Design and Benchmark Testing for Open Architecture Reconfigurable Mobile Spirometer and Exhaled Breath Monitor with GPS and Data Telemetry.

Portable and wearable medical instruments are poised to play an increasingly important role in health monitoring. Mobile spirometers are available commercially, and are used to monitor patients with advanced lung disease. However, these commercial monitors have a fixed product architecture determined by the manufacturer, and researchers cannot easily experiment with new configurations or add additional novel sensors over time. Spirometry combined with exhaled breath metabolite monitoring has the potential to transform healthcare and improve clinical management strategies. This research provides an updated design and benchmark testing for a flexible, portable, open access architecture to measure lung function, using common Arduino/Android microcontroller technologies. To demonstrate the feasibility and the proof-of-concept of this easily-adaptable platform technology, we had 43 subjects (healthy, and those with lung diseases) perform three spirometry maneuvers using our reconfigurable device and an office-based commercial spirometer. We found that our system compared favorably with the traditional spirometer, with high accuracy and agreement for forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1) and forced vital capacity (FVC), and gas measurements were feasible. This provides an adaptable/reconfigurable open access "personalized medicine" platform for researchers and patients, and new chemical sensors and other modular instrumentation can extend the flexibility of the device in the future

Spray Rolling Aluminum Strip

Spray forming is a competitive low-cost alternative to ingot metallurgy for manufacturing ferrous and non-ferrous alloy shapes. It produces materials with a reduced number of processing steps, while maintaining materials properties, with the possibility of near-net-shape manufacturing. However, there are several hurdles to large-scale commercial adoption of spray forming: 1) ensuring strip is consistently flat, 2) eliminating porosity, particularly at the deposit/substrate interface, and 3) improving material yield. Through this program, a new strip/sheet casting process, termed spray rolling, has been developed, which is an innovative manufacturing technique to produce aluminum net-shape products. Spray rolling combines the benefits of twin-roll casting and conventional spray forming, showing a promising potential to overcome the above hurdles associated with spray forming. Spray rolling requires less energy and generates less scrap than conventional processes and, consequently, enables the development of materials with lower environmental impacts in both processing and final products. Spray Rolling was developed as a collaborative project between the University of California-Davis, the Colorado School of Mines, the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, and an industry team. The following objectives of this project were achieved: (1) Demonstration of the feasibility of the spray rolling process at the bench-scale level and evaluation of the materials properties of spray rolled aluminum strip alloys; and (2) Demonstration of 2X scalability of the process and documentation of technical hurdles to further scale up and initiate technology transfer to industry for eventual commercialization of the process

Regular-fat dairy and human health:A Synopsis of Symposia presented in Europe and North America (2014-2015)

In recent history, some dietary recommendations have treated dairy fat as an unnecessary source of calories and saturated fat in the human diet. These assumptions, however, have recently been brought into question by current research on regular fat dairy products and human health. In an effort to disseminate, explore and discuss the state of the science on the relationship between regular fat dairy products and health, symposia were programmed by dairy industry organizations in Europe and North America at The Eurofed Lipids Congress (2014) in France, The Dairy Nutrition Annual Symposium (2014) in Canada, The American Society for Nutrition Annual Meeting held in conjunction with Experimental Biology (2015) in the United States, and The Federation of European Nutrition Societies (2015) in Germany. This synopsis of these symposia describes the complexity of dairy fat and the effects regular-fat dairy foods have on human health. The emerging scientific evidence indicates that the consumption of regular fat dairy foods is not associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and inversely associated with weight gain and the risk of obesity. Dairy foods, including regular-fat milk, cheese and yogurt, can be important components of an overall healthy dietary pattern. Systematic examination of the effects of dietary patterns that include regular-fat milk, cheese and yogurt on human health is warranted

Time scale analysis for fluidizedbedmeltgranulation III: binder solidification rate

In series I and II of this study ([Chua et al., 2010a] and [Chua et al., 2010b]), we discussed the time scale of granule–granule collision, droplet–granule collision and droplet spreading in Fluidized Bed Melt Granulation (FBMG). In this third one, we consider the rate at which binder solidifies. Simple analytical solution, based on classical formulation for conduction across a semi-infinite slab, was used to obtain a generalized equation for binder solidification time. A multi-physics simulation package (Comsol) was used to predict the binder solidification time for various operating conditions usually considered in FBMG. The simulation results were validated with experimental temperature data obtained with a high speed infrared camera during solidification of ‘macroscopic’ (mm scale) droplets. For the range of microscopic droplet size and operating conditions considered for a FBMG process, the binder solidification time was found to fall approximately between 10-3 and 10-1 s. This is the slowest compared to the other three major FBMG microscopic events discussed in this series (granule–granule collision, granule–droplet collision and droplet spreading)

Dissimmetric fusion of incomplete data for classification of underwater objects

To classify objects located in their environment, underwater mobile robots use sequential sensory data (sonar) . These pieces of information are imperfect, that means imprecise, uncertain and incomplete . Incompleteness is defined as the unavailability of some parameters which makes some classification criteria impossible to compute and which delays the decisions . The paper proposes to model data in the framework of possibility theory, and to apply fuzzy calculus to evaluate criteria even in the case of incompleteness . Results are sequentially fused by a dissymmetric combination process . The different dissymmetric fusion rules are reviewed and a specific dissymmetric operator is proposed to solve the incompleteness problem .Afin de classer les objets présents dans leur environnement, les robots mobiles sous-marins peuvent exploiter des informations sensorielles acquises séquentiellement (sonar). Elles sont généralement qualifiées d'imparfaites, c'est-à-dire qu'elles sont imprécises, incertaines et incomplètes. L'incomplétude est vue ici comme l'indisponibilité d'un jeu de paramètres rendant impossible le calcul des critères de classification qui en dépendent, retardant ainsi la prise de décision. L'article propose de modéliser les informations dans le cadre de la théorie des possibilités, et d'appliquer le calcul flou afin d'évaluer des critères même en présence d'incomplétude. Les résultats ainsi obtenus sont fusionnés séquentiellement par un processus de combinaison dissymétrique. Les différentes lois de fusion dissymétrique sont passées en revue et une loi spécifique au traitement de l'incomplétude est proposée

Numerical Simulation and Experimental Characterization of a Binary Aluminum Alloy Spray - Application to the Spray Rolling Process

A stochastic, droplet-resolved model has been developed to describe the behavior of a binary aluminum alloy spray during the spray-rolling process. In this process, a molten aluminum alloy is atomized and the resulting spray is depostied on the rolls of a twin-roll caster to produce aluminum strip. The one-way coupled spray model allows the prediction of spray characteristics such as enthalph and solid fraction, and their distribution between the nozzle and the depostion surface. This paper outlines the model development and compares the predicted spray dynamics to PDI measurements performed in a controlled configuration. Predicted and measured droplet velocity and size distributions are presented for two points along the spray centerline along with predicted spray averaged specific enthalph and solid fraction curves

Spray Rolling Aluminum Strip for Transportation Applications

Spray rolling is a novel strip casting technology in which molten aluminum alloy is atomized and deposited into the roll gap of mill rolls to produce aluminum strip. A combined experimental/modeling approach has been followed in developing this technology with active participation from industry. The feasibility of this technology has been demonstrated at the laboratory scale and it is currently being scaled-up. This paper provides an overview of the process and compares the microstructure and properties of spray-rolled 2124 aluminum alloy with commercial ingot-processed materia

Human airway xenograft models of epithelial cell regeneration

Regeneration and restoration of the airway epithelium after mechanical, viral or bacterial injury have a determinant role in the evolution of numerous respiratory diseases such as chronic bronchitis, asthma and cystic fibrosis. The study in vivo of epithelial regeneration in animal models has shown that airway epithelial cells are able to dedifferentiate, spread, migrate over the denuded basement membrane and progressively redifferentiate to restore a functional respiratory epithelium after several weeks. Recently, human tracheal xenografts have been developed in immunodeficient severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) and nude mice. In this review we recall that human airway cells implanted in such conditioned host grafts can regenerate a well-differentiated and functional human epithelium; we stress the interest in these humanized mice in assaying candidate progenitor and stem cells of the human airway mucosa

Two New Loci for Body-Weight Regulation Identified in a Joint Analysis of Genome-Wide Association Studies for Early-Onset Extreme Obesity in French and German Study Groups

Meta-analyses of population-based genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in adults have recently led to the detection of new genetic loci for obesity. Here we aimed to discover additional obesity loci in extremely obese children and adolescents. We also investigated if these results generalize by estimating the effects of these obesity loci in adults and in population-based samples including both children and adults. We jointly analysed two GWAS of 2,258 individuals and followed-up the best, according to lowest p-values, 44 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) from 21 genomic regions in 3,141 individuals. After this DISCOVERY step, we explored if the findings derived from the extremely obese children and adolescents (10 SNPs from 5 genomic regions) generalized to (i) the population level and (ii) to adults by genotyping another 31,182 individuals (GENERALIZATION step). Apart from previously identified FTO, MC4R, and TMEM18, we detected two new loci for obesity: one in SDCCAG8 (serologically defined colon cancer antigen 8 gene; p = 1.85610 x 10(-8) in the DISCOVERY step) and one between TNKS (tankyrase, TRF1-interacting ankyrin-related ADP-ribose polymerase gene) and MSRA (methionine sulfoxide reductase A gene; p = 4.84 x 10(-7)), the latter finding being limited to children and adolescents as demonstrated in the GENERALIZATION step. The odds ratios for early-onset obesity were estimated at similar to 1.10 per risk allele for both loci. Interestingly, the TNKS/MSRA locus has recently been found to be associated with adult waist circumference. In summary, we have completed a meta-analysis of two GWAS which both focus on extremely obese children and adolescents and replicated our findings in a large followed-up data set. We observed that genetic variants in or near FTO, MC4R, TMEM18, SDCCAG8, and TNKS/MSRA were robustly associated with early-onset obesity. We conclude that the currently known major common variants related to obesity overlap to a substantial degree between children and adults