Software product description

An overview of the MultiNet system is presented. Services, supported configurations, remote printer services, netstat, netcontrol, DECnet interoperability services, and programming libraries are briefly described

User Interface Implementation for Network License Management System

This paper describes a project to understand and enhance a distributed application - the Applied Science Microlab Network License Management System(NLMS1, and to design and implement an improved user interface for that system. The NLMS utilizes a client-server architecture, the TCPIIP network protocol suite, and the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) facility for the program to interface to the network. The new user interface is based on X WindowslMot~foUr NIX client and Microsoft Windows for PC client. In addition, management reports are added to the system and expected to provide the package usage statistics to aid in future software purchase plans. The goals of my project are to do some developmental work in the UNZX environment; to understand more about network programming; to learn how to write distributed applications; and to learn to programming X Windows/Motif and Microsoft Windows. In my opinion, I have accornplished these goals

Monoclonal Antibody Production Via Fluidized Bioreactor Technology

Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are biologically identical antibodies created by homogenous immune cells originating from the same parent cell. MAbs target a specific epitope of an antigen on a cell’s surface, allowing it to neutralize the antigen. This unique characteristic has made them a key tool in the biopharmaceutical industry for the production of therapeutic drugs. One of these drugs is Rituxan® (rituximab), a mAb drug for the treatment of various cancers and autoimmune diseases. Currently, most mAb products are grown via cell suspension technology in stirred tank bioreactors. However, we have found that by using an integrated bioprocessing model, including conventional cell suspension culture tanks and fluidized bioreactor technology, overall product yield per day is increased by about 7-fold for the production of Rituxan®. Additionally, an economic analysis shows the fluidized bioreactor process is more profitable. Furthermore, though it requires a higher initial investment than the stirred tank process, the differential present worth of the fluidized bioreactor process in comparison to the stirred tank process is $13 billion. Overall, for the production of Rituxan®, the use of fluidized bioreactor technology is a more productive and lucrative process than the conventional stirred tank process

Stress recovery algorithm for reduced order models of mechanical systems in nonlinear dynamic operative conditions

Nonlinear forced response analyses of mechanical systems in the presence of contact interfaces are usually performed in built-in numerical codes on reduced order models (ROM). Most of the cases these derive from complex finite element (FE) models, resulting from the high accuracy the designers require in modeling and meshing the components in commercial FE software. In the technical literature several numerical methods are proposed for the identification of the nonlinear forced response in terms of a kinematic quantity (i.e. displacement, velocity and acceleration) associated either to the master degrees-of-freedom retained in the ROM, or to the slave ones after having expanded the reduced response through the reduction matrix. In fact, the displacement is the quantity usually adopted to monitor the nonlinear response, and to evaluate the effectiveness of a partially loose friction interface in damping vibrations, with respect to a linear case where no friction interfaces exist and no energy dissipation can take place. However, when a ROM is used the engineering quantities directly involved in the mechanical design, i.e. the strains and stresses, cannot be retrieved without a further data processing. Moreover, in the case of a strong nonlinear behavior of the mechanical joints, the distributions of the nonlinear strains and stresses over the structure is likely different than the one obtained as a superposition of linear mode shapes whose definition require a-priori assumptions on the boundary conditions at the contact interface. This means that the mentioned approximation cannot be used to predict the safety margins of a structure working in real (nonlinear) operative conditions. This paper addresses this topic and presents a novel stress recovery algorithm for the identification of the strains and stresses resulting from a nonlinear forced response analysis on a ROM. The algorithm is applied to a bladed disk with friction contacts at the shroud joint, which make the behavior of the blades nonlinear and non-predictable by means of standard linear analyses in commercial FE software

Inhaled anti-tubercular therapy: Dry powder formulations, device and toxicity challenges

The thesis is comprised of a series of studies that characterise the potential of inhaled therapy for treatment of TB using rifapentine as a model. Novel inhalable dry powder formulations containing efflux pump inhibitors (verapamil or thioridazine) and rifapentine were successfully formulated. These powders demonstrated excellent aerosol performance and enhanced in vitro activity against intracellular growth of M. tuberculosis compared to single drug treatments. Alternatively, rifapentine-PLGA particles regardless of monomer and molecular weight showed good aerosol performance and higher affinity for macrophage uptake. In the following study, a modified Aerolizer® as a low-cost generic device demonstrated promising results for delivery of rifapentine up to a maximum dose of 100 mg in a single capsule. Finally, it was found that intratracheal delivery of rifapentine (20 mg/kg) triggered a transient neutrophil influx in the lungs which resolved by 7 days post-dosing. These findings suggest that the inhaled rifapentine is more suitable for periodic dosing (i.e. weekly) and as an adjunct to the standard oral anti-TB drug regimen

Simplifying Embedded System Development Through Whole-Program Compilers

As embedded systems embrace ever more complicated microcontrollers, they present both new capability and new complexity. To simplify their development, some lessons of computer application development will translate with additional work. This thesis offers one such translation. It shows how whole-program compilers - those that broadly analyze a program\u27s entire source code - can achieve performance gains and remove faults in embedded system applications. In so doing, this yields a novel stackless threading system named UnStacked C. UnStacked C enables cooperative multithreading without the risk of stack overflows in embedded system applications. We also propose a novel preemption system called Lazy Preemption. Unstacked C with Lazy Preemption enables stackless preemptive multithreading in embedded systems. These remove the possibility of thread stack overflows, but also significantly reduces the memory required for multithreading in embedded system

Conventional and Molecular Diagnosis of Drug-Sensitive and Drug-Resistant Pulmonary Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis is a transmissible disease, which is primarily caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis and by other Mycobacterium species, forming the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex. Until the end of the 20th Century, most cases of pulmonary tuberculosis were considered curable. Nevertheless, the rising of tuberculosis resistant to first- and second-line anti-tuberculous drugs is threatening the world’s tuberculosis control programs. Due to this fact, the World Health Organization and other public health institutions recommended applying the conventional methods, affordable by low-incoming countries, to diagnose tuberculosis and to develop faster and more sensitive and specific methods to identify M. tuberculosis and determine their condition of anti-tuberculous drug resistance or drug sensitivity. In this chapter, we mention the most used conventional and molecular methods designed to identify M. tuberculosis and to determine their drug sensitivity or drug resistance. We also briefly describe the fundamentals of methods and its advantages and limitations