A Master Cell Bank (MCB) banking troubleshooting case study: Challenges and process improvements with comprehensive root cause analysis

Mammalian cells, especially Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells, are routinely used in the biopharmaceutical industry for production of recombinant therapeutic proteins. Master Cell banking is one of the key step during drug development, which ensures preservation of cells at low temperatures for an extended period of time for GMP drug substance manufacturing. CHO cells can show significant variation in growth characteristics during cell line development. This variation necessitates the need for a robust Master Cell Bank (MCB) manufacturing process to ensure consistent MCB thaw and growth. Numerous efforts have been done to understand the cryopreservation mechanism as well as techniques to improve the robustness of banking processes. However, failure of MCB releasing still happens across the industry. A case study will be presented highlighting experiments carried out to identify root cause of MCB thaw and expansion variability. In this study, the health of the cells was examined using an Apoptosis assay and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) analysis to gain a better understanding of the cell bank health. Process improvements that included further passaging of the cell line for improved robustness of the MCB manufacturing process will be discussed

Uranium Removal from Groundwater by Permeable Reactive Barrier with Zero-Valent Iron and Organic Carbon Mixtures: Laboratory and Field Studies

Zhovty Vody city, located in south-central Ukraine, has long been an important center for the Ukrainian uranium and iron industries. Uranium and iron mining and processing activities during the Cold War resulted in poorly managed sources of radionuclides and heavy metals. Widespread groundwater and surface water contamination has occurred, which creates a significant risk to drinking water supplies. Hydrogeologic and geochemical conditions near large uranium mine tailings storage facility (TSF) were characterized to provide data to locate, design and install a permeable reactive barrier (PRB) to treat groundwater contaminated by leachate infiltrating from the TSF. The effectiveness of three different permeable reactive materials was investigated: zero-valent iron (ZVI) for reduction, sorption, and precipitation of redox-sensitive oxyanions; phosphate material to transform dissolved metals to less soluble phases; and organic carbon substrates to promote bioremediation processes. Batch and column experiments with Zhovty Vody site groundwater were conducted to evaluate reactivity of the materials. Reaction rates, residence time and comparison with site-specific clean-up standards were determined. Results of the study demonstrate the effectiveness of the use of the PRB for ground water protection near uranium mine TSF. The greatest decrease was obtained using ZVI-based reactive media and the combined media of ZVI/phosphate/organic carbon combinations

Parameterized Processor Design Suite

This document describes the design of a Parameterized Processor Design Suite. Processors are traditionally implemented on Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) chips. Designing a processor on an ASIC chip is usually very costly and time consuming. As a result, programmable logic chips have been used as an alternative processor platform. These chips allow users to change their designs without incurring the manufacturing costs and delays involved in ASIC design. Programmable logic chips, however, require the user to know a Hardware Description Language (HDL) to be able to program them. Our project removes this need while retaining the benefits of using programmable logic chips. Our software suite allows a user to easily generate custom processors based on their needs without knowing an HDL. The software suite is a collection of three programs, a Graphical User Interface (GUI), a Hardware Generation Program (HGP), and an assembler. The GUI allows a user to specify the processor parameters. The GUI passes on the information that it received from the user to the HGP. The HGP uses this information to identify all of the hardware resources that the processor will need, all of the signals that will be transmitted between these resources, and a set of instructions that the processor will implement. Once the identification is complete, the HGP generates a set of HDL files that describe the processor. These HDL files are based on a set of hardware templates that are a major portion of this design project. These templates dictate the underlying structure of the processor. The HGP also passes on its information to the assembler. The assembler can take this information from the HGP and create machine-readable code from a user's source code. Several processors that have been ..

Intelligent Information Integration in B2B Electronic Commerce

Internet and web technology penetrates many aspects of our daily life. Its importance as a medium for business transactions will grow exponentially during the next few years. In terms of the involved market volume, the B2B area will hereby be the most interesting area. Also, it will be the place, where the new technology will lead to drastic changes in established customer relationships and business models. In an era where open and flexible electronic commerce provides new types of services to its users, simple 1-1 connections will be replaced by n-m relationships between customers and vendors. This new flexibility in electronic trading will generate serious challenges. The main problem stems from the heterogeneity of information descriptions used by vendors and customers, creating problems in both manual trading and in direct 1-1 electronic trading. In the case of B2B market places, it becomes too serious to be neglected. Product descriptions, catalog formats and business documents are often unstructured and non-standardized. Intelligent solutions that mechanize the structuring, standardizing, aligning, and personalizing process are a key requisite for successfully overcoming the current bottlenecks of B2B electronic commerce while enabling its further growth. Intelligent Information Integration in B2B Electronic Commerce discusses the main problems of information integration in this area and sketches several technological solution paths. Intelligent Information Integration in B2B Electronic Commerce is designed to meet the needs of a professional audience composed of researchers and practitioners in industry and graduate level students in Computer Science

Workshops at PPSN 2018

This article provides an overview of the 6 workshops held in conjunction with PPSN 2018 in Coimbra, Portugal. For each workshop, we list title, organizers, aim and scope as well as the accepted contributions

A Spitzer public legacy survey of the UKIDSS Ultra Deep Survey

We propose a public legacy program of Spitzer IRAC+MIPS imaging of the ~1 square degree UKIDSS Ultra Deep Survey (UDS). The UDS is by far the largest, deep near-infrared (JHK) survey in existence, and the first capable of sampling truly representative cosmological volumes (100x100 Mpc) out to the highest redshifts (z>6). The UDS is an uniquely powerful resource for studying galaxy formation and evolution and already contains ~100,000 galaxies (>20,000 at z>2). However, the key to unlocking the full potential of the UDS lies in combining the ground- based near-infrared data with appropriately deep Spitzer imaging. The proposed Spitzer data will be invaluable for providing robust measurements of both stellar mass and starformation rates, and will allow the first statistical study of the evolution of the high-mass end of the galaxy mass function out to z=6. Moreover, the proposed Spitzer imaging will allow the evolution of starforming and passive galaxies to be studied separately, and help delineate the link between stellar mass assembly and starformation at high redshift. The UDS will continue to provide ever-increasing depth for the next 5 years, and will be the deepest, contiguous degree-scale infrared survey for the foreseeable future. This proposal is ideally timed to allow immediate and full exploitation of the first world-public UDS release in January 2008, but will also provide a uniquely powerful data-set of lasting legacy value for future exploitation with JWST and ALMA in the next decade