Assessing physical activity in the daily life of cystic fibrosis patients

Physical Activity (PA) plays an important role in the health and quality of life of cystic fibrosis (CF) patients, but little is known about their PA in daily living. With the use of accelerometers it is now possible to monitor activity profiles in detail. The goals of this study are to assess feasibility and acceptance of a longer-term use of accelerometers in daily living in CF patients, study the possibility of detecting changes in PA in relation to the patients’ clinical state and compare the findings between a CF and an age-matched healthy control group. We asked 15 CF patients to wear two accelerometers for 21 days and fill in a diary. Ten of them (age 21 to 40, mean 29.5 years) participated and delivered data that could be evaluated. We also recruited 10 age-matched control subjects. Data was processed for calculating usage time and features extracted to construct models of activity. The younger patients, particularly females, were concerned with fashion and style and considered wearing the sensors a challenge. Overall, the compliance of patients with CF seemed to be lower than reported for elder subjects in the literature. Time-series analysis of the data indicated characteristic patterns of PA over time, provided that data pre-processing and noise-filtering had been optimized. Further studies have to assess whether the continuous recording of PA yields additional clinical information in CF and in particular, whether it is possible to detect or even predict exacerbations in patients with CF or other diseases.     

Recommendations in a heterogeneous service environment

This paper presents novel algorithms which are able to generate recommendations within a heterogeneous service environment. In this work explicitly set preferences as well as implicitly logged viewing behavior are employed to generate recommendations for Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) content. This paper also discusses the similarity between the DVB genres and YouTube categories. In addition it presents results to show the comparison between well known collaborative filtering methods. The outcome of this comparison study is used to identify the most suitable filtering method to use in the proposed environment. Finally the paper presents a novel Personal Program Guide (PPG), which is used as a tool to visualize the generated recommendations within a heterogeneous service environment. This PPG is also capable of showing the linear DVB content and the non-linear YouTube videos in a single view.     

Hot-wire ignition of ethanol–oxygen hydrothermal flames

The forced ignition experiments conducted in a novel high pressure hydrothermal spallation drilling pilot plant with a Ni/Cr-60/15 coiled wire are presented here. A water–ethanol mixture is used as fuel and gaseous oxygen as oxidation agent. The ignition characteristics of the combustible mixture are analyzed at 260 bar and for temperatures crossing its pseudo-critical point. The influence of the bulk temperature, the fuel composition and the flow conditions on the forced ignition is shown.     

THERMALLY INDUCED VIBRATIONS OF COMPOSITE BEAMS WITH INTERLAYER SLIP

Thermally excited vibrations of composite viscoelastic two-layer beams with interfacial slip are analyzed. Geometrically linearized conditions are considered, and the Bernoulli-Euler hypothesis is applied to each layer. At the interface a linear viscoelastic slip law is assigned. The resulting sixth-order initial boundary value problem of the deflection is solved in the time domain by separating the dynamic response in a quasistatic and a complementary dynamic portions. The quasistatic solution is determined in closed form, and the remaining complementary dynamic part is approximated by a truncated modal series that exhibits accelerated convergence. Numerical results are obtained for single-span composite beams with interlayer slip by means of a time-stepping procedure based on the linear interpolation of the driving terms within the time intervals.     

Intrinsic isotopic C labelling of polyphenols

The intrinsic isotopic labelling of plants with ¹³CO₂ is an effective method to generate highly labelled compounds using photosynthesis and avoiding labour-intensive complex organic syntheses. In this study, the intrinsic isotopic labelling of polyphenols in parsley, spinach and peppermint is shown for the first time. The plants were grown in an atmosphere where ¹²CO₂ was replaced by ¹³CO₂, in order to generate highly labelled compounds. The total content of ¹³C as well as the individual polyphenols were analysed by Isotopic Ratio-MS and HPLC–Iontrap-MSⁿ.     

The virtual production simulation platform: from collaborative distributed simulation to integrated visual analysis

Computational simulations are used for the optimization of production processes in order to significantly reduce the need for costly experimental optimization approaches. Yet individual simulations can rarely describe more than a single production step. A set of simulations has to be coupled to each other to form a contiguous representation of a process chain. Eventually, simulated results have to be analyzed by domain experts to gather insight from the preformed computations. In this paper, we propose an IT infrastructure and software tools that aim at a rather non-intrusive way of coupling resources and domain expert’s knowledge to enable the collaborative setup, execution and analysis of distributed simulation chains. We illustrate the approach in the domain of materials processing. Beyond means originating from the domain of GRID computing for resource management, a data integration component assures semantic data integrity between the simulation steps and stores simulation data in an application independent way. Thus, we can transform this data into native formats for each simulation tool, and finally into a format that allows for contiguous visualizations and an intuitive, comprehensive analysis of complete simulated process chains.     

Model-checking user behaviour using interacting components

This article describes a framework to formally model and analyse human behaviour. This is shown by a simple case study of a chocolate vending machine, which represents many aspects of human behaviour. The case study is modelled and analysed using the Maude rewrite system. This work extends a previous work by Basuki which attempts to model interactions between human and machine and analyse the possibility of errors occurring in the interactions. By redesigning the interface, it can be shown that certain kinds of error can be avoided for some users. This article overcomes the limitation of Basuki’s approach by incorporating many aspects of user behaviour into a single user model, and introduces a more natural approach to model human–computer interaction.     

NAFLA – Ein Simulationswerkzeug zur analytischen Abschätzung von Schadstofffahnenlängen

Groundwater pollution with organic contaminants remains a world-wide problem. Before selection of any remediation technique, it is important to pre-assess contaminated sites with respect to their hazard. For this, several analytical and numerical approaches have been used and an initial assessment of contaminated sites the MS-Excel^© tool “NAFLA” was developed. “NAFLA” allows a quick and straightforward calculation and comparison of some analytical approaches for the estimation of maximum plume length under steady-state conditions. These approaches differ from each other in source geometry, model domain orientation, and in the consideration of (bio)chemical reaction within the domain. In this communication, we provide details about the development of “NAFLA”, its possible usage and information for users. The tool is especially designed for application in student education, by authorities and consultants.     

Biosynthesis of novel thermoplastic polythioesters by engineered Escherichia coli

The development of non-petrochemical sources for the plastics industry continues to progress as large multinationals focus on renewable resources to replace fossil carbon. Many bacteria are known to accumulate polyoxoesters as water-insoluble granules in the cytoplasm. The thermoplastic and/or elastomeric behaviour of these biodegradable polymers holds promise for the development of various technological applications. Here, we report the synthesis and characterization of microbial polythioesters (PTEs), a novel class of biopolymers of general technological relevance. Biosynthesis of PTE homopolymers was achieved using a recombinant strain of Escherichia coli that expressed a non-natural pathway consisting of a butyrate kinase, a phosphotransbutyrylase, and a PHA synthase. Different homopolymers were produced, consisting of either 3-mercaptopropionate, 3-mercaptobutyrate, or 3-mercaptovalerate repeating units, if the respective mercaptoalkanoic acids were provided as precursor substrates to the fermentative process. The PTEs contributed up to 30% (w/w) of the cellular dry weight and were identified as hydrophobic inclusions in the cytoplasm. The chemical and stereochemical homogeneity of the purified PTEs were identified by different methods, and the estimated physical properties were compared to the oxypolyester equivalents, revealing low crystalline order and, for the poly(3-mercaptopropionate) improved thermal stability. The ability to produce PTEs through a biosynthetic route opens up new avenues in the field of biomaterials.