On a Service-Oriented Approach for an Engineering Knowledge Desktop

Increasingly, manufacturing companies are shifting their focus from selling products to providing services. As a result, when designing new products, engineers must increasingly consider the life cycle costs in addition to any design requirements. To identify possible areas of concern, designers are required to consult existing maintenance information from identical products. However, in a large engineering company, the amount of information available is significant and in wide range of formats. This paper presents a prototype knowledge desktop suitable for the design engineer. The Engineering Knowledge Desktop analyses and suggests relevant information from ontologically marked-up heterogeneous web resources. It is designed using a Service-Oriented Architecture, with an ontology to mediate between Web Services. It has been delivered to the user community for evaluation

Data Mining to Support Engineering Design Decision

The design and maintenance of an aero-engine generates a significant amount of documentation. When designing new engines, engineers must obtain knowledge gained from maintenance of existing engines to identify possible areas of concern. Firstly, this paper investigate the use of advanced business intelligence tenchniques to solve the problem of knowledge transfer from maintenance to design of aeroengines. Based on data availability and quality, various models were deployed. An association model was used to uncover hidden trends among parts involved in maintenance events. Classification techniques comprising of various algorithms was employed to determine severity of events. Causes of high severity events that lead to major financial loss was traced with the help of summarization techniques. Secondly this paper compares and evaluates the business intelligence approach to solve the problem of knowledge transfer with solutions available from the Semantic Web. The results obtained provide a compelling need to have data mining support on RDF/OWL-based warehoused data

Perceive Symptom-Related Barriers to Eating and Associated Quality of Life in Head and Neck Cancer Survivors

Background: Head and neck cancer (HNC) survivors experience significant symptom burden as a result of tumor location and treatment received. These symptoms may negatively impact quality of life (QOL) and compromise dietary intake into the post-treatment survivorship phase. Few studies have examined how symptoms are associated with quality of life in HNC survivors beyond the acute phase of care. Purpose: The objective of this research was to examine associations between perceived symptom-related barriers to eating and quality of life (QOL) in post-treatment head and neck cancer (HNC) survivors who participated in a dietary intervention trial. Methods: This was an exploratory analysis of 23 post-treatment HNC survivors who had previously participated in a 12-week randomized dietary intervention trial to assess the feasibility of increasing cruciferous (CV) and green leafy vegetable (GLV) intake. For this analysis, both treatment groups were combined into one. Participants completed a pre-intervention survey that assessed HNC-specific QOL (FACT-HN) and ranked self-perceived symptom-related barriers to eating on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = “never” to 5 = “very often”). A summary score for all symptom-related barriers was computed (maximum of 80 points) and Pearson correlations between the summary score and QOL were examined. Pearson correlations were also examined between scores for individual symptom-related barriers and QOL. Results: A lower symptom-related barrier summary score was significantly correlated with improved physical, emotional, and functional QOL (p < 0.01 for all). Lower individual symptom-related barrier scores for dry mouth, food does not taste good, feeling full too quickly, choking, phlegm production in mouth, difficulty swallowing, and lack of appetite were significantly associated with improved physical QOL (p < 0.05 for all). Symptom-related barrier summary score was not correlated with overall QOL. Conclusions: In this analysis of post-treatment HNC survivors, the degree of perceived symptom related barriers was associated with reduced QOL in several domains. Many individual perceived symptom related barriers were positively correlated with the physical domain of QOL. Although this was a small and exploratory secondary data analysis, these results suggest that perceived symptom related barriers and reduced QOL may be unmet needs in this survivor population and a larger study is warranted. Funding for the original study was provided by a NIH/NCI Cancer Prevention and Control Training Grant: R25 CA047888 and a Research Enhancement Project Grant from the University of Alabama at Birmingham Center for Palliative and Supportive Care.NIH/NCI Cancer Prevention and Control Training GrantR25 CA047888Research Enhancement Project Grant from the University of Alabama at Birmingham Center for Palliative and Supportive CareOpe

Search for gravitational-lensing signatures in the full third observing run of the LIGO-Virgo network

Gravitational lensing by massive objects along the line of sight to the source causes distortions of gravitational wave-signals; such distortions may reveal information about fundamental physics, cosmology and astrophysics. In this work, we have extended the search for lensing signatures to all binary black hole events from the third observing run of the LIGO--Virgo network. We search for repeated signals from strong lensing by 1) performing targeted searches for subthreshold signals, 2) calculating the degree of overlap amongst the intrinsic parameters and sky location of pairs of signals, 3) comparing the similarities of the spectrograms amongst pairs of signals, and 4) performing dual-signal Bayesian analysis that takes into account selection effects and astrophysical knowledge. We also search for distortions to the gravitational waveform caused by 1) frequency-independent phase shifts in strongly lensed images, and 2) frequency-dependent modulation of the amplitude and phase due to point masses. None of these searches yields significant evidence for lensing. Finally, we use the non-detection of gravitational-wave lensing to constrain the lensing rate based on the latest merger-rate estimates and the fraction of dark matter composed of compact objects

Search for eccentric black hole coalescences during the third observing run of LIGO and Virgo

Despite the growing number of confident binary black hole coalescences observed through gravitational waves so far, the astrophysical origin of these binaries remains uncertain. Orbital eccentricity is one of the clearest tracers of binary formation channels. Identifying binary eccentricity, however, remains challenging due to the limited availability of gravitational waveforms that include effects of eccentricity. Here, we present observational results for a waveform-independent search sensitive to eccentric black hole coalescences, covering the third observing run (O3) of the LIGO and Virgo detectors. We identified no new high-significance candidates beyond those that were already identified with searches focusing on quasi-circular binaries. We determine the sensitivity of our search to high-mass (total mass M&gt;70 M⊙) binaries covering eccentricities up to 0.3 at 15 Hz orbital frequency, and use this to compare model predictions to search results. Assuming all detections are indeed quasi-circular, for our fiducial population model, we place an upper limit for the merger rate density of high-mass binaries with eccentricities 0&lt;e≤0.3 at 0.33 Gpc−3 yr−1 at 90\% confidence level

Ultralight vector dark matter search using data from the KAGRA O3GK run

Among the various candidates for dark matter (DM), ultralight vector DM can be probed by laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors through the measurement of oscillating length changes in the arm cavities. In this context, KAGRA has a unique feature due to differing compositions of its mirrors, enhancing the signal of vector DM in the length change in the auxiliary channels. Here we present the result of a search for U(1)B−L gauge boson DM using the KAGRA data from auxiliary length channels during the first joint observation run together with GEO600. By applying our search pipeline, which takes into account the stochastic nature of ultralight DM, upper bounds on the coupling strength between the U(1)B−L gauge boson and ordinary matter are obtained for a range of DM masses. While our constraints are less stringent than those derived from previous experiments, this study demonstrates the applicability of our method to the lower-mass vector DM search, which is made difficult in this measurement by the short observation time compared to the auto-correlation time scale of DM

Knowledge transfer: from maintenance to engine design

As manufacturers shift their focus from selling products to providing services, designers must therefore increasingly consider the life-cycle requirements in addition to conventional design parameters. To identify possible areas of concern, engineers must consider knowledge gained through the life cycle of a related product. However, because of the size and distributed nature of a company’s operation, engineers often do not have access to front-line maintenance data. Additionally, the large number of documents generated during the design and operation of a product makes it impractical to manually review all documents thoroughly during a design task. This paper presents a prototype knowledge-based document repository for an aeroengine manufacturer. The developed system searches and analyzes distributed document resources, and provides engineers with a summary view of the underlying knowledge. The aim is to aid engineers in creating design requirements that incorporate maintenance issues. Unlike existing document repositories and digital libraries, our approach is knowledge based, where users browse summary reports instead of following suggested links. To test the validity of our architecture, we have developed and deployed a prototype of our knowledge-based document repository. The repository has been demonstrated to and validated by the engine design communit

Keynote (Lunch) Speaker

Lunch with Keynote Speaker Sylvia Crowder, Senior Director, International and Foreign Language Education, Office of Postsecondary Education, U.S. Department of Educatio

Keynote (Lunch) Speaker

Lunch with Keynote Speaker Sylvia Crowder, Senior Director, International and Foreign Language Education, Office of Postsecondary Education, U.S. Department of Educatio

Informing Preliminary Design by Incorporating Service Knowledge

As manufacturers shift their focus from selling products to providing services, designers must increasingly consider the life-cycle requirements, in addition to conventional design parameters. To identify possible areas of concern, engineers must consider knowledge gained through the life cycle of a related product. However, because of the size and distributed nature of a company's operation, engineers often do not have access to front-line maintenance data. Additionally, the large number of documents generated during the design and operation of a product makes it impractical to manually review all documents thoroughly during a design task. This paper presents a prototype knowledge- based document repository for an aeroengine manufacturer; the aim of which is to aid engineers to create design requirements that incorporate maintenance issues