Modelling a Maintenance Scheduling Problem with Alternative Resources

Effective management of maintenance in buildings can have a signi cant impact on the total life cycle costs and on the building energy use. Nevertheless, the building maintenance scheduling problem has been infrequently studied. In this paper, we present constraint-based scheduling models for the building maintenance scheduling problem, where each activity has a set of alternative resources. We consider two di erent models, one using basic constraints, and the other using our new and modi fied global constraints, which handle alternative disjunctive resources for each activity to allow propagation before activities are assigned to resources. We evaluate these models on randomly generated problems and show that while the basic model is faster on smaller problems, the global con- straint model scales better

Stability of Mine Car Motion in Curves of Invariable and Variable Radii

We discuss our experiences adapting three recent algorithms for maximum common (connected) subgraph problems to exploit multi-core parallelism. These algorithms do not easily lend themselves to parallel search, as the search trees are extremely irregular, making balanced work distribution hard, and runtimes are very sensitive to value-ordering heuristic behaviour. Nonetheless, our results show that each algorithm can be parallelised successfully, with the threaded algorithms we create being clearly better than the sequential ones. We then look in more detail at the results, and discuss how speedups should be measured for this kind of algorithm. Because of the difficulty in quantifying an average speedup when so-called anomalous speedups (superlinear and sublinear) are common, we propose a new measure called aggregate speedup

5-oxoETE triggers nociception in constipation-predominant irritable bowel syndrome through MAS-related G protein-coupled receptor D.

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a common gastrointestinal disorder that is characterized by chronic abdominal pain concurrent with altered bowel habit. Polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) metabolites are increased in abundance in IBS and are implicated in the alteration of sensation to mechanical stimuli, which is defined as visceral hypersensitivity. We sought to quantify PUFA metabolites in patients with IBS and evaluate their role in pain. Quantification of PUFA metabolites by mass spectrometry in colonic biopsies showed an increased abundance of 5-oxoeicosatetraenoic acid (5-oxoETE) only in biopsies taken from patients with IBS with predominant constipation (IBS-C). Local administration of 5-oxoETE to mice induced somatic and visceral hypersensitivity to mechanical stimuli without causing tissue inflammation. We found that 5-oxoETE directly acted on both human and mouse sensory neurons as shown by lumbar splanchnic nerve recordings and Ca2+ imaging of dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons. We showed that 5-oxoETE selectively stimulated nonpeptidergic, isolectin B4 (IB4)-positive DRG neurons through a phospholipase C (PLC)- and pertussis toxin-dependent mechanism, suggesting that the effect was mediated by a G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR). The MAS-related GPCR D (Mrgprd) was found in mouse colonic DRG afferents and was identified as being implicated in the noxious effects of 5-oxoETE. Together, these data suggest that 5-oxoETE, a potential biomarker of IBS-C, induces somatic and visceral hyperalgesia without inflammation in an Mrgprd-dependent manner. Thus, 5-oxoETE may play a pivotal role in the abdominal pain associated with IBS-C.BBSRC BB/R006210/1 to James R F Hockley and Ewan St John Smith Rosetrees 834 Postdoctoral Grant (A1296) awarded to James R F Hockley and Ewan St John Smit

Sequential and parallel solution-biased search for subgraph algorithms

Funding: This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (grant numbers EP/P026842/1, EP/M508056/1, and EP/N007565).The current state of the art in subgraph isomorphism solving involves using degree as a value-ordering heuristic to direct backtracking search. Such a search makes a heavy commitment to the first branching choice, which is often incorrect. To mitigate this, we introduce and evaluate a new approach, which we call “solution-biased search”. By combining a slightly-random value-ordering heuristic, rapid restarts, and nogood recording, we design an algorithm which instead uses degree to direct the proportion of search effort spent in different subproblems. This increases performance by two orders of magnitude on satisfiable instances, whilst not affecting performance on unsatisfiable instances. This algorithm can also be parallelised in a very simple but effective way: across both satisfiable and unsatisfiable instances, we get a further speedup of over thirty from thirty-six cores, and over one hundred from ten distributed-memory hosts. Finally, we show that solution-biased search is also suitable for optimisation problems, by using it to improve two maximum common induced subgraph algorithms.Postprin

Effect of Foods and β-Cyclodextrin on the Bioaccessibility and the Uptake by Caco-2 Cells of Hydroxytyrosol from Either a Pure Standard or Alperujo

International audienceHydroxytyrosol bioaccessibility and absorption by the intestinal cells have been studied using an in vitro digestion model and Caco-2 TC7 monolayers cells in culture, in the presence or absence of β-cyclodextrin and foods. Hydroxytyrosol was either provided as a pure standard or in an alperujo powder. The presence of foods significantly decreased hydroxytyrosol bioaccessibility and absorption (-20% and -10%, respectively), while β-cyclodextrin had no effect. Moreover, the presence of other compounds from alperujo in the intestine compartment reduced hydroxytyrosol absorption by Caco-2 cells compared to pure standard (-60%). The final bioavailability of hydroxytyrosol, defined as its quantity at the basolateral side of cultured cell monolayers compared to the initial amount in the test meal, was 6.9±0.4%, 31.1±1.1% and 40.9±1.5% when hydroxytyrosol was from al perujo, or a standard administered with or without food, respectively.Our results show that conversely to foods, β-cyclodextrin does not alter hydroxytyrosolbioavailability

Comparison of sutured valves and suturless and rapid deployment valves in aortic valve surgery by minimally invasive approach

International audienc