Integrating environmental assessment in the assembly line design process

This study focuses on including the environmental assessment of a process in its design. Two improvement targets can be considered to optimize the environmental efficiency of a production phase: a cleaner process, and the optimization of the assembly of the different product parts. This work makes it possible to apply life cycle assessment to product industrialization, and specifically to assembly lines. The reduction of the environmental impacts (EI) of the production phase can be achieved by modeling the assembly line and/or optimizing equipment choices and organization. To accomplish this, we developed a tool. In this tool,equipment EI are calculated using two databases: i) an equipment database, listing Equipment characteristics: lifetime, EI for individual functional units and use parameters; and ii) a consumption database, listing the consumables and energy EI. A comparison of the equipment EI is carried out for the same function, use conditions and functional unit. Equipment is then selected according to its EI. Finally, the tool determines the EI of the optimized assembly lin

Balanced Connected Partitioning of Unweighted Grid Graphs

We consider a partitioning problem for grid graphs with special constraints: a (square) grid graph as well as a number of colors is given, a solution is a coloring approximatively assigning the same number of vertices to each color and such that the induced subgraph for each color is connected. In a "rooted" variant, a vertex to be included in the coloring for each color is specified as well. This problem has a concrete motivation in multimedia streaming applications. We show that the general problem is NP-complete. On the other hand, we define a reasonable easy subclass of grid graphs for which solutions always exist and can be computed by a greedy algorithm

Racinator : pour l'extraction de racines et de graines des échantillons de sol

Racinator est un nouvel équipement d’extraction des racines et des graines contenues dans une carotte de sol, permettant de filtrer les éléments jusqu’à 200µm. Le principe de fonctionnement repose sur plusieurs phases successives : trempage, barbotage et tamisage. La carotte de sol préalablement dissoute par trempage dans de l’eau salée est insérée dans l’appareil. Un bocal séparateur est alors alimenté automatiquement par séquences, avec le mélange de terre, de racines et de graines via une vanne pneumatique pilotée par un contrôleur logique programmable. Sous l’effet de barbotage créé par l’injection d’eau et d’air comprimé dans le bocal, les racines et les graines sont séparées de la terre et remontent à la surface de l’eau. Elles sont ensuite récupérées dans un ou plusieurs tamis superposés. La réduction du maillage de chaque tamis permet d’isoler les éléments en fonction de leur tailleRacinator is a new equipment to extract roots and seeds contained in core samples allowing filter elements up to 200 µm. Its functionning is based on successive phases : soaking, paddling and screening. The core sample that was previously disolved by soaking in salted water is inserted in the machine. A separator jar then received automatically sequences with a mix of soil, roots and seeds by a pneumatic valve piloted by a program logic controller. When injecting water and compressed air in the jar a paddling effect is created, roots and seeds are separated from soil and come back up to the surface of water. They are afterwards received in one or several screenings of different meshings. The reduction of the screening meshing allows isolate elements from smaller parts

GRAPHE : un logiciel de visualisation de données horodatées sur un graphique 2D

Graphe est un nouveau logiciel développé sous Labview et compatible avec Windows qui permet d’afficher des tableaux de données horodatées sur un graphique en 2D (temps ; valeur). En plus d’être ouvert aux formats des fichiers Excel et des fichiers texte dont les données sont délimitées par un séparateur unique, ce logiciel offre des fonctionnalités d’exploration graphique. Les caractéristiques de chaque tracé (visibilité, type, couleur, etc.) et les échelles d’axes sont modifiables. Six modes de zooms sont disponibles, des curseurs s’affichent pour suivre les coordonnées des points d’une courbe et effectuer des calculs mathématiques. Enfin, le graphique s’exporte vers le presse‑papiers ou en image simplifiée

Added value of one-view breast tomosynthesis combined with digital mammography according to reader experience

International audiencePurposeTo retrospectively evaluate the added value of one-view breast tomosynthesis in adjunct with mammography to characterize breast lesions.Materials and methodsOur institutional ethics committees approved the study and granted a waiver of informed consent. One hundred fifty-five women (mean age, 51.3 years, range: 24-92 years) who systematically underwent mammography and breast tomosynthesis with subsequent percutaneous biopsy were analyzed. Four radiologists (two seniors, R1 and R2, and two juniors, R3 and R4 with 30, 10, 3 and 1 years of experience in breast imaging, respectively) independently reviewed exams in 2 steps: mammography alone and tomosynthesis in adjunct with mammography. The lesions in the cohort included 39.3% (61/155) cancers, 2.5% (4/155) high-risk lesions and 58.1% (90/155) benign lesions. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was performed to compare the results of the two readings.ResultsThere was almost perfect agreement irrespective of reader experience for the reading of the mammography in adjunct with tomosynthesis, whereas agreement was poor between junior and senior readers for the reading of mammography alone. Area under the ROC (Az) values for the tomosynthesis in adjunct with mammography were significantly better than Az values for mammography alone for all readers except the most experienced, for whom only a tendency was noted. The proportion of cancers undiagnosed by mammography alone that were well diagnosed by tomosynthesis in adjunct with mammography was 6.5% (4/61), 13.1% (8/61), 27.8% (17/61) and 26.2% (16/61) for Readers 1, 2, 3 and 4, respectively. The proportion of false positive cases induced by the addition of breast tomosynthesis to mammography was 2.1% (2/94), 2.1% (2/94), 9.5% (9/94) and 12.7% (12/94) for Readers 1, 2, 3 and 4, respectively.ConclusionAdding breast tomosynthesis to mammography improved sensitivity and negative predictive value for all readers except for the most experienced one, in whom only a tendency for improvement was noted

Lyme borreliosis: evidence-based data useful for primary care

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Shvo-Type Metal-Ligand Cooperative Catalysts: Tethered eta(5)-Oxocyclohexadienyl Ruthenium Complexes

International audienceDiverse synthetic routes of tethered eta(5)-oxocyclo-hexadienyl ruthenium complexes, which are the extended version of the eta(4)-cyclopentadienone Shvo-type active catalyst, are described and their reactivity studies are reported. An original dimeric eta(5)-oxocyclohexadienyl compound has been isolated and its solid-state structure was established by X-ray analysis. DFT computational data suggested that this dimeric compound is prone to generate a coordinatively unsaturated mononuclear Lewis acid metal complex bearing a Lewis basic pi-coordinated eta(5)-oxocyclohexadienyl Iigand. Preliminary studies in (transfer)-hydrogenation of acetophenone confirmed that the dimeric eta(5)-oxocyclohexadienyl complex behaves as a bifunctional catalyst with metal-ligand cooperativity. Promising results were obtained under base-free conditions using dihydrogen, iPrOH, and formic acid as hydrogen highlighting the robustness and stability of the catalyst and opening perspectives donors, the latter being active in water, hence toward sustainable catalytic transformations

A probabilistic graphical model for describing the grape berry maturity

Grape berry maturation depends on complex and coupled physiological and biochemical reactions which are climate dependant. Moreover one experiment represents one year and the climate variability could not be covered exclusively by the experiments. Consequently, harvest mostly relies on expert prediction. A big challenge for the wine industry is nevertheless to be able to anticipate the reactions for sustainability purposes. We propose to implement a robust mathematical model able (1) to capitalize the heterogeneous fragmented available knowledge including data and expertise by means of probabilistic graphical approaches; and (2) to predict sugar, acidity and anthocyanin concentrations over the maturity