Hardware-in-the-loop testing of control of a precooled desiccant air-cooling system

Increasing the energy efficiency of cooling in buildings is an important component of the management of global energy consumption. A super-efficient cooling system based on the evaporation concept has been developed, and initial simulation results using the MATLAB/Simulink software tool have already been published by our team. In this paper, we present the results of hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing of the real-time controller for the cooler. HIL testing is an engineering process in which the actual controller hardware and software are implemented and interfaced with a real-time simulated model of the controlled system. Using HIL testing, many real-world problems can be fixed before testing on the actual prototype. The controller design is implemented on a small-footprint industrial PC with CODESYS RTE and application code, while control software is implemented using IEC 61131-3 programming languages. Similarly, a real-time thermodynamic and input–output variable-based model of the room, environment, and cooler and its mechanical components (sensors and actuators) are modeled using another industrial PC with the same software tools. HIL test results show very good agreement with the offline simulations

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely

Burnout among surgeons before and during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: an international survey

Background: SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has had many significant impacts within the surgical realm, and surgeons have been obligated to reconsider almost every aspect of daily clinical practice. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study reported in compliance with the CHERRIES guidelines and conducted through an online platform from June 14th to July 15th, 2020. The primary outcome was the burden of burnout during the pandemic indicated by the validated Shirom-Melamed Burnout Measure. Results: Nine hundred fifty-four surgeons completed the survey. The median length of practice was 10 years; 78.2% included were male with a median age of 37 years old, 39.5% were consultants, 68.9% were general surgeons, and 55.7% were affiliated with an academic institution. Overall, there was a significant increase in the mean burnout score during the pandemic; longer years of practice and older age were significantly associated with less burnout. There were significant reductions in the median number of outpatient visits, operated cases, on-call hours, emergency visits, and research work, so, 48.2% of respondents felt that the training resources were insufficient. The majority (81.3%) of respondents reported that their hospitals were included in the management of COVID-19, 66.5% felt their roles had been minimized; 41% were asked to assist in non-surgical medical practices, and 37.6% of respondents were included in COVID-19 management. Conclusions: There was a significant burnout among trainees. Almost all aspects of clinical and research activities were affected with a significant reduction in the volume of research, outpatient clinic visits, surgical procedures, on-call hours, and emergency cases hindering the training. Trial registration: The study was registered on clicaltrials.gov "NCT04433286" on 16/06/2020

Control of Super-Efficient Dew-Point Evaporative Cooler

Most of the electricity consumed in buildings is used by heating, cooling, and air conditioning units. Many novel devices based on renewable energy were implemented for heating purposes in recent years. However, there are no devices based on renewable energy which have been widely applied in the cooling sector. One of the novel solutions is evaporative air cooling (IEC). Evaporative air coolers utilize the latent heat of the water to provide cooling energy and therefore are less dependent on fossil fuels. They are also characterized by much higher COP factors in comparison to mechanical compression systems. The most effective method of evaporative cooling is based on the technology called Dew-Point Cooling (DPC). However, traditional DPC systems have some limitations such as efficient operation in dry air, excessive water consumption, ineffective water distribution and the absence of temperature and humidity controls etc. In this research, control for a new DPC design, which overcomes all these disadvantages and takes cooling technology to a completely new level, is developed. In the proposed system, temperature and relative humidity are controlled to save energy without reducing the comfort of the environment. Sensor data obtained from the room, atmosphere and cooler are evaluated in the developed control software and control actions are sent to actuators such as fans, vacuum pump, and water pump. With this independent control strategy, more efficient energy use will be achieved in accordance with comfort criteria. Moreover, the proposed solution provides some other advantages such as COPs on the level of 12.5 in humid climatic conditions, no external water consumption, and a novel effective water distribution system for effective water supply. The system allows over 80% energy savings in comparison to traditional systems, while providing the same level of comfort for the occupants in a wide range of outdoor conditions. In this research, control logic for the proposed system is developed using MATLAB/Simulink and software results are obtained, a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test is then conducted, real-time results are obtained and compared to the results obtained from software testing. To further increase efficiency of the system, Internet of Things (IoT) technology is implemented in the control logic to allow for data analysis, data storage, and most importantly, data monitoring to correct any errors that may occur. It is worth noting that a total of two journal publications were published during this study and a lot of the text is used throughout this paper. Copy right and author permission will be attached in appendix

Using a Fuzzy Genetic Algorithm for Solving Transportation Logistics Problems

Recently, Science defined transportation as the most potent component of logistics. In addition, it has an interdependent relationship with business logistics. Also, AI is intervened in transportation logistics to solve transportation issues. Also, it is used for optimizing and obtaining possible solutions for critical and complex problems. This paper aims to optimize costs and profit to get satisfaction for individuals and organizations using AI techniques. A proposed methodology consisted of two phases. The first phase discusses data collection, and the second involves applying FGA Artificial Intelligence techniques. A proposed Transportation Logistics model was used to determine boundary profit for each Product, and a Fuzzy Genetic Algorithm FGA for transportation logistics was done to solve transportation issues. According to that, outcomes were detected by optimizing the transportation cost by detecting the parent's and the child's chromosomes, and it took the number of iterations =2000. Also, between 100 loops, the best of 5 loops took 1.53 Millie seconds per loop Using GA. Similarly, GA was used for optimizing the minimum total cost of the Product also by determining parents and child chromosomes, which took the Number of iterations= 2000, and among 100 loops, the best five loops took 1.40 ms per loop. Moreover, determining the profit boundary of each predicted Product using triangular fuzzy logic shows that the minimum profit is considered between (20 million and 23.9 million), while the moderate profit is (24 million), and the maximum profit is more than (24.1 million)

Experimental Investigation on the Cyclic In-Plane Behavior of GFRP-Reinforced Concrete Shear Walls

The current study presents an experimental investigation performed on slender reinforced concrete shear walls, representing a common lateral-load resisting system of mid-rise buildings. The walls were reinforced with steel and glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) bars and tested up to failure under reversed quasi-static cyclic loading to investigate the capability of GFRP bars in reinforcing RC shear walls under seismic loads. Moreover, the effect of the GFRP reinforcement ratio on the structural response, deformation performance, and failure mode resulting in RC walls, compared with its behavior when reinforced with steel bars, is also investigated. Six full-scale shear walls with an aspect ratio of 3.25 were constructed. The reference wall was entirely reinforced with steel bars. Two specimens were reinforced by hybrid scheme of GFRP–steel bars. The remaining three shear walls were entirely reinforced with GFRP bars. The overall performance of each wall was characterized by investigating the lateral load capacity, hysteretic response, cracks propagation, ductility, and the behavior of energy dissipation. The experimental results showed that GFRP-reinforced concrete walls had an elastic behavior characterized by a stable hysteretic response with recoverable deformation of more than 80% of the ultimate load. However, sudden and brittle failure was attained for the wall with a high GFRP reinforcement ratio. GFRP decreases the displacement ductility of the shear walls by an average of 32.9%, depending on the reinforcement ratio, compared to that reinforced by steel bars. Moreover, lower energy dissipation through inelastic deformation was obtained for the walls reinforced with GFRP bars. Nonetheless, when GFRP bars are combined with steel bars, acceptable levels of dissipated energy are attained compared to the steel-reinforced wall

A validated stability indicating DAD–HPLC method for determination of pentoxifylline in presence of its pharmacopeial related substances

A validated, simple and sensitive stability-indicating HPLC method was introduced for the analysis of Pentoxifylline in the presence of its pharmacopeial related substances, Caffeine anhydrous and Theophylline anhydrous, in the presence of its forced degradation products. This was achieved using a gradient DAD–HPLC method in order to achieve a good separation between the related substance peaks, complying with the pharmacopeial requirement, and an adequate retention time for the Pentoxifylline peak. The method was validated according to the ICH guidelines and different HPLC parameters were optimized for the determination of Pentoxifylline in its dosage form (sustained release tablets). Furthermore, the study of forced degradation of Pentoxifylline was done under various conditions including; hydrolysis (acid, alkaline and neutral), oxidation, dry heat and photo-decomposition. The proposed method could separate Pentoxifylline peak from those of the different forced degradation product peaks and the purity of the Pentoxifylline peak was confirmed using the photo-diode array detector

Characterization of Fennel Fruits: Types and Quality (1)

Abstract: Four samples of different fennel fruit cultivars (F 1-F 4), obtained from El-Fayoum, Egypt (F 1), El- Menia, Egypt (F 2), Sudan, El-Khartoum (F 3), and Germany (F 4) were cultivated in MEPACO`s Farm (Arab Co. for Pharm. and Med. Plants, Cairo, Egypt) and the obtained fruits were subjected to macro- and micromorphological stereomicroscopic examination as well as GC-MS analysis of their volatile oils. The aim of the study is to determine the differences in the macro- and micro- characters of different fruit cultivars as well as their oil constitutes. The results show different exomorphic parameters viz. shape, color, dimensions and surface sculpture. Also the tereomicroscopic examination showed differences in the epicarp, mesocarp; vitti and endosperm. GC-MS analysis of volatile oils of (F 1-F 4) showed on comparing three parameters; fenchone, estragole and trans-anethole that F 4 has the highest percentage of trans-anethole (78.98%), while F 1 and F 2 have close values (1.05 and 1.02%, respectively) followed by F 3 (3.02%). F 4 has the lowest percentage of estragole (3.97%); while (F 1-F 3) have higher values (78.58, 64.81 and 25.79%, respectively). Also F 4 has doubled the percentage of fenchone (6.73%) of F 1 and F 2 (2.54 and 2.57%, respectively), while F 3 has 0.69%. Thus results show that the two cultivars growing in Egypt (F 1 and F 2) have almost the same ratios of the compared parameters while, the Sudan cultivar F 3 is closer to F 1 and F 2 than it is to F 4. Also the three cultivars (F 1-F 3) are far from specification of sweet fennel oil but close to bitter fennel oil. The German cultivar (F 4) has the best oil quality as a sweet fennel. Investigation of the powdered samples (F 1-F 4) showed that only F 4 is different in having higher abundant fragments of reticulate parenchyma cells with ratio of 1:3 {F 4:(F 1-F 3)}. In conclusion: These findings are of pharmaceutical-industrial value helping in the production of herbal pharmaceutical products of fennel fruit and/or oil of known higher quality

Design of a Proportional-Control-Based Advanced Control Strategy for Independent Temperature and Humidity Control of a Pre-Cooled Desiccant Air Cooling System

In this study, the control of a desiccant-wheel-based evaporative cooling system with a double-layer dew-point cooler system is emphasized. There are two dew-point evaporative coolers in the system and the air taken inside is subjected to pre- and post-cooling processes. The dehumidification process of the air taken in is carried out by the desiccant wheel after the pre-cooling process. A proportional-based control strategy has been developed to adjust the temperature and relative humidity of the room quickly and robustly with different operation modes for actuators to bring comfort with less energy consumption. In addition, an automatic Stop/Run mode has been added to the control strategy to save extra energy. With the developed control strategy, enabling the actuators to switch between the operation modes, more energy savings are achieved compared to both traditional ON/OFF and proportional controls. The accuracy and applicability of the developed control strategy were analyzed and it was observed that the room comfort reached the desired levels successfully under all disruptive effects. The control inputs and the energies consumed by all the actuators were investigated and it was determined that 21.19% more energy savings are provided by adding the automatic Stop/Run feature. With the multi-mode control strategy, a total of 40.90% less energy consumption is achieved compared to the classical ON/OFF control technique. Thus, it is seen that the controller developed for the desiccant-wheel-based evaporative cooler is a viable method to provide fast and robust comfort conditions with less energy