Process alarm management - An investment towards safe and reliable operations

Master's thesis in Technology and Operations ManagementMost of the commercial buildings and private homes are configured with a certain number of alarms to deal with emergency situations, such as fire alarms, HVAC fail alarms, theft alarms, water leakage alarms etc. However, for an industrial process plant, all alarms and their configuration parameters collectively feed into a big database. For a typical offshore installation, the alarm database for the integrated control and safety system may consist of 40000 to 150000 alarms which must be monitored. Considering the vastness of an alarm database for a process installation, and the risk of missing critical alarms, there is a need for a regulated and a guided system to handle and integrate all aspects of alarm engineering to create a functional alarm system. Such an alarm system must: • Be built on “principles of alarm design” for process industries • Be complaint with applicable regulations • Be usable by process operators in management of abnormal situations • Perform in line with organisational performance measures As process industries are getting increasingly complex, with new technologies and expansion projects, process operators are becoming overloaded with new systems and new alarms dominate the unnecessary disturbance. Alarm systems need to be well specified and maintained to ensure safe operations. During the period between August 2000 and September 2002, NPD (Norwegian Petroleum Directorate) has carried out the supervision of alarm systems on seven production facilities within the Norwegian Continental Shelf. Authorised mapping of alarm systems revealed essentially the same weaknesses and same problem areas, independent of system vendor, operating company, type of facility and age of device. Despite the limited mapping that has been made, NPD find it reasonable to assume that, the results from these activities are somewhat representative of the challenges of other facilities on the Norwegian continental shelf. This thesis will choose to provide a proactive approach to draft various procedures for a functional alarm system with all the specifics mentioned above for an alarm system within the frame work of regulations limited to Norwegian continental shelf. A well-functioned alarm system combines with coordinated operations management can drive not only safety and ensure regulatory compliance but promote better plant availability and throughput, delivering real business value. (Honeywell, 2017

Systems biology approaches to a rational drug discovery paradigm

The published manuscript is available at EurekaSelect via http://www.eurekaselect.com/openurl/content.php?genre=article&doi=10.2174/1568026615666150826114524.Prathipati P., Mizuguchi K.. Systems biology approaches to a rational drug discovery paradigm. Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry, 16, 9, 1009. https://doi.org/10.2174/1568026615666150826114524

Improved pose and affinity predictions using different protocols tailored on the basis of data availability

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Journal of Computer-Aided Molecular Design. The final authenticated version is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10822-016-9982-4.Prathipati, P., Nagao, C., Ahmad, S. et al. Improved pose and affinity predictions using different protocols tailored on the basis of data availability. J Comput Aided Mol Des 30, 817–828 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10822-016-9982-

A review on determinants and barriers affecting the transition from curative care to palliative care in patients suffering from terminal cancer

The integration of palliative care into comprehensive cancer care has become increasingly recognized as an essential aspect of cancer treatment. Palliative care can improve patient outcomes, symptom management, and overall satisfaction with care. However, despite the benefits of palliative care, several barriers exist that prevent its widespread implementation, including lack of awareness and understanding of palliative care, lack of access to palliative care services, and stigma associated with palliative care. The decision to transition from curative to palliative care is complex and influenced by several factors, including patient preferences, disease stage, and prognosis, symptom burden, comorbidities, and social support. Effective communication between healthcare providers, patients, and families is essential in ensuring that patients are informed about their options and can make informed decisions about their care. This literature review aims to explore the factors that influence the decision to transition to palliative care and to identify the barriers to the implementation of palliative care in cancer patients. The review also discusses strategies to overcome these barriers and highlights the importance of integrating palliative care into cancer care from the time of cancer diagnosis.

Energy efficient scheduling techniques for real-time embedded systems

Battery-powered portable embedded systems have been widely used in many applications. These embedded systems have to concurrently perform a multitude of complex tasks under stringent time constraints. As these systems become more complex and incorporate more functionality, they became more power-hungry. Thus, reducing power consumption and extending battery lifespan while guaranteeing the timing constraints has became a critical aspect in designing such systems. This gives rise to three aspects of research: (i) Guaranteeing the execution of the hard real-time tasks by their deadlines, (ii) Determining the minimum voltage under which each task can be executed, and (iii) Techniques to take advantage of run-time variations in the execution times of tasks. In this research, we present techniques that address the above aspects in single and multi processor embedded systems. We study the performance of the proposed techniques on various benchmarks in terms of energy savings

Heme Induction with Delta-Aminolevulinic Acid Stimulates an Increase in Water and Electrolyte Excretion

Purpose. Studies were performed to examine hemodynamic and renal function before and after acute induction of the endogenous CO system with delta-aminolevulinic acid (DALA), which drives HO activity. Methods. In vivo studies were conducted on Inactin-anesthetized male Sprague Dawley rats (250–300 g) either with or without chronic pretreatment with L-NAME (50 mg/Kg, q12 hours x4d). Results. DALA (80 μmol/Kg, IV bolus) administration acutely increased endogenous CO production and HO-1 protein. In untreated and L-NAME-pretreated rats, DALA did not alter BP, GFR, or RBF but increased UF, UNaV, and UKV (untreated: Δ108.8 ± 0.28%, 172.1 ± 18.4%, and 165.2 ± 45.9%; pretreated: Δ109.4 ± 0.29%, 187.3 ± 26.9%, and 197.2 ± 45.7%). Acute administration of biliverdin (20 mg/kg, IV) and bilirubin (30 mg/kg, IV) to similarly treated animals did not alter UF, UNaV, and UKV. Conclusion. These results demonstrate that heme oxygenase induction increases urine and electrolyte excretion and suggest a direct tubular action of endogenous carbon monoxide

A case report of primary pleomorphic lung cancer with an atypical presentation

Pulmonary pleomorphic carcinoma (PPC) is an uncommon primary lung tumor with a low incidence and aggressive biological characteristics that can occur in young people and nonsmokers. Pleomorphic carcinoma (PC) has a worse prognosis than other non-small cell lung tumors. We describe a 45-year-old man who complained of having a dry cough for a month. A well-defined mass in the anterior section of the left lower lobe was identified by chest high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT), and a positron emission tomography (PET) scan confirmed a left lobulated tumor with fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) uptake in the left mediastinal lymph nodes. An endobronchial ultrasound guided transbronchial needle aspiration (EBUS TBNA) guided biopsy of the tumor was performed and sent for histopathological analysis, which identified pleomorphic squamous cells and giant cells. Positive IHC markers included P63, TTF1, pancytokeratin, Vimentin. Patient was diagnosed with stage IIIa (T3N2M0) pleomorphic carcinoma of the lung. Due to the tumor's advanced stage, the patient received chemotherapy and radiation therapy

SAP30, a Novel Oncogenic Transcription Factor in High-Risk Neuroblastoma: Clinical Significance and Role in Tumor-Progression, Survival, and Drug Resistance

Neuroblastoma is the most common devastating extracranial solid malignancy in children, accounting for 15% of childhood cancer-related mortality. Despite an intense treatment regimen, approximately 50% of children treated for high-risk neuroblastoma have more aggressive tumor relapse with less than 20% five-year overall survival. Amplification of the oncogene MYCN is associated with a high risk of relapse. However, only 25% of high-risk neuroblastomas are MYCN-amplified, indicating that the rest are driven by factors other than MYCN. Therefore, it is essential to identify novel driver transcription factors but not passenger genes that improve prediction efficacy of therapy response and association with high-risk, progression, stage 4, and survival in neuroblastoma patients. We used three neuroblastoma patient datasets (n=1252 patients) and applied robust bioinformatic data mining tools such as Weighted Gene Co-expression Network Analysis (WGCNA), cisTarget, and Single-Cell Regulatory Network Inference and Clustering (SCENIC) to identify driver transcription factors (regulon) that associate with high-risk, progression, stage, and survival in neuroblastoma patients. Based on the regulon specificity score, we derived a 10-transcription factor signature and prioritized Sin3A Associated Protein 30 (SAP30), given its highest regulon specificity score, especially in high-risk and aggressive stage cohorts. Higher SAP30 expression was found in high-risk neuroblastoma patients and progression-specific patient-derived xenograft tumors than their respective controls. The advanced pharmacogenomic analysis and CRISPR-Cas9 screens indicated that SAP30 essentiality correlated with Cisplatin resistance and further validated in Cisplatin resistant patient-derived xenograft tumor-derived cell lines. SAP30 silencing inhibited cell proliferation, slowed growth and induced cell death in vitro, and reduced tumor burden and size in vivo. Overall, our results indicate that SAP30 is a better prognostic and Cisplatin resistant marker associated with high-risk, stage 4 progression, and poor survival in neuroblastoma patients.https://digitalcommons.unmc.edu/chri_forum/1057/thumbnail.jp

A robust tool for discriminative analysis and feature selection in paired samples impacts the identification of the genes essential for reprogramming lung tissue to adenocarcinoma

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in the world. The most common type of lung cancer is lung adenocarcinoma (AC). The genetic mechanisms of the early stages and lung AC progression steps are poorly understood. There is currently no clinically applicable gene test for the early diagnosis and AC aggressiveness. Among the major reasons for the lack of reliable diagnostic biomarkers are the extraordinary heterogeneity of the cancer cells, complex and poorly understudied interactions of the AC cells with adjacent tissue and immune system, gene variation across patient cohorts, measurement variability, small sample sizes and sub-optimal analytical methods. We suggest that gene expression profiling of the primary tumours and adjacent tissues (PT-AT) handled with a rational statistical and bioinformatics strategy of biomarker prediction and validation could provide significant progress in the identification of clinical biomarkers of AC. To minimise sample-to-sample variability, repeated multivariate measurements in the same object (organ or tissue, e.g. PT-AT in lung) across patients should be designed, but prediction and validation on the genome scale with small sample size is a great methodical challenge.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>To analyse PT-AT relationships efficiently in the statistical modelling, we propose an Extreme Class Discrimination (ECD) feature selection method that identifies a sub-set of the most discriminative variables (e.g. expressed genes). Our method consists of a paired Cross-normalization (CN) step followed by a modified sign Wilcoxon test with multivariate adjustment carried out for each variable. Using an Affymetrix U133A microarray paired dataset of 27 AC patients, we reviewed the global reprogramming of the transcriptome in human lung AC tissue versus normal lung tissue, which is associated with about 2,300 genes discriminating the tissues with 100% accuracy. Cluster analysis applied to these genes resulted in four distinct gene groups which we classified as associated with (i) up-regulated genes in the mitotic cell cycle lung AC, (ii) silenced/suppressed gene specific for normal lung tissue, (iii) cell communication and cell motility and (iv) the immune system features. The genes related to mutagenesis, specific lung cancers, early stage of AC development, tumour aggressiveness and metabolic pathway alterations and adaptations of cancer cells are strongly enriched in the AC PT-AT discriminative gene set. Two AC diagnostic biomarkers SPP1 and CENPA were successfully validated on RT-RCR tissue array. ECD method was systematically compared to several alternative methods and proved to be of better performance and as well as it was validated by comparison of the predicted gene set with literature meta-signature.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We developed a method that identifies and selects highly discriminative variables from high dimensional data spaces of potential biomarkers based on a statistical analysis of paired samples when the number of samples is small. This method provides superior selection in comparison to conventional methods and can be widely used in different applications. Our method revealed at least 23 hundreds patho-biologically essential genes associated with the global transcriptional reprogramming of human lung epithelium cells and lung AC aggressiveness. This gene set includes many previously published AC biomarkers reflecting inherent disease complexity and specifies the mechanisms of carcinogenesis in the lung AC. SPP1, CENPA and many other PT-AT discriminative genes could be considered as the prospective diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers of lung AC.</p

Impact of the Fiber Distribution Characteristics on the Uniaxial Behaviour of Fiber-Reinforced Composites- An Experimental Study

The demand for development of fiber-reinforced composites has enhanced as the practise of integrating fibres into concrete has become prevalent over the past few decades.. The intersection zone where the fiber crossing the fracture surface and fiber distribution characteristics in the composite plays an important role in predicting the overall performance of the Fiber Reinforced Composite (FRC). To ascertain the orientation and distribution of the fibres in various FRC's, a variety of experimental methods have been proposed in the literature. This study aimed to assess the impact of fibre orientation and fibre distribution characteristics on the fresh and hardened properties of Hybrid FRC's and Hybrid Graded FRC's containing glass and steel fibres. It can be concluded that the methods adopted in this study for calculating the fiber distribution and orientation characteristics were reliable and the proposed equations were successful in predicting the uniaxial behaviour of FRC. Positive synergy was observed in the Hybrid Graded FRC specimens, which was attributed to the superior fibre distribution characteristics displayed by hybrid grading of fibres, which was rationalised by the fact that modifying the fibre distribution characteristics would affect the FRC's behaviour