Development of road haulage trailer design

Heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) are synonymous with high fuel consumption due to their weight and bluff nature. At a time when fuel prices are high and haulage operators have an environmental responsibility to reduce CO2 emissions, there is great interest in the possible methods of curbing fuel consumption. With up to 50 percent of HGV fuel consumption attributed to aerodynamic drag, there are improvements which can be made to the design and manufacture of haulage trailers in order to reduce fuel consumption and reduce CO2 emissions. Various design modifications, both those able to be retrofitted and only possible at the point of manufacture, are tested using computational fluid dynamics (CFD), to establish the potential drag reduction when compared to a baseline case. These are evaluated in both normal and side-wind conditions. The baseline case is modelled to represent a HGV combination that is representative of the average trailer in operation in the UK industry. It is found that in combination, the trailer modifications analysed can reduce the aerodynamic drag of the overall vehicle geometry by up to 26%. Additional geometry is also tested that is specific to the UK industry due to the lack of a limitation on overall vehicle height. These tests highlight the consequences of unchecked vehicle geometry and the effects that inappropriate truck and trailer matching can have on the overall drag contribution of the vehicle. These cases along with the comparative and baseline cases show that the ow characteristics of the vehicle geometry differs greatly between normal and conditions of side-wind. This in turn dictates the e effctiveness of the geometry modifications dependent on their intended area of drag improvement, and can inform design decisions when incorporating these at the point of manufacture

A Comparative Study of the Clinical use of Motion Analysis from Kinect Skeleton Data

The analysis of human motion as a clinical tool can bring many benefits such as the early detection of disease and the monitoring of recovery, so in turn helping people to lead independent lives. However, it is currently under used. Developments in depth cameras, such as Kinect, have opened up the use of motion analysis in settings such as GP surgeries, care homes and private homes. To provide an insight into the use of Kinect in the healthcare domain, we present a review of the current state of the art. We then propose a method that can represent human motions from time-series data of arbitrary length, as a single vector. Finally, we demonstrate the utility of this method by extracting a set of clinically significant features and using them to detect the age related changes in the motions of a set of 54 individuals, with a high degree of certainty (F1- score between 0.9 - 1.0). Indicating its potential application in the detection of a range of age-related motion impairments

Innate immunity defines the capacity of antiviral T cells to limit persistent infection

Effective immunity requires the coordinated activation of innate and adaptive immune responses. Natural killer (NK) cells are central innate immune effectors, but can also affect the generation of acquired immune responses to viruses and malignancies. How NK cells influence the efficacy of adaptive immunity, however, is poorly understood. Here, we show that NK cells negatively regulate the duration and effectiveness of virus-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses by limiting exposure of T cells to infected antigen-presenting cells. This impacts the quality of T cell responses and the ability to limit viral persistence. Our studies provide unexpected insights into novel interplays between innate and adaptive immune effectors, and define the critical requirements for efficient control of viral persistence

Escape of Mutant Double-Stranded DNA Virus from Innate Immune Control

As innate immune system components, natural killer (NK) cells respond rapidly to infections and effectively control replication of pathogens, including murine cytomegalovirus (MCMV), a double-stranded DNA beta-herpesvirus. In the absence of NK cell control, MCMV infection results in early mortality due to uncontrolled viral replication. However, here we show that even in the face of initial NK cell control, there is late recrudescence of disease and mortality in immunodeficient mice due to the outgrowth of MCMV mutants that escape recognition by innate NK cells. These data suggest that viral infections in certain clinical settings also may be due to viral escape from innate immunity

Selenium-containing heterocycles from isoselenocyanates: synthesis of 2-methylidene-1,3-selenazolidine derivatives

A convenient and unequivocal synthesis of the title compounds from isoselenocyanates, malononitrile or 2-cyanoacetate, and 1,2-dibromoethane or a-halogenated carboxylic acid derivatives is reported. The proposed reaction mechanism involves in situ cyclization of different halogenated compounds with an intermediate keten-N,Se-acetal, generated by the base promoted nucleophilic addition of the acidic cyanomethylenes to aliphatic and aromatic isoselenocyanates. Chemical and spectroscopic evidence for the structures of the new compounds is presented