Evacuation Shelter Scheduling Problem

Evacuation shelters, which are urgently required during natural disasters, are designed to minimize the burden of evacuation on human survivors. However, the larger the scale of the disaster, the more costly it becomes to operate shelters. When the number of evacuees decreases, the operation costs can be reduced by moving the remaining evacuees to other shelters and closing shelters as quickly as possible. On the other hand, relocation between shelters imposes a huge emotional burden on evacuees. In this study, we formulate the ``Evacuation Shelter Scheduling Problem,'' which allocates evacuees to shelters in such a way to minimize the movement costs of the evacuees and the operation costs of the shelters. Since it is difficult to solve this quadratic programming problem directly, we show its transformation into a 0-1 integer programming problem. In addition, such a formulation struggles to calculate the burden of relocating them from historical data because no payments are actually made. To solve this issue, we propose a method that estimates movement costs based on the numbers of evacuees and shelters during an actual disaster. Simulation experiments with records from the Kobe earthquake (Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake) showed that our proposed method reduced operation costs by 33.7 million dollars: 32%

School Families: A New Formulation of School District Planning Problem

This paper makes a plan to introduce school families. School families refer to a hierarchical system where the junior high school district encompasses the elementary school district. School families have the advantage of promoting efficient cooperation between elementary and junior high schools. Therefore, we formulated a new school district planning problem to introduce school families and created an optimal plan under changing population situations. Our formulation achieves school families by exploiting the continuity constraints of the school district. We also compare two different methods of reorganizing school districts in the simulation experiments: changing school districts by transferring current students in a given year (school-year method) and switching new students' schools over a multi-year period (birth-year method). We examined the cost and computation time of plans obtained with both methods and showed that the method combining the two provides the most significant cost savings

OpenPLC based control system testbed for PLC whitelisting system

This paper proposes a security testbed system for industrial control systems. In control systems, controllers are final fortresses to continue the operation of field systems. Then, we need countermeasures of controllers. The whitelisting function is efficient in controller security. The whitelisting function registers normal operations in a list and detects unregistered operations as abnormal. We need a testbed system to check whether the whitelist function does not affect other functions of the controller. The industrial controller and its engineering tool are relatively expensive, and are customized with respect to controller vendors. To enhance the whitelist development, this study proposes a testbed system using OpenPLC which is an open-source software. This system is independent of controller vendors and is applicable for controller programming languages. We implement a whitelist based anomaly detection method for the testbed system and validate that the anomaly detection method operates correctly

A case of neurosarcoidosis with necrotizing granuloma expressing angiotensin-converting enzyme

金沢大学医薬保健研究域医学系We described a case of neurosarcoidosis with necrotizing sarcoid granulomatosis in a 22-year-old man. Contrast-enhanced brain computed tomography scan and magnetic resonance imaging showed intracerebral multiple nodular lesions. Noncaseating and partial necrotizing granulomas were detected in the specimen resected by neurosurgery. In addition, immunohistochemical examination revealed the expression of angiotensin-converting enzyme in necrotizing granuloma. Thus, these findings were consistent with neurosarcoidosis. Clinical and pathological presentation, immunological features, and treatment modalities of neurosarcoidosis are discussed. © 2010 Japan College of Rheumatology.This is the pre-peer reviewed version of the following article: [Full cite], which has been published in final form at [link to final article]

A direct numerical simulation of trickle flow in cokes bed

A new numerical model was successfully developed for analyzing packed bed structures containing non-spherical solids such as cokes and the high-temperature melt trickle flow characteristics of such beds. This enables the direct three-dimensional analysis of packed beds that are difficult to visualize in experimental tests. The sophisticated smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method can track the motion of liquids without discriminating between continuous and dispersed phases. Meanwhile, the advanced discrete element method (DEM) is employed as a highly-accurate method for solid-particle motion simulation. It is a method using a contact force model that is expanded to capture the motion of 3-dimensionaly freely shaped rigid bodies. We used the boundary for the packed bed configured with non-spherical solids to carry out a trickle flow simulation. Based on this model, we carried out the largescale simulations, and perform case studies and other studies of statistical processing, and investigate the effects of both physical properties and packed bed formed from various types of non-spherical cokes

Holdup Characteristics of Melt in Coke Beds of Different Shapes

Numerical analysis was carried out on the dripping and holdup behaviors in the lower part of a blast furnace for coke bed structures having different shapes; a discrete element method smoothed particle hydrodynamics scheme was used considering the size distribution immediately above the raceway. Even for coke beds with similar void fractions, the averaged-coke-shape factors such as φ and (φD)2 give little clear correlation for holdup sites. Instead of averaged-coke-shape information, only the direct evaluation of the void shape of the packed bed can explicitly trace the holdup site

Haloperidol, spiperone, pimozide and aripiprazole reduce intracellular dopamine content in PC12 cells and rat mesencephalic cultures: Implication of inhibition of vesicular transport.

Accumulating evidence suggests that antipsychotics affect dopamine release from dopaminergic neurons, but the precise mechanisms are not fully understood. Besides, there are few studies on the effects of antipsychotics on intracellular dopamine content. In this study, the effects of 8 antipsychotics on dopamine release and intracellular dopamine content in PC12 cells were investigated. Pretreatment with haloperidol, spiperone, pimozide, aripiprazole and risperidone markedly inhibited high potassium-evoked dopamine release. By contrast, pretreatment with chlorpromazine slightly increased high potassium-evoked dopamine release, while pretreatment with sulpiride and olanzapine had no effect. Haloperidol, spiperone, pimozide, chlorpromazine, aripiprazole and olanzapine evoked dopamine release, while sulpiride and risperidone had no effect. In addition, haloperidol, spiperone, pimozide, aripiprazole and risperidone reduced intracellular dopamine content in a concentration-dependent manner. These results suggest that the reduction in high potassium-evoked dopamine release by pretreatment with antipsychotics results from the reduction in vesicular dopamine content. Treatment with the 8 antipsychotics did not affect the expression of total or phosphorylated tyrosine hydroxylase. Instead, haloperidol, spiperone, pimozide and aripiprazole as well as reserpine transiently increased extracellular levels of dopamine metabolites. In addition, haloperidol, spiperone, pimozide, aripiprazole and risperidone reduced vesicular [3H]dopamine transport. These results suggest that the inhibition of vesicular dopamine transport by haloperidol, spiperone, pimozide and aripiprazole results in a reduction in vesicular dopamine content