A multi-scenario analysis to improve layout efficiency

Logistics costs represent a large portion of overall costs. Companies in peripheral countries need to be additionally careful in streamlining them if they want to maintain their competitivity. This research is focussed on a plant belonging to an aerospace component supplier, and its purpose is to reduce the layout costs in one of its warehouses. Data was collected using documentation, archival records, informal interviews, and direct and participant observation. From 66 initial scenarios based on layout decisions, storage assignment policies and alternative picking routes, 44 were compared as these are the ones that fit the company reality. Findings showed that travelling distance could be reduced when the allocation of items in shelves follow their picking frequency and when Class-based storage with return routing policies is used. In parallel, it does not impact in a relevant way process time and the quality of the picking.info:eu-repo/semantics/submittedVersio

Clinical evidence on high flow oxygen therapy and active humidification in adults

AbstractRecently there has been growing interest in an alternative to conventional oxygen therapy: the heated, humidified high flow nasal cannula oxygen therapy (HFNC). A number of physiological effects have been described with HFNC: pharyngeal dead space washout, reduction of nasopharyngeal resistance, a positive expiratory pressure effect, an alveolar recruitment, greater humidification, more comfort and better tolerance by the patient, better control of FiO2 and mucociliary clearance. There is limited experience of HFNC in adults. There are no established guidelines or decision-making pathways to guide use of the HFNC therapy for adults. In this article we review the existing evidence of HFNC oxygen therapy in adult patients, its advantages, limitations and the current literature on clinical applications. Further research is required to determine the long-term effect of this therapy and identify the adult patient population to whom it is most beneficial

Series of Hessian-Vector Products for Tractable Saddle-Free Newton Optimisation of Neural Networks

Despite their popularity in the field of continuous optimisation, second-order quasi-Newton methods are challenging to apply in machine learning, as the Hessian matrix is intractably large. This computational burden is exacerbated by the need to address non-convexity, for instance by modifying the Hessian's eigenvalues as in Saddle-Free Newton methods. We propose an optimisation algorithm which addresses both of these concerns - to our knowledge, the first efficiently-scalable optimisation algorithm to asymptotically use the exact (eigenvalue-modified) inverse Hessian. Our method frames the problem as a series which principally square-roots and inverts the squared Hessian, then uses it to precondition a gradient vector, all without explicitly computing or eigendecomposing the Hessian. A truncation of this infinite series provides a new optimisation algorithm which is scalable and comparable to other first- and second-order optimisation methods in both runtime and optimisation performance. We demonstrate this in a variety of settings, including a ResNet-18 trained on CIFAR-10.Comment: 36 pages, 10 figures, 5 tables. Submitted to TMLR. First two authors' order randomise

Rewiring strategies for changing environments

A typical pervasive application executes in a changing environment: people, computing resources, software services and network connections come and go continuously. A robust pervasive application needs adapt to this changing context as long as there is an appropriate rewiring strategy that guarantees correct behavior. We combine the MERODE modeling methodology with the ReWiRe framework for creating interactive pervasive applications that can cope with changing environments. The core of our approach is a consistent environment model, which is essential to create (re)configurable context-aware pervasive applications. We aggregate different ontologies that provide the required semantics to describe almost any target environment. We present a case study that shows a interactive pervasive application for media access that incorporates parental control on media content and can migrate between devices. The application builds upon models of the run-time environment represented as system states for dedicated rewiring strategies

Sex-specific but not sexually explicit: pupillary responses to dressed and naked adults

Dilation of the pupils is an indicator of an observer's sexual interest in other people, but it remains unresolved whether this response is strengthened or diminished by sexually explicit material. To address this question, this study compared pupillary responses of heterosexual men and women to naked and dressed portraits of male and female adult film actors. Pupillary responses corresponded with observers' self-reported sexual orientation, such that dilation occurred during the viewing of opposite-sex people, but were comparable for naked and dressed targets. These findings indicate that pupillary responses provide a sex-specific measure, but are not sensitive to sexually explicit content

ULTRASOUND AS TOOL FOR DIAGNOSIS OF DISEASES OF THE REPRODUCTIVE TRACT BULLS

AbstractThe purpose of this study was to evaluate by ultrasound and breeding soundness examination (BSE) the major diseases affecting the reproductive system of Nelore bulls, bred extensively in the state of Para, Brazil. Fifty-nine pure Nelore bulls were used, aged between 5 to 10 years, raised extensively in a commercial farm in the municipality of Paragominas, Pará state, Brazil.  Scrotal circumference, testicular length and width were measured. Semen collection for evaluation of ejaculate volume, turbulence, motility, vigor, concentration and sperm pathologies was performed. Ultrasound examination was performed by equipment type Ultrasonic Transducer - CHISON/D600vet, linear transducers, where the frequency used was 5 MHz, being held two images of each testis, the longitudinal-lateral, lateral and transverse planes. The images were processed using the program Image J. The data were analyzed using the statistical program SAS (2000) and means were compared using Tukey's test (p 0.05). Thus, it can be concluded that ultrasonography is an essential complementary tool in the diagnosis of reproductive disorders in animals subjected to BSE and its use should be recommended

Countermovement Jump Performance Trends in High School Football Players Throughout a Competitive Season

Football is the largest participation sport amongst male high school athletes in the country with over one million participants. Previous research has demonstrated that countermovement jump (CMJ) performance is negatively affected by in-season fatigue in contact sports such as rugby and hockey. However, little data are available to describe how CMJ performance and force metrics change in high school athletes throughout a competitive football season. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to examine the changes in strength and power metrics in high school football players over a single football season. METHODS: Sixty-nine male high school football athletes comprised of 25 offensive skill players, 23 linemen, 12 linebackers 7 defensive backs, and 2 special teams players were tested for maximal lower body force output at the beginning and end of a high school football season. Testing was conducted using three attempts of a maximal hands-on-hips countermovement jump on portable force plates, with the average of the three jumps used for analysis. Pre-testing occurred prior to the first game of the season, and post-test was conducted after the final game of the season with a minimum of 10-weeks between sessions accounted for the time between pre- and post-testing. A dependent-samples t-test was performed to calculate differences between the two time points. RESULTS: Significant improvements in jump height (14.15 to 14.89 inches), relative force at minimum displacement (220.36 to 235.77% body weight), peak relative braking force (220.72 to 236.39% body weight), peak relative propulsive force (238.07 to 248.02% body weight), peak braking velocity (-1.17 to -1.30m/s), and takeoff velocity (2.64 to 2.71m/s). No significant differences were seen in relative peak landing force (t(68) = 0.53, p=0.600). CONCLUSION: At the end of a competitive season, high school football athletes produced more force and increased their movement velocity, resulting in improvements in jump height compared to the beginning of the season. However, there were no significant differences in landing metrics indicating no changes in force absorption capacity. These increases in jump performance do not reflect results previously reported in contact sports such as rugby and hockey where jump performance typically decreased over the course of a season. Future studies may benefit from collecting additional performance data to assess the impact seasonal fatigue has on other body systems separate to lower body power production, and the effect to which practice and strength and conditioning programming impact force metrics. Without appropriate monitoring strategies, coaches are leaving the assessment of load management to chance, which can potentially lead to decreased performance and an increased chance of injury

Seasonal Shifts in Jumping Patterns: A Study of Countermovement Jump Strategies in High School Football Athletes

Modern sporting trends have begun to adopt sport science and load monitoring to identify in-season trends with the goal of improving performance and reducing injury. Although these resources have become increasingly common in professional and collegiate sports, many high school athletic programs have yet to adopt such technologies. While previous research has demonstrated season-long changes in jump performance, no research has investigated the impact of in-season demands on the changes in jump strategy in male high school football athletes. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to examine changes in jump strategy in high school football players over a single football season. METHODS: Sixty-nine male high school football athletes, including 25 offensive skill, 23 linemen, 12 linebackers, 7 defensive backs, and 2 special teams players were tested for maximal jump performance at the beginning and end of a high school football season. Testing was conducted using three attempts of a maximal hands-on-hips countermovement jump on portable force plates, with the average of the three jumps used for analysis. A minimum of 10-weeks between sessions accounted for the time between pre- and post-testing. A dependent-samples t-test was performed to calculate differences between the two time points. RESULTS: Significant reductions were observed across all phases of the jump movement revealed significant differences from pre- to post- testing. The largest reduction was seen during the unweighting phase (0.40 to 0.36s), followed by braking phase (0.22 to 0.19s), and finally propulsive phase (0.30 to 0.28s). Resulting in a total time to takeoff decrease of 0.92 seconds to 0.83 seconds, resulting in an increase in mean jump height (14.15 to 14.89 inches). Jump strategy differences were also significantly different between time points for modified reactive strength index (0.40 to 0.47 and stiffness metrics (-4996.86 to -5622.46N/m). No differences were seen for countermovement depth (t(68) = 0.44, p=0.663) between the two time points. CONCLUSION: At the end of a competitive season, high school football athletes increased their speed at all phases of the jumping motion. Despite the increased speed during the movement, there were no changes in the countermovement depth prior to takeoff. Our research indicates that football athletes become faster and more efficient with their CMJ strategy to achieve increased performance as measured by Jump Height. Future studies may benefit from collecting follow-up data collection to examine the detraining effect that can occur post-competition, and to incorporate differences between double and single leg jumping strategy. Doing so has the potential to identify injury risk and asymmetries throughout the season

Factors controlling rare earth element plus yttrium enrichment in Fe–Mn crusts from Canary Islands Seamounts (NE Central Atlantic)

Marine minerals are important because concentrate in their structure high contents of strategic and critical elements as rare earth elements. Forty-two samples from eight seamounts of Canary Islands Seamount Province (CISP) have been analyzed in order to evaluate their rare earth elements plus yttrium contents (REY). Highest contents of REY are related to hydrogenetic minerals and essentially Fe-vernadite (on average 3000 μg/g). Diagenetic minerals, on the other hand, show the lowest REY contents with an average content of 260 μg/g. These differences also depend on the growth rates, hydrogenetic minerals with growth rates between 0.5 and 5 mm/Ma allow the incorporation of more REY in their structure. REY contents in studied samples varies depending several factors associated with depth and location, shallowest samples presumably growth near or within the oxygen minimum zone are the most enriched with up to 3800 μg/g due to local enrichment of these elements and the slowest growth rate promoted by the reduced ambient conditions while deeper samples around 3000 m water depth show 2800 μg/g. Location also has a role in REY contents essentially due to the presence of different currents. Samples faced to north are exposed to the more oxygenated waters of the North Atlantic Deep Water and are depleted in REY if compared with deeper samples facing to south to the more oxic Antarctic Bottom Water. Finally, the case of study made on three different seamounts of the CISP show that Fe–Mn crusts from this area could provide on average 130 tons of hydrometallurgical recovered REY (based on 1 km2 areal crust coverage) together with interesting quantity of several other strategic and base elements as Mn, Co, Ni, Cu, V, Mo between others