The influence of an upstream pylon on open rotor aerodynamics at angle of attack

The aerodynamic impact of installing a horizontal pylon in front of a contra-rotating open rotor engine, at take-off, was studied. The unsteady interactions of the pylon's wake and potential field with the rotor blades were predicted by full-annulus URANS CFD calculations at 0 deg and 12 deg angle of attack (AoA). Two pylon configurations were studied: one where the front rotor blades move down behind the pylon (DBP), and one where they move up behind the pylon (UBP). When operating at 12 deg AoA, the UBP orientation was shown to reduce the rear rotor tip vortex sizes and separated flow regions, whereas the front rotor wake and vortex sizes were increased. In contrast, the DBP orientation was found to reduce the incidence variations onto the front rotor, leading to smaller wakes and vortices. The engine flow was also time-averaged, and the variation in work done on average midspan streamlines was shown to depend strongly on variation in incidence, along with a smaller contribution related to change of radius.Rolls-Royce plc, SAGE ITD (part of the Clean Sky JTI), and EPSR

Surveillance and Protection-Based Approach for Link Failures over Fiber-to the-Home (FTTH) with Combination of ACS and SANTAD

This paper introduces an in-service transmission surveillance and protection-based approach for fiber failures/faults over fiber-to-the-home passive optical network (FTTH-PON) with an excellent combination of Access Control System (ACS) and Smart Access Network Testing, Analyzing and Database (SANTAD). Our hardware design works on a standard local area network (LAN) using a specially designed hardware interfaced with a microcontroller integrated Ethernet to monitor the status of optical signals flow and provide the restoration against fiber failures/faults in FTTH-PON. We also introduce the centralized management and access control program by means of SANTAD. ACS is used to control the troubleshooting mechanism carried out by SANTAD. This design will be implemented at central office (CO) for distant monitoring and remote controlling each optical fiber line's status as well as for detecting any failures/faults that occurs in the network system downwardly from CO towards multiple optical network units (ONUs). The scope of this discussion only highlighted on the monitoring and controlling instead of the restoration scheme

The determinants of credit risk in Malaysia

Although Enterprise-Wide Risk Management (EWRM) concept is still new in many parts of Asia, there are positive indications that EWRM is beginning to receive attention.As a matter of fact, this topic is being widely discussed on an industry-wide basis.The emergence of EWRM is cited to be driven most by corporate governance, and its effective implementation is claimed to contribute towards value creation.This paper thus examined the drivers and the success of EWRM implementation with corporate governance compliance and value creation in for-profit companies.A survey found that EWRM concepts and its efforts have become a growing concern among Public Listed Companies (PLCs).The motivation factor of corporate governance is evidenced especially in non financial companies.Whilst financial companies cited that their EWRM practices were not only being driven by corporate governance compliance, but also for good business practice and improved decision making.In addition the motives of its implementation ensured the survival of the company and value creation

Facilitate recycle activities via ICT and physical approach

Recycle, reuse and reduce are commonly heard as the activities to support for green environment. However, without or lack of self awareness and voluntary to contribute to the green it can cause a failure effort and projects from the government and other sectors. Furthermore, the public could not be expected to keep recycling without enough motivation, assistance and facility. Alternatively, we proposed a web application as an e-platform for the community and business entity including shopping mall, green business and other agencies to support and collaborate between each other in supporting for recycle and reuse. We have investigated through survey and interview with those involved including the public and representatives from the selected shopping malls to collect data of the current scenario regarding their awareness and willingness to contribute to green. Our solution called e-Reward for Recyclers purposely to motivate people to recycle their used items from home at one stop recycling centre by collaborating with shopping malls. Lastly, we wanted to connect people from the green business including recycle factory, reused company and welfare organization to the recycle centre for them to collect mass recycled items to be reused for their purposes

The prevalence and risk factors of occult stress urinary incontinence in women undergoing genitourinary prolapse surgery

De novo stress urinary incontinence (SUI) may occur in up to 80% of clinically continent women following genitourinary prolapse surgery. This had resulted in an increase in the rate of concurrent continence surgery during prolapse repair from 38% in 2001 to 47% in 2009 in the United States. To date, there is no local data available to estimate the prevalence of occult SUI (OSUI) among Malaysian women awaiting surgery. Therefore, this study was conducted to elicit the prevalence of occult SUI and its associated risks factors in patients awaiting prolapse surgery. We retrospectively studied the records of 296 consecutive women with significant pelvic organ prolapse awaiting reconstructive repair. All patients attended the Urogynaecology Unit in Hospital Kuala Lumpur Malaysia between October 2007 and September 2011. They had undergone standardized interviews, clinical examinations and urodynamic studies. During the urodynamic testings, all prolapses were reduced using ring pessaries to elicit OSUI. Primary outcome was the prevalence of OSUI with prolapse reduction to predict possibility of developing de novo SUI following prolapse surgery. Secondary outcome was the assessment of potential risk factors for OSUI. Among the 296 women studied, 121 (40.9%) were found to have OSUI. The risk factors associated with OSUI included age, BMI, numbers of SVD, recurrent UTI, reduction of urinary flow symptoms and grade 2 to 4 central compartment prolapses. We concluded that preoperative urodynamic testing with reduction of prolapse is useful to identify women with OSUI. This is important for preoperative counselling as well as planning for one step approach of prophylactic concomitant anti-incontinence procedures during prolapse surgery in order to avoid postoperative de novo SUI

Understanding eye movements in face recognition with hidden Markov model

Fulltext in: http://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2013/papers/0085/paper0085.pdfIn this paper we propose a hidden Markov model (HMM)-based method to analyze eye movement data. We conducted a simple face recognition task and recorded eye movements and performance of the participants. We used a variational Bayesian framework for Gaussian mixture models to estimate the distribution of fixation locations and modelled the fixation and transition data using HMMs. We showed that using HMMs, we can describe individuals’ eye movement strategies with both fixation locations and transition probabilities. By clustering these HMMs, we found that the strategies can be categorized into two subgroups; one was more holistic and the other was more analytical. Furthermore, we found that correct and wrong recognitions were associated with distinctive eye movement strategies. The difference between these strategies lied in their transition probabilities

Develop a FTTH network management system using visual basic

This paper proposed an efficient network management software tool named Smart Access Network _ Testing,Analyzing and Database (SANTAD) for remote control, inservice transmission surveillance, centralized monitoring, and fault detection for fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) using Visual Basic programming. A virtual network is setup to operate the software tool from central office (CO) or remote point.This program is able to prevent and detect the occurrence of fault in network system through event identification against optical signal level, attenuation, and losses.SANTAD enable each status of transmission link to be displayed a single screen with capability to configure the attenuation and detect the failure simultaneously

Sacrospinous ligament fixation – a Malaysian’s tertiary centre experience

During the study period from January 2008 to December 2012, 177 women had transvaginal sacrospinous ligament fixation (SSF) for vault suspension at General Hospital Kuala Lumpur. Of the 177 women, 133 (75.1%) had severe uterovaginal prolapse while 44 (24.9%) had post-hysterectomy vault prolapse. All patients with severe uterovaginal prolapse and rectocele undergone vaginal hysterectomy and posterior colporrhaphy respectively. A hundred and seventy-four patients (98.3%) had anterior repair whilst 48 (27.1%) received midurethral sling as concomitant procedure to vault suspension (SSF). The mean duration of surgery was 92.1±30.2 minutes and the mean estimated blood loss was 319±199.3mls. There was no surgical mortality. Two patients (1.1%) had rectal injuries. No patient had bladder injury or de novo urinary symptoms. The commonest immediate postoperative complications was fever (98; 55.4%) followed by buttock pain in 18 (10.2%) patients. Both complications were resolved with conservative measures. Seven patients (3.9%) had sutures erosion as late complications. Of the 177 women, 158 (89.3%) and 141 (79.7%) came for the 6 and 12 months follow-up, respectively. The success rate for all three compartments ranged from 92.4% to 98.1% at 6 months and reduced to range from 85.7% to 94.4% at 12 months. The highest success rate was observed in the posterior compartment followed by apical and anterior compartment. Equally, the recurrence rate was lowest in the posterior compartment (1.9%), followed by the central (3.8%) and anterior compartment (7.5%) at 6 months’ review. This increased to 5.7% for rectocele, 7.8% for vault prolapse and 14.2% for cystocele at 12 months’ follow-up. None had repeated surgery for prolapse recurrence during the study period. In conclusion, SSF remains a high priority in our therapeutic regime for the treatment of severe uterovaginal and vault prolapse as it has a reasonably good success rate with lower serious complications in the skillful hands