GEOSTATIONARY STATION-KEEPING BY ION THRUSTERS: GENETIC ALGORITHMS OPTIMIZATION

The orbital control of geostationary satellites requires the periodic execution of manoeuvres for gravitational and solar radiation perturbation compensation. To maintain a fine control of the satellite position, it is usually sufficient to perform orbit corrections every two weeks, firing chemical thrusters. The operational load for the manoeuvre's planning and execution is usually quite low. Innovative technologies for station-keeping are available now, based on high efficiency ion thrusters, which allow a significant propellant saving. They are included in Artemis, a telecommunications satellite developed by the European Space Agency. When low acceleration ion thrusters are adopted, a near continuous orbit control is required; the resulting long firing arcs can be in conflict with some operational or technical constraints. The station-keeping planning is a critical process, since it is not based on periodic impulsive manoeuvres, but rather on quasi-continuous firings. Furthermore the orbit control should be planned more on a seasonal or a yearly cycle rather than on short weekly cycles. Since each manoeuvre is defined by its start time and duration, the total number of parameters involved in a station-keeping optimization process amounts to several tens. The presence of many variables and logical constraints makes the use of classical optimization methods quite complex. The model proposed here is based on genetic algorithms, which allows the convergence to an optimum solution through successive iterations, in which a random set of solutions is progressively selected on the basis of a factor of merit tailored to the target. This paper presents some innovative concepts for station-keeping optimization when ion propulsion is adopted for orbital control; furthermore, the general properties of genetic algorithms are discussed, together with the results obtained in the specific station-keeping application.     

Analysis of hexamidine, dibromohexamidine, dibromopropamidine and chlorhexidine in cosmetic products by high-performance liquid chromatography

A method of determining qualitatively and quantitatively hexamidine, dibromohexamidine, dibromopropamidine and chlorhexidine in cosmetic products by means of paired ion, reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and ultraviolet detection (UV) at 264 nm.
Détermination de l'hexamidine, du dibromohexamidine, du dibromopropamidine et de la chlorhexidine dans les produits cosmétiques     

General heat balance for oxygen steelmaking

Energy balances are a general fundamental approach for analyzing the heat requirements for metallurgical processes.The formulation of heat balance equations was...     

MULTIRESPONSE OPTIMIZATION of ACID CASEIN PRODUCTION

A multivariate skimmilk extrusion process, designed to produce an acid coprecipitate was studied in terms of minimizing residual lactose, ash and fines. an experimental model system was utilized to simulate the extrusion process and evaluated using response surface methodology to assess the relationship between the responses (fines, residual lactose and minerals) and the process variables (concentration, pH, temperature, agitation, washing time and wash water ratio). Compromise optimum conditions were derived using the Generalized Distance Approach (GDA) and an Extended Response Surface Procedure (ERSP) which made use of the SAS RSREG procedure with and without constraints. the GDA procedure produced good results in terms of providing an optimum for a general acid casein process, while the ERSP allowed more extensive analysis of the data in terms of assessing specific processing conditions. Although more computing intensive, the ERSP conferred additional flexibility in determining optimal conditions for special situations such as extrusion processing. Both approaches are useful for process engineering, with the GDA being a more general tool while the ERSP is advantageous when the GDA procedure becomes limiting.     

Time to clinical stability in patients hospitalized with community-acquired pneumonia: implications for practice guidelines

CONTEXT: Many groups have developed guidelines to shorten hospital length of stay in pneumonia in order to decrease costs, but the length of time until a patient hospitalized with pneumonia becomes clinically stable has not been established. OBJECTIVE: To describe the time to resolution of abnormalities in vital signs, ability to eat, and mental status in patients with community-acquired pneumonia and assess clinical outcomes after achieving stability. DESIGN: Prospective, multicenter, observational cohort study. SETTING: Three university and 1 community teaching hospital in Boston, Mass, Pittsburgh, Pa, and Halifax, Nova Scotia. PATIENTS: Six hundred eighty-six adults hospitalized with community-acquired pneumonia. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Time to resolution of vital signs, ability to eat, mental status, hospital length of stay, and admission to an intensive care, coronary care, or telemetry unit. RESULTS: The median time to stability was 2 days for heart rate (< or =100 beats/min) and systolic blood pressure (> or =90 mm Hg), and 3 days for respiratory rate (< or =24 breaths/min), oxygen saturation (> or =90%), and temperature (< or =37.2 degrees C [99 degrees F]). The median time to overall clinical stability was 3 days for the most lenient definition of stability and 7 days for the most conservative definition. Patients with more severe cases of pneumonia at presentation took longer to reach stability. Once stability was achieved, clinical deterioration requiring intensive care, coronary care, or telemetry monitoring occurred in 1% of cases or fewer. Between 65% to 86% of patients stayed in the hospital more than 1 day after reaching stability, and fewer than 29% to 46% were converted to oral antibiotics within 1 day of stability, depending on the definition of stability. CONCLUSIONS: Our estimates of time to stability in pneumonia and explicit criteria for defining stability can provide an evidence-based estimate of optimal length of stay, and outline a clinically sensible approach to improving the efficiency of inpatient management.     

Persistent thrombin generation in humans during specific thrombin inhibition with hirudin

BACKGROUND: The degree to which antithrombotic drugs suppress thrombin generation is unknown. Because hirudin, unlike antithrombin III, binds intravascular thrombin rapidly and selectively to yield a circulating inactive complex of 3- to 4-hour half-life, we used intravenous hirudin in humans to investigate the course of thrombin generation during and early after anticoagulation with this potent, direct antithrombin. METHODS AND RESULTS: Intravascular thrombin was measured with an ELISA for the thrombin-hirudin complex formed during and for 18 hours after stopping a 6-hour infusion of hirudin at 0.1, 0.2, and 0.3 mg.kg-1.h-1 in three groups of six patients each. With free hirudin in 20- to 10,000-fold molar excess of thrombin and peak activated partial thromboplastin times of 2.3 to 3.0 times baseline, mean plasma thrombin-hirudin complex increased from 794 +/- 85 pg/mL (mean +/- SEM) 15 minutes after the start of the infusion to 1617 +/- 151 pg/mL at 6 hours of infusion to 2667 +/- 654 pg/mL at 24 hours. During the 24-hour observation period, plasma concentration of fragment 1.2 (the peptide released during conversion of prothrombin to thrombin) never fell below baseline but rather increased transiently during the hirudin infusion. Plasma concentrations of thrombin-antithrombin III complex (in ng/mL) decreased from 4.34 +/- 0.40 at baseline to 1.64 +/- 0.13 at 6 hours (P < .001) and gradually increased after stopping the infusion to 5.7 +/- 0.87 at 24 hours (nonsignificant compared with baseline). CONCLUSIONS: Measurement of thrombin-hirudin complex may be used as a marker of thrombin generation in humans. Persistent accumulation of thrombin-hirudin complex and generation of fragment 1.2 during and after completion of potent anticoagulation with hirudin suggest thrombin generation is not blocked by high-affinity thrombin inhibition. The persistent formation of thrombin during declining plasma levels of hirudin may contribute to the pathogenesis of rethrombosis early after antithrombin therapy or during inadequate anticoagulation.     

Children's use of looking behavior as a cue to detect another's goal

Three studies examined children's understanding of the role that looking behavior plays in revealing another's desired goal. In each study, participants were asked which of 2 objects a protagonist wanted to obtain. Four-year-olds did not infer that an object examined via prolonged looking was more likely to be the protagonist's goal than an object that was either glanced at or inadvertently touched. Instead, they were accurate only when the protagonist looked at one of two potential goals. In contrast, the majority of 6-year-olds (and adults in Experiment 1) consistently regarded prolonged looking as the more important cue of the protagonist's goal. These age differences suggest that development is characterized by an increasing appreciation that goal is revealed by comparative differences in the quality of perceptual connectedness to objects in the world. One explanation for these age differences is that preschoolers are limited in their understanding of the difference between perceiving with full attention and without it.     

The removal of arsenic from （ground）-water by adsorbent loaded in polymeric microspheres

Arsenic is a natural tasteless and odourless element,existing in the earth’s crust at average levels of between two and five thousands micrograms per liter (parts per million) . Arsenic is highly toxic to humans, who are exposed to it primarily from air,food and water. The occurrence of arsenic in groundwater is due to geological composition of soil. High concentrations of arsenic in water are the result of dissolution or desorption of ferric oxides and the oxidation of mineral arsenopyrites. Arsenic in drinking water has an important impact on the human health,especially in the less developed countries. Different methods exist to remove arsenic from aquatic media,and one of them is by adsorption. In this work,the adsorption of both As(III) and As(V) by means of novel microspheres has been investigated. In particular,TiO2 has been embedded into polymeric microspheres PES (PolyEtherSulphone) and PEEK-WC (PolyEtherEther-Ketone) . The main advantages of this encapsulation adsorption material are: no loss of adsorbents into the water stream,easy to be used and scaled-up.