Adapted Tricycle 2021

This document describes and outlines the details of the senior project completed by a team of four mechanical engineering students in their final year at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. The team worked with Linda Wolff at California Children’s Services to reach their main goal: to create an exercise tricycle that can be used by Savannah. Savannah is a young adult, and she needs to be able to steer, brake, and power the tricycle using almost entirely her core muscles. Over the course of the project, the team worked to design and build a safe and functional tricycle that satisfies Savannah’s exercise needs. Overall, this document gives details about the project process and describes how the team performed so that the project was a success. Included in the report is the project introduction, background, objectives, concept design, final design description and justification, manufacturing description, design verification, and project management which each discuss the background product research, milestones that were reached, details of the tricycle design, the manufacturing and assembly process, testing, and more detailed plans as to how the team’s goals were met

Common cause analysis : a review and extension of existing methods

The quantitative common cause analysis code, MOBB, is extended to include uncertainties arising from modelling uncertainties and data uncertainties. Two methods, Monte Carlo simulation and the Method-of-Moments are used to propagate uncertainties through the analysis. The two different capabilities of the code are then compared. When component failure rates are assumed lognormallv distributed, bounded lognormal (Sb) distributions are used to evaluate higher moment terms, as required by the Method-of-Moments, in order to minimize the effect of the tail of the lognormal. A code using the discrete probability distribution (DPD) method is developed for analyzing system unavailability due to common initiating events (internal and external). Sample problems demonstrating each approach are also presented

Filler wire for aluminum alloys and method of welding

A weld filler wire chemistry has been developed for fusion welding 2195 aluminum-lithium. The weld filler wire chemistry is an aluminum-copper based alloy containing high additions of titanium and zirconium. The additions of titanium and zirconium reduce the crack susceptibility of aluminum alloy welds while producing good weld mechanical properties. The addition of silver further improves the weld properties of the weld filler wire. The reduced weld crack susceptibility enhances the repair weldability, including when planishing is required

Observation of pollution plume capping by a tropopause fold

Airborne lidar measurements reveal a case in which a layer of high-ozone air extruding from a tropopause fold appears to cap a pollution plume and force it to spread out in the lower troposphere. The morphology of the high-ozone layer resembles a three-dimensional model of tropopause fold evolution that produces a low-altitude potential vorticity tube. This is a mechanism that can complete the irreversible transfer of air from the stratosphere, and can also affect pollution levels at the surface if the capping layer reaches the top of the boundary layer.United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Grant NAG1-2306

Two heads are better than one: current landscape of integrating QSP and machine learning

Quantitative systems pharmacology (QSP) modeling is applied to address essential questions in drug development, such as the mechanism of action of a therapeutic agent and the progression of disease. Meanwhile, machine learning (ML) approaches also contribute to answering these questions via the analysis of multi-layer ‘omics’ data such as gene expression, proteomics, metabolomics, and high-throughput imaging. Furthermore, ML approaches can also be applied to aspects of QSP modeling. Both approaches are powerful tools and there is considerable interest in integrating QSP modeling and ML. So far, a few successful implementations have been carried out from which we have learned about how each approach can overcome unique limitations of the other. The QSP ? ML working group of the International Society of Pharmacometrics QSP Special Interest Group was convened in September, 2019 to identify and begin realizing new opportunities in QSP and ML integration. The working group, which comprises 21 members representing 18 academic and industry organizations, has identified four categories of current research activity which will be described herein together with case studies of applications to drug development decision making. The working group also concluded that the integration of QSP and ML is still in its early stages of moving from evaluating available technical tools to building case studies. This paper reports on this fast-moving field and serves as a foundation for future codification of best practices

Supporting Adolescent Orphan Girls to Stay in School as HIV Risk Prevention: Evidence From a Randomized Controlled Trial in Zimbabwe

Objectives. Using a randomized controlled trial in rural eastern Zimbabwe, we tested whether comprehensive support to keep orphan adolescent girls in school could reduce HIV risk

TGF-ß Regulates Enamel Mineralization and Maturation through KLK4 Expression

Transforming growth factor-ß (TGF-ß) signaling plays an important role in regulating crucial biological processes such as cell proliferation, differentiation, apoptosis, and extracellular matrix remodeling. Many of these processes are also an integral part of amelogenesis. In order to delineate a precise role of TGF-ß signaling during amelogenesis, we developed a transgenic mouse line that harbors bovine amelogenin promoter-driven Cre recombinase, and bred this line with TGF-ß receptor II floxed mice to generate ameloblast-specific TGF-ß receptor II conditional knockout (cKO) mice. Histological analysis of the teeth at postnatal day 7 (P7) showed altered enamel matrix composition in the cKO mice as compared to the floxed mice that had enamel similar to the wild-type mice. The µCT and SEM analyses revealed decreased mineral content in the cKO enamel concomitant with increased attrition and thinner enamel crystallites. Although the mRNA levels remained unaltered, immunostaining revealed increased amelogenin, ameloblastin, and enamelin localization in the cKO enamel at the maturation stage. Interestingly, KLK4 mRNA levels were significantly reduced in the cKO teeth along with a slight increase in MMP-20 levels, suggesting that normal enamel maturation is regulated by TGF-ß signaling through the expression of KLK4. Thus, our study indicates that TGF-ß signaling plays an important role in ameloblast functions and enamel maturation

Discordance of HIV and HSV-2 biomarkers and self-reported sexual behaviour among orphan adolescents in Western Kenya

This paper examines the discordance between biological data of HIV and HSV-2 infections and self-reported questionnaire responses among orphan adolescents in Western Kenya

Boulder size and shape distributions on asteroid Ryugu

In 2018, the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa2, arrived at the small asteroid Ryugu. The surface of this C-type asteroid is covered with numerous boulders whose size and shape distributions are investigated in this study. Using a few hundred Optical Navigation Camera (ONC) images with a pixel scale of approximately 0.65 m, we focus on boulders greater than 5m in diameter. Smaller boulders are also considered using five arbitrarily chosen ONC close-up images with pixel scales ranging from 0.7 to 6 cm. Across the entire surface area (~2.7 km2) of Ryugu, nearly 4400 boulders larger than 5m were identified. Boulders appear to be uniformly distributed across the entire surface, with some slight differences in latitude and longitude. At ~50 km−2, the number density of boulders larger than 20m is twice as large as on asteroid Itokawa (or Bennu). The apparent shapes of Ryugu's boulders resemble laboratory impact fragments, with larger boulders being more elongated. The ratio of the total volume of boulders larger than 5m to the total excavated volume of craters larger than 20m on Ryugu can be estimated to be ~94%, which is comparatively high. These observations strongly support the hypothesis that most boulders found on Ryugu resulted from the catastrophic disruption of Ryugu's larger parent body, as described in previous papers (Watanabe et al., 2019; Sugita et al.,2019). The cumulative size distribution of boulders larger than 5 m has a power-index of −2.65 ± 0.05, which is comparatively shallow compared with other asteroids visited by spacecraft. For boulders smaller than 4 m, the power-index is even shallower and ranges from −1.65 ± 0.05 to −2.01 ± 0.06. This particularly shallow power-index implies that some boulders are buried in Ryugu's regolith. Based on our observations, we suggest that boulders near the equator might have been buried by the migration of finer material and, as a result, the number density of boulders larger than 5 m in the equatorial region is lower than at higher latitudes

Prediction of Graft-Versus-Host Disease in Humans by Donor Gene-Expression Profiling

BACKGROUND: Graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) results from recognition of host antigens by donor T cells following allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (AHCT). Notably, histoincompatibility between donor and recipient is necessary but not sufficient to elicit GVHD. Therefore, we tested the hypothesis that some donors may be “stronger alloresponders” than others, and consequently more likely to elicit GVHD. METHODS AND FINDINGS: To this end, we measured the gene-expression profiles of CD4(+) and CD8(+) T cells from 50 AHCT donors with microarrays. We report that pre-AHCT gene-expression profiling segregates donors whose recipient suffered from GVHD or not. Using quantitative PCR, established statistical tests, and analysis of multiple independent training-test datasets, we found that for chronic GVHD the “dangerous donor” trait (occurrence of GVHD in the recipient) is under polygenic control and is shaped by the activity of genes that regulate transforming growth factor-β signaling and cell proliferation. CONCLUSIONS: These findings strongly suggest that the donor gene-expression profile has a dominant influence on the occurrence of GVHD in the recipient. The ability to discriminate strong and weak alloresponders using gene-expression profiling could pave the way to personalized transplantation medicine