Process Testing and Improvement of Tapping Machinery at Lisi Aerospace

This report documents my senior project for California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo. I have chosen to do a senior project with Lisi Aerospace. Lisi would like to compare the manufacturer rated cycle count of taps versus an experimental one based on our machines in house. My goal for this project would be to run an experiment on one tapping machine and report on the achievable cycle count for the taps. I plan to do this in several ways including: Running extra cycle counts above tap manufacturer recommendations Documenting machine failure modes Create a process document to be repeated on other parts My solution approach shall be based on these objectives. A document detailing this experimental process will be created. This will include documentation of part/tap failures, machine failures and any other data that needs to be recorded about the production run. Many different aspects of the batch will be covered such as: material, tap material, tap maker, part produced, and tooling setup used. My deliverables to Lisi include: Documentation of experiment Documentation of machine/part/tap failures Recommendation for extension of tap lif

The role of perineural invasion in predicting survival in patients with primary operable colorectal cancer: a systematic review

Perineural invasion is a clear route for cancer cell spread however, the role of nerves in cancer progression is relatively unknown. Recent work would suggest that nerves can actively infiltrate the tumour microenvironment and stimulate cancer cell growth. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to systematically review the identification and associations of perineural invasion and survival in patients with primary operable colorectal cancer. From initial search results of 912 articles, 38 studies were selected. Using H&E stains; five studies including 1835 patients reported on survival stratified by perineural invasion in colon cancer with weighted average detection rates of 26%; eleven studies including 3837 patients reported on rectal cancer with weighted average detection rates of 25% and; sixteen studies including 9145 patients reported on survival stratified by perineural invasion in colorectal cancer with weighted average detection rates of 17%. Using special techniques (S100), six studies including 1458 patients reported on the identification of perineural invasion in colorectal cancer. In comparison to H&E staining alone, the use of immunohistochemistry with S100 increased the detection of perineural invasion to approximately 70%. However, those studies did not examine the relationship with outcomes, so further research is required to establish the clinical significance of perineural invasion detected by immunohistochemistry. In conclusion, perineural invasion deserves special attention for improved prognostic stratification in patients with colorectal cancer. Further work is required to standardise pathology assessment and reporting of perineural invasion, in particular its definition, use of special stains and routine inclusion in pathology practice. Reliable assessment is required for investigations into mechanisms of perineural invasion, its role tumour spread and prognostic value

The relationship between tumour budding, the tumour microenvironment and survival in patients with primary operable colorectal cancer

Background: Tumour budding has been reported to reflect invasiveness, metastasis and unfavourable prognosis in colorectal cancer. The aim of the study was to examine the relationship between tumour budding and clinicopathological characteristics, tumour microenvironment and survival in patients with primary operable colorectal cancer. Methods: A total of 303 patients from a prospective data set of patients with primary operable colorectal cancer were included in the study. The presence of budding was determined through assessment of all tumour-containing H&E slides and the number of tumour buds was counted using a 10 high-powered field method. Routine pathologic sections were used to assess: tumour necrosis, the tumour inflammatory cell infiltrate using Klintrup–Makinen (KM) grade and tumour stroma percentage (TSP) combined as the Glasgow Microenvironment Score (GMS). Results: High-grade tumour budding was present in 39% of all tumours and in 28% of node-negative tumours respectively. High-grade budding was significantly associated with T stage (P<0.001), N stage (P<0.001), TNM stage (P<0.001), serosal involvement (P<0.001), venous invasion (P<0.005), KM grade (P=0.022), high tumour stroma (P<0.001) and GMS (P<0.001). Tumour budding was associated with reduced cancer-specific survival (CSS) (HR=4.03; 95% confidence interval (CI), 2.50–6.52; P<0.001), independent of age (HR=1.47; 95% CI, 1.13–1.90; P=0.004), TNM stage (HR=1.52; 95% CI, 1.02–2.25; P=0.040), venous invasion (HR=1.73; 95% CI, 1.13–2.64; P=0.012) and GMS (HR=1.54; 95% CI, 1.15–2.07; P=0.004). Conclusions: The presence of tumour budding was associated with elements of the tumour microenvironment and was an independent adverse prognostic factor in patients with primary operable colorectal cancer. Specifically high tumour budding stratifies effectively the prognostic value of tumour stage, venous invasion and GMS. Taken together, tumour budding should be assessed routinely in patients with primary operable colorectal cancer

Sex, Gender, and Sex Hormones in Pulmonary Hypertension and Right Ventricular Failure

Pulmonary hypertension (PH) encompasses a syndrome of diseases that are characterized by elevated pulmonary artery pressure and pulmonary vascular remodeling and that frequently lead to right ventricular (RV) failure and death. Several types of PH exhibit sexually dimorphic features in disease penetrance, presentation, and progression. Most sexually dimorphic features in PH have been described in pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), a devastating and progressive pulmonary vasculopathy with a 3-year survival rate <60%. While patient registries show that women are more susceptible to development of PAH, female PAH patients display better RV function and increased survival compared to their male counterparts, a phenomenon referred to as the “estrogen paradox” or “estrogen puzzle” of PAH. Recent advances in the field have demonstrated that multiple sex hormones, receptors, and metabolites play a role in the estrogen puzzle and that the effects of hormone signaling may be time and compartment specific. While the underlying physiological mechanisms are complex, unraveling the estrogen puzzle may reveal novel therapeutic strategies to treat and reverse the effects of PAH/PH. In this article, we (i) review PH classification and pathophysiology; (ii) discuss sex/gender differences observed in patients and animal models; (iii) review sex hormone synthesis and metabolism; (iv) review in detail the scientific literature of sex hormone signaling in PAH/PH, particularly estrogen-, testosterone-, progesterone-, and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA)-mediated effects in the pulmonary vasculature and RV; (v) discuss hormone-independent variables contributing to sexually dimorphic disease presentation; and (vi) identify knowledge gaps and pathways forward

Quantitation of intracellular NAD(P)H can monitor an imbalance of DNA single strand break repair in base excision repair deficient cells in real time

DNA single strand breaks (SSBs) are one of the most frequent DNA lesions in genomic DNA generated either by oxidative stress or during the base excision repair pathways. Here we established a new real-time assay to assess an imbalance of DNA SSB repair by indirectly measuring PARP-1 activation through the depletion of intracellular NAD(P)H. A water-soluble tetrazolium salt is used to monitor the amount of NAD(P)H in living cells through its reduction to a yellow colored water-soluble formazan dye. While this assay is not a direct method, it does not require DNA extraction or alkaline treatment, both of which could potentially cause an artifactual induction of SSBs. In addition, it takes only 4 h and requires less than a half million cells to perform this measurement. Using this assay, we demonstrated that the dose- and time-dependent depletion of NAD(P)H in XRCC1-deficient CHO cells exposed to methyl methanesulfonate. This decrease was almost completely blocked by a PARP inhibitor. Furthermore, methyl methanesulfonate reduced NAD(P)H in PARP-1+/+cells, whereas PARP-1¿/¿ cells were more resistant to the decrease in NAD(P)H. These results indicate that the analysis of intracellular NAD(P)H level using water-soluble tetrazolium salt can assess an imbalance of SSB repair in living cells in real time

Long Span Bridges: Enhanced data fusion of GPS displacement and deck accelerations

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record.Displacement data under operational loads are an important aid for the estimation of structural performance, but accurate measurement of structural displacement remains as a challenging task, especially for long-span bridges. The global positioning system (GPS) is the common choice for long-span bridge displacement monitoring but the measurement accuracy is not satisfactory. The purpose of this study is to improve the GPS accuracy using a practical data fusion method. Although the main algorithms of data fusion method based on multi-rate Kalman filter are already reported, the detail about how to select the noise parameters required for Kalman filter is not provided. This paper demonstrates that maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) can be used to determine the necessary noise parameters. The proposed approach was validated on numerical and field data, the latter from a single-day displacement monitoring campaign on the Humber Bridge in the UK. The direct measurement by GPS was merged with the collocated acceleration data and the resulting displacement signal was evaluated by comparing it to the displacement signal from an independent vision-based system. Through the comparison, it is shown that MLE enhanced data fusion is practical to improve the GPS measurement accuracy and to widen the frequency bandwidth. The MLE provides an estimation about the GPS noise (assumed as zero-mean Gaussian process) with the standard deviation varying from 6 mm to 16 mm in the test day. The normalised root mean square deviation of GPS measurement compared with the vision-based measurement was decreased from 3.17% to 2.37% after applying the data fusion.The field test was possible via permission of Humber Bridge Board and was assisted by James Bassitt from University of Exeter and Mungo Morgan from Imetrum Ltd. The Humber Bridge monitoring system was installed using funding from EPSRC grant EP/F035403/1. Finally the authors would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments

Magnetic structure and glassiness in Fe 0.5 Ni 0.5 PS 3

This work explores the magnetic properties of Fe0.5Ni 0.5PS3. The system shows pronounced hysteresis in the magnetic phase transition temperature as a function of the direction of the change in temperature. Field cooled/zero field cooled hysteresis is not pronounced. However, the transition temperature between antiferromagnetic and paramagnetic order occurs at approximately 97 K on cooling, but at 138 K on warming, whether the warming is after zero field or field cooling. This is indicative of magnetic glassiness, and made all the more unusual because all measurements exhibit a transition to a third magnetic phase existing at temperatures below ∼14K. The intermediate phase relaxes on a laboratory time scale of the order of 48 min, into an antiferromagnetic state whose magnetic structure is, from neutron diffraction, indistinguishable from the low temperature state. This low temperature state shows magnetic ordering consistent with that observed in CoPS3 and NiPS3. Analysis of the neutron measurements shows that the direction of moments cannot be along the b-axis. It is also shown that the moments are unlikely to lie in the c * direction. Therefore, we suggest that the moments lie along the a-axis