⁺. In this study, laser ablation coupled ICP-MS, and synchrotron-based micro-X-ray fluorescence (µXRF, beamline Nanoscopium, SOLEIL, France) have been used in order to localize Y within the plant tissue and identify associated elements. The plant used in this study is Saxifraga paniculata, a rugged alpine plant that has shown an affinity for Y in previous studies (in prep.). Furthermore, Saxifraga paniculata performs guttation, which means that it possesses phloem sap secreting openings on the leaf surface that serve to regulate root pressure. These so-called hydathodes could provide special insights in elemental transport in plants. The plants have been grown on Y doped soil (500mg/kg DW) for four months. The results showed that Y was mainly concentrated in the roots of Saxifraga paniculata (260 ± 85mg/kg), and only a small amount was translocated to the leaves (10 ± 7.8mg/kg). µXRF analysis indicated that within the root transects, the majority of Y remained in the epidermis and hardly penetrated the stele. Laser ablation coupled ICP-MS confirmed this finding and showed a positive correlation in the roots between Y, Fe, Al, and to a lesser extent Ca. In the stem transect, Y was mainly detected in a hotspot of approximately 40µm in diameter situated in the endodermis area. Within the stem and especially in the hotspot, Y was highly colocalized with Al and Fe. Similar-sized Y hotspots have been detected in/on the leaves. All of them were strongly colocalized with Al and Fe, except for those situated within the hydathodes, which showed no colocalization with any of the measured elements. Accordingly, a relation between Y and Ca during root uptake remains possible, whereas a correlation to Fe and Al appears to be dominant in the aerial parts, suggesting common storage compartments, the formation of complexes, or a shared pathway during translocation.

Keywords: laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS), Phytoaccumulation, Rare earth elements, Saxifraga paniculata, Synchrotron-based micro-X-ray fluorescence, Yttrium

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Authors: Meitham Amereh, Mohsen Akbari, Ben Nadler

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Cancer has been recognized as one of the most challenging problems in biology and medicine. Aggressive tumors are a lethal type of cancers characterized by high genomic instability, rapid progression, invasiveness, and therapeutic resistance. Their behavior involves complicated molecular biology and consequential dynamics. Although tremendous effort has been devoted to developing therapeutic approaches, there is still a huge need for new insights into the dark aspects of tumors. As one of the key requirements in better understanding the complex behavior of tumors, mathematical modeling and continuum physics, in particular, play a pivotal role. Mathematical modeling can provide a quantitative prediction on biological processes and help interpret complicated physiological interactions in tumors microenvironment. The pathophysiology of aggressive tumors is strongly affected by the extracellular cues such as stresses produced by mechanical forces between the tumor and the host tissue. During the tumor progression, the growing mass displaces the surrounding extracellular matrix (ECM), and due to the level of tissue stiffness, stress accumulates inside the tumor. The produced stress can influence the tumor by breaking adherent junctions. During this process, the tumor stops the rapid proliferation and begins to remodel its shape to preserve the homeostatic equilibrium state. To reach this, the tumor, in turn, upregulates epithelial to mesenchymal transit-inducing transcription factors (EMT-TFs). These EMT-TFs are involved in various signaling cascades, which are often associated with tumor invasiveness and malignancy. In this work, we modeled the tumor as a growing hyperplastic mass and investigated the effects of mechanical stress from surrounding ECM on tumor invasion. The invasion is modeled as volume-preserving inelastic evolution. In this framework, principal balance laws are considered for tumor mass, linear momentum, and diffusion of nutrients. Also, mechanical interactions between the tumor and ECM is modeled using Ciarlet constitutive strain energy function, and dissipation inequality is utilized to model the volumetric growth rate. System parameters, such as rate of nutrient uptake and cell proliferation, are obtained experimentally. To validate the model, human Glioblastoma multiforme (hGBM) tumor spheroids were incorporated inside Matrigel/Alginate composite hydrogel and was injected into a microfluidic chip to mimic the tumor’s natural microenvironment. The invasion structure was analyzed by imaging the spheroid over time. Also, the expression of transcriptional factors involved in invasion was measured by immune-staining the tumor. The volumetric growth, stress distribution, and inelastic evolution of tumors were predicted by the model. Results showed that the level of invasion is in direct correlation with the level of predicted stress within the tumor. Moreover, the invasion length measured by fluorescent imaging was shown to be related to the inelastic evolution of tumors obtained by the model.

Keywords: cancer, invasion, mathematical modeling, microfluidic chip, tumor spheroids

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Authors: Natia Jalagonia, Tinatin Kuchukhidze

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Polymer electrolytes (PE) play an important part in electrochemical devices such as batteries and fuel cells. To achieve optimal performance, the PE must maintain a high ionic conductivity and mechanical stability at both high and low relative humidity. The polymer electrolyte also needs to have excellent chemical stability for long and robustness. According to the prevailing theory, ionic conduction in polymer electrolytes is facilitated by the large-scale segmental motion of the polymer backbone, and primarily occurs in the amorphous regions of the polymer electrolyte. Crystallinity restricts polymer backbone segmental motion and significantly reduces conductivity. Consequently, polymer electrolytes with high conductivity at room temperature have been sought through polymers which have highly flexible backbones and have largely amorphous morphology. The interest in polymer electrolytes was increased also by potential applications of solid polymer electrolytes in high energy density solid state batteries, gas sensors and electrochromic windows. Conductivity of 10-3 S/cm is commonly regarded as a necessary minimum value for practical applications in batteries. At present, polyethylene oxide (PEO)-based systems are most thoroughly investigated, reaching room temperature conductivities of 10-7 S/cm in some cross-linked salt in polymer systems based on amorphous PEO-polypropylene oxide copolymers.. It is widely accepted that amorphous polymers with low glass transition temperatures Tg and a high segmental mobility are important prerequisites for high ionic conductivities. Another necessary condition for high ionic conductivity is a high salt solubility in the polymer, which is most often achieved by donors such as ether oxygen or imide groups on the main chain or on the side groups of the PE. It is well established also that lithium ion coordination takes place predominantly in the amorphous domain, and that the segmental mobility of the polymer is an important factor in determining the ionic mobility. Great attention was pointed to PEO-based amorphous electrolyte obtained by synthesis of comb-like polymers, by attaching short ethylene oxide unit sequences to an existing amorphous polymer backbone. The aim of presented work is to obtain of solid polymer electrolyte membranes using PMHS as a matrix. For this purpose the hydrosilylation reactions of α,ω-bis(trimethylsiloxy)methyl¬hydrosiloxane with allyl triethylene-glycol mo¬nomethyl ether and vinyltriethoxysilane at 1:28:7 ratio of initial com¬pounds in the presence of Karstedt’s catalyst, platinum hydrochloric acid (0.1 M solution in THF) and platinum on the carbon catalyst in 50% solution of anhydrous toluene have been studied. The synthesized olygomers are vitreous liquid products, which are well soluble in organic solvents with specific viscosity ηsp ≈ 0.05 - 0.06. The synthesized olygomers were analysed with FTIR, 1H, 13C, 29Si NMR spectroscopy. Synthesized polysiloxanes were investigated with wide-angle X-ray, gel-permeation chromatography, and DSC analyses. Via sol-gel processes of doped with lithium trifluoromethylsulfonate (triflate) or lithium bis¬(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)¬imide polymer systems solid polymer electrolyte membranes have been obtained. The dependence of ionic conductivity as a function of temperature and salt concentration was investigated and the activation energies of conductivity for all obtained compounds are calculated

Keywords: synthesis, PMHS, membrane, electrolyte

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Authors: Zatovska T. V., Nesterova N. V., Baranova G. V., Zagorodnya S. D.

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In recent years, biosensor technologies based on the phenomenon of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) are becoming increasingly used in biology and medicine. Their application facilitates exploration in real time progress of binding of biomolecules and identification of agents that specifically interact with biologically active substances immobilized on the biosensor surface (biochips). Special attention is paid to the use of Biosensor analysis in determining the antibody-antigen interaction in the diagnostics of diseases caused by viruses and bacteria. According to WHO, the diseases that are caused by the herpes simplex virus (HSV), take second place (15.8%) after influenza as a cause of death from viral infections. Current diagnostics of HSV infection include PCR and ELISA assays. The latter allows determination the degree of immune response to viral infection and respective stages of its progress. In this regard, the searches for new and available diagnostic methods are very important. This work was aimed to develop Biosensor chip for detection of specific antibodies to HSV-1 in the human blood serum. The proteins of HSV1 (strain US) were used as antigens. The viral particles were accumulated in cell culture MDBK and purified by differential centrifugation in cesium chloride density gradient. Analysis of the HSV1 proteins was performed by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and ELISA. The protein concentration was measured using De Novix DS-11 spectrophotometer. The device for detection of antigen-antibody interactions was an optoelectronic two-channel spectrometer ‘Plasmon-6’, using the SPR phenomenon in the Krechman optical configuration. It was developed at the Lashkarev Institute of Semiconductor Physics of NASU. The used carrier was a glass plate covered with 45 nm gold film. Screening of human blood serums was performed using the test system ‘HSV-1 IgG ELISA’ (GenWay, USA). Development of Biosensor chip included optimization of conditions of viral antigen sorption and analysis steps. For immobilization of viral proteins 0.2% solution of Dextran 17, 200 (Sigma, USA) was used. Sorption of antigen took place at 4-8°C within 18-24 hours. After washing of chip, three times with citrate buffer (pH 5,0) 1% solution of BSA was applied to block the sites not occupied by viral antigen. It was found direct dependence between the amount of immobilized HSV1 antigen and SPR response. Using obtained biochips, panels of 25 positive and 10 negative for the content of antibodies to HSV-1 human sera were analyzed. The average value of SPR response was 185 a.s. for negative sera and from 312 to. 1264 a.s. for positive sera. It was shown that SPR data were agreed with ELISA results in 96% of samples proving the great potential of SPR in such researches. It was investigated the possibility of biochip regeneration and it was shown that application of 10 mM NaOH solution leads to rupture of intermolecular bonds. This allows reuse the chip several times. Thus, in this study biosensor chip for detection of specific antibodies to HSV1 was successfully developed expanding a range of diagnostic methods for this pathogen.

Keywords: biochip, herpes virus, SPR

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Authors: B. R. Campomanes-Alvarez, P. Quiros, B. Fernandez

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Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) is a machine-based process of decoding and transcribing oral speech. A typical ASR system receives acoustic input from a speaker or an audio file, analyzes it using algorithms, and produces an output in the form of a text. Some speech recognition systems use Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) to deal with the temporal variability of speech and Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs) to determine how well each state of each HMM fits a short window of frames of coefficients that represents the acoustic input. Another way to evaluate the fit is to use a feed-forward neural network that takes several frames of coefficients as input and produces posterior probabilities over HMM states as output. Deep neural networks (DNNs) that have many hidden layers and are trained using new methods have been shown to outperform GMMs on a variety of speech recognition systems. Acoustic models for state-of-the-art ASR systems are usually training on massive amounts of data. However, audio files with their corresponding transcriptions can be difficult to obtain, especially in the Spanish language. Hence, in the case of these low-resource scenarios, building an ASR model is considered as a complex task due to the lack of labeled data, resulting in an under-trained system. Semi-supervised learning approaches arise as necessary tasks given the high cost of transcribing audio data. The main goal of this proposal is to develop a procedure based on acoustic semi-supervised learning for Spanish ASR systems by using DNNs. This semi-supervised learning approach consists of: (a) Training a seed ASR model with a DNN using a set of audios and their respective transcriptions. A DNN with a one-hidden-layer network was initialized; increasing the number of hidden layers in training, to a five. A refinement, which consisted of the weight matrix plus bias term and a Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) training were also performed. The objective function was the cross-entropy criterion. (b) Decoding/testing a set of unlabeled data with the obtained seed model. (c) Selecting a suitable subset of the validated data to retrain the seed model, thereby improving its performance on the target test set. To choose the most precise transcriptions, three confidence scores or metrics, regarding the lattice concept (based on the graph cost, the acoustic cost and a combination of both), was performed as selection technique. The performance of the ASR system will be calculated by means of the Word Error Rate (WER). The test dataset was renewed in order to extract the new transcriptions added to the training dataset. Some experiments were carried out in order to select the best ASR results. A comparison between a GMM-based model without retraining and the DNN proposed system was also made under the same conditions. Results showed that the semi-supervised ASR-model based on DNNs outperformed the GMM-model, in terms of WER, in all tested cases. The best result obtained an improvement of 6% relative WER. Hence, these promising results suggest that the proposed technique could be suitable for building ASR models in low-resource environments.

Keywords: automatic speech recognition, deep neural networks, machine learning, semi-supervised learning

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Authors: LouAnne Boyd

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From the perspective of self-advocates, the biggest unaddressed problem is not the symptoms of an autism spectrum diagnosis but the social stigma that accompanies autism. This societal perspective is in contrast to the focus on the majority of interventions. Autism interventions, and consequently, most innovative technologies for autism, aim to improve deficits that occur within the person. For example, the most common Human-Computer Interaction research projects in assistive technology for autism target social skills from a normative perspective. The premise of the autism technologies is that difficulties occur inside the body, hence, the medical model focuses on ways to improve the ailment within the person. However, other technological approaches to support people with autism do exist. In the realm of Human Computer Interaction, there are other modes of research that provide critique of the medical model. For example, critical design, whose intended audience is industry or other HCI researchers, provides products that are the opposite of interventionist work to bring attention to the misalignment between the lived experience and the societal perception of autism. For example, parodies of interventionist work exist to provoke change, such as a recent project called Facesavr, a face covering that helps allistic adults be more independent in their emotional processing. Additionally, from a critical disability studies’ perspective, assistive technologies perpetuate harmful normalizing behaviors. However, these critical approaches can feel far from the frontline in terms of taking direct action to positively impact end users. From a critical yet more pragmatic perspective, projects such as Counterventions lists ways to reduce the likelihood of perpetuating ableism in interventionist’s work by reflectively analyzing a series of evolving assistive technology projects through a societal lens, thus leveraging the momentum of the evolving ecology of technologies for autism. Therefore, all current paradigms fall short of addressing the largest need—the negative impact of social stigma. The current work introduces a new paradigm for technologies for autism, borrowing from a paradigm introduced two decades ago around changing the narrative related to eating disorders. It is the shift from reprimanding poor habits to celebrating positive aspects of eating. This work repurposes Celebratory Technology for Neurodiversity and intended to reduce social stigma by targeting for the public at large. This presentation will review how requirements were derived from current research on autism social stigma as well as design sessions with autistic adults. Congruence between these two sources revealed three key design implications for technology: provide awareness of the autistic experience; generate acceptance of the neurodivergence; cultivate an appreciation for talents and accomplishments of neurodivergent people. The current pilot work in Celebratory Technology offers a new paradigm for supporting autism by shifting the burden of change from the person with autism to address changing society’s biases at large. Shifting the focus of research outside of the autistic body creates a new space for a design that extends beyond the bodies of a few and calls on all to embrace humanity as a whole.

Keywords: neurodiversity, social stigma, accessibility, inclusion, celebratory technology

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Authors: Akanksha Agrawal, Richa Rathor, Geetha Suryakumar

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Muscle represents about ¾ of the body mass, and a healthy muscular system is required for human performance. A healthy muscular system is dynamically balanced via the catabolic and anabolic process. High altitude associated hypoxia altered this redox balance via producing reactive oxygen and nitrogen species that ultimately modulates protein structure and function, hence, disrupts proteostasis or protein homeostasis. The mechanism by which proteostasis is clinched includes regulated protein translation, protein folding, and protein degradation machinery. Perturbation in any of these mechanisms could increase proteome imbalance in the cellular processes. Altered proteostasis in skeletal muscle is likely to be responsible for contributing muscular atrophy in response to hypoxia. Therefore, we planned to elucidate the mechanism involving altered proteostasis leading to skeletal muscle atrophy under chronic hypobaric hypoxia. Material and Methods-Male Sprague Dawley rats weighing about 200-220 were divided into five groups - Control (Normoxic animals), 1d, 3d, 7d and 14d hypobaric hypoxia exposed animals. The animals were exposed to simulated hypoxia equivalent to 282 torr pressure (equivalent to an altitude of 7620m, 8% oxygen) at 25°C. On completion of chronic hypobaric hypoxia (CHH) exposure, rats were sacrificed, muscle was excised and biochemical, histopathological and protein synthesis signaling were studied. Results-A number of changes were observed with the CHH exposure time period. ROS was increased significantly on 07 and 14 days which were attributed to protein oxidation via damaging muscle protein structure by oxidation of amino acids moiety. The oxidative damage to the protein further enhanced the various protein degradation pathways. Calcium activated cysteine proteases and other intracellular proteases participate in protein turnover in muscles. Therefore, we analysed calpain and 20S proteosome activity which were noticeably increased at CHH exposure as compared to control group representing enhanced muscle protein catabolism. Since inflammatory markers (myokines) affect protein synthesis and triggers degradation machinery. So, we determined inflammatory pathway regulated under hypoxic environment. Other striking finding of the study was upregulation of Akt/PKB translational machinery that was increased on CHH exposure. Akt, p-Akt, p70 S6kinase, and GSK- 3β expression were upregulated till 7d of CHH exposure. Apoptosis related markers, caspase-3, caspase-9 and annexin V was also increased on CHH exposure. Conclusion: The present study provides evidence of disrupted proteostasis under chronic hypobaric hypoxia. A profound loss of muscle mass is accompanied by the muscle damage leading to apoptosis and cell death under CHH. These cellular stress response pathways may play a pivotal role in hypobaric hypoxia induced skeletal muscle atrophy. Further research in these signaling pathways will lead to development of therapeutic interventions for amelioration of hypoxia induced muscle atrophy.

Keywords: Akt/PKB translational machinery, chronic hypobaric hypoxia, muscle atrophy, protein degradation

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Authors: Wang Hong, Liu Chang Kui, Zhao Bing Jing, Hu Min

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Objection We observed the repairment effection of canine mandibular defect with meshy Ti6Al4V scaffold fabricated by electron beam melting (EBM) combined with bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMMSCs) encapsulated in chitosan hydrogel. Method Meshy titanium scaffolds were prepared by EBM of commercial Ti6Al4V power. The length of scaffolds was 24 mm, the width was 5 mm and height was 8mm. The pore size and porosity were evaluated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Chitosan /Bio-Oss hydrogel was prepared by chitosan, β- sodium glycerophosphate and Bio-Oss power. BMMSCs were harvested from canine iliac crests. BMMSCs were seeded in titanium scaffolds and encapsulated in Chitosan /Bio-Oss hydrogel. The validity of BMMSCs was evaluated by cell count kit-8 (CCK-8). The osteogenic differentiation ability was evaluated by alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity and gene expression of OC, OPN and CoⅠ. Combination were performed by injecting BMMSCs/ Chitosan /Bio-Oss hydrogel into the meshy Ti6Al4V scaffolds and solidified. 24 mm long box-shaped bone defects were made at the mid-portion of mandible of adult beagles. The defects were randomly filled with BMMSCs/ Chitosan/Bio-Oss + titanium, Chitosan /Bio-Oss+titanium, titanium alone. Autogenous iliac crests graft as control group in 3 beagles. Radionuclide bone imaging was used to monitor the new bone tissue at 2, 4, 8 and 12 weeks after surgery. CT examination was made on the surgery day and 4 weeks, 12 weeks and 24 weeks after surgery. The animals were sacrificed in 4, 12 and 24 weeks after surgery. The bone formation were evaluated by histology and micro-CT. Results: The pores of the scaffolds was interconnected, the pore size was about 1 mm, the average porosity was about 76%. The pore size of the hydrogel was 50-200μm and the average porosity was approximately 90%. The hydrogel were solidified under the condition of 37℃in 10 minutes. The validity and the osteogenic differentiation ability of BMSCs were not affected by titanium scaffolds and hydrogel. Radionuclide bone imaging shown an increasing tendency of the revascularization and bone regeneration was observed in all the groups at 2, 4, 8 weeks after operation, and there were no changes at 12weeks.The tendency was more obvious in the BMMSCs/ Chitosan/Bio-Oss +titanium group and autogenous group. CT, Micro-CT and histology shown that new bone formed increasingly with the time extend. There were more new bone regenerated in BMMSCs/ Chitosan /Bio-Oss + titanium group and autogenous group than the other two groups. At 24 weeks, the autogenous group was achieved bone union. The BMSCs/ Chitosan /Bio-Oss group was seen extensive new bone formed around the scaffolds and more new bone inside of the central pores of scaffolds than Chitosan /Bio-Oss + titanium group and titanium group. The difference was significantly. Conclusion: The titanium scaffolds fabricated by EBM had controlled porous structure, good bone conduction and biocompatibility. Chitosan /Bio-Oss hydrogel had injectable plasticity, thermosensitive property and good biocompatibility. The meshy Ti6Al4V scaffold produced by EBM combined BMSCs encapsulated in chitosan hydrogel had good capacity on mandibular bone defect repair.

Keywords: mandibular reconstruction, tissue engineering, electron beam melting, titanium alloy

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Authors: Ruth Goldschmidt, Vyacheslav Kalchenko, Lilah Agemy, Rachel Elmoalem, Avigdor Scherz

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Vascular Targeted Photodynamic therapy (VTP) is a new modality for selective cancer treatment that leads to the complete tumor ablation. A photosensitizer, a bacteriochlorophyll derivative in our case, is first administered to the patient and followed by the illumination of the tumor area, by a near-IR laser for its photoactivation. The photoactivated drug releases reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the circulation, which reacts with blood cells and the endothelium leading to the occlusion of the blood vasculature. If the blood vessels are only partially closed, the tumor may recover, and cancer cells could survive. On the other hand, excessive treatment may lead to toxicity of healthy tissues nearby. Simultaneous VTP monitoring and image processing independent of the photoexcitation laser has not yet been reported, to our knowledge. Here we present a method for blood flow monitoring, using a real-time laser speckle imaging (RTLSI) in the tumor during VTP. We have synthesized over the years a library of bacteriochlorophyll derivatives, among them WST11 and STL-6014. Both are water soluble derivatives that are retained in the blood vasculature through their partial binding to HSA. WST11 has been approved in Mexico for VTP treatment of prostate cancer at a certain drug dose, and time/intensity of illumination. Application to other bacteriochlorophyll derivatives or other cancers may require different treatment parameters (such as light/drug administration). VTP parameters for STL-6014 are still under study. This new derivative mainly differs from WST11 by its lack of the central Palladium, and its conjugation to an Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD) sequence. RGD is a tumor-specific ligand that is used for targeting the necrotic tumor domains through its affinity to αVβ3 integrin receptors. This enables the study of cell-targeted VTP. We developed a special RTLSI module, based on Labview software environment for data processing. The new module enables to acquire raw laser speckle images and calculate the values of the laser temporal statistics of time-integrated speckles in real time, without additional off-line processing. Using RTLSI, we could monitor the tumor’s blood flow following VTP in a CT26 colon carcinoma ear model. VTP with WST11 induced an immediate slow down of the blood flow within the tumor and a complete final flow arrest, after some sporadic reperfusions. If the irradiation continued further, the blood flow stopped also in the blood vessels of the surrounding healthy tissue. This emphasizes the significance of light dose control. Using our RTLSI system, we could prevent any additional healthy tissue damage by controlling the illumination time and restrict blood flow arrest within the tumor only. In addition, we found that VTP with STL-6014 was the most effective when the photoactivation was conducted 4h post-injection, in terms of tumor ablation success in-vivo and blood vessel flow arrest. In conclusion, RTSLI application should allow to optimize VTP efficacy vs. toxicity in both the preclinical and clinical arenas.

Keywords: blood vessel occlusion, cancer treatment, photodynamic therapy, real time imaging

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Authors: Paola Clerici Maestosi

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Positive Energy District (PED) is a rather recent concept whose aim is to contribute to the main objectives of the Energy Union strategy. It is based on an integrated multi-sectoral approach in response to Europe's most complex challenges. PED integrates energy efficiency, renewable energy production, and energy flexibility in an integrated, multi-sectoral approach at the city level. The core idea behind Positive Energy Districts (PEDs) is to establish an urban area that can generate more energy than it consumes. Additionally, it should be flexible enough to adapt to changes in the energy market. This is crucial because a PED's goal is not just to achieve an annual surplus of net energy but also to help reduce the impact on the interconnected centralized energy networks. It achieves this by providing options to increase on-site load matching and self-consumption, employing technologies for short- and long-term energy storage, and offering energy flexibility through smart control. Thus, it seems that PEDs can encompass all types of buildings in the city environment. Given this which is the added value of having green buildings being constitutive part of PEDS? The paper will present a systematic literature review identifying the role of green building in Positive Energy District to provide answer to following questions: (RQ1) the state of the art of PEDs implementation; (RQ2) penetration of green building in Positive Energy District selected case studies. Methodological approach is based on a broad holistic study of bibliographic sources according to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) further data will be analysed, mapped and text mining through VOSviewer. Main contribution of research is a cognitive framework on Positive Energy District in Europe and a selection of case studies where green building supported the transition to PED. The inclusion of green buildings within Positive Energy Districts (PEDs) adds significant value for several reasons. Firstly, green buildings are designed and constructed with a focus on environmental sustainability, incorporating energy-efficient technologies, materials, and design principles. As integral components of PEDs, these structures contribute directly to the district's overall ability to generate more energy than it consumes. Secondly, green buildings typically incorporate renewable energy sources, such as solar panels or wind turbines, further boosting the district's capacity for energy generation. This aligns with the PED objective of achieving a surplus of net energy. Moreover, green buildings often feature advanced systems for on-site energy management, load-matching, and self-consumption. This enhances the PED's capability to respond to variations in the energy market, making the district more agile and flexible in optimizing energy use. Additionally, the environmental considerations embedded in green buildings align with the broader sustainability goals of PEDs. By reducing the ecological footprint of individual structures, PEDs with green buildings contribute to minimizing the overall impact on centralized energy networks and promote a more sustainable urban environment. In summary, the incorporation of green buildings within PEDs not only aligns with the district's energy objectives but also enhances environmental sustainability, energy efficiency, and the overall resilience of the urban environment.

Keywords: positive energy district, renewables energy production, energy flexibility, energy efficiency

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Authors: Beverly Redman

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With the Theatre Season of 2020-2021 cancelled due to COVID-19 at Purdue University, Fort Wayne, IN, USA, faculty directors found themselves scrambling to create theatre production opportunities for their students in the Department of Theatre. Redman, Chair of the Department, found her community to be suffering from anxieties brought on by a confluence of issues: the global-scale Covid-19 Pandemic, the United States’ Black Lives Matter protests erupting in cities all across the country and the coming Presidential election, arguably the most important and most contentious in the country’s history. Redman wanted to give her students the opportunity to speak not only on these issues but also to be able to record who they were at this time in their personal lives, as well as in this broad socio-political context. She also wanted to invite them into an experience of feeling empathy, too, at a time when empathy in this world seems to be sorely lacking. Returning to a mode of Devising Theatre she had used with community groups in the past, in which storytelling and re-enactment of participants’ life events combined with oral history documentation practices, Redman planned The Shared Breath Project. The process involved three months of workshops, in which participants alternated between theatre exercises and oral history collection and documentation activities as a way of generating original material for a theatre production. The goal of the first half of the project was for each participant to produce a solo piece in the form of a monologue after many generations of potential material born out of gammes, improvisations, interviews and the like. Along the way, many film and audio clips recorded the process of each person’s written documentation—documentation prepared by the subject him or herself but also by others in the group assigned to listen, watch and record. Then, in the second half of the project—and only once each participant had taken their own contributions from raw improvisatory self-presentations and through the stages of composition and performative polish, participants then exchanged their pieces. The second half of the project involved taking on each other’s words, mannerisms, gestures, melodic and rhythmic speech patterns and inhabiting them through the rehearsal process as their own, thus the title, The Shared Breath Project. Here, in stage two the acting challenges evolved to be those of capturing the other and becoming the other through accurate mimicry that embraces Denis Diderot’s concept of the Paradox of Acting, in that the actor is both seeming and being simultaneous. This paper shares the carefully documented process of making the live-streamed theatre production that resulted from these workshops, writing processes and rehearsals, and forming, The Shared Breath Project, which ultimately took the students’ Realist, life-based pieces and edited them into a single unified theatre production. The paper also utilizes research on the Paradox of Acting, putting a Post-Structuralist spin on Diderot’s theory. Here, the paper suggests the limitations of inhabiting the other by allowing that the other is always already a thing impenetrable but nevertheless worthy of unceasing empathetic, striving and delving in an epoch in which slow, careful attention to our fellows is in short supply.

Keywords: otherness, paradox of acting, oral history theatre, devised theatre, political theatre, community-based theatre, peoples’ theatre

Procedia PDF Downloads 169

Authors: Sugam Kale, Arif Uzair Bin Mohammed Roslan, Cindy Lee, Syed Beevee Mohammed Ismail

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Preemptive analgesia is an established concept in the modern practice of anaesthesia. To be most effective, it is best instituted earlier than the surgical stimulus and should last beyond the offset of surgically induced pain till healing is complete. Whereas the start of afferent pain blockade with regional anaesthesia is common, its effect often falls short to cover the entire period of pain impulses making their way to CNS in the post-operative period. We tried to use a combination of two regional anaesthetic techniques used sequentially to overcome this handicap. Madam S., a 56 year old lady, was scheduled for elective surgery for pancreatic cancer. She underwent laparotomy and distal pancreatectomy, splenectomy, bilateral salpingo oophorectomy, and sigmoid colectomy. Surgery was expected to be extensive, and it was presumed that the standard pain relief with PCA with opiates and oral analgesics would not be adequate. After counselling the patient pre-operative about the technique of regional anaesthesia techniques, including epidural catheterization and rectus sheath catheter placement, their benefits, and potential complications, informed consent was obtained. Epidural catheter was placed awake, and general anaesthesia was then induced. Epidural infusion of local anaesthetics was started prior to surgical incision and was continued till 60 hours into the postoperative period. Before skin closure, the surgeons inserted commercially available rectus sheath catheters bilaterally along the midline incision used for laparotomy. After 46 hours post-op, local anaesthetic infusion via these was started as bridging while the epidural infusion rate was tapered off. The epidural catheter was removed at 75 hours. Elastomeric pumps were used to provide local anaesthetic infusion with the ability to vary infusion rates. Acute pain service followed up the patient’s vital signs and effectiveness of pain relief twice daily or more frequently as required. Rectus sheath catheters were removed 137 hours post-op. The patient had good post-op analgesia with the minimal additional analgesic requirement. For the most part, the visual analog score (VAS) for pain remained at 1-3 on a scale of 1 to 10. Haemodynamics remained stable, and surgical recovery was as expected. Minimal opiate requirement after an extensive laparotomy also translates to the early return of intestinal motility. Our experience was encouraging, and we are hoping to extend this combination of two regional anaesthetic techniques to patients undergoing similar surgeries. Epidural analgesia is denser and offers excellent pain relief for both visceral and somatic pain in the first few days after surgery. As the pain intensity grows weaker, rectus sheath block and oral analgesics provide almost the same degree of pain relief after the epidural catheter is removed. We discovered that the background infusion of local anaesthetic down the rectus sheath catherter largely reduced the requirement for other classes of analgesics. We aim to study this further with a larger patient cohort and hope that it may become an established clinical practice that benefits patients everywhere.

Keywords: rectus sheath, epidural infusion, post operative analgesia, elastomeric

Procedia PDF Downloads 109

Authors: Ved Vrat Verma, Rani Gupta, Manisha Goel

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γ-glutamyltranspeptidase (GGT: EC 2.3.2.2) is an N-terminal nucleophile hydrolase conserved in all three domains of life. GGT plays a key role in glutathione metabolism where it catalyzes the breakage of the γ-glutamyl bonds and transfer of γ-glutamyl group to water (hydrolytic activity) or amino acids or short peptides (transpeptidase activity). GGTs from bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes (human, rat and mouse) are homologous proteins sharing >50% sequence similarity and conserved four layered αββα sandwich like three dimensional structural fold. These proteins though similar in their structure to each other, are quite diverse in their enzyme activity: some GGTs are better at hydrolysis reactions but poor in transpeptidase activity, whereas many others may show opposite behaviour. GGT is known to be involved in various diseases like asthma, parkinson, arthritis, and gastric cancer. Its inhibition prior to chemotherapy treatments has been shown to sensitize tumours to the treatment. Microbial GGT is known to be a virulence factor too, important for the colonization of bacteria in host. However, all known inhibitors (mimics of its native substrate, glutamate) are highly toxic because they interfere with other enzyme pathways. However, a few successful efforts have been reported previously in designing species specific inhibitors. We aim to leverage the diversity seen in GGT family (pathogen vs. eukaryotes) for designing specific inhibitors. Thus, in the present study, we have used DIVERGE software to identify sites in GGT proteins, which are crucial for the functional and structural divergence of these proteins. Since, type II divergence sites vary in clade specific manner, so type II divergent sites were our focus of interest throughout the study. Type II divergent sites were identified for pathogen vs. eukaryotes clusters and sites were marked on clade specific representative structures HpGGT (2QM6) and HmGGT (4ZCG) of pathogen and eukaryotes clade respectively. The crucial divergent sites within 15 A radii of the binding cavity were highlighted, and in-silico mutations were performed on these sites to delineate the role of these sites on the mechanism of catalysis and protein folding. Further, the amino acid network (AAN) analysis was also performed by Cytoscape to delineate assortative mixing for cavity divergent sites which could strengthen our hypothesis. Additionally, molecular dynamics simulations were performed for wild complexes and mutant complexes close to physiological conditions (pH 7.0, 0.1 M ionic strength and 1 atm pressure) and the role of putative divergence sites and structural integrities of the homologous proteins have been analysed. The dynamics data were scrutinized in terms of RMSD, RMSF, non-native H-bonds and salt bridges. The RMSD, RMSF fluctuations of proteins complexes are compared, and the changes at protein ligand binding sites were highlighted. The outcomes of our study highlighted some crucial divergent sites which could be used for novel inhibitors designing in a species-specific manner. Since, for drug development, it is challenging to design novel drug by targeting similar protein which exists in eukaryotes, so this study could set up an initial platform to overcome this challenge and help to deduce the more effective targets for novel drug discovery.

Keywords: γ-glutamyltranspeptidase, divergence, species-specific, drug design

Procedia PDF Downloads 257

Authors: Manju Bala Jassi

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The Covid 19 pandemic has badly mauled Dubai’s GDP heavily dependent on hospitality, tourism, entertainment, logistics, property and the retail sectors. In the context of the World Health protocols on social distancing for better maintenance of health and hygiene, the revival of the battered tourism and hospitality sectors has serious lessons for designers- interiors and public places. The tangible and intangible aesthetic elements and design –ambiance, materials, furnishings, colors, lighting and interior with architectural design issues of tourism and hospitality need a rethink to ensure a memorable tourist experience. Designers ought to experiment with sustainable places of tourism and design, develop, build and projects are aesthetic and leave as little negative impacts on the environment and public as possible. In short, they ought to conceive public spaces that makes use of little untouched materials and energy, and creates pollution and waste that are minimal. The spaces can employ healthier and more resource-efficient prototypes of construction, renovation, operation, maintenance, and demolition and thereby mitigate the environment impacts of the construction activities and it is sustainable These measures encompass the hospitality sector that includes hotels and restaurants which has taken the hardest fall from the pandemic. The paper sought to examine building energy efficiency and materials and design employed in public places, green buildings to achieve constructive sustainability and to establish the benefits of utilizing energy efficiency, green materials and sustainable design; to document diverse policy interventions, design and Spatial dimensions of tourism and hospitality sectors; to examine changes in the hospitality, aviation sector especially from a design perspective regarding infrastructure or operational constraints and additional risk-mitigation measures; to dilate on the nature of implications for interior designers and architects to design public places to facilitate sustainable tourism and hospitality while balancing convenient space and their operations' natural surroundings. The qualitative research approach was adopted for the study. The researcher collected and analyzed data in continuous iteration. Secondary data was collected from articles in journals, trade publications, government reports, newspaper/ magazine articles, policy documents etc. In depth interviews were conducted with diverse stakeholders. Preliminary data indicates that designers have started imagining public places of tourism and hospitality against the backdrop of the government push and WHO guidelines. For instance, with regard to health, safety, hygiene and sanitation, Emirates, the Dubai-based airline has augmented health measures at the Dubai International Airport and on board its aircraft. It has leveraged high tech/ Nano-tech, social distancing to encourage least human contact, flexible design layouts to limit the occupancy. The researcher organized the data into thematic categories and found that the Government of Dubai has initiated comprehensive measures in the hospitality, tourism and aviation sectors in compliance with the WHO guidelines.

Keywords: Covid 19, design, Dubai, hospitality, public spaces, tourism

Procedia PDF Downloads 146

Authors: Milica B. Veljković, Milica B. Simović, Marija M. Ćorović, Ana D. Milivojević, Anja I. Petrov, Katarina M. Banjanac, Dejan I. Bezbradica

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In recent decades, the scientific community has recognized the growing importance of prebiotics, and therefore, numerous studies are focused on their economic production due to their low presence in natural resources. It has been confirmed that prebiotics is a source of energy for probiotics in the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) and enable their proliferation, consequently leading to the normal functioning of the intestinal microbiota. Also, products of their fermentation are short-chain fatty acids (SCFA), which play a key role in maintaining and improving the health not only of the GIT but also of the whole organism. Among several confirmed prebiotics, fructooligosaccharides (FOS) are considered interesting candidates for use in a wide range of products in the food industry. They are characterized as low-calorie and non-cariogenic substances that represent an adequate sugar substitute and can be considered suitable for use in products intended for diabetics. The subject of this research will be the production of FOS by transforming sucrose using a fructosyltransferase (FTase) present in commercial preparation Pectinex® Ultra SP-L, with special emphasis on the development of adequate FTase immobilization method that would enable selective isolation of the enzyme responsible for the synthesis of FOS from the complex enzymatic mixture. This would lead to considerable enzyme purification and allow its direct incorporation into different sucrose-based products without the fear that the action of the other hydrolytic enzymes may adversely affect the products' functional characteristics. Accordingly, the possibility of selective immobilization of the enzyme using support with primary amino groups, Purolite® A109, which was previously activated and modified using glutaraldehyde (GA), was investigated. In the initial phase of the research, the effects of individual immobilization parameters such as pH, enzyme concentration, and immobilization time were investigated to optimize the process using support chemically activated with 15% and 0.5% GA to form dimers and monomers, respectively. It was determined that highly active immobilized preparations (371.8 IU/g of support - dimer and 213.8 IU/g of support – monomer) were achieved under acidic conditions (pH 4) provided that an enzyme concentration was 50 mg/g of support after 7 h and 3 h, respectively. Bearing in mind the obtained results of the expressed activity, it is noticeable that the formation of dimers showed higher reactivity compared to the form of monomers. Also, in the case of support modification using 15% GA, the value of the ratio of FTase and pectinase (as dominant enzyme mixture component) activity immobilization yields was 16.45, indicating the high feasibility of selective immobilization of FTase on modified polystyrene resin. After obtaining immobilized preparations of satisfactory features, they were tested in a reaction of FOS synthesis under determined optimal conditions. The maximum FOS yields of approximately 50% of total carbohydrates in the reaction mixture were recorded after 21 h. Finally, it can be concluded that the examined immobilization method yielded highly active, stable and, more importantly, refined enzyme preparation that can be further utilized on a larger scale for the development of continual processes for FOS synthesis, as well as for modification of different sucrose-based mediums.

Keywords: chemical modification, fructooligosaccharides, glutaraldehyde, immobilization of fructosyltransferase

Procedia PDF Downloads 168

Authors: Sesethu G. Njokweni, Marelize Botes, Emile W. H. Van Zyl

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An alternative strategy to the production of bioethanol is by examining the degradability of biomass in a natural system such as the rumen of mammals. This anaerobic microbial community has higher cellulolytic activities than microbial communities from other habitats and degrades cellulose to produce volatile fatty acids (VFA), methane and CO₂. VFAs have the potential to serve as intermediate products for electrochemical conversion to hydrocarbon fuels. In vitro mimicking of this process would be more cost-effective than bioethanol production as it does not require chemical pre-treatment of biomass, a sterile environment or added enzymes. The strategies of the carboxylate platform and the co-cultures of a bovine ruminal microbiota from cannulated cows were combined in order to investigate and optimize the bioconversion of agricultural biomass (apple and grape pomace, citrus pulp, sugarcane bagasse and triticale straw) to high value VFAs as intermediates for biofuel production in a consolidated bioprocess. Optimisation of reactor conditions was investigated using five different ruminal inoculum concentrations; 5,10,15,20 and 25% with fixed pH at 6.8 and temperature at 39 ˚C. The ANKOM 200/220 fiber analyser was used to analyse in vitro neutral detergent fiber (NDF) disappearance of the feedstuffs. Fresh and cryo-frozen (5% DMSO and 50% glycerol for 3 months) rumen cultures were tested for the retainment of fermentation capacity and durability in 72 h fermentations in 125 ml serum vials using a FURO medical solutions 6-valve gas manifold to induce anaerobic conditions. Fermentation of apple pomace, triticale straw, and grape pomace showed no significant difference (P > 0.05) in the effect of 15 and 20 % inoculum concentrations for the total VFA yield. However, high performance liquid chromatographic separation within the two inoculum concentrations showed a significant difference (P < 0.05) in acetic acid yield, with 20% inoculum concentration being the optimum at 4.67 g/l. NDF disappearance of 85% in 96 h and total VFA yield of 11.5 g/l in 72 h (A/P ratio = 2.04) for apple pomace entailed that it was the optimal feedstuff for this process. The NDF disappearance and VFA yield of DMSO (82% NDF disappearance and 10.6 g/l VFA) and glycerol (90% NDF disappearance and 11.6 g/l VFA) stored rumen also showed significantly similar degradability of apple pomace with lack of treatment effect differences compared to a fresh rumen control (P > 0.05). The lack of treatment effects was a positive sign in indicating that there was no difference between the stored samples and the fresh rumen control. Retaining of the fermentation capacity within the preserved cultures suggests that its metabolic characteristics were preserved due to resilience and redundancy of the rumen culture. The amount of degradability and VFA yield within a short span was similar to other carboxylate platforms that have longer run times. This study shows that by virtue of faster rates and high extent of degradability, small scale alternatives to bioethanol such as rumen microbiomes and other natural fermenting microbiomes can be employed to enhance the feasibility of biofuels large-scale implementation.

Keywords: agricultural wastes, carboxylate platform, rumen microbiome, volatile fatty acids

Procedia PDF Downloads 113

Authors: Iryna Atamaniuk, Hannah Boysen, Nils Wieczorek, Natalia Politaeva, Iuliia Bazarnova, Kerstin Kuchta

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Over the last decade due to climate change and a strategy of natural resources preservation, the interest for the aquatic biomass has dramatically increased. Along with mitigation of the environmental pressure and connection of waste streams (including CO₂ and heat emissions), microalgae bioeconomy can supply food, feed, as well as the pharmaceutical and power industry with number of value-added products. Furthermore, in comparison to conventional biomass, microalgae can be cultivated in wide range of conditions without compromising food and feed production, thus addressing issues associated with negative social and the environmental impacts. This paper presents the state-of-the art technology for microalgae bioeconomy from cultivation process to production of valuable components and by-streams. Microalgae Chlorella sorokiniana were cultivated in the pilot-scale innovation concept in Hamburg (Germany) using different systems such as race way pond (5000 L) and flat panel reactors (8 x 180 L). In order to achieve the optimum growth conditions along with suitable cellular composition for the further extraction of the value-added components, process parameters such as light intensity, temperature and pH are continuously being monitored. On the other hand, metabolic needs in nutrients were provided by addition of micro- and macro-nutrients into a medium to ensure autotrophic growth conditions of microalgae. The cultivation was further followed by downstream process and extraction of lipids, proteins and saccharides. Lipids extraction is conducted in repeated-batch semi-automatic mode using hot extraction method according to Randall. As solvents hexane and ethanol are used at different ratio of 9:1 and 1:9, respectively. Depending on cell disruption method along with solvents ratio, the total lipids content showed significant variations between 8.1% and 13.9 %. The highest percentage of extracted biomass was reached with a sample pretreated with microwave digestion using 90% of hexane and 10% of ethanol as solvents. Proteins content in microalgae was determined by two different methods, namely: Total Kejadahl Nitrogen (TKN), which further was converted to protein content, as well as Bradford method using Brilliant Blue G-250 dye. Obtained results, showed a good correlation between both methods with protein content being in the range of 39.8–47.1%. Characterization of neutral and acid saccharides from microalgae was conducted by phenol-sulfuric acid method at two wavelengths of 480 nm and 490 nm. The average concentration of neutral and acid saccharides under the optimal cultivation conditions was 19.5% and 26.1%, respectively. Subsequently, biomass residues are used as substrate for anaerobic digestion on the laboratory-scale. The methane concentration, which was measured on the daily bases, showed some variations for different samples after extraction steps but was in the range between 48% and 55%. CO₂ which is formed during the fermentation process and after the combustion in the Combined Heat and Power unit can potentially be used within the cultivation process as a carbon source for the photoautotrophic synthesis of biomass.

Keywords: bioeconomy, lipids, microalgae, proteins, saccharides

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Authors: Blaga Alexandra Cristina, Kloetzer Lenuta, Bompa Amalia Stela, Galaction Anca Irina, Cascaval Dan

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Vitamin B9 is an important member of vitamins B group, being a growth factor, important for making genetic material as DNA and RNA, red blood cells, for building muscle tissues, especially during periods of infancy, adolescence and pregnancy. Its production by biosynthesis is based on the high metabolic potential of mutant Bacillus subtilis, due to a superior biodisponibility compared to that obtained by chemical pathways. Pertraction, defined as the extraction and transport through liquid membranes consists in the transfer of a solute between two aqueous phases of different pH-values, phases that are separated by a solvent layer of various sizes. The pertraction efficiency and selectivity could be significantly enhanced by adding a carrier in the liquid membrane, such as organophosphoric compounds, long chain amines or crown-ethers etc., the separation process being called facilitated pertraction. The aim of the work is to determine the impact of the presence of two extractants/carriers in the bulk liquid membrane, i.e. di(2-ethylhexyl) phosphoric acid (D2EHPA) and lauryltrialkylmetilamine (Amberlite LA2) on the transport kinetics of vitamin B9. The experiments have been carried out using two pertraction equipments for a free liquid membrane or bulk liquid membrane. One pertraction cell consists on a U-shaped glass pipe (used for the dichloromethane membrane) and the second one is an H-shaped glass pipe (used for h-heptane), having 45 mm inner diameter of the total volume of 450 mL, the volume of each compartment being of 150 mL. The aqueous solutions are independently mixed by means of double blade stirrers with 6 mm diameter and 3 mm height, having the rotation speed of 500 rpm. In order to reach high diffusional rates through the solvent layer, the organic phase has been mixed with a similar stirrer, at a similar rotation speed (500 rpm). The area of mass transfer surface, both for extraction and for reextraction, was of 1.59x10-³ m2. The study on facilitated pertraction with the mixture of two carriers, namely D2EHPA and Amberlite LA-2, dissolved in two solvents with different polarities: n-heptane and dichloromethane, indicated the possibility to obtain the synergic effect. The synergism has been analyzed by considering the vitamin initial and final mass flows, as well as the permeability factors through liquid membrane. The synergic effect has been observed at low D2EHPA concentrations and high Amberlite LA-2 concentrations, being more important for the low-polar solvent (n-heptane). The results suggest that the mechanism of synergic pertraction consists on the reaction between the organophosphoric carrier and vitamin B9 at the interface between the feed and membrane phases, while the aminic carrier enhances the hydrophobicity of this compound by solvation. However, the formation of this complex reduced the reextraction rate and, consequently, affects the synergism related to the final mass flows and permeability factor. For describing the influences of carriers concentrations on the synergistic coefficients, some equations have been proposed by taking into account the vitamin mass flows or permeability factors, with an average deviations between 4.85% and 10.73%.

Keywords: pertraction, synergism, vitamin B9, Amberlite LA-2, di(2-ethylhexyl) phosphoric acid

Procedia PDF Downloads 260

Authors: Keita Nishio, Takashi Kaburagi, Yosuke Kurihara

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Recent advances in medical technology have served to enhance average life expectancy. However, the total time for which the patients are prescribed complete bedrest has also increased. With patients being required to maintain a constant lying posture- also called bedsore- development of a system to detect patient roll-over becomes imperative. For this purpose, extant studies have proposed the use of cameras, and favorable results have been reported. Continuous on-camera monitoring, however, tends to violate patient privacy. We have proposed unconstrained bio-signal measurement system that could detect body-motion during sleep and does not violate patient’s privacy. Therefore, in this study, we propose a roll-over detection method by the date obtained from the bi-signal measurement system. Signals recorded by the sensor were assumed to comprise respiration, pulse, body motion, and noise components. Compared the body-motion and respiration, pulse component, the body-motion, during roll-over, generate large vibration. Thus, analysis of the body-motion component facilitates detection of the roll-over tendency. The large vibration associated with the roll-over motion has a great effect on the Root Mean Square (RMS) value of time series of the body motion component calculated during short 10 s segments. After calculation, the RMS value during each segment was compared to a threshold value set in advance. If RMS value in any segment exceeded the threshold, corresponding data were considered to indicate occurrence of a roll-over. In order to validate the proposed method, we conducted experiment. A bi-directional microphone was adopted as a high-sensitivity pressure sensor and was placed between the mattress and bedframe. Recorded signals passed through an analog Band-pass Filter (BPF) operating over the 0.16-16 Hz bandwidth. BPF allowed the respiration, pulse, and body-motion to pass whilst removing the noise component. Output from BPF was A/D converted with the sampling frequency 100Hz, and the measurement time was 480 seconds. The number of subjects and data corresponded to 5 and 10, respectively. Subjects laid on a mattress in the supine position. During data measurement, subjects—upon the investigator's instruction—were asked to roll over into four different positions—supine to left lateral, left lateral to prone, prone to right lateral, and right lateral to supine. Recorded data was divided into 48 segments with 10 s intervals, and the corresponding RMS value for each segment was calculated. The system was evaluated by the accuracy between the investigator’s instruction and the detected segment. As the result, an accuracy of 100% was achieved. While reviewing the time series of recorded data, segments indicating roll-over tendencies were observed to demonstrate a large amplitude. However, clear differences between decubitus and the roll-over motion could not be confirmed. Extant researches possessed a disadvantage in terms of patient privacy. The proposed study, however, demonstrates more precise detection of patient roll-over tendencies without violating their privacy. As a future prospect, decubitus estimation before and after roll-over could be attempted. Since in this paper, we could not confirm the clear differences between decubitus and the roll-over motion, future studies could be based on utilization of the respiration and pulse components.

Keywords: bedsore, high-sensitivity pressure sensor, roll-over, unconstrained bio-signal measurement

Procedia PDF Downloads 105

Authors: Sini George

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Active learning pedagogies are valued for their success in increasing 21st-century learners’ engagement, developing transferable skills like critical thinking or quantitative reasoning, and creating deeper and more lasting educational gains. 'Blended learning' is an active learning pedagogical approach in which direct instruction moves from the group learning space to the individual learning space, and the resulting group space is transformed into a dynamic, interactive learning environment where the educator guides students as they apply concepts and engage creatively in the subject matter. This project aimed to develop a blended learning instructional approach to teaching concepts around pharmaceutical calculations to year 1 pharmacy students. The wrong dose, strength or frequency of a medication accounts for almost a third of medication errors in the NHS therefore, progression to year 2 requires a 70% pass in this calculation test, in addition to the standard progression requirements. Many students were struggling to achieve this requirement in the past. It was also challenging to teach these concepts to students of a large class (> 130) with mixed mathematical abilities, especially within a traditional didactic lecture format. Therefore, short screencasts with voice-over of the lecturer were provided in advance of a total of four teaching sessions (two hours/session), incorporating core content of each session and talking through how they approached the calculations to model metacognition. Links to the screencasts were posted on the learning management. Viewership counts were used to determine that the students were indeed accessing and watching the screencasts on schedule. In the classroom, students had to apply the knowledge learned beforehand to a series of increasingly difficult set of questions. Students were then asked to create a question in group settings (two students/group) and to discuss the questions created by their peers in their groups to promote deep conceptual learning. Students were also given time for question-and-answer period to seek clarifications on the concepts covered. Student response to this instructional approach and their test grades were collected. After collecting and organizing the data, statistical analysis was carried out to calculate binomial statistics for the two data sets: the test grade for students who received blended learning instruction and the test grades for students who received instruction in a standard lecture format in class, to compare the effectiveness of each type of instruction. Student response and their performance data on the assessment indicate that the learning of content in the blended learning instructional approach led to higher levels of student engagement, satisfaction, and more substantial learning gains. The blended learning approach enabled each student to learn how to do calculations at their own pace freeing class time for interactive application of this knowledge. Although time-consuming for an instructor to implement, the findings of this research demonstrate that the blended learning instructional approach improves student academic outcomes and represents a valuable method to incorporate active learning methodologies while still maintaining broad content coverage. Satisfaction with this approach was high, and we are currently developing more pharmacy content for delivery in this format.

Keywords: active learning, blended learning, deep conceptual learning, instructional approach, metacognition, pharmaceutical calculations

Procedia PDF Downloads 155

Authors: F. Iberraken, R. Medjoudj, D. Aissani

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The development of the smart grids concept is built around two separate definitions, namely: The European one oriented towards sustainable development and the American one oriented towards reliability and security of supply. In this paper, we have investigated reliability merits enabling decision-makers to provide a high quality of service. It is based on system behavior using interruptions and failures modeling and forecasting from one hand and on the contribution of information and communication technologies (ICT) to mitigate catastrophic ones such as blackouts from the other hand. It was found that this concept has been adopted by developing and emerging countries in short and medium terms followed by sustainability concept at long term planning. This work has highlighted the reliability merits such as: Benefits, opportunities, costs and risks considered as consistent units of measuring power customer satisfaction. From the decision making point of view, we have used the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to achieve customer satisfaction, based on the reliability merits and the contribution of such energy resources. Certainly nowadays, fossil and nuclear ones are dominating energy production but great advances are already made to jump into cleaner ones. It was demonstrated that theses resources are not only environmentally but also economically and socially sustainable. The paper is organized as follows: Section one is devoted to the introduction, where an implicit review of smart grids development is given for the two main concepts (for USA and Europeans countries). The AHP method and the BOCR developments of reliability merits against power customer satisfaction are developed in section two. The benefits where expressed by the high level of availability, maintenance actions applicability and power quality. Opportunities were highlighted by the implementation of ICT in data transfer and processing, the mastering of peak demand control, the decentralization of the production and the power system management in default conditions. Costs were evaluated using cost-benefit analysis, including the investment expenditures in network security, becoming a target to hackers and terrorists, and the profits of operating as decentralized systems, with a reduced energy not supplied, thanks to the availability of storage units issued from renewable resources and to the current power lines (CPL) enabling the power dispatcher to manage optimally the load shedding. For risks, we have razed the adhesion of citizens to contribute financially to the system and to the utility restructuring. What is the degree of their agreement compared to the guarantees proposed by the managers about the information integrity? From technical point of view, have they sufficient information and knowledge to meet a smart home and a smart system? In section three, an application of AHP method is made to achieve power customer satisfaction based on the main energy resources as alternatives, using knowledge issued from a country that has a great advance in energy mutation. Results and discussions are given in section four. It was given us to conclude that the option to a given resource depends on the attitude of the decision maker (prudent, optimistic or pessimistic), and that status quo is neither sustainable nor satisfactory.

Keywords: reliability, AHP, renewable energy resources, smart grids

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Authors: Chiara Cosentino, Carlo Pruneti, Carla Merisio, Domenico Sgromo

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Introduction – Psychoneuroimmunology as approach clearly showed how psychological features can influence health through specific physiological pathways linked to the stress reaction. This can be true also in cancer, in its latter conceptualization seen as a chronic disease. Therefore, it is still not clear how the psychological features can combine with a physiological specific path, for a better adjustment to cancer. The aim of this study is identifying how in Italian survivors, perceived social support, body image, coping and quality of life correlate with or influence Heart Rate Variability (HRV), the physiological parameter that can mirror a condition of chronic stress or a good relaxing capability. Method - The study had an exploratory transversal design. The final sample was made of 38 ovarian cancer survivors aged from 29 to 80 (M= 56,08; SD=12,76) following a program for Ovarian Cancer at the Oncological Clinic, University Hospital of Parma, Italy. Participants were asked to fill: Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS); Derridford Appearance Scale-59 (DAS-59); Mental Adjustment to Cancer (MAC); Quality of Life Questionnaire (EORTC). For each participant was recorded Short-Term HRV (5 minutes) using emWavePro. Results– Data showed many interesting correlations within the psychological features. EORTC scores have a significant correlation with DAS-59 (r =-.327 p <.05), MSPSS (r =.411 p<.05), and MAC scores, in particular with the strategy Fatalism (r =.364 p<.05). A good social support improves HRV (F(1,33)= 4.27 p<.05). Perceiving themselves as effective in their environment, preserving a good role functioning (EORTC), positively affects HRV (F(1,33)=9.810 p<.001). Women admitting concerns towards body image seem prone to emotive disclosure, reducing emotional distress and improving HRV (β=.453); emotional avoidance worsens HRV (β=-.391). Discussion and conclusion - Results showed a strong relationship between body image and Quality of Life. These data suggest that higher concerns on body image, in particular, the negative self-concept linked to appearance, was linked to the worst functioning in everyday life. The relation between the negative self-concept and a reduction in emotional functioning is understandable in terms of possible distress deriving from the perception of body appearance. The relationship between a high perceived social support and a better functioning in everyday life was also confirmed. In this sample fatalism, was associated with a better physical, role and emotional functioning. In these women, the presence of a good support may activate the physiological Social Engagement System improving their HRV. Perceiving themselves effective in their environment, preserving a good role functioning, also positively affects HRV, probably following the same physiological pathway. A higher presence of concerns about appearance contributes to a higher HRV. Probably women admitting more body concerns are prone to a better emotive disclosure. This could reduce emotional distress improving HRV and global health. This study reached preliminary demonstration of an ‘Integrated Model of Defense’ in these cancer survivors. In these model, psychological features interact building a better quality of life and a condition of psychological well-being that is associated and influence HRV, then the physiological condition.

Keywords: cancer survivors, heart rate variability, ovarian cancer, psychophysiological adjustment

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Authors: Ramanpreet, Gursatej Gandhi

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Background: Dependence on electromagnetic radiations involved in communication and information technologies has incredibly increased in the personal and professional world. Among the numerous radiations, sources are fixed site transmitters, mobile phone base stations, and power lines beside indoor devices like cordless phones, WiFi, Bluetooth, TV, radio, microwave ovens, etc. Rather there is the continuous emittance of radiofrequency radiations (RFR) even to those not using the devices from mobile phone base stations. The consistent and widespread usage of wireless devices has build-up electromagnetic fields everywhere. In fact, the radiofrequency electromagnetic field (RF-EMF) has insidiously become a part of the environment and like any contaminant may pose to be health-hazardous requiring assessment. Materials and Methods: In the present study, cytogenetic damage was assessed using the Buccal Micronucleus Cytome (BMCyt) assay as a function of radiation exposure after Institutional Ethics Committee clearance of the study and written voluntary informed consent from the participants. On a pre-designed questionnaire, general information lifestyle patterns (diet, physical activity, smoking, drinking, use of mobile phones, internet, Wi-Fi usage, etc.) genetic, reproductive (pedigrees) and medical histories were recorded. For this, 24 hour-personal exposimeter measurements (PEM) were recorded for unrelated 60 healthy adults (40 cases residing in the vicinity of mobile phone base stations since their installation and 20 controls residing in areas with no base stations). The personal exposimeter collects information from all the sources generating EMF (TETRA, GSM, UMTS, DECT, and WLAN) as total RF-EMF uplink and downlink. Findings: The cases (n=40; 23-90 years) and the controls (n=20; 19-65 years) matched for alcohol drinking, smoking habits, and mobile and cordless phone usage. The PEM in cases (149.28 ± 8.98 mV/m) revealed significantly higher (p=0.000) electric field strength compared to the recorded value (80.40 ± 0.30 mV/m) in controls. The GSM 900 uplink (p=0.000), GSM 1800 downlink (p=0.000),UMTS (both uplink; p=0.013 and downlink; p=0.001) and DECT (p=0.000) electric field strength were significantly elevated in the cases as compared to controls. The electric field strength in the cases was significantly from GSM1800 (52.26 ± 4.49mV/m) followed by GSM900 (45.69 ± 4.98mV/m), UMTS (25.03 ± 3.33mV/m), DECT (18.02 ± 2.14mV/m) and was least from WLAN (8.26 ± 2.35mV/m). The higher significantly (p=0.000) increased exposure to the cases was from GSM (97.96 ± 6.97mV/m) in comparison to UMTS, DECT, and WLAN. The frequencies of micronuclei (1.86X, p=0.007), nuclear buds (2.95X, p=0.002) and cell death parameter (condensed chromatin cells) were significantly (1.75X, p=0.007) elevated in cases compared to that in controls probably as a function of radiofrequency radiation exposure. Conclusion: In the absence of other exposure(s), any cytogenetic damage if unrepaired is a cause of concern as it can cause malignancy. Larger sample size with the clinical assessment will prove more insightful of such an effect.

Keywords: Buccal micronucleus cytome assay, cytogenetic damage, electric field strength, personal exposimeter

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Authors: Priscila Ribeiro dos Santos, Luiz Antonio Daniel

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Inadequate access to clean water and sanitation has become one of the most widespread problems affecting people throughout the developing world, leading to an unceasing need for low-cost and sustainable wastewater treatment systems. The UASB technology has been widely employed as a suitable and economical option for the treatment of sewage in developing countries, which involves low initial investment, low energy requirements, low operation and maintenance costs, high loading capacity, short hydraulic retention times, long solids retention times and low sludge production. Whereas dissolved air flotation process is a good option for the post-treatment of anaerobic effluents, being capable of producing high quality effluents in terms of total suspended solids, chemical oxygen demand, phosphorus, and even pathogens. This work presents an evaluation and monitoring, over a period of 6 months, of one compact full-scale system with this configuration, UASB reactors followed by dissolved air flotation units (DAF), operating in Brazil. It was verified as a successful treatment system, and an issue of relevance since dissolved air flotation process treating UASB reactor effluents is not widely encompassed in the literature. The study covered the removal and behavior of several variables, such as turbidity, total suspend solids (TSS), chemical oxygen demand (COD), Escherichia coli, total coliforms and Clostridium perfringens. The physicochemical variables were analyzed according to the protocols established by the Standard Methods for Examination of Water and Wastewater. For microbiological variables, such as Escherichia coli and total coliforms, it was used the “pour plate” technique with Chromocult Coliform Agar (Merk Cat. No.1.10426) serving as the culture medium, while the microorganism Clostridium perfringens was analyzed through the filtering membrane technique, with the Ágar m-CP (Oxoid Ltda, England) serving as the culture medium. Approximately 74% of total COD was removed in the UASB reactor, and the complementary removal done during the flotation process resulted in 88% of COD removal from the raw sewage, thus the initial concentration of COD of 729 mg.L-1 decreased to 87 mg.L-1. Whereas, in terms of particulate COD, the overall removal efficiency for the whole system was about 94%, decreasing from 375 mg.L-1 in raw sewage to 29 mg.L-1 in final effluent. The UASB reactor removed on average 77% of the TSS from raw sewage. While the dissolved air flotation process did not work as expected, removing only 30% of TSS from the anaerobic effluent. The final effluent presented an average concentration of 38 mg.L-1 of TSS. The turbidity was significantly reduced, leading to an overall efficiency removal of 80% and a final turbidity of 28 NTU.The treated effluent still presented a high concentration of fecal pollution indicators (E. coli, total coliforms, and Clostridium perfringens), showing that the system did not present a good performance in removing pathogens. Clostridium perfringens was the organism which suffered the higher removal by the treatment system. The results can be considered satisfactory for the physicochemical variables, taking into account the simplicity of the system, besides that, it is necessary a post-treatment to improve the microbiological quality of the final effluent.

Keywords: dissolved air flotation, municipal sewage, UASB reactor, treatment

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Authors: Vijaya Dixit Aasheesh Dixit

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Shipbuilding industry operates in Engineer Procure Construct (EPC) context. Product mix of a shipyard comprises of various types of ships like bulk carriers, tankers, barges, coast guard vessels, sub-marines etc. Each order is unique based on the type of ship and customized requirements, which are engineered into the product right from design stage. Thus, to execute every new project, a shipyard needs to upgrade its production expertise. As a result, over the long run, holistic learning occurs across different types of projects which contributes to the knowledge base of the shipyard. Simultaneously, in the short term, during execution of a project comprising of multiple sister ships, repetition of similar tasks leads to learning at activity level. This research aims to capture above learnings of a shipyard and incorporate learning curve effect in project scheduling and materials procurement to improve project performance. Extant literature provides support for the existence of such learnings in an organization. In shipbuilding, there are sequences of similar activities which are expected to exhibit learning curve behavior. For example, the nearly identical structural sub-blocks which are successively fabricated, erected, and outfitted with piping and electrical systems. Learning curve representation can model not only a decrease in mean completion time of an activity, but also a decrease in uncertainty of activity duration. Sister ships have similar material requirements. The same supplier base supplies materials for all the sister ships within a project. On one hand, this provides an opportunity to reduce transportation cost by batching the order quantities of multiple ships. On the other hand, it increases the inventory holding cost at shipyard and the risk of obsolescence. Further, due to learning curve effect the production scheduled of each consequent ship gets compressed. Thus, the material requirement schedule of every next ship differs from its previous ship. As more and more ships get constructed, compressed production schedules increase the possibility of batching the orders of sister ships. This work aims at integrating materials management with project scheduling of long duration projects for manufacturing of multiple sister ships. It incorporates the learning curve effect on progressively compressing material requirement schedules and addresses the above trade-off of transportation cost and inventory holding and shortage costs while satisfying budget constraints of various stages of the project. The activity durations and lead time of items are not crisp and are available in the form of probabilistic distribution. A Stochastic Mixed Integer Programming (SMIP) model is formulated which is solved using evolutionary algorithm. Its output provides ordering dates of items and degree of order batching for all types of items. Sensitivity analysis determines the threshold number of sister ships required in a project to leverage the advantage of learning curve effect in materials management decisions. This analysis will help materials managers to gain insights about the scenarios: when and to what degree is it beneficial to treat a multiple ship project as an integrated one by batching the order quantities and when and to what degree to practice distinctive procurement for individual ship.

Keywords: learning curve, materials management, shipbuilding, sister ships

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Authors: A. Chávez, A. Rodríguez, F. Pinzón

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Society is concerned about measures of environmental, economic and social impacts generated in the solid waste disposal. These places of confinement, also known as landfills, are locations where problems of pollution and damage to human health are reduced. They are technically designed and operated, using engineering principles, storing the residue in a small area, compact it to reduce volume and covering them with soil layers. Problems preventing liquid (leachate) and gases produced by the decomposition of organic matter. Despite planning and site selection for disposal, monitoring and control of selected processes, remains the dilemma of the leachate as extreme concentration of pollutants, devastating soil, flora and fauna; aggressive processes requiring priority attention. A biological technology is the activated sludge system, used for tributaries with high pollutant loads. Since transforms biodegradable dissolved and particulate matter into CO2, H2O and sludge; transform suspended and no Settleable solids; change nutrients as nitrogen and phosphorous; and degrades heavy metals. The microorganisms that remove organic matter in the processes are in generally facultative heterotrophic bacteria, forming heterogeneous populations. Is possible to find unicellular fungi, algae, protozoa and rotifers, that process the organic carbon source and oxygen, as well as the nitrogen and phosphorus because are vital for cell synthesis. The mixture of the substrate, in this case sludge leachate, molasses and wastewater is maintained ventilated by mechanical aeration diffusers. Considering as the biological processes work to remove dissolved material (< 45 microns), generating biomass, easily obtained by decantation processes. The design consists of an artificial support and aeration pumps, favoring develop microorganisms (denitrifying) using oxygen (O) with nitrate, resulting in nitrogen (N) in the gas phase. Thus, avoiding negative effects of the presence of ammonia or phosphorus. Overall the activated sludge system includes about 8 hours of hydraulic retention time, which does not prevent the demand for nitrification, which occurs on average in a value of MLSS 3,000 mg/L. The extended aeration works with times greater than 24 hours detention; with ratio of organic load/biomass inventory under 0.1; and average stay time (sludge age) more than 8 days. This project developed a pilot system with sludge leachate from Doña Juana landfill - RSDJ –, located in Bogota, Colombia, where they will be subjected to a process of activated sludge and extended aeration through a sequential Bach reactor - SBR, to be dump in hydric sources, avoiding ecological collapse. The system worked with a dwell time of 8 days, 30 L capacity, mainly by removing values of BOD and COD above 90%, with initial data of 1720 mg/L and 6500 mg/L respectively. Motivating the deliberate nitrification is expected to be possible commercial use diffused aeration systems for sludge leachate from landfills.

Keywords: sludge, landfill, leachate, SBR

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Authors: Harpa Ragnarsdóttir, Magnús Kjartan Gíslason, Kristín Briem, Guðný Lilja Oddsdóttir

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Introduction: Whiplash-Associated Disorder (WAD) is a health problem characterized by motor, neurological and psychosocial symptoms, stressing the need for a multimodal treatment approach. To achieve individualized multimodal approach, prognostic factors need to be identified early using validated patient-reported and objective outcome measures. The aim of this study is to demonstrate the degree of association between patient-reported and clinical outcome measures of WAD patients in the subacute phase. Methods: Individuals (n=41) with subacute (≥1, ≤3 months) WAD (I-II), medium to high-risk symptoms, or neck pain rating ≥ 4/10 on the Visual Analog Scale (VAS) were examined. Outcome measures included measurements for movement control (Butterfly test) and cervical active range of motion (cAROM) using the NeckSmart system, a computer system using an inertial measurement unit (IMU) that connects to a computer. The IMU sensor is placed on the participant’s head, who receives visual feedback about the movement of the head. Patient-reported neck disability, pain intensity, general health, self-perceived handicap, central sensitization, and difficulties due to dizziness were measured using questionnaires. Excel and R statistical software were used for statistical analyses. Results: Forty-one participants, 15 males (37%), 26 females (63%), mean (SD) age 36.8 (±12.7), underwent data collection. Mean amplitude accuracy (AA) (SD) in the Butterfly test for easy, medium, and difficult paths were 2.4mm (0.9), 4.4mm (1.8), and 6.8mm (2.7), respectively. Mean cAROM (SD) for flexion, extension, left-, and right rotation were 46.3° (18.5), 48.8° (17.8), 58.2° (14.3), and 58.9° (15.0), respectively. Mean scores on the Neck Disability Index (NDI), VAS, Dizziness Handicap Inventory (DHI), Central Sensitization Inventory (CSI), and 36-Item Short Form Survey RAND version (RAND) were 43% (17.4), 7 (1.7), 37 (25.4), 51 (17.5), and 39.2 (17.7) respectively. Females showed significantly greater deviation for AA compared to males for easy and medium Butterfly paths (p<0.05). Statistically significant moderate to strong positive correlation was found between the DHI and easy (r=0.6, p=0.05), medium (r=0.5, p=0.05)) and difficult (r=0.5, p<0.05) Butterfly paths, between the total RAND score and all cAROMs (r between 0.4-0.7, p≤0.05) except flexion (r=0.4, p=0.7), and between the NDI score and CSI (r=0.7, p<0.01), VAS (r=0.5, p<0.01), and DHI (r=0.7, p<0.01) scores respectively. Discussion: All patient-reported and objective measures were found to be outside the reference range. Results suggest females have worse movement control in the neck in the subacute WAD phase. However, no statistical difference based on gender was found in patient-reported measures. Suggesting females might have worse movement control than males in general in this phase. The correlation found between DHI and the Butterfly test can be explained because the DHI measures proprioceptive symptoms like dizziness and eye movement disorders that can affect the outcome of movement control tests. A correlation was found between the total RAND score and cAROM, suggesting that a reduced range of motion affects the quality of life. Significance: The NeckSmart system can detect abnormalities in cAROM, fine movement control, and kinesthesia of the neck. Results suggest females have worse movement control than males. Results show a moderate to a high correlation between several patient-reported and objective measurements.

Keywords: whiplash associated disorders, car-collision, neck, trauma, subacute

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