Scanning Pattern Optimization to Reduce Temperature Gradients in DMLS

Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS) is a specific type of additive manufacturing that is used to create metal parts. In this process, an optical laser is used to melt a metal powder, fusing the powder into a solidified form. The laser follows instructions from a CAD model, which illustrates the design and from which the layer pattern the laser should follow is extracted. A scan path is generated for the laser to trace on the powder, that initially follows the perimeter, and then draws parallel neighboring contour lines in the interior of the scanned perimeter to cover the surface and form a consolidated layer. Currently, there is an issue with DMLS builds; due to the high heat generated by the laser and the uneven cooling patterns of the metal after fusion. Deformations are forming in the design builds after cooling. Today, additive manufacturing technicians and or designers are having to adjust the original CAD files through the use of predictive software to account for the deformations caused by the laser heat. After an extensive literature review, it was confirmed that the scanning pattern the laser takes in the DMLS to sinter the powder metal affects the magnitude of the temperature gradient and thus affects subsequent build part deformations. A simulation that computationally mimics the moving laser heat source in DMLS on a build-part allows for control of the scanning pattern and the number of layers to be scanned and returns the temperature profile of the part as it is built and subsequently cooled. A genetic algorithm is tied to the simulation in order to optimize the scanning pattern of the laser with the ultimate goal to reduce the overall temperature gradients induced on the build part. The effects of layer build-up were also investigated with the optimization of the scanning pattern of the laser. The combination of the DMLS simulation and Genetic Algorithm application show qualitatively that optimal scanning patterns can reduce the temperature gradients from the DMLS process. This research work is meant to be a basis for the optimization of scan pattern on specific build part designs and be able to be applied to a wider array of designs as well as in-situ DMLS builds in the future

Towards a Harm-Minimising Approach to Sex Work: A Call for Decriminalisation in England and Wales

This thesis has developed a harm-minimising framework to analyse the regulation of sex work in England and Wales and propose a system of reform. In so doing, it defines the ‘harm’ in sex work as that of stigma, violence and exploitation, using this categorisation to judge the effectiveness of any (new) system of legal regulation. This thesis demonstrates how sex workers are frequently cast as a deviant population and separated from the rest of society, facing extreme forms of violence and exploitation. Using my harm-framework of analysis, this thesis examines the regulation of sex work in England and Wales, starting with the Contagious Disease Acts of the 1860’s through to modern day. In doing this, it will demonstrate the ability of the law to maintain, shape and create the conditions for the violence, exploitation and stigma faced by women selling sex. The thesis then explores alternative means of regulating sex work. It will look towards the alternatives of criminalising the clients, regimes of legalisation and of decriminalisation. It concludes that in order to provide the sex worker with sufficient protections against violence, stigma and exploitation, England and Wales should adopt a regime of decriminalisation. It is only under such a regime that sex workers could be provided with effective and realistic safeguards against the harm currently endemic in their work, and within which, crucial steps can be made towards altering their stigmatised and marginalised status

The Evaluation of Immigrants' Credentials: The Roles of Accreditation, Immigrant Race, and Evaluator Biases

Theories of subtle prejudice imply that personnel decision makers might inadvertently discriminate against immigrant employees, in particular immigrant employees form racial minority groups. The argument is that the ambiguities that are associated with immigrant status (e.g., quality of foreign credentials) release latent biases against minorities. Hence, upon removal of these ambiguities (e.g., recognition of foreign credentials as equivalent to local credentials), discrimination against immigrant employees from minority groups should no longer occur. Experimental research largely confirmed these arguments, showing that participants evaluated the credentials of black immigrant employees less favorably only when the participants harbored latent racial biases and the foreign credentials of the applicants had not been accredited. The results suggest the importance of the official recognition of foreign credentials for the fair treatment of immigrant employees.Labour Discrimination, Immigrants, Racial Minorities, Prejudice, Credential Recognition, Experiment

A central line care maintenance bundle for the prevention of central line–associated bloodstream infection in non–intensive care unit settings

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate a central line care maintenance bundle to reduce central line-associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI) in non-ICU settings. DESIGN: Before-after trial with 12 month follow-up period. SETTING: 1250-bed teaching hospital. PARTICIPANTS: Patients with central lines on eight general medicine wards. Four wards received the intervention and four served as controls. INTERVENTION: A multifaceted catheter care maintenance bundle consisting of educational programs for nurses, update of hospital policies, visual aids, a competency assessment, process monitoring, regular progress reports, and consolidation of supplies necessary for catheter maintenance. RESULTS: Data were collected for 25,542 catheter-days including 43 CLABSI (rate = 1.68 per 1,000 CL-days) and 4,012 catheter dressing observations. Following the intervention, a 2.5% monthly decrease in the CLABSI incidence density was observed on intervention floors, but this was not statistically significant (95% confidence interval (CI); −5.3 – 0.4). On control floors, there was a smaller, but marginally significant decrease in CLABSI incidence during the study (change in monthly rate = −1.1%; 95% CI, −2.1 - −0.1). Implementation of the bundle was associated with improvement in catheter dressing compliance on intervention wards (78.8% compliance pre-intervention vs. 87.9% during intervention/follow-up; p<0.001) but improvement was also observed on control wards (84.9% compliance pre-intervention vs. 90.9% during intervention/follow-up; P = .001). CONCLUSIONS: A multi-faceted program to improve catheter care was associated with improvement in catheter dressing care, but no change in CLABSI rates. Additional study is needed to determine strategies to prevent CLABSI in non-ICU patients

The MPA mouse breast cancer model: evidence for a role of progesterone receptors in breast cancer

More than 60% of all breast neoplasias are ductal carcinomas expressing estrogen (ER) and progesterone receptors (PR). In contrast, most of the spontaneous, chemically or MMTV induced tumors, as well as tumors arising in genetically modified mice do not express hormone receptors. We developed a model of breast cancer in which the administration of medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA) to BALB/c female mice induces mammary ductal carcinomas with a mean latency of 52 weeks and an incidence of about 80%. These tumors are hormone-dependent, metastatic, express both ER and PR, and are maintained by syngeneic transplants. The model has been further refined to include mammary carcinomas that evolve through different stages of hormone dependency, as well as several hormone-responsive cell lines. In this review, we describe the main features of this tumor model, highlighting the role of PR as a trigger of key signaling pathways mediating tumor growth. In addition, we discussthe relevance of this model in comparison with other currently used breast cancer models pointing out its advantages and limitations and how, this model may be suitable to unravel key questions in breast cancer.Fil: Lanari, Claudia Lee Malvina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Fundación de Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental; ArgentinaFil: Lamb, Caroline Ana. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Fundación de Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental; ArgentinaFil: Fabris, Victoria Teresa. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Fundación de Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental; ArgentinaFil: Helguero, Luisa A.. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Fundación de Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental; ArgentinaFil: Soldati, Rocío. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Fundación de Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental; ArgentinaFil: Bottino, Maria Cecilia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Fundación de Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental; ArgentinaFil: Giulianelli, Sebastian Jesus. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Fundación de Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental; ArgentinaFil: Cerliani, Juan Pablo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Fundación de Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental; ArgentinaFil: Wargon, Victoria. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Fundación de Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental; ArgentinaFil: Molinolo, Alfredo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Fundación de Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental; Argentina. Public Health Service. National Institute Of Health; Estados Unido

Multipartite Attitudes to Enterprise : A Comparative Study of Young People and Place

The article examines young people’s attitudes towards enterprise, comparing prosperous and deprived neighbourhoods and two UK cities. Corpus linguistics analysis identified multi-layered attitudes and variations in how place prosperity and city affect attitudes. High interest in enterprise was associated with weaker place attachment and reduced social embeddedness. Young adults from prosperous neighbourhoods delegitimised other’s enterprises; the ‘deprived’ sub-corpus included more fluid notions of enterprise legitimacy. Liverpool accounts contained stronger discursive threads around self-determination; Bradford accounts included greater problematizing of entrepreneurship versus employment. An original Multipartite Model of Attitudes to Enterprise is presented consisting of four layers: attitudes to enterprise generally; attitudes legitimising particular forms of enterprise; attitudes to enterprise related to place; and attitudes to enterprise related to self. The conclusion explains why policies and research need to be fine-grained and avoid uni-dimensional conceptualisations of attitudes to enterprise or deterministic arguments relating entrepreneurship to specific types of places or backgrounds

Measurement properties of tools used to assess self-harm in autistic and general population adults

Autistic people are at increased risk of experiencing self-harm compared to the general population. However, it is unclear which tools are being used to assess self-harm in autistic people, or whether existing tools need to be adapted for this group. This two-stage systematic review aimed to identify tools used to assess self-harm in autistic and general population adults, evaluate these tools on their measurement properties, and make recommendations for their appropriate use in research and clinical practice. Four databases were systematically searched (PsycINFO, Embase, MEDLINE and Web of Science). Eight frequently used self-harm assessment tools were identified and assessed for risk of bias, criteria for good measurement properties, and quality of evidence using the COSMIN checklist. Of these, two tools had sufficient evidence of internal consistency (ISAS, QNSSI), and one had been frequently used with autistic adults (NSSI-AT). These three tools may have potential for use with autistic adults but require further investigation for content validity and measurement properties in the autistic population. More research and potential adaptations to current self-harm assessment tools are recommended in order to better conceptualise and understand self-harm and its measurement in autism.</p

Spatio-temporal judgements of observed actions : Contrasts between first- and third-person perspective after motor priming.

When observing actions, motor simulation processes aid the prediction and understanding of future events. A central issue concerns whether such action simulation serves social functions of interpreting other people, where performance is predicted to be better when third-person perspective (3PP) actions are viewed; or whether it is most beneficial to guide self actions, whereby the first-person perspective (1PP) would be advantageous. We show that in a spatio-temporal judgement task there is an advantage for the prediction of 1PP. However, this is only detected after motor priming whereby participants perform the observed actions prior to making spatio-temporal judgements. The results, firstly, confirm that we draw on our motor experience for the accurate simulation and prediction of action. Secondly, the results suggest that such experience facilitates more accurate state estimation for actions perceived in the 1PP which map more closely onto visual input of self-generated action. More forward prediction error is retained for 3PP viewed actions, which may however have the benefit of compensating for the uncertainty involved in interacting with others

Trust in Artificial Intelligence: Comparing Trust Processes Between Human and Automated Trustees in Light of Unfair Bias

Automated systems based on artifcial intelligence (AI) increasingly support decisions with ethical implications where decision makers need to trust these systems. However, insights regarding trust in automated systems predominantly stem from contexts where the main driver of trust is that systems produce accurate outputs (e.g., alarm systems for monitoring tasks). It remains unclear whether what we know about trust in automated systems translates to application contexts where ethical considerations (e.g., fairness) are crucial in trust development. In personnel selection, as a sample context where ethical considerations are important, we investigate trust processes in light of a trust violation relating to unfair bias and a trust repair intervention. Specifcally, participants evaluated preselection outcomes (i.e., sets of preselected applicants) by either a human or an automated system across twelve selection tasks. We additionally varied information regarding imperfection of the human and automated system. In task rounds fve through eight, the preselected applicants were predominantly male, thus constituting a trust violation due to potential unfair bias. Before task round nine, participants received an excuse for the biased preselection (i.e., a trust repair intervention). The results of the online study showed that participants have initially less trust in automated systems. Furthermore, the trust violation and the trust repair intervention had weaker efects for the automated system. Those efects were partly stronger when highlighting system imperfection. We conclude that insights from classical areas of automation only partially translate to the many emerging application contexts of such systems where ethical considerations are central to trust processes

Linguistische Aspekte der Kommunikation in den neueren elektronischen Medien

Die vorliegende Untersuchung verfolgt das Ziel, einen Überblick über das Schreibverhalten in neueren elektronischen Medien zu geben. Zu diesem Zweck wurden Textbeispiele aus drei unterschiedlichen Bereichen gesammelt und verglichen. Neben Kurzmitteilungen (Teiluntersuchungen 1 und 2) und E-Mails (Teiluntersuchung 3) rücken auch Facebook-Nachrichten (Teiluntersuchung 4) in den Fokus der Analyse. Außerdem beinhaltet die Arbeit einen Exkurs zum Thema Whatsapp