Root Cause Analysis of a Vibration Problem in a Propylene Turbo Compressor

Case StudyProblem:• A newly installed turbo compressor system for propylene showed vibrations in the piping system and rotor. • After that supporting layout was significantly improved measurements showed that vibrations were within the allowable range. • Still the rotor vibrations were not acceptable. • A root cause analysis was carried that showed two likely causes

Root Cause Analysis of a Vibration Problem in a Propylene Turbo Compressor

Case StudyProblem:• A newly installed turbo compressor system for propylene showed vibrations in the piping system and rotor. • After that supporting layout was significantly improved measurements showed that vibrations were within the allowable range. • Still the rotor vibrations were not acceptable. • A root cause analysis was carried that showed two likely causes

Influence of prenatal maternal stress, maternal plasma cortisol and cortisol in the amniotic fluid on birth outcomes and child temperament at 3 months

This prospective, longitudinal study aimed to investigate relationships between indicators of maternal prenatal stress, infant birth outcomes and early temperament. We examined the pattern of associations and postulated pathways between physiological (cortisol plasma concentrations) and self-report indices (stress, anxiety) of maternal prenatal stress, cortisol in the amniotic fluid, birth outcomes and infant temperament at 3 months. The sample consisted of 158 women undergoing amniocentesis in the 2nd trimester of pregnancy. Questionnaire measures of maternal stress and anxiety were found to be unrelated to cortisol in plasma or amniotic fluid. Maternal cortisol was related to amniotic cortisol, which in turn was associated with lower birth weight. Birth weight predicted infant fear and distress to limitation at 3 months old. We found trend-like indirect effects of amniotic fluid on infant distress to limitation and fear via birth weight. This is one of the few studies to simultaneously assess the role of maternal and amniotic fluid cortisol on birth outcomes and infant emotional development. The results suggest that foetal cortisol may be an important predictor of infant outcomes and shed light on the mechanisms through which prenatal maternal stress affects infant psychological health

Development and external validation of a clinical prediction model for predicting quality of recovery up to 1 week after surgery

The Quality of Recovery Score-40 (QoR-40) has been increasingly used for assessing recovery after patients undergoing surgery. However, a prediction model estimating quality of recovery is lacking. The aim of the present study was to develop and externally validate a clinical prediction model that predicts quality of recovery up to one week after surgery. The modelling procedure consisted of two models of increasing complexity (basic and full model). To assess the internal validity of the developed model, bootstrapping (1000 times) was applied. At external validation, the model performance was evaluated according to measures for overall model performance (explained variance (R 2)) and calibration (calibration plot and slope). The full model consisted of age, sex, previous surgery, BMI, ASA classification, duration of surgery, HADS and preoperative QoR-40 score. At model development, the R 2 of the full model was 0.24. At external validation the R 2 dropped as expected. The calibration analysis showed that the QoR-40 predictions provided by the developed prediction models are reliable. The presented models can be used as a starting point for future updating in prediction studies. When the predictive performance is improved it could be implemented clinically in the future.</p

Community-Acquired Bacterial Meningitis in Alcoholic Patients

BACKGROUND: Alcoholism is associated with susceptibility to infectious disease, particularly bacterial pneumonia. In the present study we described characteristics in alcoholic patients with bacterial meningitis and delineate the differences with findings in non-alcoholic adults with bacterial meningitis. METHODS/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: This was a prospective nationwide observational cohort study including patients aged >16 years who had bacterial meningitis confirmed by culture of cerebrospinal fluid (696 episodes of bacterial meningitis occurring in 671 patients). Alcoholism was present in 27 of 686 recorded episodes of bacterial meningitis (4%) and alcoholics were more often male than non-alcoholics (82% vs 48%, P = 0.001). A higher proportion of alcoholics had underlying pneumonia (41% vs 11% P<0.001). Alcoholics were more likely to have meningitis due to infection with Streptococcus pneumoniae (70% vs 50%, P = 0.01) and Listeria monocytogenes (19% vs 4%, P = 0.005), whereas Neisseria meningitidis was more common in non-alcoholic patients (39% vs 4%, P = 0.01). A large proportion of alcoholics developed complications during clinical course (82% vs 62%, as compared with non-alcoholics; P = 0.04), often cardiorespiratory failure (52% vs 28%, as compared with non-alcoholics; P = 0.01). Alcoholic patients were at risk for unfavourable outcome (67% vs 33%, as compared with non-alcoholics; P<0.001). CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Alcoholic patients are at high risk for complications resulting in high morbidity and mortality. They are especially at risk for cardiorespiratory failure due to underlying pneumonia, and therefore, aggressive supportive care may be crucial in the treatment of these patient

The Role of Gasotransmitters in Gut Peptide Actions

Although gasotransmitters nitric oxide (NO), carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen sulfide (H(2)S) receive a bad connotation; in low concentrations these play a major governing role in local and systemic blood flow, stomach acid release, smooth muscles relaxations, anti-inflammatory behavior, protective effect and more. Many of these physiological processes are upstream regulated by gut peptides, for instance gastrin, cholecystokinin, secretin, motilin, ghrelin, glucagon-like peptide 1 and 2. The relationship between gasotransmitters and gut hormones is poorly understood. In this review, we discuss the role of NO, CO and H(2)S on gut peptide release and functioning, and whether manipulation by gasotransmitter substrates or specific blockers leads to physiological alterations

ClioPatria: A SWI-Prolog Infrastructure for the Semantic Web

ClioPatria is a comprehensive semantic web development framework based on SWI-Prolog. SWI-Prolog provides an efficient C-based main-memory RDF store that is designed to cooperate naturally and efficiently with Prolog, realizing a flexible RDF-based environment for rule based programming. ClioPatria extends this core with a SPARQL and LOD server, an extensible web frontend to manage the server, browse the data, query the data using SPARQL and Prolog and a Git-based plugin manager. The ability to query RDF using Prolog provides query composition and smooth integration with application logic. ClioPatria is primarily positioned as a prototyping platform for exploring novel ways of reasoning with RDF data. It has been used in several research projects in order to perform tasks such as data integration and enrichment and semantic search

La mission Griaule à Kangaba (Mali)

Le livre de Solange de Ganay est un document historique fascinant, non pas tant pour l'étude du Kamabolon, ni pour celle de la culture mandingue, mais important pour l'histoire de l'ethnographie griaulienne laquelle a marqué l'ancienne ethnographie du Mali. Cette ethnographie décrite par S. de Ganay reflète le projet ethnographique de Marcel Griaule, pour qui la recherche sur le terrain est vue comme une campagne « militaire » : l'ethnographie est faite en équipe, avec des spécialistes de divers domaines. Concrètement, l'équipe de M. Griaule voit des symboles comme une cryptographie : on doit les déchiffrer, « trouver le code », afin d'aboutir aux secrets gardés par une minorité de la population étudiée. Parmi les textes sur l'histoire du Manden, recueillis dans la période 1954-1996, le texte de S. de Ganay est une anomalie. Cet article essaie d'en comprendre la création et la construction pour mettre en question la méthode de recherche et la connaissance des informateurs.The Griaule Expedition to Kangaba (Mali). -- Solange de Ganay's book is a fascinating historical document not for the study of Kamabolon or Manding culture but for the history of Marcel Griaule's field work, which has left its marks on the ethnology of Mali. The kind of ethnological study described by de Ganay reflects Griaule's ethnological project. For him, field work was like a "military" campaign to be conducted by a team with specialists in various fields. The Griaule team saw symbols as a cryptography to be "decoded" so as to discover the secrets kept by a minority of the population. Among the texts on Manden history collected between 1954 and 1996, de Ganay's is an anomaly. How to understand its creation and construction so as to question its research methods and informers' knowledge

Sampled-data control of hybrid systems with discrete inputs and outputs

We address the control synthesis of hybrid systems with discrete inputs, disturbances and outputs. The control objective is to ensure that the events of the closed-loop system belong to the language of the control requirements. The controller is sampling-based and it is representable by a &#64257;nite-state machine. We formalize the control problem and provide a theoretically sound solution. The solution is based on solving a discrete-event control problem for a &#64257;nite-state abstraction of the plant. We propose a speci&#64257;c construction for the &#64257;nite-state abstraction. This construction is not based on discretizing the state-space, but rather on converting the continuous-time hybrid system to a discrete-time one based on sampling. The construction works only for a speci&#64257;c class of hybrid systems. We describe this class of systems and we provide an example of such a system, inspired by an industrial use-case