An investigation into standards in sustainable design and manufacture

This paper reports upon the application of standards to reduce the negative environmental impacts of manufacturing through product lifecycle planning and closed loop production. By eliminating waste and retaining the energy embodied within materials and components, manufacturing can become more sustainable from both ecological and financial perspectives. Energy consumption and the associated carbon pollution can thus be minimised. Environmental Management System implementation is also considered

Delay Aware Intelligent Transient Stability Assessment System

Transient stability assessment is a critical tool for power system design and operation. With the emerging advanced synchrophasor measurement techniques, machine learning methods are playing an increasingly important role in power system stability assessment. However, most existing research makes a strong assumption that the measurement data transmission delay is negligible. In this paper, we focus on investigating the influence of communication delay on synchrophasor-based transient stability assessment. In particular, we develop a delay aware intelligent system to address this issue. By utilizing an ensemble of multiple long short-term memory networks, the proposed system can make early assessments to achieve a much shorter response time by utilizing incomplete system variable measurements. Compared with existing work, our system is able to make accurate assessments with a significantly improved efficiency. We perform numerous case studies to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed intelligent system, in which accurate assessments can be developed with time one third less than state-of-the-art methodologies. Moreover, the simulations indicate that noise in the measurements has trivial impact on the assessment performance, demonstrating the robustness of the proposed system.published_or_final_versio

A Novel Online Scheduling Algorithm for Hierarchical Vehicle-to-Grid System

SAC-SGC.1: Smart Grid Energy Managementpostprin

Quaternion algebras with the same subfields

G. Prasad and A. Rapinchuk asked if two quaternion division F -algebras that have the same subfields are necessarily isomorphic. The answer is known to be "no" for some very large fields. We prove that the answer is "yes" if F is an extension of a global field K so that F /K is unirational and has zero unramified Brauer group. We also prove a similar result for Pfister forms and give an application to tractable fields

Increase in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus acquisition rate and change in pathogen pattern associated with an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome

Background. An outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) occurred in our 22-bed intensive care unit (ICU; Prince of Wales Hospital, Hong Kong, HKSAR, China) from 12 March to 31 May 2003, when only patients with SARS were admitted. This period was characterized by the upgrading of infection control precautions, which included the wearing of gloves and gowns all the time, an extensive use of steroids, and a change in antibiotic prescribing practices. The pattern of endemic pathogenic organisms, the rates of acquisition of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), and the rates of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) were compared with those of the pre-SARS and post-SARS periods. Methods. Data on pathogenic isolates were obtained from the microbiology department (Prince of Wales Hospital). Data on MRSA acquisition and VAP rates were collected prospectively. MRSA screening was performed for all ICU patients. A case of MRSA carriage was defined as an instance in which MRSA was recovered from any site in a patient, and cases were classified as imported or ICU-acquired if the first MRSA isolate was recovered within 72 h of ICU admission or after 72 h in the ICU, respectively. Results. During the SARS period in the ICU, there was an increase in the rate of isolation of MRSA and Stenotrophomonas and Candida species but a disappearance of Pseudomonas and Klebsiella species. The MRSA acquisition rate was also increased: it was 3.53% (3.53 cases per 100 admissions) during the pre-SARS period, 25.30% during the SARS period, and 2.21% during the post-SARS period (P < .001). The VAP rate was high, at 36.5 episodes per 1000 ventilator-days, and 47% of episodes were caused by MRSA. Conclusions. A SARS outbreak in the ICU led to changes in the pathogen pattern and the MRSA acquisition rate. The data suggest that MRSA cross-transmission may be increased if gloves and gowns are worn all the time.published_or_final_versio

An interactive and pen-based simulator to enhance education and research in computer systems: An experience report

The active uses of simulators to facilitate and/or promote learners’ experience in many applications has significantly reshaped the latest educational technology or training methodologies in the past decades including the training of engineering students to understand the actual working mechanisms of specific engineering principles, or the military officers on tactic planning in a simulated combat environment. In many cases, it was clearly revealed that the appropriate uses of simulators not only avoids the indispensable costs of human lives or money lost in the hostile combat or investment field, but also effectively motivates and/or enhances the learners’ interests in the relevant fields of study, thus fueling significant impacts on their actual performance. However, many conventional simulators often require the users to input a formal specification file such as a script or program to specify about the simulation settings. Besides, even in many Window based simulators, the users may need to explicitly memorize about the meanings of various system variables and their proper settings before running a simulation to observe the imparted changes. All these unnecessary hassles will drastically reduce the interactivity of simulators, and also lower the users’ interests in using them. With the fast developing tablet and ultra-mobile PCs, we have seen ample opportunities of employing sophisticated pen-based computing technologies to improve the interactivity of simulators in order to enhance the learners’ experience to learn, reason or visualize with simulators in more effective ways. Therefore, in a recent pen-based simulator development project awarded by the Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA), we proposed to use the Microsoft digital ink library to support fast symbol/character recognition and the XML technologies to flexibly define various models of computer architectures so as to build an innovative and pen-based simulator for mobile computing devices. With pen-based or other inputs, our simulator allows the instructors/students to flexibly add or modify instructions that will generate live animations to facilitate interactive discussion for teaching undergraduate to postgraduate courses. Besides, our simulator has the full potential to support research on computer systems through visualization of new results generated out of new computational models or optimization strategies. A prototype of our simulator was completed and then released to all our Year-1 students for trials in the last month in which we collected some initial and positive feedbacks. A more vigorous evaluation was planned and would be conducted by the end of this spring semester. All in all, there are many interesting directions for further investigation including the integration of relevant course materials in the form of digital resources or pointers to online databases into our simulator, and a careful study of the pedagogical changes brought by our innovative and pen-based simulator.published_or_final_versio

Serum Level of Soluble Receptor for Advanced Glycation End Products Is Associated with A Disintegrin And Metalloproteinase 10 in Type 1 Diabetes

Background The receptor for advanced glycation end products (RAGE) is involved in the pathogenesis of diabetic complications, and soluble forms of the receptor (sRAGE) can counteract the detrimental action of the full-length receptor by acting as decoy. Soluble RAGE is produced by alternative splicing [endogenous secretory RAGE (esRAGE)] and/or by proteolytic cleavage of the membrane-bound receptor. We have investigated the role of A Disintegrin And Metalloproteinase 10 (ADAM10) in the ectodomain shedding of RAGE. Methods Constitutive and insulin-induced shedding of RAGE in THP-1 macrophages by ADAM10 was evaluated using an ADAM10-specific metalloproteinase inhibitor. Serum ADAM10 level was measured in type 1 diabetes and control subjects, and the association with serum soluble RAGE was determined. Serum total sRAGE and esRAGE were assayed by ELISA and the difference between total sRAGE and esRAGE gave an estimated measure of soluble RAGE formed by cleavage (cRAGE). Results RAGE shedding (constitutive and insulin-induced) was significantly reduced after inhibition of ADAM10 in macrophages, and insulin stimulated ADAM10 expression and activity. Diabetic subjects have higher serum total sRAGE and esRAGE (p<0.01) than controls, and serum ADAM10 was also increased (p<0.01). Serum ADAM10 correlated with serum cRAGE in type 1 diabetes (r = 0.40, p<0.01) and in controls (r = 0.31. p<0.01) but no correlations were seen with esRAGE. The association remained significant after adjusting for age, gender, BMI, smoking status and HbA1c. Conclusion Our data suggested that ADAM10 contributed to the shedding of RAGE. Serum ADAM10 level was increased in type 1 diabetes and was a significant determinant of circulating cRAGE.published_or_final_versio

Wind-induced vibration analysis of the Hong Kong Ting Kau Bridge

Because of their high flexibility and relatively low structural damping, long-span bridges are prone to wind-induced vibration. An efficient wind field simulation technique for wind-induced vibration analysis of long-span bridges is first introduced in this paper. The time-domain expressions for the buffeting and self-excited forces acting on long-span bridges can then be found from the wind velocities. Based on the above theory and the aerodynamic parameters obtained by wind tunnel tests, a study of the wind fluctuations and aerodynamic forces is carried out on the Hong Kong Ting Kau Bridge, which is a cable-stayed bridge comprising two main spans and two side spans. The buffeting response of the bridge is analysed in the time domain by using step-by-step numerical integration techniques. The aerodynamic behaviour of the bridge can therefore be obtained, and the safety performance of the bridge against strong wind can further be evaluated. Numerical results basically agree with the experimental data, indicating that the theory presented in this paper is applicable to engineering practice.published_or_final_versio