The maximum energy dissipation principle and phenomenological cooperative and collective effects

The collective phenomena in physics and cooperative phenomena in biology/chemistry is compared in terms of the variational description. The maximum energy dissipation principle is employed and the cost-like functional is chosen according to an optimal control based formulation (Moroz, 2008; Moroz, 2009). Using this approach, the variational outline has been considered for non-equilibrium thermodynamic conditions. The differences between the application of the proposed approach to the description of cooperative phenomena in chemical/biochemical kinetics and the Landau free energy approach to collective phenomena in physics have been investigated.Comment: Preprint, 11 pages, 2 figures, submitted to Physics Letters A, to appear in 201

Reduced order modelling of bone resorption and formation.

The bone remodelling process, performed by the Bone Multicellular Unit (BMU) is a key multi-hierarchically regulated process, which provides and supports various functionality of bone tissue. It is also plays a critical role in bone disorders, as well as bone tissue healing following damage. Improved modelling of bone turnover processes could play a significant role in helping to understand the underlying cause of bone disorders and thus develop more effective treatment methods. Moreover, despite extensive research in the field of bone tissue engineering, bonescaffold development is still very empirical. The development of improved methods of modelling the bone remodelling process should help to develop new implant designs which encourage rapid osteointegration. There are a number of limitations with respect to previous research in the field of mathematical modelling of the bone remodelling process, including the absence of an osteocyte loop of regulation. It is within this context that this research presented in this thesis utilises a range of modelling methods to develop a framework for bone remodelling which can be used to improve treatment methods for bone disorders. The study concentrated on dynamic and steady state variables that in perspective can be used as constraints for optimisation problem considering bone remodelling or tissue remodelling with the help of the grafts/scaffolds.The cellular and combined allosteric-regulation approaches to modelling of bone turnover, based on the osteocyte loop of regulation, have been studied. Both approaches have been studied different within wide range of rate parameters. The approach to the model validation has been considered, including a statistical approach and parameter reduction approach. From a validation perspective the cellular class of modes is preferable since it has fewer parameters to validate. The optimal control framework for regulation of remodelling has been studied. Future work in to improve the models and their application to bone scaffold design applications have been considered. The study illustrates the complexity of formalisation of the metabolic processes and the relations between hierarchical subsystems in hard tissue where a relatively small number of cells are active. Different types/modes of behaviour have been found in the study: relaxational, periodical and chaotic modes. All of these types of behaviour can be found, in bone tissue. However, a chaotic or periodic modes are ones of the hardest to verify although a number of periodical phenomena have been observed empirically in bone and skeletal development. Implementation of the allosteric loop into cellular model damps other types of behaviour/modes. In this sense it improves the robustness, predictability and control of the system. The developed models represent a first step in a hierarchical model of bone tissue (system versus local effects). The limited autonomy of any organ or tissue implies differentiation on a regulatory level as well as physiological functions and metabolic differences. Implementation into the cellular phenomenological model of allosteric-like loop of regulation has been performed. The results show that the robustness of regulation can be inherited from the phenomenological model. An attempt to correlate the main bone disorders with different modes of behaviour has been undertaken using Paget’s disorder in bone, osteoporosis and some more general skeleton disorders which lead to periodical changes in bone mass, reported by some authors. However, additional studies are needed to make this hypothesis significant. The study has revealed a few interesting techniques. When studying a multidimensional phenomenon, as a bone tissue is, the visualisation and data reduction is important for analysis and interpretation of results. In the study two novel technical methods have been proposed. The first is the graphical matrix method to visualise/project the multidimensional phase space of variables into diagonal matrix of regular combination of two-dimensional graphs. This significantly simplifies the analysis and, in principle, makes it possible to visualise the phase space higher than three-dimensional. The second important technical development is the application of the Monte-Carlo method in combination with the regression method to study the character and stability of the equilibrium points of a dynamic system. The advantage of this method is that it enables the most influential parameters that affect the character and stability of the equilibrium point to be identified from a large number of the rate parameters/constants of the dynamic system. This makes the interpretation of parameters and conceptual verification of the model much easier

An Investigation into the Effects of Teacher Involvement and Influence on the Creativity of Children in the Classroom

Children have potential for demonstrating increased creativity where certain negative influences are removed during the creative process. These negative influences include the involvement of the teacher in the art and design class at school. This study establishes through primary and secondary research the different ways that teachers engage with children as potential influences that are tested through experimentation. The study was concerned with revealing levels of creativity in designs as well as signs of adult influence. The results revealed that different types of involvement do have a negative impact on creativity, especially giving children instructions

Electropolishing of re-melted SLM stainless steel 316L parts using deep eutectic solvents: 3x3 full factorial design

The authors acknowledge the significant support provided by researchers from the Materials Centre, Department of Chemistry, University of Leicester (Dr Harris, Robert C., Dr Juma, Jamil ‎ and particularly Karl S. Ryder, Professor of Physical Chemistry). The affiliation of co-author A.A.Al-Barzinjy at time of submission of the article and duration of the experimental work, was the Materials Centre, Department of Chemistry, University of Leicester. The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.This three-level three-factor full factorial study describes the effects of electropolishing using deep eutectic solvents on the surface roughness of re-melted 316L stainless steel samples produced by the selective laser melting (SLM) powder bed fusion additive manufacturing method. An improvement in the surface finish of re-melted stainless steel 316L parts was achieved by optimizing the processing parameters for a relatively environmentally friendly electropolishing process using a Choline Chloride ionic electrolyte. The results show that further improvement of the response value-average surface roughness (Ra) can be obtained by electropolishing after re-melting to yield a 75% improvement compared to the as-built Ra. The best Ra value was less than 0.5 lm, obtained with a potential of 4 V, maintained for 30 min at 40 C. Electropolishing has been shown to be effective at removing the residual oxide film formed during the remelting process. The material dissolution during the process is not homogenous and is directed preferentially toward the iron and nickel, leaving the surface rich in chromium with potentially enhanced properties. The re-melted and polished surface of the samples gave an approximately 20% improvement in fatigue life at low stresses (approximately 570 MPa). The results of the study demonstrate that a combination of re-melting and electropolishing provides a flexible method for surface texture improvement which is capable of delivering a significant improvement in surface finish while holding the dimensional accuracy of parts within an acceptable range

Evaluation of Suitability of Rapid Prototyping Techniques for Use by Children

This is a paper produced by Rafat Madani as part of his PhD research, under the supervision of Dr Adam Moroz and Dr Emily Baines (both at De Montfort University), with some specialist advice from Belal Makled.Technology that facilitates rapid prototyping and rapid manufacturing has become increasingly available to the ordinary user in the home, the office, or at school. These rapid prototyping technologies should make it possible to offer school children the opportunity to design and then realise three dimensional (3D) objects. One of the perceived benefits of this is that children can become more involved in the process of producing 3D objects. Unfortunately, because of the nature of the available of the technology, and the issues associated with access to materials, adult help, supervision and assistance are often required, depriving children of the opportunity to create and produce freely, taking ownership of the process. This study evaluates the different techniques and materials available to children, highlighting their benefits and limitations, and reaching a conclusion about which materials and techniques are the most suitable for achieving a child-led approach to production. The study concludes that Cubify Cube is the most appropriate solution in terms of ease of use, not requiring adult assistance or supervision or the realisation of designs

Investigating the Demand for Short-shelf Life Food Products for SME Wholesalers

Accurate forecasting of fresh produce demand is one the challenges faced by Small Medium Enterprise (SME) wholesalers. This paper is an attempt to understand the cause for the high level of variability such as weather, holidays etc., in demand of SME wholesalers. Therefore, understanding the significance of unidentified factors may improve the forecasting accuracy. This paper presents the current literature on the factors used to predict demand and the existing forecasting techniques of short shelf life products. It then investigates a variety of internal and external possible factors, some of which is not used by other researchers in the demand prediction process. The results presented in this paper are further analysed using a number of techniques to minimize noise in the data. For the analysis past sales data (January 2009 to May 2014) from a UK based SME wholesaler is used and the results presented are limited to product ‘Milk’ focused on café’s in derby. The correlation analysis is done to check the dependencies of variability factor on the actual demand. Further PCA analysis is done to understand the significance of factors identified using correlation. The PCA results suggest that the cloud cover, weather summary and temperature are the most significant factors that can be used in forecasting the demand. The correlation of the above three factors increased relative to monthly and becomes more stable compared to the weekly and daily demand

CMS physics technical design report : Addendum on high density QCD with heavy ions

Peer reviewe

A Variational Framework for Nonlinear Chemical Thermodynamics Employing the Maximum Energy Dissipation Principle.

Maximum energy dissipation principle is employed to nonlinear chemical thermodynamics in terms of distance variable (general displacement) from the global equilibrium, applyong the optimal control interpretation to develop a variational formulation. The cost-like functional was chosen to support the suggestion that such a formulation corresponds to the maximum energy dissipation principle. Using this approach, the variational framework was proposed for a nonlinear chemical thermodynamics, including a general cooperative kinetics model. The formulation is in good agreement with standatd linear nonequilibrium chemical thermodynamics

On a variational formulation of the Maximum Energy Dissipation principle for nonequilibrium chemical thermodynamics

The maximum energy dissipation related to maximum entropy production hypothesis has been revised above in terms of the pure variational approach and the Pontryagin maximum principle in optimal control.In this work we revise the applicability of the optimal control and variational approach to the maximum energy dissipation (MED) principle in non-equilibrium thermodynamics. The optimal control analogies for the kinetical and potential parts of thermodynamic Lagrangian (in the form of a sum of the positively defined thermodynamic potential and positively defined dissipative function) have been considered. An interpretation of thermodynamic momenta is discussed with respect to standard optimal control applications,which employ dynamic constraints. Also included is interpretation in terms of the least action principle