Airborne Pathogens Transport in an Aircraft Cabin

Airborne pathogens can spread within an aircraft cabin from sneezing, coughing or breathing of a sick passenger. This paper reports a 3D numerical study on the transport of airborne pathogens inside Boeing 767 cabin. After cough or sneeze of an infected passenger, the entire unsteady pathogen dispersion process is simulated. Effects under study include the direction of coughing on the pathogens propagation and the spreading times from infected to hosts passengers

Particle dynamics from aerosol flow

Particles with different sizes are modeled under steady- state laminar flow conditions. For this purpose, a CFD numerical simulation is performed to resolve the fluid flow and particles trajectories

Making Tactile Textures with Predefined Affective Properties

A process for the design and manufacture of 3D tactile textures with predefined affective properties was developed. Twenty four tactile textures were manufactured. Texture measures from the domain of machine vision were used to characterize the digital representations of the tactile textures. To obtain affective ratings, the textures were touched, unseen, by 107 participants who scored them against natural, warm, elegant, rough, simple, and like, on a semantic differential scale. The texture measures were correlated with the participants' affective ratings using a novel feature subset evaluation method and a partial least squares genetic algorithm. Six measures were identified that are significantly correlated with human responses and are unlikely to have occurred by chance. Regression equations were used to select 48 new tactile textures that had been synthesized using mixing algorithms and which were likely to score highly against the six adjectives when touched by participants. The new textures were manufactured and rated by participants. It was found that the regression equations gave excellent predictive ability. The principal contribution of the work is the demonstration of a process, using machine vision methods and rapid prototyping, which can be used to make new tactile textures with predefined affective properties

A Look inside AMLF: What Traded and Who Benefited

The Federal Reserve’s AMLF program was designed to provide liquidity to money market funds (MMFs). Between September 2008 and May 2009, the program made $217 billion in non-recourse loans to depository institutions and bank holding companies to purchase asset-backed commercial paper from MMFs. JP Morgan and State Street dominated the program, accounting for over 90% of all loans made. Our analysis suggests that JP Morgan exhibited more self-dealing behavior than State Street. We find that JP Morgan and State Street earned economically and statistically significant cumulative returns of 2.28% and 2.49% (respectively) over the first seven days of the program after controlling for market returns and heteroscedasticity

Experimental and numerical validation of active flaps for wind turbine blades

An industrial active flap concept for wind turbine rotor blades is validated numerically by means of CFD, as well as experimentally in a wind tunnel environment. This paper presents the numerical and experimental results, as well as a discussion regarding the testing of airfoils equipped with active flaps with a highly loaded aft portion. A conceptual implementation for an offshore wind turbine and the potential for load reduction is shown by means of aeroelastic calculations. The work presented herein is conducted within the frame of the Induflap2 project and is partially funded by the Danish funding board EUDP

Thoracoscopic Repair of Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia in Neonates: Lessons Learned

Abstract Purpose: We sought to characterize our recent experience with thoracoscopic congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) repair and identify patient selection factors. Methods: We reviewed the medical records of full-term neonatal (<1 month of age) patients who underwent thoracoscopic CDH repair between 2004 and 2008 (n=15). We obtained data on prenatal diagnosis, characteristics of the CDH and repair, complications, and outcome. Results: All patients were stabilized preoperatively and underwent repair at an average of 5.7+/-1.3 days. Six patients were prenatally diagnosed, including the 5 inborn. Thirteen defects were left-sided. All were intubated shortly after birth and 2 required extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). Twelve of 15 (80%) patients underwent successful thoracoscopic primary repair, including 1 of the patients who required ECMO prior to repair. Conversion to open repair occurred in 3 of 15 (20%) patients because of the need for patch closure or intraoperative instability. Among those converted to open, all had left-sided CDH defects and 3 had stomach herniation (of 5 such patients). Patients spent an average of 6.9+/-1.0 days on the ventilator following repair. The average time until full-enteral feeding was 16.7+/-2.25 days, and average length of hospital stay was 23.8+/-2.73 days. All patients survived to discharge, and average length of follow-up was 15.3+/-3.6 months. Conclusions: Thoracoscopic repair of CDH is a safe, effective strategy in patients who have undergone prior stabilization. Stomach herniation is associated with, but does not categorically predict, conversion to open repair. ECMO use prior to repair should not be an absolute contraindication to thoracoscopic repair.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78119/1/lap.2009.0129.pd

Understanding Customers' Affective Needs with Linguistic Summarization

Abstract: To increase the chance of launching a successful product into market, it is essential to satisfy customers’ affective needs during the product design stage. However, understanding customers’ affective needs is very difficult task and product designers might misunderstand the customers’ affective needs. In this study, linguistic summarization with fuzzy set is used to present customers’ affective needs with natural language statements which could be easily understood by human beings. The relations between customers’ affective needs and product design elements are represented by type-I and type-II fuzzy quantified sentences. To illustrate the applicability of the linguistic summarization with fuzzy set in translating customers’ affective needs to natural language statements, a case study is conducted on mobile phone design. The results indicate that the linguistic summarization with fuzzy set can be a useful tool to assist designers to create products satisfying affective needs of customer

Model validation for a noninvasive arterial stenosis detection problem

Copyright @ 2013 American Institute of Mathematical SciencesA current thrust in medical research is the development of a non-invasive method for detection, localization, and characterization of an arterial stenosis (a blockage or partial blockage in an artery). A method has been proposed to detect shear waves in the chest cavity which have been generated by disturbances in the blood flow resulting from a stenosis. In order to develop this methodology further, we use both one-dimensional pressure and shear wave experimental data from novel acoustic phantoms to validate corresponding viscoelastic mathematical models, which were developed in a concept paper [8] and refined herein. We estimate model parameters which give a good fit (in a sense to be precisely defined) to the experimental data, and use asymptotic error theory to provide confidence intervals for parameter estimates. Finally, since a robust error model is necessary for accurate parameter estimates and confidence analysis, we include a comparison of absolute and relative models for measurement error.The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Deopartment of Education and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)

Developing a Labeled Affective Magnitude scale and Fuzzy Linguistic scale for tactile feeling

Affective design is the inclusion or representation of human emotions and subjective impressions in product design processes. In affective design, a number of different scales are commonly used to reveal and measure subjective emotions related to the design features of products. Osgood's Semantic Differential Scale (SDS) is one of the scales that has often been used for this purpose. However, there are some drawbacks in the SDS due to the ordinal nature of the scale that leads to losses or distortions of a significant amount of information and this makes it difficult to justify parametric statistical analysis. In this study, two scales, namely a Labeled Affective Magnitude (LAM) scale and a Fuzzy Linguistic scale, are developed. The LAM scale is an alternative scale based on magnitude estimation and has ratio properties. The Fuzzy Linguistic scale is an interval scale for which responses are linguistic descriptors that are identified with fuzzy numbers or intervals. The scales were developed for tactile feelings because they are an important factor in product evaluation. Statistical analysis was conducted to compare the scales. There was no significant difference between the newly constructed fuzzy scale and 11 point SDS, whereas there was a significant difference between the newly constructed LAM scale and 11 point SDS

Detailed analysis of the blade root flow of a horizontal axis wind turbine

The root flow of wind turbine blades is subjected to complex physical mechanisms that influence significantly the rotor aerodynamic performance. Spanwise flows, the Himmelskamp effect, and the formation of the root vortex are examples of interrelated aerodynamic phenomena that take place in the blade root region. In this study we address those phenomena by means of particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements and Reynolds-averaged Navier&ndash;Stokes (RANS) simulations. The numerical results obtained in this study are in very good agreement with the experiments and unveil the details of the intricate root flow. The Himmelskamp effect is shown to delay the stall onset and to enhance the lift force coefficient Cl even at moderate angles of attack. This improvement in the aerodynamic performance occurs in spite of the negative influence of the mentioned effect on the suction peak of the involved blade sections. The results also show that the vortex emanating from the spanwise position of maximum chord length rotates in the opposite direction to the root vortex, which affects the wake evolution. Furthermore, the aerodynamic losses in the root region are demonstrated to take place much more gradually than at the tip