Science-Based Technological Transfer as a Key Tool in Public Health

Only a small portion of all the projects that are funded with public grants reaches the market, due to a gap known as “Death Valley” between the public and private source of resources. Know Hub Chile (KH) is a non-profit organization founded to transform scientific research results into goods and services available to the market and for the benefit of society. When the Covid-19 emergency reached Chile, the organization launched the “KH Bridge” a program of proof-of-concept and selected three technologies able to support hospitals in solving their needs. The first one was a smart shift planning platform of medical staff for reducing the virus spreading probability; the second solution aimed to assess the use of masks, and counting capacity and physical distance of patients by using video camera analytic technology in real-time; and the third project selected was an innovative design of personal protection equipment made with copper nanoparticles. All these solutions were piloted and validated into public hospitals for three months with a USD 25.000 budget. The KH Bridge experience has shown that the pandemic scenario has been an opportunity to validate university technologies in real environments and in shorter time frames, contributing to public health operations

A Hard Constraint Algorithm to Model Particle Interactions in DNA-laden Flows

We present a new method for particle interactions in polymer models of DNA. The DNA is represented by a bead-rod polymer model and is fully-coupled to the fluid. The main objective in this work is to implement short-range forces to properly model polymer-polymer and polymer-surface interactions, specifically, rod-rod and rod-surface uncrossing. Our new method is based on a rigid constraint algorithm whereby rods elastically bounce off one another to prevent crossing, similar to our previous algorithm used to model polymer-surface interactions. We compare this model to a classical (smooth) potential which acts as a repulsive force between rods, and rods and surfaces

A Hybrid Godunov Method for Radiation Hydrodynamics

From a mathematical perspective, radiation hydrodynamics can be thought of as a system of hyperbolic balance laws with dual multiscale behavior (multiscale behavior associated with the hyperbolic wave speeds as well as multiscale behavior associated with source term relaxation). With this outlook in mind, this paper presents a hybrid Godunov method for one-dimensional radiation hydrodynamics that is uniformly well behaved from the photon free streaming (hyperbolic) limit through the weak equilibrium diffusion (parabolic) limit and to the strong equilibrium diffusion (hyperbolic) limit. Moreover, one finds that the technique preserves certain asymptotic limits. The method incorporates a backward Euler upwinding scheme for the radiation energy density and flux as well as a modified Godunov scheme for the material density, momentum density, and energy density. The backward Euler upwinding scheme is first-order accurate and uses an implicit HLLE flux function to temporally advance the radiation components according to the material flow scale. The modified Godunov scheme is second-order accurate and directly couples stiff source term effects to the hyperbolic structure of the system of balance laws. This Godunov technique is composed of a predictor step that is based on Duhamel's principle and a corrector step that is based on Picard iteration. The Godunov scheme is explicit on the material flow scale but is unsplit and fully couples matter and radiation without invoking a diffusion-type approximation for radiation hydrodynamics. This technique derives from earlier work by Miniati & Colella 2007. Numerical tests demonstrate that the method is stable, robust, and accurate across various parameter regimes.Comment: accepted for publication in Journal of Computational Physics; 61 pages, 15 figures, 11 table

Numerical solution of the eXtended Pom-Pom model for viscoelastic free surface flows

In this paper we present a finite difference method for solving two-dimensional viscoelastic unsteady free surface flows governed by the single equation version of the eXtended Pom-Pom (XPP) model. The momentum equations are solved by a projection method which uncouples the velocity and pressure fields. We are interested in low Reynolds number flows and, to enhance the stability of the numerical method, an implicit technique for computing the pressure condition on the free surface is employed. This strategy is invoked to solve the governing equations within a Marker-and-Cell type approach while simultaneously calculating the correct normal stress condition on the free surface. The numerical code is validated by performing mesh refinement on a two-dimensional channel flow. Numerical results include an investigation of the influence of the parameters of the XPP equation on the extrudate swelling ratio and the simulation of the Barus effect for XPP fluids