Modeling and analyses of the retirement of deteriorated structures

With the increasing stock of aging structures, the strategy to model and analyse the retirement of deteriorated structures is becoming a challenging research field. As the converse of construction of new projects, the retirement of constructed facilities puts forward some new management and economics themes as well as environmental issues or adds some new contents even though the same issues are faced in construction. This research aims to model and analyse the maintenance and demolition activities of constructed facilities from economic and environmental perspectives. Both cost and carbon dioxide of maintenance and demolition activities are formulated based on those of construction activities and applied to an empirical study on deteriorated bridges. Further modelling and analysis is investigated to elaborate the demolition stage of a structure. The developed modelling and analysis methodology may enable the decision maker to determine the retirement strategy for a deteriorated structure

AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION INTO THE EFFECT OF TECHNOSTRESS OF PHYSICIANS ON ADOPTION OF ELECTRONIC HEALTHCARE SYSTEMS

Information technology systems in healthcare have existed for several years and gained relatively widespread usage. Therefore, factors of IT adoption have largely been discussed in literatures in order to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of using systems. However, existing frameworks are failing to include an important aspect, the technostress undertaken by physicians. Our research idea is that IT adoption in a clinical environment depends on five different dimensions of technostress (e.g. work overload, techno-invasion and etc. al) of physicians through PU and PEOU based on TAM model. This paper first made comprehensive literature review to the content about technostress and different theories related to adoption, then put forward five hypotheses based on the TAM Model, which has been widely perceived by scholars. As for the model construction and data collection, the research intends to use a 5-point Likert scale and select physicians at different levels from 7 representative hospitals’ basic units located in Shaanxi province. Based on all above, we expect the research could offer a subtle theoretical understanding about the nature of technostress and their impact on adoption by physicians. On the practical front, the research has implications for managers intending to design managerial procedures or rules for the purpose of improving the adoption

A Manipulator-Assisted Multiple UAV Landing System for USV Subject to Disturbance

Marine waves significantly disturb the unmanned surface vehicle (USV) motion. An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) can hardly land on a USV that undergoes irregular motion. An oversized landing platform is usually necessary to guarantee the landing safety, which limits the number of UAVs that can be carried. We propose a landing system assisted by tether and robot manipulation. The system can land multiple UAVs without increasing the USV's size. An MPC controller stabilizes the end-effector and tracks the UAVs, and an adaptive estimator addresses the disturbance caused by the base motion. The working strategy of the system is designed to plan the motion of each device. We have validated the manipulator controller through simulations and well-controlled indoor experiments. During the field tests, the proposed system caught and placed the UAVs when the disturbed USV roll range was approximately 12 degrees

A mass spectrometry-guided genome mining approach for natural product peptidogenomics.

Peptide natural products show broad biological properties and are commonly produced by orthogonal ribosomal and nonribosomal pathways in prokaryotes and eukaryotes. To harvest this large and diverse resource of bioactive molecules, we introduce here natural product peptidogenomics (NPP), a new MS-guided genome-mining method that connects the chemotypes of peptide natural products to their biosynthetic gene clusters by iteratively matching de novo tandem MS (MS(n)) structures to genomics-based structures following biosynthetic logic. In this study, we show that NPP enabled the rapid characterization of over ten chemically diverse ribosomal and nonribosomal peptide natural products of previously unidentified composition from Streptomycete bacteria as a proof of concept to begin automating the genome-mining process. We show the identification of lantipeptides, lasso peptides, linardins, formylated peptides and lipopeptides, many of which are from well-characterized model Streptomycetes, highlighting the power of NPP in the discovery of new peptide natural products from even intensely studied organisms

Epigenetics in ovarian cancer: premise, properties, and perspectives.

Malignant ovarian tumors bear the highest mortality rate among all gynecological cancers. Both late tumor diagnosis and tolerance to available chemical therapy increase patient mortality. Therefore, it is both urgent and important to identify biomarkers facilitating early identification and novel agents preventing recurrence. Accumulating evidence demonstrates that epigenetic aberrations (particularly histone modifications) are crucial in tumor initiation and development. Histone acetylation and methylation are respectively regulated by acetyltransferases-deacetylases and methyltransferases-demethylases, both of which are implicated in ovarian cancer pathogenesis. In this review, we summarize the most recent discoveries pertaining to ovarian cancer development arising from the imbalance of histone acetylation and methylation, and provide insight into novel therapeutic interventions for the treatment of ovarian carcinoma