Improved outcome in patients treated with postoperative radiation therapy for pathologic stage I/II endometrial cancer

OEE33, a component of the oxygen-evolving enzyme in chloroplasts, normally resides in the thylakoid lumen. In an attempt to study the fate of mistargeted proteins in chloroplasts, we substituted the bipartite transit peptide of OEE33 with that of CAB7, an integral thylakoid-membrane protein. As a result, when imported into isolated chloroplasts, the chimeric protein protein was targeted to the stroma instead of the thylakoid lumen. Whereas the wild-type OEE33 was totally stable for at least 2 h, the chimeric protein was rapidly degraded, with a half-life of 60 min. Degradation of the chimeric protein was stimulated by ATP supplementation. Degradation could also be observed in lysed chloroplasts, in an ATP-stimulated manner. When lysates were fractionated, the proteolytic activity was found to be associated mainly with the stromal fraction. This activity was very effectively inhibited by all tested inhibitors of serine proteases. Western blot analysis demonstrated that the stromal fraction active in degrading the chimeric OEE33 contains ClpC and ClpP, homologues of the regulatory and proteolytic subunits, respectively, of the bacterial, ATP-dependent, serine-type Clp protease.     

On the application of the complex torque coefficients method to the analysis of torsional dynamics

The complex torque coefficients method has been widely accepted for the analysis of the phenomenon of torsional interaction of turbine-generator units in power systems. This paper shows that, depending on the system parameters and the operating point, the complex torque coefficients method may exhibit limitations and not accurately and fully predict the system behavior in the frequency range of interest. These shortcomings consist of inability to i) predict monotonic instability due to real poles, ii) identify all electromechanical oscillatory modes, and iii)accurately predict damping (and consequently stability) of the oscillatory modes. This paper develops mathematical expressions to highlight the limitations of the complex torque coefficients method. Quantitative results based on three case studies, including a study on the first IEEE Benchmark System, are reported and results from eigenvalue analysis method, complex torque coefficients method, and time-domain simulation are presented and compared. This paper concludes that the complex torque coefficients method can be used only as a preliminary method for the investigation of torsional interactions and the results must be verified by other methods.     

Multi-Objective Optimization Model for Design and Operation of Water Transmission Systems Using a Power Resilience Index for Assessing Hydraulic Reliability

Water Resources Management - Water Transmission Systems (WTSs) are used to transport large flow over long distances and/or high heads. An optimal design involves evaluation of both cost and...     

Pressure Management Model for Urban Water Distribution Networks

A technique for leakage reduction is pressure management, which considers the direct relationship between leakage and pressure. To control the hydraulic pressure in a water distribution system, water levels in the storage tanks should be maintained as much as the variations in the water demand allows. The problem is bounded by minimum and maximum allowable pressure at the demand nodes. In this study, a Genetic Algorithm (GA) based optimization model is used to develop the optimal hourly water level variations in a storage tank in different seasons in order to minimize the leakage level. Resiliency and failure indices of the system have been considered as constraints in the optimization model to achieve the minimum required performance. In the proposed model, the results of a water distribution simulation model are used to train an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model. Outputs of the ANN model as a hydraulic pressure function is then linked to a GA based optimization model to simulate hydraulic pressure and leakage at each node of the water distribution network based on the water level in the storage tank, water consumption and elevation of each node. The proposed model is applied for pressure management of a major pressure zone with an integrated storage facility in the northwest part of Tehran Metropolitan area. The results show that network leakage can be reduced more than 30% during a year when tank water level is optimized by the proposed model.     

Manufacturing and processing of NiTi implants: A review

NiTi is categorized as a shape memory alloy that found interesting applications in vast areas of engineering from aerospace to biomedical; the latter applications are due to its biocompatibility in addition to its unique properties. The unique properties such as shape memory and pseudoelasticity make NiTi an excellent candidate in many functional designs. However, the manufacturing and processing complications of this alloy pose impediments to widespread applications. This paper discusses challenges and opportunities in making NiTi parts for biomedical applications such as implants. To this end, common manufacturing processes for NiTi from casting and powder metallurgy to machining are discussed. Also, new opportunities in additive manufacturing processes such as laser and electron beam techniques towards making 3D components from NiTi are described. Finally, the challenges in heat treatment and shape-setting of NiTi parts in order to attain desired shape memory properties are reviewed.     

PROMETHEE with Precedence Order in the Criteria (PPOC) as a New Group Decision Making Aid: An Application in Urban Water Supply Management

In this paper, a new group Multi-Criteria-Decision-Making (MCDM) method is introduced by combining two ??Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluations (PROMETHEE)?? and ??Multi-attribute decision making with dominance in the criteria?? methods. PROMETHEE family of outranking methods is among the recently developed MCDM methods which have received lots of attention in the recent years because of its capacity in ranking finite set of alternative actions based on conflicting criteria. The second method helps the decision makers to consider ambiguity and imprecision of relative importance of each objective (criterion) without allocating importance weights to them. The proposed method of PROMETHEE with Precedence Order in the Criteria (PPOC) not only can address capabilities of PROMETHEE method just with determination of precedence order of criteria, but also can make it possible to have a group decision making environment with conflicting objectives. Operational management of an urban water supply system is a good example of a set of decision making problems with several objectives and Decision Makers (DMs). In this paper, PPOC method has been applied to the case study of Melbourne water supply system, previously analyzed in the literature, to assess a number of operation rules with respect to eight criteria evaluated under single or group decision-making situations. The satisfaction degree of each DM and the overall group ranking results have also been provided in the paper. The proposed method is applicable for different decision making problems in urban water supply management.     

Pseudostatic Approach for Seismic Analysis of Single Piles

This paper evaluates a simple approximate methodology for estimating the maximum internal forces of piles subjected to lateral seismic excitation. The method involves two main steps: computation of the free-field soil movements caused by the earthquake and the analysis of the response of the pile to the maximum free-field soil movements (considered as static movements) plus a static loading at the pile head, which depends on the computed spectral acceleration of the structure being supported. The applicability of this approach has been verified by an independent benchmark analysis developed by the writers. It is demonstrated that the proposed method yields reasonable estimates of the pile maximum moment and shear. The methodology is then used to obtain the response of the Ohba-Ohashi bridge in Japan to one of the earthquakes that occurred in the 1980s. Good agreement is found between the computed and measured pile moments.     

Time-invariant discord: high temperature limit and initial environmental correlations

We present a thorough investigation of the phenomena of frozen and time-invariant quantum discord for two-qubit systems independently interacting with local reservoirs. Our work takes into account several significant effects present in decoherence models, which have not been yet explored in the context of time-invariant quantum discord, but which in fact must be typically considered in almost all realistic models. Firstly, we study the combined influence of dephasing, dissipation and heating reservoirs at finite temperature. Contrarily to previous claims in the literature, we show the existence of time-invariant discord at high temperature limit in the weak coupling regime and also examine the effect of thermal photons on the dynamical behavior of frozen discord. Secondly, we explore the consequences of having initial correlations between the dephasing reservoirs. We demonstrate in detail how the time-invariant discord is modified depending on the relevant system parameters such as the strength of the initial amount of entanglement between the reservoirs.     

Automatic creation of mining polygons using hierarchical clustering techniques

There are multiple stages in a mining operation in which a mining engineer must draw polygons to be used as operation guidelines. These polygons are drawn by hand and based on the engineer’s experience and knowledge of the deposit. However, automatic procedures for forming the shapes can increase the quality and decrease the efforts required. Long-term planning requires large polygons that can be used as mining cuts. On the other hand, short-term planning requires mineable shapes to be used as mining units. These shapes need to be homogenous in grades and rock types so that the quality and dilution of material sent to the plant can be estimated with good approximation. In addition, the direction of mining can affect the desired shapes of the polygons. To address these problems, a clustering algorithm with shape control is introduced, which can provide reasonable guidelines for all the aforementioned shapes by calibrating its parameters. The implementations of the algorithm on two small datasets with 874 and 2794 blocks are illustrated. Performance of the algorithm on a real gold deposit with different mining strategies is also presented and evaluated based on homogeneity of grade, rock types, determined destinations, and run times.     

A Low-Power Stand-Alone Adaptive Circuit for Harvesting Energy From a Piezoelectric Micropower Generator

An adaptive energy-harvesting circuit with low power dissipation is presented and demonstrated, which is useful for efficient ac/dc voltage conversion of a piezoelectric micropower generator. The circuit operates stand-alone, and it extracts the piezoelectric strain energy independent of the load and piezoelectric parameters without using any external sensor. The circuit consists of a voltage-doubler rectifier, a step-down switching converter, and an analog controller operating with a single supply voltage in the range of 2.5–15 V. The controller uses the piezoelectric voltage as a feedback and regulates the rectified voltage to adaptively improve the extracted power. The nonscalable power dissipation of the controller unit is less than 0.05 mW, and the efficiency of the circuit is about 60% for output power levels above 0.5 mW. Experimental verifications of the circuit show the following: 1) the circuit notably increases the extracted power from a piezoelectric element compared to a simple full-bridge diode rectifier without control circuitry, and 2) the efficiency of the circuit is dominantly determined by its switching converter. The simplicity of the circuit facilitates the development of efficient piezoelectric energy harvesters for low-power applications such as wireless sensors and portable devices.