Part agent that proposes maintenance actions for a part considering its life cycle

Part of: Seliger, Günther (Ed.): Innovative solutions : proceedings / 11th Global Conference on Sustainable Manufacturing, Berlin, Germany, 23rd - 25th September, 2013. - Berlin: Universitätsverlag der TU Berlin, 2013. - ISBN 978-3-7983-2609-5 (online). - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:83-opus4-40276. - pp. 235–240.The transition from a consumption-oriented society to a reuse-based society is needed for the effective use of resources and environmental protection. However, it is difficult for a user to make appropriate decisions for maintenance of his/her parts because of the wide range of choices of action and the huge amount of information required. To support the user's decision and to promote the reuse of parts, we have developed a part agent system that manages information about individual parts throughout their life cycle. A part agent is a network agent that contains the information of its corresponding part and follows the movement of the part via the network throughout its life cycle. This paper describes a new mechanism of a part agent that proposes appropriate maintenance actions for the corresponding part by estimating its expected value, cost, and environmental load based on the predicted information about its life cycle

Laparoscopic repair of an abdominal incisional hernia above the pubis

　　Laparoscopic repair of a suprapubic hernia typically carries a high risk of recurrence, because fixation of the mesh in the peripubic area is difficult. We herein report a patient undergoing laparoscopic repair of a suprapubic hernia, along with a description of the surgical techniques employed. 　A 78-year-old woman visited our hospital with a chief complaint of swelling at the median hypogastric incision site after surgery for an ovarian cyst performed at age 25 years. Laparoscopic examination revealed the hernia orifice to be 3.5×3.0 cm in size and that the distance between the caudal margin of the hernia orifice and the pubis was 2.5 cm. Parietex composite mesh was used for fixation through all layers of the abdominal wall with non-absorbable sutures and tack fixation. On the pubic side, after the pubis had been exposed by separating it from the bladder, we performed mesh fixation through all layers of the abdominal wall immediately above the pubis with the sutures placed inside the mesh, combined with tack mesh fixation directly to the pubis. This procedure enabled definite fixation of the mesh. Six days after surgery, she was discharged without complications. To date, two years and five months after surgery, no recurrence has been observed

Biomass Production and Lodging Resistance in ‘Leaf Star’, a New Long-Culm Rice Forage Cultivar

Biomass production and lodging resistance in the new long-culm forage cultivar ‘Leaf Star’, developed using a precise evaluation method for lodging resistance, were evaluated by comparing these properties with those of its parents and recently improved forage rice cultivars. Leaf Star had a higher biomass production of above-ground parts than its parents, and its straw yield was 13 t ha-1. The bending moment of the basal internode at breaking in Leaf Star was three times higher than that in Koshihikari, owing to a large section modulus and a high bending stress. Biomass production of above-ground parts of Leaf Star did not differ significantly from that of other forage cultivars. However, Leaf Star had the highest straw yield of all forage cultivars. Leaf Star accumulated a large amount of starch in straw. Bending moment of the basal internode was the highest among forage cultivars owing to a large section modulus. These results show that the traits related to lodging resistance such as culm thickness and culm stiffness could be introduced into long-culm cultivars by using the precise evaluation method for the traits related to lodging resistance. The results also show that Leaf Star has a large biomass and high quality, which are suitable properties for feed and biofuel production