Economic design of X̅-control charts under generalized exponential shock models with uniform sampling intervals

Economic design of X̅-control chart was first presented by Duncan’s model (1956) model and then followed by Hu (1984) with fixed sampling intervals and failure mechanism of Poisson and Weibull distributions, respectively. For the sake of convenience, in many situations, it may be desirable to have frequency of sampling fixed with age of the system and to avoid certain drawbacks of the mentioned distributions. It appears that the Generalized Exponential model can be used as an alternative to the Poisson or Weibull models in many situations. We, here, proposed a cost model based upon Generalized Exponential with uniform sampling intervals

Economic design of X̅-control charts under generalized exponential shock models with uniform sampling intervals

Economic design of X̅-control chart was first presented by Duncan’s model (1956) model and then followed by Hu (1984) with fixed sampling intervals and failure mechanism of Poisson and Weibull distributions, respectively. For the sake of convenience, in many situations, it may be desirable to have frequency of sampling fixed with age of the system and to avoid certain drawbacks of the mentioned distributions. It appears that the Generalized Exponential model can be used as an alternative to the Poisson or Weibull models in many situations. We, here, proposed a cost model based upon Generalized Exponential with uniform sampling intervals

Efficient identification of hydrophobic MOFs: Application in the capture of toxic industrial chemicals

A novel and quick computational strategy is developed based on water Henry's constants to distinguish different levels of hydrophobicity among metal–organic frameworks. The technique is applied to a large database of MOFs to identify hydrophobic materials.We thank the Army Research Office (grant W911NF-12-1-0130) and the EPSRC IAA Partnership Development Award (RG/75759) for financial support. Computational work was partly supported by Northwestern University's shared computer system, Quest (project: P20261). D. F.-J. thanks the Royal Society for funding through a University Research Fellowship. We also thank Prof. Omar Yaghi and Dr Hiroyasu Furukawa for supplying the experimental water isotherms for some of the MOFs studied in this work. We thank Dr Pritha Ghosh and Dr Diego A. Gomez-Gualdron for fruitful discussions.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the Royal Society of Chemistry via http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/c5ta06472

Pipeline failure prediction in water distribution networks using evolutionary polynomial regression combined with Κ- means clustering

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis via the DOI in this record.This paper presents a new approach for improving pipeline failure predictions by combining a data driven statistical model, i.e. Evolutionary Polynomial Regression (EPR), with K-means clustering. The EPR is used for prediction of pipe failures based on length, diameter and age of pipes as explanatory factors. Individual pipes are aggregated using their attributes of age, diameter and soil type to create homogenous groups of pipes. The created groups were divided into training and test datasets using the cross-validation technique for calibration and validation purposes respectively. The K-means clustering is employed to partition the training data into a number of clusters for individual EPR models. The proposed approach was demonstrated by application to the cast iron pipes of a water distribution network in the UK. Results show the proposed approach is able to significantly reduce the error of pipe failure predictions especially in the case of a large number of failures. The prediction models were used to calculate the failure rate of individual pipes for rehabilitation planning.The work reported is supported by the UK Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) project Safe &SuRe (EP/K006924/1)

Development of a DNA-Liposome Complex for Gene Delivery Applications

The association structures formed by cationic liposomes and DNA(Deoxyribonucleic acid)-liposome have been effectively utilized as gene carriers in transfection assays. In this research study, cationic liposomes were prepared using a modified lipid film hydration method consisting of a lyophilization step for gene delivery applications. The obtained results demonstrated that the mean particle size had no significant change while the polydispersity (PDI) increased after lyophilization. The mean particle size slightly reduced after lyophilization (520 ± 12 nm to 464 ± 25 nm) while the PDI increased after lyophilization (0.094 ± 0.017 to 0.220 ± 0.004). In addition. The mean particle size of vesicles increases when DNA is incorporated to the liposomes (673 ± 27 nm). According to the Scanning Electron Microscopy(SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images, the spherical shape of liposomes confirmed their successful preservation and reconstitution from the powder. It was found that liposomal formulation has enhanced transfection considerably compared to the naked DNA as negative control. Finally, liposomal formulation in this research had a better function than Lipofectamine® 2000 as a commercialized product because the cellular activity (cellular protein) was higher in the prepared lipoplex than Lipofectamine® 2000

Genetic variation of Amaranthus retroflexus L. and Chenopodium album L. (Amaranthaceae) suggests multiple independent introductions into Iran

Amaranthus retroflexus L. and Chenopodium album L. (Amaranthaceae) are weedy plants that cause severe ecological and economic damage. In this study, we collected DNA from three different countries and assessed genetic diversity using inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR) markers. Our analysis shows both weed species have low genetic diversity within a population and high genetic diversity among populations, as well as a low value of gene flow among the populations. UPGMA clustering and principal coordinate analysis indicate four distinct groups for A. retroflexus L. and C. album L. exist. We detected significant isolation-by-distance for A. retroflexus L. and no significant correlation for C. album L. These conclusions are based data from 13 ISSR primers where the average percentage of polymorphism produced was 98.46 % for A. retroflexus L. and 74.81% for C. album L.. These data suggest that each population was independently introduced to the location from which it was sampled and these noxious weeds come armed with considerable genetic variability giving them the opportunity to manifest myriad traits that could be used to avoid management practices. Our results, albeit not definitive about this issue, do not support the native status of C. album L. in Iran