On the issue of trend and noise in the estimation of extreme rainfall properties.

Up until today extreme rainfall properties are frequently applied in sewer design guidelines. Uncertainty in the estimation of such properties will hence directly influence the dimensions of sewers, structures and pumps. In this paper the issue of potential trend and noise in the estimation is investigated for 6 rain series ranging from 19 to 55 years in duration. Different to recent research that predicts a climate induced-increase in heavy precipitation no clear indication for such trend was found in the investigated historical rain series. Another important aspect is the length of the rain series that is required for the estimation of extreme rainfall properties and the associated uncertainty. The analysis indicates that at least a period of 10 years should be used for the estimation. But even so the possible deviation expressed in terms of the 90 percentile is in the order of 5 to 10% of the 'true value', defined as the value derived when the whole given series is used for the estimation.     

On the effect of spatial variances in historical rainfall time series to CSO performance evaluation.

Historical, high-resolution rain series are the backbone of modern combined sewer overflow (CSO) structure design. These rain series are the input to the computational estimation of the performance of the measures with respect to CSO pollution abatement. However, those historical precipitation measurements are available at only a few locations. Frequently rain series have to be used from gauging stations at a significant distance. In order to judge and to compensate for this influence an estimate between rain characteristics and combined sewer outflow (CSO) performance indicators would be useful. In this paper such correlations have been sought for a collection of 37 rain series covering large areas of Europe. It was found that the mean annual rain volume can explain most of the variances for the performance indicators Number of overflows and CSO volume. For explaining the spatial differences in the efficiency of the CSO structure another rain characteristic, i.e. the maximum event with a return period of one year, is to be used.     

Polymeric prodrugs of mitomycin C designed for tumour tropism and sustained activation

Prodrugs of mitomycin C (MMC) based on soluble poly-[N-(2-hydroxyethyl)-L-glutamine] (pHEG) polymers have been evaluated as tumour-targeted drugs. These materials are designed to exploit the enhanced permeability of tumour vasculature, combining a passive tumour tropism with decreased systemic liberation of free MMC. A tri- or tetrapeptide linkage (e.g. Gly-Phe-Ala-Leu) between pHEG and the aziridine nitrogen of MMC can combine good hydrolytic stability with rapid cleavage by lysosomal enzymes, releasing free MMC. The conjugates showed decreased systemic toxicity and could be administered to mice at a total MMC dose of 15 mg/kg i.v., compared with just 6 mg/kg for free MMC. Conjugates also showed better activity against animal models of established tumours, achieving up to 77% increased life span (ILS) against solid P388 leukaemia, compared with only 23% for free MMC, and up to 121% ILS against solid C26 colorectal carcinoma, compared with no activity for the free drug. Improving the therapeutic index of anticancer drugs by combining tumour tropism with decreased systemic toxicity is a versatile approach that should produce a new generation of improved anticancer agents.     

Robust crossfeed design for hovering rotorcraft

Control law design for rotorcraft fly-by-wire systems normally attempts to decouple the angular responses using fixed-gain crossfeeds. This approach can lead to poor decoupling over the frequency range of pilot inputs and increase the load on the feedback loops. In order to improve the decoupling performance, dynamic crossfeeds should be adopted. Moreover, because of the large changes that occur in the aircraft dynamics due to small changes about the nominal design condition, especially for near-hovering flight, the crossfeed design must be ‘robust’. A new low-order matching method is presented here to design robust crossfeed compensators for multi-input, multi-output (MIMO) systems. The technique minimizes cross-coupling given an anticipated set of parameter variations for the range of flight conditions of concern. Results are presented in this paper of an analysis of the pitch/roll coupling of the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter in near-hovering flight. A robust crossfeed is designed that shows significant improvement in decoupling perfomance and robustness over the fixed-gain or single point dynamic compensators. The design method and results are presented in an easily used graphical format that lends significant physical insight to the design procedure. This plant precompensation technique is an appropriate preliminary step to the design of robust feedback control laws for rotorcraft.     

The effects of growth hormone in children with a GH deficiency: a report of 5 cases

The authors describe 5 cases, 3 boys and 2 girls, with idiopathic growth hormone deficiency in prepubertal age, treated with human growth hormone. In four of five cases the response to treatment with GH was relevant. Only in one case (F1) the response was negative. The results of this study confirm that rhGH is a safe and effective therapy in children with GHD.     

Soft-spring nonlinear vibrations of antisymmetrically laminated rectangular plates

This paper deals with the effects of initial geometric imperfections and in-plane boundary conditions on the large-amplitude vibration behavior of angle- and cross-ply rectangular thin plates. It is found that the presence of imperfection amplitudes of the order of only half the total laminated-plate thickness may significantly raise the vibration frequencies and change the large-amplitude vibration behavior from the well-known hard-spring to soft-spring behavior. The effects of fibre angles and bending-stretching coupling for angle-ply plates and Young's moduli ratios and number of layers for antisymmetric cross-ply plates are examined.     

Control of free-radical emulsion polymerization of methyl methacrylate by oxygen injection. II. Experimental study

Oxygen injection has been proposed and experimentally demonstrated as an effective control measure for limiting the rate of heat release and altering the rate of polymerization in emulsion processes. A detailed mathematical model has been previously developed to describe the system behavior with and without oxygen injection. A simple lab scale apparatus was constructed and run extensively. Only trace quantities of oxygen are needed to inhibit the reaction completely. The facile response makes this method attractive for fast temperature control. However, because of the rapid penetration of dissolved oxygen into the polymer particles, growing radical chains are terminated prematurely, lowering product molecular weights. To minimize this detrimental effect, pulsed oxygen control is used and extensive experimental work was performed to determine the effects of controller set points on molecular weight. Moderate oxygen flows and moderate set point temperatures are found to give the optimal response without significant lowering of the final molecular weight. Injected quantities agree well with the order-of-magnitude sparging calculations needed to completely stop initiation. However, complete agreement between model simulations and experimental results was not reached due to an unmeasured loss of monomer from the reactor. Chain transfer to monomer is found to be important in modeling the polymer molecular weight. It has, however, a negligible effect on the reaction rate.