Feasibility of extractive distillation process variants in batch rectifier column

A systematic comparison is presented about the separation tasks of azeotropic and close-boiling mixtures applying batch extractive distillation (BED) in rectifier. All the eight possible mixture types with at most a single azeotrope (minimum and maximum boiling azeotropes with heavy, light, and intermediate boiling entrainers; and close boiling mixtures with heavy and light entrainers) are compared. The main results of the feasibility studies on the hitherto unpublished cases are presented. All the cases are feasible in batch rectifier, applying BED. The operation steps are determined by the relative position of the azeotropic composition and entrainer in bubble point ranking. The main limiting parameters (F/V, N, Epremix) are also determined by the mentioned relative position; only the existence of maximum number of stages in the rectifying section is determined by the type of the azeotrope. Use of residue curves maps (RCMs) for predicting feasibility is not generally satisfactory, but profiles maps can be used instead. Studying only the total reflux case can be misleading, and should be treated with great care. The theoretical results of separation variants applying intermediate boiling entrainer were proved experimentally

Identifying super-feminine, super-masculine and sex-defining connections in the human braingraph

For more than a decade now, we can discover and study thousands of cerebral connections with the application of diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) techniques and the accompanying algorithmic workflow. While numerous connectomical results were published enlightening the relation between the braingraph and certain biological, medical, and psychological properties, it is still a great challenge to identify a small number of brain connections closely related to those conditions. In the present contribution, by applying the 1200 Subjects Release of the Human Connectome Project (HCP) and Support Vector Machines, we identify just 102 connections out of the total number of 1950 connections in the 83-vertex graphs of 1064 subjects, which-by a simple linear test-precisely, without any error determine the sex of the subject. Next, we re-scaled the weights of the edges-corresponding to the discovered fibers-to be between 0 and 1, and, very surprisingly, we were able to identify two graph edges out of these 102, such that, if their weights are both 1, then the connectome always belongs to a female subject, independently of the other edges. Similarly, we have identified 3 edges from these 102, whose weights, if two of them are 1 and one is 0, imply that the graph belongs to a male subject-again, independently of the other edges. We call the former 2 edges superfeminine and the first two of the 3 edges supermasculine edges of the human connectome. Even more interestingly, the edge, connecting the right Pars Triangularis and the right Superior Parietal areas, is one of the 2 superfeminine edges, and it is also the third edge, accompanying the two supermasculine connections if its weight is 0; therefore, it is also a "switching" edge. Identifying such edge-sets of distinction is the unprecedented result of this work

Provenance-based trust for grid computing: Position Paper

Current evolutions of Internet technology such as Web Services, ebXML, peer-to-peer and Grid computing all point to the development of large-scale open networks of diverse computing systems interacting with one another to perform tasks. Grid systems (and Web Services) are exemplary in this respect and are perhaps some of the first large-scale open computing systems to see widespread use - making them an important testing ground for problems in trust management which are likely to arise. From this perspective, today's grid architectures suffer from limitations, such as lack of a mechanism to trace results and lack of infrastructure to build up trust networks. These are important concerns in open grids, in which "community resources" are owned and managed by multiple stakeholders, and are dynamically organised in virtual organisations. Provenance enables users to trace how a particular result has been arrived at by identifying the individual services and the aggregation of services that produced such a particular output. Against this background, we present a research agenda to design, conceive and implement an industrial-strength open provenance architecture for grid systems. We motivate its use with three complex grid applications, namely aerospace engineering, organ transplant management and bioinformatics. Industrial-strength provenance support includes a scalable and secure architecture, an open proposal for standardising the protocols and data structures, a set of tools for configuring and using the provenance architecture, an open source reference implementation, and a deployment and validation in industrial context. The provision of such facilities will enrich grid capabilities by including new functionalities required for solving complex problems such as provenance data to provide complete audit trails of process execution and third-party analysis and auditing. As a result, we anticipate that a larger uptake of grid technology is likely to occur, since unprecedented possibilities will be offered to users and will give them a competitive edge

Tilted pillar array fabrication by the combination of proton beam writing and soft lithography for microfluidic cell capture Part 2: Image sequence analysis based evaluation and biological application

As a continuation of our previously published work, this paper presents a detailed evaluation of a microfabricated cell capture device utilizing a doubly tilted micropillar array. The device was fabricated using a novel hybrid technology based on the combination of proton beam writing and conventional lithography techniques. Tilted pillars offer unique flow characteristics and support enhanced fluidic interaction for improved immuno-affinity based cell capture. The performance of the microdevice was evaluated by an image sequence analysis based in-house developed single cell tracking system. Individual cell tracking allowed in-depth analysis of the cell-chip surface interaction mechanism from hydrodynamic point of view. Simulation results were validated by using the hybrid device and the optimized surface functionalization procedure. Finally, the cell capture capability of this new generation microdevice was demonstrated by efficiently arresting cells from a HT29 cellline suspension

Consulting (in Writing) to the Corporation: Principles and Pragmatics

Provenance information provides a useful basis to verify whether a particular application behavior has been adhered to. This is particularly useful to evaluate the basis for a particular outcome, as a result of a process, and to verify if the process involved in making the decision conforms to some pre-defined set of rules. This is significant in a healthcare scenario, where it is necessary to demonstrate that patient data has been processed in a particular way. Understanding how provenance information may be recorded, stored, and subsequently analyzed by a decision maker is therefore significant in a service oriented architecture, which involves the use of third party services over which the decision maker does not have control. The aggregation of data from multiple sources of patient information plays an important part in subsequent treatments that are proposed for a patient. A tool to navigate through and analyze such provenance information is proposed, based on the use of a portal framework that allows different views on provenance information to co-exist. The portal enables users to add custom portlets enabling application specific views that would facilitate particular decision making