DYNAMIC ANALYSIS OF HANDLING COMPLIANT SHEET-METAL BLANKS

ABSTRACT Automating material handling of flexible sheet-metal blanks in stamping process requires attention due to its significant impact on product quality and productivity. This paper investigated the capability of a fully dynamic and nonlinear finite element technique in developing virtual material handling process of compliant sheet-metal blanks subject to time varying movability conditions. The technique used explicit time integration to avoid the formulation of stiffness matrix by a direct integration of the equations of motion. The influence of holding end-effector layout scheme and movability conditions on the final part quality was investigated

Development Of Psychometrically Validated Standardized Test Instruments For Outcomes Assessment In Experiential Engineering Education

There is a major trend in engineering education to provide students with realistic hands-on learning experiences. This paper reports on the results of work done to develop standardized test instruments to use for student learning outcomes assessment in an experiential hands-on manufacturing engineering and technology environment. The specific outcomes targeted for assessment are those defined under the MILL (Manufacturing Integrated Learning Laboratory) Manufacturing Competency Model. In a unique feature aimed at experiential learning, the test instruments incorporate the use of a physical manipulative to evaluate attainment of particular hands-on skills. The resulting standardized tests have been subjected to extensive psychometric analysis. The results of the analysis indicate excellent structure of the test instruments. The test instruments have shown high levels of stability, internal consistency, and reliability. These tests can be used as instruments for outcomes assessment to help document attainment of targeted learning outcomes for program assessment, accreditation, and other assessment purposes. Outcomes Assessment; Standardized Test; Psychometrically Validated; Experiential Learnin

Learning Transcriptional Regulatory Relationships Using Sparse Graphical Models

Understanding the organization and function of transcriptional regulatory networks by analyzing high-throughput gene expression profiles is a key problem in computational biology. The challenges in this work are 1) the lack of complete knowledge of the regulatory relationship between the regulators and the associated genes, 2) the potential for spurious associations due to confounding factors, and 3) the number of parameters to learn is usually larger than the number of available microarray experiments. We present a sparse (L1 regularized) graphical model to address these challenges. Our model incorporates known transcription factors and introduces hidden variables to represent possible unknown transcription and confounding factors. The expression level of a gene is modeled as a linear combination of the expression levels of known transcription factors and hidden factors. Using gene expression data covering 39,296 oligonucleotide probes from 1109 human liver samples, we demonstrate that our model better predicts out-of-sample data than a model with no hidden variables. We also show that some of the gene sets associated with hidden variables are strongly correlated with Gene Ontology categories. The software including source code is available at http://grnl1.codeplex.com

Global, regional, and national under-5 mortality, adult mortality, age-specific mortality, and life expectancy, 1970–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016

BACKGROUND: Detailed assessments of mortality patterns, particularly age-specific mortality, represent a crucial input that enables health systems to target interventions to specific populations. Understanding how all-cause mortality has changed with respect to development status can identify exemplars for best practice. To accomplish this, the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016 (GBD 2016) estimated age-specific and sex-specific all-cause mortality between 1970 and 2016 for 195 countries and territories and at the subnational level for the five countries with a population greater than 200 million in 2016. METHODS: We have evaluated how well civil registration systems captured deaths using a set of demographic methods called death distribution methods for adults and from consideration of survey and census data for children younger than 5 years. We generated an overall assessment of completeness of registration of deaths by dividing registered deaths in each location-year by our estimate of all-age deaths generated from our overall estimation process. For 163 locations, including subnational units in countries with a population greater than 200 million with complete vital registration (VR) systems, our estimates were largely driven by the observed data, with corrections for small fluctuations in numbers and estimation for recent years where there were lags in data reporting (lags were variable by location, generally between 1 year and 6 years). For other locations, we took advantage of different data sources available to measure under-5 mortality rates (U5MR) using complete birth histories, summary birth histories, and incomplete VR with adjustments; we measured adult mortality rate (the probability of death in individuals aged 15-60 years) using adjusted incomplete VR, sibling histories, and household death recall. We used the U5MR and adult mortality rate, together with crude death rate due to HIV in the GBD model life table system, to estimate age-specific and sex-specific death rates for each location-year. Using various international databases, we identified fatal discontinuities, which we defined as increases in the death rate of more than one death per million, resulting from conflict and terrorism, natural disasters, major transport or technological accidents, and a subset of epidemic infectious diseases; these were added to estimates in the relevant years. In 47 countries with an identified peak adult prevalence for HIV/AIDS of more than 0·5% and where VR systems were less than 65% complete, we informed our estimates of age-sex-specific mortality using the Estimation and Projection Package (EPP)-Spectrum model fitted to national HIV/AIDS prevalence surveys and antenatal clinic serosurveillance systems. We estimated stillbirths, early neonatal, late neonatal, and childhood mortality using both survey and VR data in spatiotemporal Gaussian process regression models. We estimated abridged life tables for all location-years using age-specific death rates. We grouped locations into development quintiles based on the Socio-demographic Index (SDI) and analysed mortality trends by quintile. Using spline regression, we estimated the expected mortality rate for each age-sex group as a function of SDI. We identified countries with higher life expectancy than expected by comparing observed life expectancy to anticipated life expectancy on the basis of development status alone. FINDINGS: Completeness in the registration of deaths increased from 28% in 1970 to a peak of 45% in 2013; completeness was lower after 2013 because of lags in reporting. Total deaths in children younger than 5 years decreased from 1970 to 2016, and slower decreases occurred at ages 5-24 years. By contrast, numbers of adult deaths increased in each 5-year age bracket above the age of 25 years. The distribution of annualised rates of change in age-specific mortality rate differed over the period 2000 to 2016 compared with earlier decades: increasing annualised rates of change were less frequent, although rising annualised rates of change still occurred in some locations, particularly for adolescent and younger adult age groups. Rates of stillbirths and under-5 mortality both decreased globally from 1970. Evidence for global convergence of death rates was mixed; although the absolute difference between age-standardised death rates narrowed between countries at the lowest and highest levels of SDI, the ratio of these death rates-a measure of relative inequality-increased slightly. There was a strong shift between 1970 and 2016 toward higher life expectancy, most noticeably at higher levels of SDI. Among countries with populations greater than 1 million in 2016, life expectancy at birth was highest for women in Japan, at 86·9 years (95% UI 86·7-87·2), and for men in Singapore, at 81·3 years (78·8-83·7) in 2016. Male life expectancy was generally lower than female life expectancy between 1970 and 2016, an

RNA sequencing of identical twins discordant for autism reveals blood-based signatures implicating immune and transcriptional dysregulation

Background: A gap exists in our mechanistic understanding of how genetic and environmental risk factors converge at the molecular level to result in the emergence of autism symptoms. We compared blood-based gene expression signatures in identical twins concordant and discordant for autism spectrum condition (ASC) to differentiate genetic and environmentally driven transcription differences, and establish convergent evidence for biological mechanisms involved in ASC. Methods: Genome-wide gene expression data were generated using RNA-seq on whole blood samples taken from 16 pairs of monozygotic (MZ) twins and seven twin pair members (39 individuals in total), who had been assessed for ASC and autism traits at age 12. Differential expression (DE) analyses were performed between (a) affected and unaffected subjects (N = 36) and (b) within discordant ASC MZ twin pairs (total N = 11) to identify environmental-driven DE. Gene set enrichment and pathway testing was performed on DE gene lists. Finally, an integrative analysis using DNA methylation data aimed to identify genes with consistent evidence for altered regulation in cis. Results: In the discordant twin analysis, three genes showed evidence for DE at FDR < 10%: IGHG4, EVI2A and SNORD15B. In the case-control analysis, four DE genes were identified at FDR<10% including IGHG4, PRR13P5, DEPDC1B, and ZNF501. We find enrichment for DE of genes curated in the SFARI human gene database. Pathways showing evidence of enrichment included those related to immune cell signalling and immune response, transcriptional control and cell cycle/proliferation. Integrative methylomic and transcriptomic analysis identified a number of genes showing suggestive evidence for cis dysregulation. Limitations: Identical twins stably discordant for ASC are rare, and as such the sample size was limited and constrained to the use of peripheral blood tissue for transcriptomic and methylomic profiling. Given these primary limitations, we focused on transcript-level analysis. Conclusions: Using a cohort of ASC discordant and concordant MZ twins, we add to the growing body of transcriptomic-based evidence for an immune-based component in the molecular aetiology of ASC. Whilst the sample size was limited, the study demonstrates the utility of the discordant MZ twin design combined with multi-omics integration for maximising the potential to identify disease-associated molecular signals

Vehicles: A New Open Access Journal to Publish Your Ground Vehicle Research Results

The broad definition of a vehicle includes any type of mechanism that transports people or cargo in the air or space, on or under the surface of the water, or on the surface of the ground [...

Using Lever Analogy Diagrams in Teaching Compound Planetary Gear Trains

This article discusses using lever analogy diagrams to teach students about compound planetary gear trains. Planetary gear trains are used in automotive, aerospace and marine manufacturing. The lever analogy curriculum approach aims to help students understand planetary gear trains and their applications better. This document may be downloaded in PDF file format

ETT 4150 - Fundamentals of Hybrid and Electric Vehicles

Program Description:Wayne State University offers a Bachelor of Science in Electric Transportation Technology, which prepares students for application-oriented engineering technology careers in the electric transportation industry. Areas of study include Automotive Electric and Electronic Systems, In-Vehicle Networking and Embedded Systems, Mechatronics in Vehicle Control Systems, and more. Course Description:This three-credit Fundamentals of Hybrid and Electric Vehicles was developed with seed funding from the Center for Advanced Automotive Technology (CAAT), and discusses hybrid electric and electric vehicle (HEV/EV) technologies. The course focuses on concepts and design, energy analysis, unified model approach, hybridization, hybrid powertrain architectures, internal combustion engines for HEVs, transmissions used in HEVs, and on-board energy storage.Course Contents:This course is composed of 15 presentations. These presentation include 1) Introduction of Hybrid Electric Vehicles and Plugin Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEV/PHEV), 2) Overview of Vehicle Road Load, 3) Hybrid Powertrain Configurations, 4) Vehicle Electrification, 5) Hybrid Powertrain Components, 6) Overview of Electrically Variable Transmissions (EVT), 7) Electric Machines, 8) Power Electronics Pt. 1, 9) Power Electronics Pt. 2, 10) On-Board Energy Storage, 11) Battery Cell Management, State Estimation, Cell Balancing, and Charging Schemes, 12) Battery Management Systems (BMS), 13) Fundamentals of Regenerative Braking, 14) Modeling and Simulation Software for Vehicle System and Driveline Analysis, and 15) HEV/PHEV/EV Future Trends.Below is a list of files contained within the zip attachment. The size of each file is included in parenthesis.Fundamentals of Hybrid and Eclectic Vehicles (15 files, 31.1MB)Introduction to HEV/PHEV Presentation (mct6150-ett4150-1_HEV-introduction.pdf 5.7MB)Overview of Vehicle Road Load Presentation (mct6150-ett4150-2_Road-load.pdf 207KB)Hybrid Powertrain Configuration Presentation (mct6150-ett4150-3_HEV-configuration.pdf 842KB)Vehicle Electrification Presentation (mct6150-ett4150-4_Auxiliary-electrification.pdf 1.4MB)Hybrid Powertrain Components Presentation (mct6150-ett4150-5_HEV-components.pdf 332KB)Overview of EVT Presentation (mct6150-ett4150-6_EVT.pdf 3.7MB)Electric Machines Presentation (mct6150-ett4150-7_electric-machines.pdf 332KB)Introduction to Power Electronics Presentation (mct6150-ett4150-8_PE_1.pdf 2.3MB)Power Electronics in Vehicles Presentation (mct6150-ett4150-9_PE_2.pdf 1.3MB)On Board Energy Storage Presentation (mct6150-ett4150-10_on-board-ES.pdf 4.4MB)Battery Cell Management Presentation (mct6150-ett4150-11_BMS-cell-management-charging.pdf 2.3MB)Battery Management Systems Presentation (mct6150-ett4150-12_BMS-functions.pdf 2.1MB)Fundamentals of Regenerative Braking Presentation (mct6150-ett4150-13_regenerative-brake.pdf 904KB)Modeling and Simulation Software Presentation (mct6150-ett4150-14_vehicle-modeling-simulation.pdf 950KB)HEV/PHEV/EV Future Trends Presentation (mct6150-ett4150-15_HEV-future.pdf 1.9MB