The immunologic identification of abnormal hemoglobins

Guinea pig antisera against human hemoglobin contain antibodies to multiple antigenic determinants. Hemoglobin variants having single amino acid substitutions affecting these determinants are recognized as antigenically deficient in a radioimmunoassay system. The multivalent antisera may be made more selective by appropriate absorption with hemoglobin variants. Three such antisera containing antibodies specific, respectively, for the beta-chain of Hb A, Hb S, and Hb C are described. They can differentiate among the hemoglobins of individuals who possess these variants alone or in any paired combination. Their discriminating ability is not hindered by the presence of 1,000-fold concentrations of Hb F and may therefore be extended to the early prenatal diagnosis of sickling disorders. The antisera described also detect several other variants of Hb A. The approximate location of the substitution in variants so detected can be determined by a complementation test. This is based on the finding that two antigenically deficient hemoglobins will complement each other in mixture provided their amino acid substitutions involve different determinants.     

Studies of Novel Heterocyclic Insensitive High Explosive Compounds: Pyridines,Pyrimidines, Pyrazines and Their Bicyclic Analogues

The rationale behind using heterocyclic compounds [1], particularly nitrogen heterocycles, as higher energy insensitive high explosives is discussed, including the potential advantages compared with carbocyclic compounds. The types of functional groups used to impart energy to heterocyclic nuclei, whilst maintaining insensitivity, and methodologies for their introduction, are covered. The latter include nitration (by conventional and clean synthetic methods), amination, and oxidation (on ring heteroatoms and of exocyclic amino groups). Strategies for maximising the energetic content of a given heterocyclic nucleus are also examined. The syntheses of specific examples at QinetiQ are described, based on the following nuclei: pyridine, pyrimidine, pyrazine, quinoxaline, quinazoline, pteridine and purine. Strategies for obtaining the desired amino‐nitro derivatives and their heterocyclic N‐oxides are outlined. Optimisation of the synthetic routes for several candidates is discussed. The physical, explosive and thermal properties of the more successful candidates are described, with suggestions for their potential application in military stores.     

Martensitic transformation and thermal cycling effect in Cu–Co–Zr alloys

Cu_50?xCo_x Zr₅₀ (x = 0, 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 at.%) alloys were cast in a cylindrical copper mold by a suction casting device. In order to investigate the thermal behavior of the as-cast rods, the samples were heated from 313 to 573 K and then cooled down to about 253 K. The structure of the samples was studied by X-ray diffraction and optical microscopy. Thermal cycling measurements were also done for alloys with 2, 3, 4 and 5 at.% cobalt. It was found that increasing the cobalt content decreases martensite (M_s) and austenite (A_s) start temperatures, while it increases the temperature region in which austenite is stable. Thermal cycling measurements revealed that by increasing the number of cycles, the austenite start temperature increases while martensite start temperature shifts to lower temperatures.     

Investment Risk Analysis in Airport Parking Facility Development

Although parking revenue is a principal source of income, supply of parking infrastructure at airports is based largely on expected needs. Although that is a rational basis, high investment costs and management fees are requiring developers and financiers to carefully analyze investment risks. This paper focuses on sources of investment risk in airport parking infrastructure development and discusses the application of Monte Carlo simulation to estimate and understand the impacts of cash flow uncertainties on project feasibility. It is shown that cost overruns, which are common in construction project development, have the most significant impact on return risk.     

PSO-DS: a scheduling engine for scientific workflow managers

Cloud computing, an important source of computing power for the scientific community, requires enhanced tools for an efficient use of resources. Current solutions for workflows execution lack frameworks to deeply analyze applications and consider realistic execution times as well as computation costs. In this study, we propose cloud user–provider affiliation (CUPA) to guide workflow’s owners in identifying the required tools to have his/her application running. Additionally, we develop PSO-DS, a specialized scheduling algorithm based on particle swarm optimization. CUPA encompasses the interaction of cloud resources, workflow manager system and scheduling algorithm. Its featured scheduler PSO-DS is capable of converging strategic tasks distribution among resources to efficiently optimize makespan and monetary cost. We compared PSO-DS performance against four well-known scientific workflow schedulers. In a test bed based on VMware vSphere, schedulers mapped five up-to-date benchmarks representing different scientific areas. PSO-DS proved its efficiency by reducing makespan and monetary cost of tested workflows by 75 and 78%, respectively, when compared with other algorithms. CUPA, with the featured PSO-DS, opens the path to develop a full system in which scientific cloud users can run their computationally expensive experiments.     

Application of Artificial Intelligent Tools to Modeling of Glucosamine Preparation from Exoskeleton of Shrimp

The objective of this study was to forecast and optimize the glucosamine production yield from chitin (obtained from Persian Gulf shrimp) by means of genetic algorithm (GA), particle swarm optimization (PSO), and artificial neural networks (ANNs) as tools of artificial intelligence methods. Three factors (acid concentration, acid solution to chitin ratio, and reaction time) were used as the input parameters of the models investigated. According to the obtained results, the production yield of glucosamine hydrochloride depends linearly on acid concentration, acid solution to solid ratio, and time and also the cross-product of acid concentration and time and the cross-product of solids to acid solution ratio and time. The production yield significantly increased with an increase of acid concentration, acid solution ratio, and reaction time. The production yield is inversely related to the cross-product of acid concentration and time. It means that at high acid concentrations, the longer reaction times give lower production yields. The results revealed that the average percent error (PE) for prediction of production yield by GA, PSO, and ANN are 6.84, 7.11, and 5.49%, respectively. Considering the low PE, it might be concluded that these models have a good predictive power in the studied range of variables and they have the ability of generalization to unknown cases.     

Parametric optimisation of composite shell structures for an aircraft Krueger flap

This paper details the conceptual design optimisation of the configuration and composite lay-ups used to replace the conventional honeycomb stiffened structure of a Krueger flap. The multiple composite laminates selected for redesigning the lay-ups within an initial symmetrical quasi-isotropic ply configuration of [0/45/−45/90]_s, had to demonstrate full orthotropic characteristics. In order to construct a numerical process to optimise the required multi-layered composite shells, a commercial finite element code, Ansys, was used to develop a parametric analysis file. This analysis subroutine was then integrated into an Ansys Parametric Design Language code embedding the objective of the optimisation process––mass minimisation––as well as all the constraints and the allowable domains of the parameters. The paper, in its conclusion, presents a comparison between the original product and the optimal design, and reviews the advantages of the future implementation of this design.