A strategy for integrating product conceptualization and bid preparation

Collaboration with other members of the supply chain is one means by which small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) can compete in today’s global business environment. Thus, early stages of the new product development process involve both technical activities, e.g., product platform definition, and commercial activities, e.g., bidding for contracts. This paper introduces an integrated collaborative bidding and design system (CBDS) to help SMEs coordinate the two aspects. General sorting was employed for initial requirements acquisition and platform definition; while a self-organizing map (SOM) neural network was combined with a concurrent cost-schedule estimation strategy for refinement of design options and bid evaluation/preparation. A case study on cellular phone design was then applied for illustrating the proposed prototype system.     

Palatability of prerigor cooked boar meat

Cooking reduces odor intensity in boar meat but also may induce lipid oxidation unless the meat pH is above approximately 6.0. This research was designed to determine the feasibility of cooking boar meat in the prerigor state to overcome boar odor and lipid oxidation problems. Prerigor and postrigor triceps brachii muscle samples from 40 boars (20 Duroc and 20 Yorkshire) were cooked to 60 degrees C, frozen and stored at -20 degrees C, reheated in a 60 degrees C water bath for 1 h, and then subjected to pH, thiobarbituric acid (TBA), and sensory analyses. Boar odor intensity and skatole concentration in backfat samples were determined by olfactory test and HPLC, respectively. Cooked (initial cooking) prerigor meat was found to have higher (P < .05) pH and lower (P < .05) TBA values than comparable postrigor meat (6.44 vs 6.09 and 2.15 vs 3.23, respectively). Regression analysis indicated an inverse relationship between pH and TBA values (r = -.52; P < .01). No appreciable changes in TBA values were noted after frozen storage for 14 to 98 d, but reheating increased TBA values (P < .05) in both prerigor and postrigor samples (3.45 vs 4.32, respectively). Sensory evaluation scores indicated that prerigor cooked meat was less tender with more pronounced rancid flavor than postrigor cooked meat (P < .05), but panelists may have allowed the toughness of the prerigor samples to adversely affect their flavor scores. No difference in boar odor was detected between rigor states or breeds. Mean skatole concentration in backfat was .12 micrograms/g and no difference was detected between breeds.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

Administering amphotericin B--a practical approach

Despite the introduction in recent years of novel antifungal agents, the potency and broad spectrum of activity of amphotericin B have ensured that it remains the treatment of choice for most deep-seated mycoses. However, this agent is not without significant toxicity, particularly in patients who are already seriously ill and/or who are receiving other potentially nephrotoxic drugs. We review the various routes by which amphotericin B can be administered, focusing mainly on the intravenous route. The use of more rapid infusion rates, lipid-complexed preparations, sodium supplementation in salt-depleted patients and strategies to reduce the incidence of infusion-related reactions and nephrotoxicity are also considered. Finally, detailed recommendations for the administration of amphotericin B are provided.     

Development of an epileptic seizure prediction algorithm using R–R intervals with self-attentive autoencoder

Epilepsy is a neurological disorder that may affect the autonomic nervous system (ANS) from 15 to 20 min before seizure onset, and disturbances of ANS affect R–R intervals (RRI) on an electrocardiogram (ECG). This study aims to develop a machine learning algorithm for predicting focal epileptic seizures by monitoring R–R interval (RRI) data in real time. The developed algorithm adopts a self-attentive autoencoder (SA-AE), which is a neural network for time-series data. The results of applying the developed seizure prediction algorithm to clinical data demonstrated that it functioned well in most patients; however, false positives (FPs) occurred in specific participants. In a future work, we will investigate the causes of FPs and optimize the developing seizure prediction algorithm to further improve performance using newly added clinical data.

     

Monitoring the Coefficient of Variation Using the Side Sensitive Group Runs Chart

Many quality characteristics have means and standard deviations that are not independent. Instead, the standard deviations of these quality characteristics are proportional to their corresponding means. Thus, monitoring the coefficient of variation (CV), for these quality characteristics, using a control chart has gained remarkable attention in recent years. This paper presents a side sensitive group runs chart for the CV (called the SSGR CV chart). The implementation and optimization procedures of the proposed chart are presented. Two optimization procedures are developed, i.e. (i) by minimizing the average run length (ARL) when the shift size is deterministic and (ii) by minimizing the expected average run length (EARL) when the shift size is unknown. An application of the SSGR CV chart using a real dataset is also demonstrated. Additionally, the SSGR CV chart is compared with the Shewhart CV, runs rules CV, synthetic CV and exponentially weighted moving average CV charts by means of ARLs and standard deviation of the run lengths. The performance comparison is also conducted using EARLs when the shift size is unknown. In general, the SSGR CV chart surpasses the other charts under comparison, for most upward and downward CV shifts. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Correction on link relative based approach to CUSUM chart

Link relative-based approach was used in an article (see reference 1) to enhance the performance of the cumulative sum (CUSUM) control chart. This technique involves the use of firstly, the link relative variable to convert the process observations in a relative to the mean form and secondly, optimal constants to define a new variable which is used as the plotting statistic of the link relative CUSUM chart. In this article, it is proven through simulation study that the optimal constants with fixed values, as reported in the aforementioned article, give different results. Instead, if the regression technique is used, then the same results will be obtained.     

Side-effect localization for lazy, purely functional languages via aspects

Many side-effecting programming activities, such as profiling and tracing, can be formulated as crosscutting concerns and be framed as side-effecting aspects in the aspect-oriented programming paradigm. The benefit gained from this separation of concerns is particularly evident in purely functional programming, as adding such aspects using techniques such as monadification will generally lead to crosscutting changes. This paper presents an approach to provide side-effecting aspects for lazy purely functional languages in a user transparent fashion. We propose a simple yet direct state manipulation construct for developing side-effecting aspects and devise a systematic monadification scheme to translate the woven code to monadic style purely functional code. Furthermore, we present a static and dynamic semantics of the aspect programs and reason about the correctness of our monadification scheme with respect to them.     

A fast immersed interface method for solving Stokes flows on irregular domains

We present a fast immersed interface method for solving the steady Stokes flows involving the rigid boundaries. The immersed rigid boundary is represented by a set of Lagrangian control points. In order to enforce the prescribed velocity at the rigid boundary, singular forces at the rigid boundary are applied on the fluid. The forces are related to the jumps in pressure and the jumps in the derivatives of both pressure and velocity, and are approximated using the cubic splines. The strength of singular forces is determined by solving a small system of equations via the GMRES method. The Stokes equations are discretized using finite difference method with the incorporation of jump conditions on a staggered Cartesian grid and solved by the conjugate gradient Uzawa-type method. Numerical results demonstrate the accuracy and ability of the proposed method to simulate Stokes flows on irregular domains.