Dynamic Coordinated Condition-Based Maintenance for Multiple Components With External Conditions

published_or_final_versio

Development of a new machine system for the forming of micro-sheet-products

Most of the developed micro-forming machines were based on standalone concepts which do not support efficient integration to make them fully automated and integrated. At present, material feeding in micro-forming is not of sufficient precision and reliability for high throughput manufacturing applications. Precise feeding is necessary to ensure that micro-parts can be produced with sufficient accuracy, especially in multi-stage forming, while high-speed feeding is a must to meet the production-rate requirements. Therefore, design of a new high-precision and high-speed feeder for micro-forming is proposed. Several possible approaches are examined with a view to establishing feasible concepts. Based on the investigation, several concepts for thin sheet-metal feeding for micro-forming are generated, they being argued and assessed with applicable loads and forces analysis. These form a basis of designing a new feeder

Subnanometer-resolution structures of the grass carp reovirus core and virion.

Grass carp reovirus (GCRV) is a member of the Aquareovirus genus of the family Reoviridae, a large family of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) viruses infecting plants, insects, fishes and mammals. We report the first subnanometer-resolution three-dimensional structures of both GCRV core and virion by cryoelectron microscopy. These structures have allowed the delineation of interactions among the over 1000 molecules in this enormous macromolecular machine and a detailed comparison with other dsRNA viruses at the secondary-structure level. The GCRV core structure shows that the inner proteins have strong structural similarities with those of orthoreoviruses even at the level of secondary-structure elements, indicating that the structures involved in viral dsRNA interaction and transcription are highly conserved. In contrast, the level of similarity in structures decreases in the proteins situated in the outer layers of the virion. The proteins involved in host recognition and attachment exhibit the least similarities to other members of Reoviridae. Furthermore, in GCRV, the RNA-translocating turrets are in an open state and lack a counterpart for the sigma1 protein situated on top of the close turrets observed in mammalian orthoreovirus. Interestingly, the distribution and the organization of GCRV core proteins resemble those of the cytoplasmic polyhedrosis virus, a cypovirus and the structurally simplest member of the Reoviridae family. Our results suggest that GCRV occupies a unique structure niche between the simpler cypoviruses and the considerably more complex mammalian orthoreovirus, thus providing an important model for understanding the structural and functional conservation and diversity of this enormous family of dsRNA viruses

Efficacy, quality of life, and acceptability outcomes of atypical antipsychotic augmentation treatment for treatment-resistant depression: Protocol for a systematic review and network meta-analysis

Background: Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a debilitating and costly mental disorder. Although commercially available antidepressants have proliferated over the last 20 years, a substantial number of patients either do not respond adequately to these drugs or are unable to tolerate their adverse effects. One common approach has been to augment conventional antidepressants with an adjunctive agent, but the optimal selection of atypical antipsychotic agents for adjunctive treatment of treatment-resistant depression (TRD) remains controversial. Methods/Design: An electronic literature search of PubMed, the Cochrane Library, Embase, Web of Science, LiLACS, CINAHL, and PsycINFO for studies will be conducted with no restrictions on language, publication year, or publication type. Several clinical trial registry agencies, pharmaceutical company websites, and FDA reports will also be reviewed. Randomized clinical trials (RCTs) with atypical antipsychotic augmentation treatment for treatment-resistant depression will be considered. Data will be independently extracted by two reviewers. Traditional pairwise meta-analyses will be performed for RCTs that directly compare different treatment arms. Then, Bayesian network meta-analyses will be performed to compare the relative efficacy and acceptability of different atypical antipsychotic agents (and doses). A sensitivity analysis will be performed by excluding studies classified as a small sample size, having a high placebo effect. Discussion: This systematic review and network meta-analysis will comparatively analyze the efficacy, quality of life, and acceptability profiles of atypical antipsychotic medications used for the adjunctive treatment of TRD. The findings should provide clinically relevant implications for comprehensively understanding the risk-benefit profiles of these adjunctive treatments. Systematic review registration: PROSPERO CRD 42014009666

Demographic information prediction: a portrait of smartphone application Users

Demographic information is usually treated as private data (e.g., gender and age), but has been shown great values in personalized services, advertisement, behavior study and other aspects. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to make efficient demographic prediction based on smartphone application usage. Specifically, we firstly consider to characterize the data set by building a matrix to correlate users with types of categories from the log file of smartphone applications. Then, by considering the category-unbalance problem, we make use of the correlation between users’ demographic information and their requested Internet resources to make the prediction, and propose an optimal method to further smooth the obtained results with category neighbors and user neighbors. The evaluation is supplemented by the dataset from real world workload. The results show advantages of the proposed prediction approach compared with baseline prediction. In particular, the proposed approach can achieve 81.21% of Accuracy in gender prediction. While in dealing with a more challenging multi-class problem, the proposed approach can still achieve good performance (e.g., 73.84% of Accuracy in the prediction of age group and 66.42% of Accuracy in the prediction of phone level)

The sucrose transporter HbSUT3 plays an active role in sucrose loading to laticifer and rubber productivity in exploited trees of Hevea brasiliensis (para rubber tree)

Efficient sucrose loading in rubber-producing cells (laticifer cells) is essential for retaining rubber productivity in Hevea brasiliensis, but the molecular mechanisms underlying the regulation of this process remain unknown. Here, we functionally characterized a putative Hevea SUT member, HbSUT3, mainly in samples from regularly exploited trees. When expressed in yeast, HbSUT3 encodes a functional sucrose transporter that exhibits high sucrose affinity with a Km value of 1.24 mm at pH 4.0, and possesses features typical of sucrose/H+ symporters. In planta, when compared to the expression of other Hevea SUT genes, HbSUT3 was found to be the predominant member expressed in the rubber-containing cytoplasm (latex) of laticifers. The comparison of HbSUT3 expression among twelve Hevea tissues demonstrates a relatively tissue-specific pattern, i.e. expression primarily in the latex and in female flowers. HbSUT3 expression is induced by the latex stimulator Ethrel (an ethylene generator), and relates to its yield-stimulating effect. Tapping (the act of rubber harvesting) markedly increased the expression of HbSUT3, whereas wounding alone had little effect. Moreover, the expression of HbSUT3 was found to be positively correlated with latex yield. Taken together, our results provide evidence favouring the involvement of HbSUT3 in sucrose loading into laticifers and in rubber productivity

Comparative efficacy and tolerability of first-generation and newer-generation antidepressant medications for depressive disorders in children and adolescents: Study protocol for a systematic review and network meta-analysis

Introduction: Depressive disorders are among the most common psychiatric disorders in children and adolescents, and have adverse effects on their psychosocial functioning. Questions concerning the efficacy and safety of antidepressant medications in the treatment of depression in children and adolescents, led us to integrate the direct and indirect evidence using network meta-analysis to create hierarchies of these drugs. Methods and analysis: Seven databases with PubMed, EMBASE, the Cochrane Library, Web of Science, CINAHL, LiLACS and PsycINFO will be searched from 1966 to December 2013 (updated to May, 2015). There are no restrictions on language or type of publication. Randomised clinical trials assessing first-generation and newer-generation antidepressant medications against active comparator or placebo as acute treatment for depressive disorders in children and adolescents (under 18 years of age) will be included. The primary outcome for efficacy will be mean improvement in depressive symptoms, as measured by the mean change score of a depression rating scale from baseline to post-treatment. The tolerability of treatment will be defined as side effect discontinuation, as defined by the proportion of patients who discontinued treatment due to adverse events during the trial. We will also assess the secondary outcome for efficacy (response rate), acceptability (all-cause discontinuation) and suiciderelated outcomes. We will perform the Bayesian network meta-analyses for all relative outcome measures. Subgroup analyses and sensitivity analyses will be conducted to assess the robustness of the findings. Dissemination: The network meta-analysis will provide useful information on antidepressant treatment for child and adolescent depression. The results will be disseminated through peer-reviewed publication or conference presentations