A Case-Based Reasoning Method for Remanufacturing Process Planning

Remanufacturing is a practice of growing importance due to its increasing environmental and economic benefits. Process planning plays a critical role in realizing a successful remanufacturing strategy. This paper presents a case-based reasoning method for remanufacturing process planning, which allows a process planner to rapidly retrieve, reuse, revise, and retain the solutions to past process problems. In the proposed method, influence factors including essential characteristics, failure characteristics, and remanufacturing processing characteristics are identified, and the local similarity of influence factors between the new case and the past cases is determined by nearest neighbor matching method, and then the vector of correction factor for local similarity is utilized in the nearest neighbor algorithm to improve the accuracy and effectiveness of case searching. To assess the usefulness and practicality of the proposed method, an illustrative example is given and the results are discussed

(2E)-2-[2-(4-Chloro­phen­yl)hydrazin-1-yl­idene]-4,4,4-trifluoro-3-oxobutanal

The title compound, C10H6ClF3N2O2, was synthesized by coupling 4-dimethyl­amino-1,1,1-trifluoro­but-3-en-2-one with 4-chloro­benzene­diazo­nium chloride. It crystallizes with two mol­ecules in the asymmetric unit, which form two similar centrosymmetric dimers via hydrogen bonds. Extensive electron delocalization and intra­molecular N—H⋯O hydrogen bonds are responsible for a planar conformation of the mol­ecules (maximum deviations = 0.010 and −0.015 Å for the two molecules). In addition to hydrogen bonds, π–π stacking inter­actions with centroid–centroid distances of 3.604 (2) and 3.583 (2) Å contribute to the stability of the crystal structure

An updated determination of the pion-photon transition form factor

In this paper, we study the properties of the pion-photon transition form factor (TFF), $\gamma\gamma^{\ast} \rightarrow \pi^{0}$, by using the principle of maximum commonality (PMC) to deal with its perturbative QCD contribution up to next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) QCD corrections. Applying the PMC, we achieve precise pQCD approximant for the TFF in large $Q^2$-region without conventional renormalization scale ambiguity. We also discuss the power suppressed non-valence quark contribution to the TFF, which is important for a sound prediction in low and intermediate $Q^2$-region, e.g. the non-valence quark components affect the TFF by about $1\%$ to $23\%$ when $Q^{2}$ changes down from $40~{\rm GeV^{2}}$ to $4~{\rm GeV^{2}}$. The resultant pion-photon TFF shows a better agreement with previous Belle data. It is hoped that previous discrepancies between the experimental measurements and theoretical predictions could be clarified by the forth-coming precise data on the Belle II measurements.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

Priming of Toll-like receptor 4 pathway in mesenchymal stem cells increases expression of B cell activating factor

AbstractMesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) can be polarized into two distinct populations, MSC1 and MSC2, by activation of different Toll-like receptors (TLRs). TLR4-primed MSC1 expressed proinflammatory factors, whereas TLR3-primed MSC2 expressed suppressive factors. However, little is known about the function of TLRs on B lymphocyte-related immune modulation. In this study, we investigated the expression of B cell activating factor (BAFF), a member of the tumor necrosis factor ligand superfamily with notable stimulating activity on B cells, in human MSCs (hMSCs) and in murine MSCs (mMSCs) after activation of TLRs. BAFF was increasingly expressed in presence of TLR4 agonist (lipopolysaccharide, LPS), while TLR2 agonist (Zymosan) and TLR3-agonist (polyinocinic–polycytidykic acid, poly I:C) had no effect on BAFF expression. In addition, we demonstrated that signaling pathways of NF-κB, p38 MAPK, and JNK were involved in TLR4-primed BAFF expression. Our results suggested that TLR4 and downstream pathways in MSCs exert an important function in B lymphocyte-related immune regulation. Further defining a homogeneous population of MSCs should provide insight into MSC-based immune-modulating therapy

A demands-matching multi-criteria decision-making method for reverse logistics

A demand matching oriented Multi-Criteria Decision-Making method is presented to identify the best collection mode for used components. In this method, the damage condition and remaining service life are incorporated into the evaluation criteria of reuse mode, then a hybrid method (AHP-EW) integrating Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Entropy Weight (EW) is used to derive the criteria weights and the grey Multi-Attributive Border Approximation Area Comparison (MABAC) is adopted to rank the collection modes. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is used to test the stability of the method and a demands-matching method is proposed to validate the feasibility of the optimal alternative. The method is validated using the collection of used pressurizers as case study. The results of which show the effectiveness of the proposed method