Engineering data management: a tool for technical coordination

This paper studies the basic motivations behind Engineering Data Management (EDM) in a decade long Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project with at least another decades operational period at CERN. The main argument is that without strict managerial principles to control engineering work the exploitation of EDM becomes impossible. Structured and organized configuration management is the absolute prerequisite for an effective integration of design, manufacturing and installation work. EDM is seen to provide all collaborating parties of the project with a coherent and up-to-date view of the product specifications together with other relevant information, such as products change log, responsibilities and status indicators during the products whole life-cycle. It is argued that by combining simple and commonly accepted managerial principles with an advanced EDM system the outcome supports the main phases of products evolution, i.e. design, assembly, operation and maintenance. The paper outlines the main tasks of the configuration management and the fundamental requirements of EDM in order to meet LHC-projects complexity, stringent budget, high quality and tight schedule constraints set by the CERN Council. Keywords: configuration management, new product development, project management, concurrent engineering, engineering data managemen

Motivational Factors And The Hospitality Industry: A Case Study Examining The Effects Of Changes In The Working Environment

The Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Bangkok is a world-wide leader in hospitality management. A critical ingredient for their success has been developing and maintaining superior performance from their employees. How is that accomplished? What Human Resource Management (HRM) practices should organizations invest in to acquire and retain great employees? Recent studies have demonstrated the importance of providing a supportive work environment, one that engenders employee satisfaction and promotes effective service performance among hospitality employees. But what is a supportive environment for hotel workers who are required to be responsive to the needs of guests twenty four hours a day? The Mandarin Oriental’s unique approach involved building a separate area in the hotel dedicated to the well-being of their employees. This area—The O-Zone—originated from the idea of providing workplaces which support fun and enjoyment as part of work-life balance. The case focuses attention on how changes in the working environment can significantly enhance the recognition and appreciation of employees A dedicated employee center in the hospitality industry has not been explored before and offers up an exceptional opportunity to examine the effect on motivation and how the center may be appreciated differently by employees based on gender, department and work experience—an important consideration for Human Resources when designing incentive programs

The information system for LHC parameters and layouts

The construction of the Large Hadron Collider, LHC, at CERN implies both the handling of a huge amount of information and the control of the coherence of this information. The LHC machine parameters have to be maintained coherent as the design evolves from the conceptual stage to the actual, installed, machine and have to be made available to all concerned. Design data is provided in many different formats from the machine builders, drawings, technical documents, meeting notes, lattice simulation input files, etc. The World Wide Web is being used to make the information accessible both at CERN and at the external collaborating laboratories. In this paper we describe the implementation of an Oracle database as the central common repository for machine parameters and of information for the automatic generation of CAD layout drawings and WWW pages. This system is integrated in a larger context, the EDMS system for the LHC project, which encompasses both the accelerator and the experiments

Maternal allocation of carotenoids increases tolerance to bacterial infection in brown trout.

Life-history theory predicts that iteroparous females allocate their resources differently among different breeding seasons depending on their residual reproductive value. In iteroparous salmonids there is typically much variation in egg size, egg number, and in the compounds that females allocate to their clutch. These compounds include various carotenoids whose functions are not sufficiently understood yet. We sampled 37 female and 35 male brown trout from natural streams, collected their gametes for in vitro fertilizations, experimentally produced 185 families in 7 full-factorial breeding blocks, raised the developing embryos singly (n = 2960), and either sham-treated or infected them with Pseudomonas fluorescens. We used female redness (as a measure of carotenoids stored in the skin) and their allocation of carotenoids to clutches to infer maternal strategies. Astaxanthin contents largely determined egg colour. Neither egg weight nor female size was correlated with the content of this carotenoid. However, astaxanthin content was positively correlated with larval growth and with tolerance against P. fluorescens. There was a negative correlation between female skin redness and the carotenoid content of their eggs. Although higher astaxanthin contents in the eggs were associated with an improvement of early fitness-related traits, some females appeared not to maximally support their current offspring as revealed by the negative correlation between female red skin colouration and egg carotenoid content. This correlation was not explained by female size and supports the prediction of a maternal trade-off between current and future reproduction

The CEDAR Project

The LHC project at CERN requires both the handling of a huge amount of engineering information and the control of the coherence of this information as the design work evolves on the machine and the experiments. A commercial Engineering Data Management System, (EDMS), is being implemented to manage data for the design, construction, installation and maintenance of both the accelerator and the experiments. This CERN-wide project is called CEDAR The World Wide Web is used to make the information accessible at CERN and in the external collaborating laboratories around the world. In this paper we describe the objectives of the CEDAR project, the different subprojects in the machine and the experiments as well as the first results of the implementation work

Fully automated screening of veterinary drugs in milk by turbulent flow chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry

There is an increasing interest in screening methods for quick and sensitive analysis of various classes of veterinary drugs with limited sample pre-treatment. Turbulent flow chromatography in combination with tandem mass spectrometry has been applied for the first time as an efficient screening method in routine analysis of milk samples. Eight veterinary drugs, belonging to seven different classes were selected for this study. After developing and optimising the method, parameters such as linearity, repeatability, matrix effects and carry-over were studied. The screening method was then tested in the routine analysis of 12 raw milk samples. Even without internal standards, the linearity of the method was found to be good in the concentration range of 50 to 500 µg/L. Regarding repeatability, RSDs below 12% were obtained for all analytes, with only a few exceptions. The limits of detection were between 0.1 and 5.2 µg/L, far below the maximum residue levels for milk set by the EU regulations. While matrix effects—ion suppression or enhancement—are obtained for all the analytes the method has proved to be useful for screening purposes because of its sensitivity, linearity and repeatability. Furthermore, when performing the routine analysis of the raw milk samples, no false positive or negative results were obtained

An integrated genomic approach to dissect the genetic landscape regulating the cell-to-cell transfer of α-synuclein

Neuropathological and experimental evidence suggests that the cell-to-cell transfer of α-synuclein has an important role in the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease (PD). However, the mechanism underlying this phenomenon is not fully understood. We undertook a small interfering RNA (siRNA), genome-wide screen to identify genes regulating the cell-to-cell transfer of α-synuclein. A genetically encoded reporter, GFP-2A-αSynuclein-RFP, suitable for separating donor and recipient cells, was transiently transfected into HEK cells stably overexpressing α-synuclein. We find that 38 genes regulate the transfer of α-synuclein-RFP, one of which is ITGA8, a candidate gene identified through a recent PD genome-wide association study (GWAS). Weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) and weighted protein-protein network interaction analysis (WPPNIA) show that those hits cluster in networks that include known PD genes more frequently than expected by random chance. The findings expand our understanding of the mechanism of α-synuclein spread

Assays to Detect β-Tubulin Codon 200 Polymorphism in Trichuris trichiura and Ascaris lumbricoides

The soil-transmitted helminths Ascaris lumbricoides and Trichuris trichiura are gastrointestinal nematodes causing many disabilities in tropical parts of the developing world. Control programs, such as “The Focussing Resources on Effective School Health” (FRESH) Partnership, have been implemented to remove human soil-transmitted nematodes through large-scale use of benzimidazole anthelmintic drugs for school-aged children in developing countries. The benzimidazole drugs albendazole and mebendazole are commonly used as a single annual treatment in areas where the burden is high. In veterinary nematodes, repeated use of these anthelmintics has selected for resistant populations. Resistance to benzimidazoles is commonly associated with a single amino acid substitution from phenylalanine to tyrosine in the β-tubulin gene at position 200. In this study, we have developed pyrosequencing assays for codon 200 in A. lumbricoides and T. trichiura to screen for this single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in β-tubulin. The 200Tyr SNP was detected at low frequency in T. trichiura from non-treated people from Kenya and at high frequency in T. trichiura from treated people from Panama. The presence of the resistance-associated SNP may play a role in the sometimes low and variable efficacy of benzimidazole anthelmintics against T. trichiura