Development of a TQM-based Framework for Product Infant Failure Assessment

Product infant failures have been traced to the product development and production stage. Researchers and practitioners have opined that total quality management (TQM) can be used to properly managed these failures. While their suggestions have helped in this regard, there is limited information on how to scientifically aggregate criteria that can be used to specifically identify the most suitable TQM technique for product infant failure improvement, especially at the development stage. Hence, this study proposes a fuzzy-based multi-criteria framework for this problem. The framework uses intuitionistic fuzzy set to handle vague and imprecise judgment and Vlsekriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) to rank selected TQM techniques.  Real-world data sets were used to evaluate the framework performance, while TOPSIS (Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) was used to validate the framework performance. Based on the results obtained, the IFWG-VIKOR and TOPSIS methods rank the most and least suitable TQM practices as TM4 and TM11, respectively. The framework can be used to provides insights into the management of techniques that can address infant product failure issues at the early stage of product development.

Advances in Food Development with Plant-Based Proteins from Seed Sources

Increased awareness on the effects of food on human health and the environment has compelled the need to look for alternative food sources. This resulted in the steady increase in demand for plant-based protein foods as opposed to animal food sources on the premises of significant health benefits, environment-friendly sustainable production systems and moral ethics. This trend has also been reflected in recently reviewed national food guides. Research on plant-based food systems primarily aims to understand the nutritional and functional roles of dietary proteins sourced from crop seeds. Recent scientific advances in this field explore the use innovative technologies in the research and commercial applications of seed proteins. The objective of this paper is to review and summarize key research efforts and recent advances on the utility of seed-sourced proteins in the food product development applications. Important topics covered in the review are: exploration of sources of dietary protein seeds, the status of seed dietary protein research for nutrition and health, and the deployment of new and innovative technologies for developing dietary seed proteins. The topics draw on research and publications on the availability, functionality, quality, genetics, and innovative technologies to develop value-added products from dietary plant-based proteins. The review will fill knowledge gaps in the utilization of emerging plant-based protein food systems in relation to nutritional and health benefits, process technologies and promoting food system sustainability

Coenzyme Q10 Protect Mice Against Inflammatory Responses During Experimental Cerebral Malaria

Malaria is a life threatening infectious diseases transmitted by the bite of infected female Anopheles mosquito and responsible for high morbidity and mortality rates. Cerebral malaria is a complex neurological syndrome, whose pathology is mediated by inflammatory processes triggered by the immune system of the host following infection with Plasmodium falciparum. Coenzyme Q10 is an obligatory cofactor in the electron transport chain. The reduced form of Coenzyme Q10 serves as a potent antioxidant additionally; Coenzyme Q10 has been identified as a modulator of gene expression, inflammation and apoptosis. However, the modulatory effects of Coenzyme Q10 Plasmodium berghei ANKA infection process and risk occurrence of experimental cerebral malaria (ECM) have not been determined. The aim of this study was to elucidate the putative impact of oral administration of Coenzyme-Q10 on the initiation or regulation of inflammatory immune response in ECM of C57BL/6 mice during Plasmodium berghei ANKA (PbA) infection. We observed that oral administration of Coenzyme-Q10 both before and after PbA infection significantly hampered infiltration of inflammatory monocytes into the brain. Furthermore, pro-inflammatory cytokine TNF-α, which is associated with inflammation during ECM, was down-regulated in Coenzyme-Q10 administered mice. Remarkably, Coenzyme-Q10 was very effective in inhibiting dendritic cell differentiation. These data collectively demonstrated the immuno-modulatory function of Coenzyme-Q10 on host inflammatory responses during ECM. Keywords: Plasmodium berghei ANKA, Coenzyme Q10, experimental cerebral malaria DOI: 10.7176/JNSR/9-2-05

HarvardX and MITx: The First Year of Open Online Courses, Fall 2012-Summer 2013

HarvardX and MITx are collaborative institutional efforts between Harvard University and MIT to enhance campus-based education, advance educational research, and increase access to online learning opportunities worldwide. Over the year from the fall of 2012 to the summer of 2013, HarvardX and MITx launched 17 courses on edX, a jointly founded platform for delivering massive open online courses (MOOCs). In that year, 43,196 registrants earned certificates of completion. Another 35,937 registrants explored half or more of course content without certification. An additional 469,702 registrants viewed less than half of the content. And 292,852 registrants never engaged with the online content. In total, there were 841,687 registrations from 597,692 unique users across the first year of HarvardX and MITx courses. This report is a joint effort by institutional units at Harvard and MIT to describe the registrant and course data provided by edX in the context of the diverse efforts and intentions of HarvardX and MITx instructor teams

PH207x: Health in Numbers and PH278x: Human Health and Global Environmental Change: 2012-2013 Course Report

In the 2012-2013 academic year, the first two Harvard School of Public Health courses were offered through HarvardX on the edX platform: PH207x: Health in Numbers and PH278x: Human Health and Global Environmental Change. They were taught by Professors Earl Francis Cook and Marcello Pagano, and Aaron Bernstein and Jack Spengler, respectively. This report describes the structure of these two courses, the demographic characteristics of registrants, and the activity of students. This report was prepared by researchers external to the course teams and is based on examination of the courseware, analyses of the data collected by the edX platform, and interviews and consultations with the course faculty and team members

HarvardX and MITx: The First Year of Open Online Courses, Fall 2012-Summer 2013

HarvardX and MITx are collaborative institutional efforts between Harvard University and MIT to enhance campus-based education, advance educational research, and increase access to online learning opportunities worldwide. Over the year from the fall of 2012 to the summer of 2013, HarvardX and MITx launched 17 courses on edX, a jointly founded platform for delivering massive open online courses (MOOCs). In that year, 43,196 registrants earned certificates of completion. Another 35,937 registrants explored half or more of course content without certification. An additional 469,702 registrants viewed less than half of the content. And 292,852 registrants never engaged with the online content. In total, there were 841,687 registrations from 597,692 unique users across the first year of HarvardX and MITx courses. This report is a joint effort by institutional units at Harvard and MIT to describe the registrant and course data provided by edX in the context of the diverse efforts and intentions of HarvardX and MITx instructor teams

ER22x: JusticeX: Spring 2013 Course Report

ER22x was offered as a HarvardX course in Spring 2013 on edX, a platform for massive open online courses (MOOCs). It was taught by Professor Michael Sandel. The report was prepared by researchers external to the course team, based on an examination of the courseware, analyses of data collected by the edX platform, and interviews with the course faculty and team members

Heroesx: The Ancient Greek Hero: Spring 2013 Course Report

CB22x: The Ancient Greek Hero, was offered as a HarvardX course in Spring 2013 on edX, a platform for massive open online courses (MOOCs). It was taught by Professor Greg Nagy. The report was prepared by researchers external to the course team, based on examination of the courseware, analyses of the data collected by the edX platform, and interviews and consultations with the course faculty and team members

The Holy Grail: A road map for unlocking the climate record stored within Mars' polar layered deposits

In its polar layered deposits (PLD), Mars possesses a record of its recent climate, analogous to terrestrial ice sheets containing climate records on Earth. Each PLD is greater than 2 ​km thick and contains thousands of layers, each containing information on the climatic and atmospheric state during its deposition, creating a climate archive. With detailed measurements of layer composition, it may be possible to extract age, accumulation rates, atmospheric conditions, and surface activity at the time of deposition, among other important parameters; gaining the information would allow us to “read” the climate record. Because Mars has fewer complicating factors than Earth (e.g. oceans, biology, and human-modified climate), the planet offers a unique opportunity to study the history of a terrestrial planet’s climate, which in turn can teach us about our own planet and the thousands of terrestrial exoplanets waiting to be discovered. During a two-part workshop, the Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS) hosted 38 Mars scientists and engineers who focused on determining the measurements needed to extract the climate record contained in the PLD. The group converged on four fundamental questions that must be answered with the goal of interpreting the climate record and finding its history based on the climate drivers. The group then proposed numerous measurements in order to answer these questions and detailed a sequence of missions and architecture to complete the measurements. In all, several missions are required, including an orbiter that can characterize the present climate and volatile reservoirs; a static reconnaissance lander capable of characterizing near surface atmospheric processes, annual accumulation, surface properties, and layer formation mechanism in the upper 50 ​cm of the PLD; a network of SmallSat landers focused on meteorology for ground truth of the low-altitude orbiter data; and finally, a second landed platform to access ~500 ​m of layers to measure layer variability through time. This mission architecture, with two landers, would meet the science goals and is designed to save costs compared to a single very capable landed mission. The rationale for this plan is presented below. In this paper we discuss numerous aspects, including our motivation, background of polar science, the climate science that drives polar layer formation, modeling of the atmosphere and climate to create hypotheses for what the layers mean, and terrestrial analogs to climatological studies. Finally, we present a list of measurements and missions required to answer the four major questions and read the climate record. 1. What are present and past fluxes of volatiles, dust, and other materials into and out of the polar regions? 2. How do orbital forcing and exchange with other reservoirs affect those fluxes? 3. What chemical and physical processes form and modify layers? 4. What is the timespan, completeness, and temporal resolution of the climate history recorded in the PLD

Robust Preparation of Wigner-Negative States with Optimized SNAP-Displacement Sequences

Hosting nonclassical states of light in three-dimensional microwave cavities has emerged as a promising paradigm for continuous-variable quantum information processing. Here we experimentally demonstrate high-fidelity generation of a range of Wigner-negative states useful for quantum computation, such as Schrodinger-cat states, binomial states, Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill states, as well as cubic phase states. The latter states have been long sought after in quantum optics and have never been achieved experimentally before. We use a sequence of interleaved selective number-dependent arbitrary phase (SNAP) gates and displacements. We optimize the state preparation in two steps. First we use a gradient-descent algorithm to optimize the parameters of the SNAP and displacement gates. Then we optimize the envelope of the pulses implementing the SNAP gates. Our results show that this way of creating highly nonclassical states in a harmonic oscillator is robust to fluctuations of the system parameters such as the qubit frequency and the dispersive shift