Operation-based Configuration Complexity Measurement for Manufacturing System

open5Configuration not only determines the material flow pattern but also influences the production cost in a manufacturing system. The diversity of the products and growing demands for system flexibility increases the complexity of the configuration. In this paper, an operation-based approach is proposed to measure the configuration complexity of a manufacturing system. The configuration complexity models of the stations are built with single operation, several operations and their parallel types. Subsequently, an operation-based configuration complexity model of the overall system is used to measure the configuration complexity of a manufacturing system using the information entropy. Then, the relationship of the complexity between operations and stations is quantitatively described. An assembly line example is presented to validate the model. The results show that the proposed complexity measurement may evaluate the configuration complexity of a manufacturing system.openGuoliang, Fan*; Aiping, Li; Giovanni, Moroni; Liyun, Xu; Xuemei, LiuFan, Guoliang; Li, Aiping; Moroni, Giovanni; Xu, Liyun; Liu, Xueme

Production Line Layout Planning Based on Complexity Measurement

Mass customization production increases the difficulty of the production line layout planning. The material distribution process for variety of parts is very complex, which greatly increases the cost of material handling and logistics. In response to this problem, this paper presents an approach of production line layout planning based on complexity measurement. Firstly, by analyzing the influencing factors of equipment layout, the complexity model of production line is established by using information entropy theory. Then, the cost of the part logistics is derived considering different variety of parts. Furthermore, the function of optimization including two objectives of the lowest cost, and the least configuration complexity is built. Finally, the validity of the function is verified in a case study. The results show that the proposed approach may find the layout scheme with the lowest logistics cost and the least complexity. Optimized production line layout planning can effectively improve production efficiency and equipment utilization with lowest cost and complexity

Prognostic value of routine laboratory variables in prediction of breast cancer recurrence.

The prognostic value of routine laboratory variables in breast cancer has been largely overlooked. Based on laboratory tests commonly performed in clinical practice, we aimed to develop a new model to predict disease free survival (DFS) after surgical removal of primary breast cancer. In a cohort of 1,596 breast cancer patients, we analyzed the associations of 33 laboratory variables with patient DFS. Based on 3 significant laboratory variables (hemoglobin, alkaline phosphatase, and international normalized ratio), together with important demographic and clinical variables, we developed a prognostic model, achieving the area under the curve of 0.79. We categorized patients into 3 risk groups according to the prognostic index developed from the final model. Compared with the patients in the low-risk group, those in the medium- and high-risk group had a significantly increased risk of recurrence with a hazard ratio (HR) of 1.75 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.30-2.38) and 4.66 (95% CI 3.54-6.14), respectively. The results from the training set were validated in the testing set. Overall, our prognostic model incorporating readily available routine laboratory tests is powerful in identifying breast cancer patients who are at high risk of recurrence. Further study is warranted to validate its clinical application

Nisin and ε-polylysine combined treatment enhances quality of fresh-cut jackfruit at refrigerated storage

This study investigated the effects of nisin combined with ε-polylysine on microorganisms and the refrigerated quality of fresh-cut jackfruit. After being treated with distilled water (control), nisin (0.5 g/L), ε-polylysine (0.5 g/L), and the combination of nisin (0.1 g/L) and ε-polylysine (0.4 g/L), microporous modified atmosphere packaging (MMAP) was carried out and stored at 10 ± 1°C for 8 days. The microorganisms and physicochemical indexes were measured every 2 days during storage. The results indicated that combined treatment (0.1 g/L nisin, 0.4 g/L ε-polylysine) had the best preservation on fresh-cut jackfruit. Compared with the control, combined treatment inhibited microbial growth (total bacterial count, mold and yeast), reduced the weight loss rate, respiratory intensity, polyphenol oxidase and peroxidase activities, and maintained higher sugar acid content, firmness, and color. Furthermore, it preserved higher levels of antioxidant compounds, reduced the accumulation of malondialdehyde and hydrogen peroxide, thereby reducing oxidative damage and maintaining high nutritional and sensory qualities. As a safe application of natural preservatives, nisin combined with ε-polylysine treatment has great application potential in the fresh-cut jackfruit industry

Application of 2D Variational Mode Decomposition Method in Seismic Signal Denoising

Seismic data are typical nonlinear and nonstationary data. In the acquisition and processing of seismic data, many factors interfere with it. Seismic data contain both effective waves and random noises, seriously affecting the quality of seismic data and not conducive to the goal of fine interpretation of subsequent seismic data. Therefore, studying new seismic data denoising methods is beneficial for improving the quality of seismic data and plays a very important role in subsequent seismic data interpretation. In this paper, the principle of variational mode decomposition (VMD) and 2D-VMD is introduced in detail, and the seismic profile with a simple signal and fault model is denoised. Compared to traditional empirical mode decomposition (EMD), the 2D-VMD method has the best seismic data denoising effect. The test results of the synthesised signal show that the 2D-VMD method has a signal-to-noise ratio of 47.14 dB after denoising, which is higher than the signal-to-noise ratio after EMD and VMD denoising, indicating that it has a better denoising effect. The VMD and 2D-VMD methods are applied to the denoising of actual seismic data. The application results show that the 2D-VMD method can effectively improve the quality of the seismic data, enhance the continuity and reliability of the seismic data, and is conducive to the fine interpretation of subsequent seismic data

A Metabolomics Profiling Study in Hand-Foot-and-Mouth Disease and Modulated Pathways of Clinical Intervention Using Liquid Chromatography/Quadrupole Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry

Hand-foot-and-mouth disease (HFMD), with poorly understood pathogenesis, has become a major public health threat across Asia Pacific. In order to characterize the metabolic changes of HFMD and to unravel the regulatory role of clinical intervention, we have performed a metabolomics approach in a clinical trial. In this study, metabolites profiling was performed by liquid chromatography/quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LC-Q-TOF-MS) platform from the HFMD clinical patient samples. The outcome of this study suggested that 31 endogenous metabolites were mainly involved and showed marked perturbation in HFMD patients. In addition, combination therapy intervention showed normalized tendency in HFMD patients in differential pathway. Taken together, these results indicate that metabolomics approach can be used as a complementary tool for the detection and the study of the etiology of HFMD

Differential analysis of chromatin accessibility and histone modifications for predicting mouse developmental enhancers

Enhancers are distal cis-regulatory elements that modulate gene expression. They are depleted of nucleosomes and enriched in specific histone modifications; thus, calling DNase-seq and histone mark ChIP-seq peaks can predict enhancers. We evaluated nine peak-calling algorithms for predicting enhancers validated by transgenic mouse assays. DNase and H3K27ac peaks were consistently more predictive than H3K4me1/2/3 and H3K9ac peaks. DFilter and Hotspot2 were the best DNase peak callers, while HOMER, MUSIC, MACS2, DFilter and F-seq were the best H3K27ac peak callers. We observed that the differential DNase or H3K27ac signals between two distant tissues increased the area under the precision-recall curve (PR-AUC) of DNase peaks by 17.5-166.7% and that of H3K27ac peaks by 7.1-22.2%. We further improved this differential signal method using multiple contrast tissues. Evaluated using a blind test, the differential H3K27ac signal method substantially improved PR-AUC from 0.48 to 0.75 for predicting heart enhancers. We further validated our approach using postnatal retina and cerebral cortex enhancers identified by massively parallel reporter assays, and observed improvements for both tissues. In summary, we compared nine peak callers and devised a superior method for predicting tissue-specific mouse developmental enhancers by reranking the called peaks

The quest for modernisation of traditional Chinese medicine.

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is an integral part of mainstream medicine in China. Due to its worldwide use, potential impact on healthcare and opportunities for new drug development, TCM is also of great international interest. Recently, a new era for modernisation of TCM was launched with the successful completion of the Good Practice in Traditional Chinese Medicine Research in the Post-genomic Era (GP-TCM) project, the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) coordination action on TCM research. This 3.5-year project that involved inputs from over 200 scientists resulted in the production of 20 editorials and in-depth reviews on different aspects of TCM that were published in a special issue of Journal of Ethnopharmacology (2012; volume 140, issue 3). In this narrative review, we aim to summarise the findings of the FP7 GP-TCM project and highlight the relevance of TCM to modern medicine within a historical and international context. Advances in TCM research since the 1950s can be characterised into three phases: Phase I (1950s-1970s) was fundamental for developing TCM higher education, research and hospital networks in China; Phase II (1980s-2000s) was critical for developing legal, economic and scientific foundations and international networks for TCM; and Phase III (2011 onwards) is concentrating on consolidating the scientific basis and clinical practice of TCM through interdisciplinary, interregional and intersectoral collaborations. Taking into account the quality and safety requirements newly imposed by a globalised market, we especially highlight the scientific evidence behind TCM, update the most important milestones and pitfalls, and propose integrity, integration and innovation as key principles for further modernisation of TCM. These principles will serve as foundations for further research and development of TCM, and for its future integration into tomorrow's medicine.RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are