Front Matter

Front Matte

Optimal motion compensation for suspended loads

Offshore kranoperasjoner er ofte kritiske operasjoner under krevende forhold som krever mye av kranoperatøren. Dette gjør at behovet for teknologiske løsninger er svært høy. Svingende laster er en sikkerhetsbekymring som kan skade både materiell og i verste fall personell. Med et anti-sleng kontrollsystem dempes denne uønskede svingingen, og kranoperatøren blir avskåret fra avgjørende roller, noe som resulterer i en mye mer effektiv operasjon. I denne avhandlingen blir en matematisk modell av den hengende lasten presentert, og dens bevegelseslikninger blir funnet ved bruk av Euler-Lagranges metode. En ulineær anti-sleng kontroller er utviklet basert på Lyapunov analyse og det er bevist at den gjør systemet eksponentielt stabilt. I tillegg til anti-sleng kontrolleren blir det brukt en PID-kontroller for å flytte kranen som styrt av kranoperatøren samt opprettholde ønsket posisjon. Anti-sleng Kontrolleren er testet i simuleringer for ulike utfordrende scenarioer med og uten operatør involvert, og den viser seg å være svært effektiv for å dempe uønskede svingninger i lasten.As offshore crane operations often are critical operations under tough condition demanding a lot from the crane operator, the need for technological solutions are very high. Swaying loads is a safety concerns that can damage both material and in worst case personnel. With an anti-sway control system, this unwanted swaying is dampened and the crane operator is deprived from crucial roles resulting in a much more effective operation. In this thesis, a mathematical model of the suspended load is presented and its equations of motion is found using the Euler-Lagrange method. A nonlinear anti-sway controller is found based on Lyapunov analysis and proven to make the system exponentially stable. In addition to the anti-sway controller, a PID controller is used to moved the crane as steered by the crane operator. The controller is put to the test under simulations for different challenging scenarios with and without the operator in the loop, and it proves to be very effective in damping unwanted sway of the load

Kombucha Leather Durability: Sugar Concentration\u27s Effect on Bacterial Cellulose

Due to its rising popularity many people may now know of kombucha; A fermented tea beverage thought to have originated long ago in the region that is now known as China. Through the same process that this familiar beverage is made, there is also the less familiar production of a polymeric bacterial cellulose pellicle that floats on the surface of the culture. This and other forms of bacterial cellulose are the subject of research for several different applications. Bacterial cellulose has potential for use in medicine, textiles, and as a food additive. The tensile strength of kombucha’s leather-like material grown in different sugar concentrations was measured and statistically analyzed. The groups grown in higher sugar concentrations were found to withstand significantly more force before tearing than those grown in low sugar concentrations. Photographs of the pellicles of each group were also taken and compared at 400x magnification

A Study of Role Theory and Selected Factors in Relation to Mental Illness

Mental illness is a major drain on all types of productivity in the world. In the United States alone there are 63,226 patients in mental hospitals and another 174,727 in homes or schools for the mentally retarded. (1) South Dakota’s figures read 1,981 patients in mental hospitals and 895 in homes or schools for the mentally retarded. (2) The rehabilitation of these people would result in millions of dollars being saved plus the avoidance of untold sorrow and hardship for the patients and their families. A great deal of work is being done to rehabilitate the mental patient so he can be released. The success of this work is shown the estimate that there are millions of ex-mental patients in the American population. (3) These patients are released, but are they accepted in to society or are they merely replaced into their original environments which may have contributed to their mental illness in the first place? Recent theories contribute mental illness more and more to social and cultural causes rather than organic causes. The present study attempts an epidemiological approach to the topic of mental illness, but it utilizes social rather that physical or geographical factors. (see more in text

Structural and attitudinal effects on organizational priorities

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University. Department of Sociology, 197

Reconstructing Haemodynamics Quantities of Interest from Doppler Ultrasound Imaging

The present contribution deals with the estimation of haemodynamics Quantities of Interest by exploiting Ultrasound Doppler measurements. A fast method is proposed, based on the PBDW method. Several methodological contributions are described: a sub-manifold partitioning is introduced to improve the reduced-order approximation, two different ways to estimate the pressure drop are compared, and an error estimation is derived. A test-case on a realistic common carotid geometry is presented, showing that the proposed approach is promising in view of realistic applications.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1904.1336

Dietary and body mass thresholds for reproduction in grasshoppers

An organism’s dietary protein should match its respective dietary needs to yield the most advantageous effects; an extended lifespan and increased reproductive output. The key challenge however, is how to tailor a specific diet to an organism’s individual needs. Applying the technique of Piper et. al, we can approximate the optimal diet of the lubber grasshopper, Romalea microptera, by using the AA profile of vitellogenin (Vg), the precursor to egg yolk protein. The lubber grasshopper, Romalea microptera, was selected because of its plasticity in reproductive responsiveness in response to diet quality and quantity. Each of the organisms were fed 1g of romaine lettuce, ad libitum (ad-lib) zero protein high carbohydrate artificial diet and a different experimentally manipulated diet. The 4 treatment groups, Vg-balanced AA, unbalanced AA, ad-lib lettuce, and dietary restriction (DR), dietary treatments were applied twice daily from day 2 of adulthood to egg laying. The experimental group was force-fed the balanced AA diet, which was derived from the AA composition of vitellogenin. The unbalanced AA group was fed an isonitrogenous diet with over representations of AA’s found in romaine. The ad lib group had unlimited access to romaine and was force-fed PBS. The DR group was fed a diet comprising of 1 gram of romaine and PBS. The results indicated ad-lib group had the highest yield, followed by Vg-balanced, unbalanced, and DR . In contrast, somatic mass and storage did not differ across 3 groups fed 1gm lettuce daily. Isonitrogenous diets exhibited difference in reproduction but not somatic growth

Telomere Length and Long-Term Endurance Exercise: Does Exercise Training Affect Biological Age? A Pilot Study

Background: Telomeres are potential markers of mitotic cellular age and are associated with physical ageing process. Long-term endurance training and higher aerobic exercise capacity (VO2max) are associated with improved survival, and dynamic effects of exercise are evident with ageing. However, the association of telomere length with exercise training and VO2max has so far been inconsistent. Our aim was to assess whether muscle telomere length is associated with endurance exercise training and VO2max in younger and older people. Methods: Twenty men; 10 young (22–27 years) and 10 old (66–77 years), were studied in this cross-sectional study. Five out of 10 young adults and 5 out of 10 older were endurance athletes, while other halves were exercising at a medium level of activity. Mean telomere length was measured as telomere/single copy gene-ratio (T/S-ratio) using quantitative real time polymerase chain reaction. VO2max was measured directly running on a treadmill. Results: Older endurance trained athletes had longer telomere length compared with older people with medium activity levels (T/S ratio 1.12±0.1 vs. 0.92±0.2, p = 0.04). Telomere length of young endurance trained athletes was not different than young non-athletes (1.47±0.2 vs. 1.33±0.1, p = 0.12). Overall, there was a positive association between T/S ratio and VO2max (r = 0.70, p = 0.001). Among endurance trained athletes, we found a strong correlation between VO2max and T/S ratio (r = 0.78, p = 0.02). However, corresponding association among non-athlete participants was relatively weak (r = 0.58, p = 0.09). Conclusion: Our data suggest that VO2max is positively associated with telomere length, and we found that long-term endurance exercise training may provide a protective effect on muscle telomere length in older people.© 2012 Østhus et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

Vitellogenin RNAi Halts Ovarian Growth and Diverts Reproductive Proteins and Lipids in Young Grasshoppers

Reduced reproduction extends lifespan of females in many animals. To test the effects of reproduction on storage of macronutrients, we block reproductive output in the lubber grasshopper by injecting RNAi against the precursor to egg-yolk protein, vitellogenin, in early adulthood. Controls were injected with either buffer or RNAi against the major storage protein in the hemolymph, hexamerin-90. Vitellogenin RNAi greatly reduced both levels of mRNA for vitellogenin and ovarian growth, in comparison to both controls. Fat body mass was increased upon vitellogenin RNAi, but concentrations of the three hexameric storage proteins from the hemolymph were not. Surprisingly, hemolymph vitellogenin levels were increased upon vitellogenin RNAi. Total reproductive protein (hemolymph vitellogenin plus ovarian vitellin) was unchanged by vitellogenin RNAi, as reproductive protein was diverted to the hemolymph. Similarly, the increased lipid storage upon vitellogenin RNAi was largely attributable to the reduction in lipid in the ovary, due to decreased ovarian growth. A BLAST search revealed that the 515 bp sequence of vitellogenin used for RNAi had three 11 bp regions identical to the vitellogenin receptor of the cockroach Leucophaea maderae. This suggests that our treatment, in addition to reducing levels of vitellogenin transcript, may have also blocked transport of vitellogenin from the hemolymph to the ovary. This would be consistent with halted ovarian growth simultaneous with high levels of vitellogenin in the hemolymph. Nonetheless, the accumulation of vitellogenin, instead of hexameric storage proteins, is inconsistent with a simple model of the trade-off between reproduction and storage. This was observed in young females; future studies will address whether investment of proteins may shift to the soma as individuals age. Overall, our results suggest that blockage of reproduction in young grasshoppers redirects lipids to storage and reproductive proteins to the hemolymph