Light scattering shape diagnostics for nano-agglomerates

Motivated by light scattering experiments showing enhanced intensity of electric field aligned nano-agglomerates vs. randomly oriented nano-agglomerates, we address the theoretical basis for this effect by applying the theory of small angle Rayleigh-Debye-Gans light scattering to oriented nano-clusters generated by classical diffusion–limited cluster-cluster aggregation (DLCA). Based on more than 100 nano-clusters with 30 monomers and with 100 monomers, the ratio of the slopes of the inverse of the structure factor vs. the momentum transfer squared (S(q)ˉ¹ vs. q² ) for the partially aligned (aligned along the major axis but free to rotate about that axis) and randomly oriented clusters is well correlated with a linear fit to the shape anisotropy, defined as the ratio of the square of the major to minor principle radii of gyration. It is also shown that state of the art small-angle aerosol scattering measurements would have the angular resolution required to measure the shape anisotropy with 30 to 1000 nano-monomers with a size parameter of 0.15. For large q for nano-clusters with 30 to1000 monomers, it is shown from the simulations that S(q) for the partially aligned clusters is not proportional to q[suberscript -Df] , where D[subscript f] is the fractal dimension, as it is for randomly oriented clusters. Nano-clusters with a fixed orientation are shown to result in a structure factor with multiple peaks, which could be used to obtain more detailed information about particle structure than shape anisotropy. The measurements reported in the literature showing enhanced scattering for partially aligned soot agglomerates were for angle integrated measurements. Calculation of the integrated light scattering cross section for the same range of angles and polarization direction as the experiments indicate a significant enhancement of 70 % and 120 % for two representative aspect ratios. The smaller value overlaps with measured values of the scattering enhancement for oriented soot agglomerates in an electric field

Demand driven materials requirement planning (DDMRP). A new method for production and planning management

LAUREA MAGISTRALEQuesto master aspira ad affrontare l'impatto che le attività di pianificazione hanno su un'organizzazione, considerando la più recente metodologia di pianificazione chiamata Demand Driven Materials Requirement Planning. L'introduzione dell'argomento dovrà seguire un percorso generale per spiegare gli attuali scenari delle attività di pianificazione odierne, le tendenze segnalate negli ultimi anni per evidenziare la necessità di un cambiamento nella metodologia di pianificazione. Oggi l'economia è globale, competitiva e garantisce ai clienti il ​​modo migliore di vedere come desiderano i prodotti che possiedono. Parlando in termini di business, le organizzazioni affrontano la necessità di essere molto più flessibili e forniscono alle catene la necessità di essere agili. La qualità e la coerenza sono semplici requisiti di ordine negli ambienti aziendali competitivi e complessi di oggi. I fattori sopra considerati hanno sollevato l'insieme di problemi che richiedevano una profonda comprensione per analizzare la necessità di questa nuova metodologia di pianificazione, il suo impatto e influenza nel contesto organizzativo e gli effetti del cambiamento per gestire questi problemi. La revisione della letteratura preliminare viene eseguita considerando il fatto di distribuzioni di inventario ampiamente riportate da organizzazioni che implementano attività di pianificazione correnti (strumenti MRP). Ciò ha portato all'idea di perseguire in dettaglio attraverso una revisione sistematica della letteratura sul tema della Demand Require Planning Requirement Planning (DDMRP), uno degli argomenti macro inclusi nel nuovo modello Demand Driven Planning. Nello stato dell'arte, la Demand Require Planning Requirement Planning è stata considerata e spiegata insieme alle sue principali caratteristiche, principi e framework. La ricerca prende la strada attraverso un case study in un'azienda manifatturiera, consentendo una visione più profonda dell'implicazione nella vita reale della nuova metodologia di pianificazione. Il case study aiuta a comprendere le modifiche richieste in termini di produzione, distribuzione e attività di pianificazione per diventare un'azienda guidata dalla domanda. Affronta gli impatti di tali cambiamenti sul contesto organizzativo generale, i benefici o le criticità della metodologia. Aiuta a raccogliere informazioni su come i cambiamenti consentano alle organizzazioni di affrontare la crescente complessità e variabilità della supply chain, consentendo contemporaneamente i requisiti di prestazione ottimali dei mercati dinamici di oggi.This master thesina aspires to address the impact that planning activities have on an organization, considering the most recent planning methodology called Demand Driven Materials Requirement Planning. The introduction of the topic shall take a general route to explain the current scenarios of planning activities today, the trends reported over the past few years to highlight the need for a change in the planning methodology. Today the economy is global, competitive and grants the customers the ultimate take on how they want the products they own. Talking in terms of business, organizations face the need to be much more flexible and supply chains the need to be agile. Quality and consistence are mere order qualifiers in today’s competitive and complex business environments. The above factors considered, raised the set of problems that required deep understanding to analyse the need for this new planning methodology, its impact and influence in the organizational context and the effects of change to handle these issues. The preliminary literature review is performed considering the fact of inventory distributions reported widely by organizations that implement current planning activities (MRP tools). This led to the idea of pursuing in detail through a systematic literature review on the topic of Demand Driven Materials Requirement Planning (DDMRP), one of the macro topics included in the new Demand Driven Planning model. Within the state of the art, the Demand Driven Materials Requirement Planning was considered and explained along with its main characteristics, principles and framework. The research takes the route through a case study in a manufacturing company, allowing a deeper insight of the real-life implication of the new planning methodology. The case study helps understand the changes required in terms of production, distribution and planning activities to become a Demand Driven company. It addresses the impacts of such changes on the overall organizational context, the benefits or criticalities of the methodology. It helps to gather insights on how the changes allow organizations to tackle the increasing supply chain complexity and variability simultaneously enabling the optimal performance requirements of today’s dynamic markets

A system for large-scale image and video retrieval on everyday scenes

There has been a growing amount of multimedia data generated on the web todayin terms of size and diversity. This has made accurate content retrieval with these large and complex collections of data a challenging problem. Motivated by the need for systems that can enable scalable and efficient search, we propose QIK (Querying Images Using Contextual Knowledge). QIK leverages advances in deep learning (DL) and natural language processing (NLP) for scene understanding to enable large-scale multimedia retrieval on everyday scenes with common objects. The system consists of three major components: Indexer, Query Processor, and Video Processor. Given an image, the Indexer performs probabilistic image understanding (PIU). The PIU generated consists of the most probable captions, parsed and represented by tree structures using NLP techniques, and detected objects. The PIU's are stored and indexed in a database system. For a query image, the Query Processor generates the most probable caption and parses it into the corresponding tree structure. Then an optimized tree-pattern query is constructed and executed on the database to retrieve a set of candidate images. The candidate images fetched are ranked using the tree-edit distance metric computed on the tree structures. Given a video, the Video Processor extracts a sequence of key scenes that are posed to the Query Processor to retrieve a set of candidate scenes. The candidate scene parse trees corresponding to a video are extracted and are ranked based on the number of matching scenes. We evaluated the performance of our system for large-scale image and video retrieval tasks on datasets containing everyday scenes and observed that our system could outperform state-ofthe- art techniques in terms of mean average precision.Includes bibliographical references

Editors' Introduction

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Contextualizing the Global Nursing Care Chain: International Migration and the Status of Nursing in Kerala, India

In this article I explore the issue of nursing status in Kerala, India and how over time a colonial discourse of caste‐based pollution has given way to a discourse of sexual pollution under expanding migratory opportunities. Based on survey and qualitative research findings, I caution that the improving occupational status of nursing in India is not directly mapped onto social status, and this is particularly evident in the matrimonial market. In the light of these findings I argue that global nursing care chain (GNCC) analysis must assess more than just workplace contexts in order to conceptualize how global care chains (GCCs) interlock, and how they are differentiated from each other

Error-analysis and comparison to analytical models of numerical waveforms produced by the NRAR Collaboration

The Numerical-Relativity-Analytical-Relativity (NRAR) collaboration is a joint effort between members of the numerical relativity, analytical relativity and gravitational-wave data analysis communities. The goal of the NRAR collaboration is to produce numerical-relativity simulations of compact binaries and use them to develop accurate analytical templates for the LIGO/Virgo Collaboration to use in detecting gravitational-wave signals and extracting astrophysical information from them. We describe the results of the first stage of the NRAR project, which focused on producing an initial set of numerical waveforms from binary black holes with moderate mass ratios and spins, as well as one non-spinning binary configuration which has a mass ratio of 10. All of the numerical waveforms are analysed in a uniform and consistent manner, with numerical errors evaluated using an analysis code created by members of the NRAR collaboration. We compare previously-calibrated, non-precessing analytical waveforms, notably the effective-one-body (EOB) and phenomenological template families, to the newly-produced numerical waveforms. We find that when the binary's total mass is ~100-200 solar masses, current EOB and phenomenological models of spinning, non-precessing binary waveforms have overlaps above 99% (for advanced LIGO) with all of the non-precessing-binary numerical waveforms with mass ratios <= 4, when maximizing over binary parameters. This implies that the loss of event rate due to modelling error is below 3%. Moreover, the non-spinning EOB waveforms previously calibrated to five non-spinning waveforms with mass ratio smaller than 6 have overlaps above 99.7% with the numerical waveform with a mass ratio of 10, without even maximizing on the binary parameters.Comment: 51 pages, 10 figures; published versio

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy

A note on a ginger (Zingiber officinale Rosc.) type collected from Western Ghats, South India

Even though South East Asia is considered to be the centre of origin of ginger (Zingiber officinale&nbsp;Rosc.) (Bailey 1949), there are very few reports of ginger occurring in the wild' state. Fisher (1921) recorded that ginger was seen apparently in wild conditions in the Anamalais at about 2300 ft elevation. Muralidharan &amp; Velayudhan (1983) also indicated the possibility of ginger growing as a component of natural vegetation in pockets of Western Ghats at higher altitudes. &nbsp