A performance model of a telecommunications network structured according to intelligent network principles

The Intelligent Network (IN) is an telecommunications services architecture which enables the rapid creation and deployment of supplementary telecommunications services. However, this flexibility makes the management of the network performance critical in ensuring that customers receive their expected Quality of Service. This thesis describes a model which has been developed to predict the delays in the network due to IN-specific service processing. The model proposed is a queuing network which builds on the existing state of the art as follows. The characteristics of the flows between the IN physical entities are considered and general service time distributions are assumed at each entity. Additionally, the model allows the reservation of capacities as the SCP for each service type. An analytic formulation was developed using the decomposition approximate method. The model was also simulated in order to ascertain its’ accuracy. The results of the analytic solution and the simulation were compared for different scenarios and the results are presented in this thesis. The analytic approximation was found to be a very good solution for situations where network utilisation was low or medium. As the utilisation of the network increases to higher utilisation factors, the accuracy of the analytic solution decreases

Integrated membrane systems for toxic cyanobacteria removal

Blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) provide a major problem for the water industry as they can produce metabolites toxic to humans in addition to taste and odour (T&O) compounds that make drinking water aesthetically displeasing. This problem is likely to be intensified by the effects of climate change through reservoir warming. Microfiltration (MF) provides a potential solution for dealing with blooms of toxic blue green algae. In the past, coagulation and sand filtration have been successfully used for removal of cyanobacteria, however as membrane technology has become more economically viable, the demand for information on the application of membranes for cyanobacterial metabolite removal has increased. MF pore size is a key matter as cyanobacterial metabolites should permeate such membranes. However, if cyanobacterial metabolites remain within the algal cells MF might be effective through the removal of these intact cells. This study investigated an integrated membrane system incorporating coagulation, powdered activated carbon and MF for the removal of intracellular and extracellular cyanobacterial metabolites. A laboratory scale MF unit was designed and studied. It utilised PVDF fibres with a nominal 0.02 micron pore size. Three species of blue-green algae were tested and three different coagulants were used on each species for removal of intact cells. Powdered activated carbon (PAC) was dosed prior to the MF at 20mg/L to remove extracellular metabolites. Cell counts as well as analysis for total and extracellular toxin and T&O were undertaken to assess each stage of the IMS. The results of this study are promising.Mike Dixon, Brian O'Neill, Yann Richard, Lionel Ho, Chris Chow and Gayle Newcombehttp://www.chemeca2010.com/abstract/460.as

Engagement of people with multiple sclerosis to enhance research into the physiological effect of hyperbaric oxygen therapy

BACKGROUND: Thousands of people with multiple sclerosis (MS) have used self-administered oxygen therapy in the UK. Clinical trials have been performed, with scant evidence that people with MS have been consulted to explore how they benefit from or how to optimize this treatment. The conventional MS disease disability scores used in trials seldom reflect the effects individuals report when using oxygen therapy to treat their symptoms. METHODS: Three people with MS and the manager of an MS Centre formed a public involvement group and collaborated with clinicians and scientists to inform a lab-based study to investigate the physiological effects of oxygen therapy on microvascular brain endothelial cells. RESULTS: People with MS often use oxygen therapy at a later stage when their symptoms worsen and only after using other treatments. The frequency of oxygen therapy sessions and hyperbaric pressure is individualized and varies for people with MS. Despite direct comparisons of efficacy proving difficult, most individuals are exposed to 100% O2 at 1.5 atmosphere absolute (ATA; 1140 mmHg absolute) for 60 min. In a laboratory-based study human brain endothelial cells were exposed in vitro to 152 mmHg O2 for 60 min with and without pressure, as this equates to 20% O2 achievable via hyperbarics, which was then replicated at atmospheric pressure. A significant reduction in endothelial cells ICAM-1 (CD54) implicated in inflammatory cell margination across the blood brain barrier was observed under oxygen treatment. CONCLUSIONS: By collaborating with people living with MS, we were able to design laboratory-based experimental protocols that replicate their treatment regimens to advance our understanding of the physiological effects of hyperbaric oxygen treatment on brain cells and their role in neuroinflammation

SAperI: Approaching Gender Gap Using Spatial Ability Training Week in High-School Context

The purpose of this paper is to describe the structure of a girls summer school, “SAperI – Spatial Ability per l’Ingegneria” (in English, “Knowledge – Spatial Ability for Engineering”), and to illustrate its impact on spatial ability development and future career preferences on those who participated in the week long summer school compared to a control group that did not participate.The 5 days school,organized by Politecnico di Torino (Italy), was included in a larger project addressing 17 years old high-school students. Thirtyseven girls actively took part in a summer school, while 167 students (both males and females) were tested as a controlled group.For those who attended the summer school, significant gains were observed in four measures of spatial ability - mental rotation, spatialvisualization, mental cutting and paper folding. For a minority of participants, scores on one of these tests, paper folding, were lower when measured at the end of the summer school but this was an exception. Furthermore, when tested several months after the summer school, the gains in spatial ability that were made during the course were maintained indicating stability over time with regard to the improvement in spatial ability.In terms of the experience of taking the course, the feedback provided was very positive and all but one participant would recommend the summer school to othergirls at this stage of high school

Self-repair ability of evolved self-assembling systems in cellular automata

Self-repairing systems are those that are able to reconfigure themselves following disruptions to bring them back into a defined normal state. In this paper we explore the self-repair ability of some cellular automata-like systems, which differ from classical cellular automata by the introduction of a local diffusion process inspired by chemical signalling processes in biological development. The update rules in these systems are evolved using genetic programming to self-assemble towards a target pattern. In particular, we demonstrate that once the update rules have been evolved for self-assembly, many of those update rules also provide a self-repair ability without any additional evolutionary process aimed specifically at self-repair