End-of-Life decision tool with emphasis on remanufacturing

Remanufacturing is a product recovery strategy resulting in end-of-life products being returned to as new condition or better and receiving a warranty at least equivalent to the original. To differentiate remanufacturing from other forms of product recovery, a clear definition of a remanufactured product is essential. At present two distinct methods for understanding end-of-life recovery strategies exist; a) the use of tools and b) definitions. These current methods fall short however of categorically stating what is and what is not a remanufactured product. Therefore, the responsibility of classifying a product as remanufactured is left to individuals and organizations and so potential exists for products to be incorrectly labelled. By firstly examining the problems associated with using existing methods to determine the status of end-of-life product, and why product identification is important, this paper then goes on to present a new simple innovative method to quickly and accurately determine the status of a product which has undergone an end-of-life recovery strategy, by virtue of a bespoke tool. The tool presented is the result of two rounds of academic and industrial feedback; an initial tool was presented, and underwent critique, at the International Conference on Remanufacturing 2015 with an updated tool then subject to another independent review from academic and industrial stakeholders. The main benefits associated with this tool are, a) a quick way to identify the status of a product, b) a method for researchers to quickly determine the best terminology for end-of-life products which have received a recovery treatment, c) a quick and reliable method to check whether a remanufactured product is labelled as something else, d) an additional way to ensure compliance with existing legislation and standards, and e) an identification of only the essential characteristics of a remanufactured product

Elastic constant determination of unidirectional composite via ultrasonic bulk wave through transmission measurements : a review

The determination of the elastic constants of unidirectional carbon fibre composite via immersion based ultrasound is an established area with much literature. Existing literature reviews in this area discuss the extant literature but do not offer a deep review of the seminal publications during this period, but instead focus on reporting the contributions of the published literature. Thus, a gap in knowledge exists for a comprehensive literature review charting the evolution of how the elastic constants of uni-directional carbon fibre composite are determined via immersion based ultrasonic through transmission. This work addresses this. Building on previous literature, this paper reviews seminal publications in chronological order, with the benefits, drawbacks and contributions to knowledge of each reviewed publication identified within this work. This review is bounded from 1970-2015, (some 45 years of literature), and maps the progression of technological and scientific advancement of the through transmission technique; that is, seminal literature during this period is both identified and reviewed in chronological order thus demonstrating how each paper builds on previous work. This paper also documents two novel information tables, which for the first time allow the significant contributions to knowledge during this period to be quickly identifie

Velocity-space sensitivity of the time-of-flight neutron spectrometer at JET

The velocity-space sensitivities of fast-ion diagnostics are often described by so-called weight functions. Recently, we formulated weight functions showing the velocity-space sensitivity of the often dominant beam-target part of neutron energy spectra. These weight functions for neutron emission spectrometry (NES) are independent of the particular NES diagnostic. Here we apply these NES weight functions to the time-of-flight spectrometer TOFOR at JET. By taking the instrumental response function of TOFOR into account, we calculate time-of-flight NES weight functions that enable us to directly determine the velocity-space sensitivity of a given part of a measured time-of-flight spectrum from TOFOR

Relationship of edge localized mode burst times with divertor flux loop signal phase in JET

A phase relationship is identified between sequential edge localized modes (ELMs) occurrence times in a set of H-mode tokamak plasmas to the voltage measured in full flux azimuthal loops in the divertor region. We focus on plasmas in the Joint European Torus where a steady H-mode is sustained over several seconds, during which ELMs are observed in the Be II emission at the divertor. The ELMs analysed arise from intrinsic ELMing, in that there is no deliberate intent to control the ELMing process by external means. We use ELM timings derived from the Be II signal to perform direct time domain analysis of the full flux loop VLD2 and VLD3 signals, which provide a high cadence global measurement proportional to the voltage induced by changes in poloidal magnetic flux. Specifically, we examine how the time interval between pairs of successive ELMs is linked to the time-evolving phase of the full flux loop signals. Each ELM produces a clear early pulse in the full flux loop signals, whose peak time is used to condition our analysis. The arrival time of the following ELM, relative to this pulse, is found to fall into one of two categories: (i) prompt ELMs, which are directly paced by the initial response seen in the flux loop signals; and (ii) all other ELMs, which occur after the initial response of the full flux loop signals has decayed in amplitude. The times at which ELMs in category (ii) occur, relative to the first ELM of the pair, are clustered at times when the instantaneous phase of the full flux loop signal is close to its value at the time of the first ELM

Multi-trait genome-wide association study identifies new loci associated with optic disc parameters

A new avenue of mining published genome-wide association studies includes the joint analysis of related traits. The power of this approach depends on the genetic correlation of traits, which reflects the number of pleiotropic loci, i.e. genetic loci influencing multiple traits. Here, we applied new meta-analyses of optic nerve head (ONH) related traits implicated in primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG); intraocular pressure and central corneal thickness using Haplotype reference consortium imputations. We performed a multi-trait analysis of ONH parameters cup area, disc area and vertical cup-disc ratio. We uncover new variants; rs11158547 in PPP1R36-PLEKHG3 and rs1028727 near SERPINE3 at genome-wide significance that replicate in independent Asian cohorts imputed to 1000 Genomes. At this point, validation of these variants in POAG cohorts is hampered by the high degree of heterogeneity. Our results show that multi-trait analysis is a valid approach to identify novel pleiotropic variants for ONH

Whole-genome sequencing reveals host factors underlying critical COVID-19

Critical COVID-19 is caused by immune-mediated inflammatory lung injury. Host genetic variation influences the development of illness requiring critical care1 or hospitalization2,3,4 after infection with SARS-CoV-2. The GenOMICC (Genetics of Mortality in Critical Care) study enables the comparison of genomes from individuals who are critically ill with those of population controls to find underlying disease mechanisms. Here we use whole-genome sequencing in 7,491 critically ill individuals compared with 48,400 controls to discover and replicate 23 independent variants that significantly predispose to critical COVID-19. We identify 16 new independent associations, including variants within genes that are involved in interferon signalling (IL10RB and PLSCR1), leucocyte differentiation (BCL11A) and blood-type antigen secretor status (FUT2). Using transcriptome-wide association and colocalization to infer the effect of gene expression on disease severity, we find evidence that implicates multiple genes—including reduced expression of a membrane flippase (ATP11A), and increased expression of a mucin (MUC1)—in critical disease. Mendelian randomization provides evidence in support of causal roles for myeloid cell adhesion molecules (SELE, ICAM5 and CD209) and the coagulation factor F8, all of which are potentially druggable targets. Our results are broadly consistent with a multi-component model of COVID-19 pathophysiology, in which at least two distinct mechanisms can predispose to life-threatening disease: failure to control viral replication; or an enhanced tendency towards pulmonary inflammation and intravascular coagulation. We show that comparison between cases of critical illness and population controls is highly efficient for the detection of therapeutically relevant mechanisms of disease

Human capital, higher education and graduate migration: an analysis of Scottish and Welsh students

In this paper we model the sequential migration behaviour of some 76,000 Scottish and Welsh students, from their domicile location to the location of their higher education and on to their employment location. We employ a probit model methodology to analyse the choice of the location of the university attended, whether inside or outside of Scotland or Wales. Then, within a GIS framework we estimate migration-on migration correlations and elasticities in order to identify the mobility effects of human-capital acquisition. Our results confirm the DaVanzo hypothesis that subsequent migration is related to previous migration, and also the Sjaastad-Becker hypothesis that higher human capital individuals are more geographically mobile. However, there are institutional differences between the two countries which mean that but the mobility effects of human-capital acquisition have to be interpreted carefully in the light of other economic, geographic and social influences