Modelling of liquid-liquid dispersions in batch stirred vessels

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Is there a role for oral triple therapy in patients with acute coronary syndromes without atrial fibrillation?

© 2018 Bentham Science PublishersBACKGROUND: Acute coronary syndrome (ACS) patients, despite treatment with dual antiplatelet therapy (DAPT), have up to 10% risk of recurrent major adverse cardiac events (MACE) in the short term. METHODS: Here we review studies using more potent antithrombotic agent combinations to reduce this risk, namely triple therapy (TT) with the addition of an oral anticoagulant, PAR-1 antagonist, or cilostazol to DAPT (mainly aspirin and clopidogrel), and discuss the limitations of trials to date. RESULTS: Generally speaking, TT leads to an increase in bleeding. Vorapaxar showed a signal for reducing ischaemic events, but increased intracranial haemorrhage 3-fold in the subacute phase of ACS, although remains an option for secondary prevention beyond the immediate subacute phase, particularly if prasugrel or ticagrelor are not available. Non-vitamin K oral anticoagulants (NOACs) all increased bleeding, with only modest reduction in MACE noted with low dose rivaroxaban. Rivaroxaban can be considered combined with aspirin and clopidogrel in ACS patients at high ischaemic and low bleeding risk, without prior stroke/TIA. The combination of P2Y12 inhibitor and NOAC, without aspirin, looks promising. DAPT may be replaced, not by TT, but by dual therapy comprising a NOAC with a P2Y12 inhibitor. CONCLUSION: More potent antithrombotic regimens increase bleeding and should only be considered on an individual basis, after careful risk stratification. Accurate risk stratification of ACS patients, for both ischaemic and bleeding risk, is essential to allow individualised treatment.Peer reviewe

Prioritizing Life Cycle Cost In Design For Remanufacturing Using Intelligent Tool

Sustainable practice is needed in every manufacturing industry.There are three indicators and problem arising with the economy indicator is that the variable used is not finalised during substitution value.Decisions made by decision makers are not synchronised and staff from different departments tend to argue until final decision is made.Different industries prioritize different cost resulting different in final answer.Therefore,this research will make the staff from the industry to substitute value and utilised well the Life Cycle Cost (LCC) equation to identify the suitability of Design for Remanufacturing (DFReM) practice.First objective was to determine parameter’s weightage concerning LCC equation. The data obtained from industries are direct overhead cost,indirect overhead cost,spare parts cost and packaging cost.Survey forms were distributed among 20 decision makers resulting in different perceptive and their answers were recorded.To make best cost prioritization from 20 different companies’ expenses, second objective is to propose three methods that are used in this experiment.The methods proposed are Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP),Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and combination of both techniques.Before the main research was conducted,a preliminary experiment was carried out to identify which FAHP will give answer almost same as AHP.AHP is compared because other FAHP are created based on AHP,therefore AHP will give almost correct but not as accurate as FAHP.The findings of this experiment show that Triangular AHP gives the near sequence and suitable material selection to fabricate a table fan.From this preliminary experiment,Triangular FAHP is implemented for cost selection in DFReM.Next part of experiment is to make decision using ANN. Before this part of experiment is carried out,a small experiment was carried out to determine the number of hidden neuron.The outcome of this experiment for this application,the suitable hidden neuron is 2. The last proposed method for cost prioritizing is combination of both FAHP and ANN. The improvement made is used as output from FAHP and introduced as target file.Input remained the same as previous part of ANN experiment.Final objective is to validate life cycle cost prioritizing through comparison of proposed decision making tool outputs.All proposed method’s output were identified and result shows that combination of FAHP and ANN will make the company save more expenses compared to carrying single technique.FAHP manage the company to save up to RM 91,353.The result from ANN makes the company to save up to RM 95,093. However the combination method saves the company to a total of RM 95,633.To conclude,combination of FAHP and ANN is the best technique used for cost selection before substituting in an economy indicator for DFReM. Contribution made towards body of knowledge is to adapt FAHP answer as target file for neural network simulation. Contribution made to industry is that by introducing AI technique,LCC equation gives out profit and make DFReM practice suitable for any manufacturing industry

Conceptual Design Of Reverse And Jaw Detector Jig

Essentra Component is a company located in Ipoh, Perak which produce seals. There are two types of seal available in the company which are metal and plastic seals. The production plant still employs fully manual operation for most of the production line, but some operations are semi – automated. Due to manual assembly, human operator tends to get fatigue for doing repetitive task in one long shift. When this occurs, minor error such as misplace or wrong orientation of jaw will occur. Customers complain that the seal, especially those plastic seals are not functioning well. The quality problem sometimes not purposely done by the operator during placing the jaw in reverse orientation and moreover the jaw sometimes can be missing during transportation of work – in – progress to the ultrasonic welding station. This jig is designed to have the ability to detect reverse jaw or missing jaw and so that the finish product which has the quality problem will be prevented from being shipped to customers. The jig must also have a flexibility to be used for other plastic seal product. Under chapter 2, jig definition is known, the method of designing, suitable type of sensors, sample jig which used and research on decision making tool. As for methodology, a project schedules being developed in the form of Gantt chart to have time restriction in producing the concept design of reverse and missing jaw jig. Each and every stage was explained in detail in the methodology chapter. In result and discussion, House of Quality (HOQ) have been used to determine the highest weightage criteria. The important criteria which will be carried forward to Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) are 15.9% on flexibility and ease of maintenance, 15.4% on both ease of use and longevity of jig usage, lastly 15.2% for accuracy checking. The result obtain after AHP computation are Design 1 with 20.7%, Design 2 with 13.7%, Design 3 with 22%, Design 4 with 27.1% and Design 5 with 16.5%. Design 4 is selected due to the highest weightage after computation. Last chapter consists of a conclusion that has been drawn out from overall research project where final design is justified its properties and why should it be fabricate. Some suggestions are mentioned for future work in order to obtain better reading to make a better judgement

Effect of diaphragm wall construction on adjacent deep foundation

The need of using the underground space was limited in the human history, but in the last century and due to the increase of world population, the use of the underground space has become essential. Underground metro stations, deep garages, tunnels and basements, etc... are examples of using the underground space inside the cities. The use of underground space is conducted through deep excavation or tunneling. Several techniques are used to conduct the deep excavation and one of the most popular and well known techniques used for deep excavation is the diaphragm walling technique which is widely used specially inside the cities to safe space because it requires a very small space to conduct a deep reinforced concreted wall under the ground. However, the construction of such walls causes deformation of the surrounding ground and it could also affect the nearby existing structures. In some recorded cases the slurry trench failed and causes a great deformation which effect the nearby structures. However, Minor damages and cracks were observed in buildings near stable slurry trenches, because the soil deformation was high. The existing structures inside the cities have been constructed on shallow or deep foundations and this research was oriented to study the effect of diaphragm wall installation on the existing adjacent piled foundation. Very limited studies were made to investigate such an effect. At Cambridge university centrifuge model tests were conducted to investigate the effect of slurry reduction on single piles. Field observation was conducted in several projects and showed the settlement and deformation of buildings located on deep foundation during the diaphragm wall trenching. Numerical analysis was conducted using FLAC 3D to simulate the laboratory and the available field works. FLAC 3D is a commercial software and it depend in its analysis on finite difference method. The purpose of the simulation was to verify the used numerical analysis method. The results from the numerical analysis were in a good agreement with the available field data results, and they were also in good agreement with the laboratory test results regarding soil settlement but it was not in such good agreement when they were compared regarding the pile. Generally, from the verification the numerical analysis method is considered to be reliable. A parametric study was performed using the verified numerical analysis method. The flexible nature of the numerical analysis allows to simulate different cases and to study a variety of parameters. The output of the parametric study was the pile deflection, the bending moment and the shaft friction. The study was divided into three main parts while each part contains several parameter combinations. The first part studied the effect of the single and double panel(s) on the single pile group that has different piles numbers and formations. The second and third parts studied the effect of multiple panels on connected pile groups and piled raft foundation, respectively. Generally, the studied parameters can be divided into three main groups. The first is related to the trench which includes the panel dimension, the number of panels and the slurry level inside the panel. The effect of slurry pressure reduction at some levels inside the trench was also studied. The second group concerned the soil type and ground water level. The third group is related to the deep foundation which includes pile characteristics, location, and formation within the group. The results from the parametric study showed that the pile behavior was greatly affected by panel length, groundwater level, slurry level inside the trench and steadiness of the slurry pressure. The piles were also affected by the different stages of construction related to the pile location from the constructed panel. The piles within the group act together so they behave different from each other according to their position. The effect of the pile on the trench stability is presented through a simple analytical approach which is based on the wedge analysis. The analytical approach provided equations that calculate the factor of safety in two and three dimensions. The pile location was governing the equation that calculate the factor of safety because the pile could be fully inside the failure wedge or intersect with the failure surface. A comparative study was conducted to find out the effect of the different pile location and other parameters on the safety factor. Generally, this comparative study showed that the pile located within the failure wedge reduces the factor of safety, while the pile that intersects the failure surface could increase it. The pile row near a trench that contains piles inside the failure wedge and others intersects the failure surface act together to balance the failure wedge. The factor of safety results of some cases from the analytical approach were also compared with those calculated from the numerical analysis. In general, the factor of safety from the numerical analysis was higher than that calculated from the proposed analytical approach. This research helped to understand the trenching effect on the ground surface and on the nearby piled foundations. It provided charts that could help to predict the soil deformation and earth pressure coefficient which could be used in the design. It showed through the parametric study the precautions that should be taken into consideration during trenching process near piled foundation. This research provided a design method for the slurry trench panel near piled foundation

Autophagic Reprogramming of Macrophages Polarization

Background: Macroautophagy is a highly conserved catabolic process among eukaryotes. Autophagosome is a piece of double-membrane machinery that fuses with lysosomes to form autolysosomes. Autolysosome degrades organelles and organizes the pathogen engulfment during phagocytosis in innate immunity. Macrophages are highly dynamic immune cells that orchestrate the host-pathogen interaction. Interestingly, autophagy is implicated in disease pathophysiologies such as Crohn’s disease, cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases. Therefore, this work aimed to study the interplay between autophagy and macrophage polarization (activation) through two approaches, first to construct the genetic regulatory network and pathway analysis. And to predict the target proteins that mediate the interplay between autophagy and macrophage activation(polarization). Followed by an in vitro experimental validation of target proteins using immune co-localization studies, flow cytometry studies, laser confocal microscopy studies, and gene expression analysis. Methods: A systems biology approach was performed to find the interplay between Autophagy related genes (Atgs) & Differentially expressed genes of Macrophage Polarization M1-M2 (DEGs), followed by common pathway enrichment and construction of transcription factors and mi-RNAs regulatory networks. The Atgs and DEGs targets that mediate the interplay between autophagy and macrophage polarization were defined, and experimental validation for targets took place. Bone marrow-derived monocytes were isolated from the femur and tibia of female mice. After differentiation of monocytes to M0, M1, and M2a, the lineage phenotypes were characterized using flow cytometry. Afterward, we validated the targets of Smad1, LC3A&B, Atg16L1, Atg7, IL6, CD68, Arg-1, and Vamp7. Finally, we investigated the impact of autophagy inhibition on all immune lineages using autophagy inhibitor Bafilomycin-A. Results: Immune phenotyping by flow cytometry revealed three macrophage phenotypes: (IL6+/CD68+) M0, (IL6+/CD68+/Arg-1 +) M1 and (CD68+/Arg-1) M2a lineages. And 3D reconstruction of laser confocal microscopy Z-stalk images revealed an increase of autophagy activity in both M1 and M2a lineages. Besides, a significant increase was observed in pre autophagosome size and number of Atg-7, Atg-16L1 in interleukin -4 activated M2a cells compared to control M 0 naïve cells. The size of LC 3 A& B auto phagosomal aggregates showed an increase in M2a cells. RT qPCR supported these findings and showed the high gene expression profile of Atg 16 L 1- 3, Smad1, and Vamp 7 in M2a lineage. Bafilomycin –A, an autophagy inhibitor, induced increased expression of CD68 and Arg-1 in all cell lineages. Phagocytosis assay with Heat killed E Coli bacteria showed decreased phagocytosis activity in IL-4 activated M2a cells but not M1 cells. Conclusion: This study suggests that autophagy reprograms macrophages through CD68 and Arginase-1 phagocytosis markers and Atg 16 L 1 -3 dependent manner