Flexible combination of multiple diagnostic biomarkers to improve diagnostic accuracy

In medical research, it is common to collect information of multiple continuous biomarkers to improve the accuracy of diagnostic tests. Combining the measurements of these biomarkers into one single score is a popular practice to integrate the collected information, where the accuracy of the resultant diagnostic test is usually improved. To measure the accuracy of a diagnostic test, the Youden index has been widely used in literature. Various parametric and nonparametric methods have been proposed to linearly combine biomarkers so that the corresponding Youden index can be optimized. Yet there seems to be little justification of enforcing such a linear combination. This paper proposes a flexible approach that allows both linear and nonlinear combinations of biomarkers. The proposed approach formulates the problem in a large margin classification framework, where the combination function is embedded in a flexible reproducing kernel Hilbert space. Advantages of the proposed approach are demonstrated in a variety of simulated experiments as well as a real application to a liver disorder study

Experimental Study on Match for Indoor and Outdoor Heat Exchanger of Residential Air-conditioner

In this study, the effects of indoor unit heat transfer area and air flow rate and outdoor unit air flow rate on the system performance of residential air-conditioner were experimentally investigated under rated cooling and heating conditions. The experimental results showed that the system cooling capacity, EER, heating capacity and COP all had evident variation with indoor unit heat transfer area and air flow rate and out unit air flow rate, which predicated that there was a proper match range for indoor unit and outdoor unit to make the system overall performance best. The increase of indoor unit heat transfer area and air flow rate significantly improved system cooling and heating performances especially for the smaller heat transfer area indoor unit, and the improvement was more obvious for heating performance. The heat transfer area ratio of indoor unit and outdoor unit was smaller, the indoor unit air flow rate should be designed as higher air velocity, but that should not be higher than 1.2m/s. In addition, with the specified outdoor unit in this study, the matched heat transfer area of indoor unit should not be too high or too low, and the optimal heat transfer area ratio of indoor and outdoor unit was between 0.33 and 0.37, which was better to choose the smaller value for higher indoor unit air flow rate. The increase of outdoor unit air flow rate also was advantageous for improving system cooling and heating performances especially for system EER and COP, but excessive higher air flow rate can cause the degradation of the system performance. The proposed outdoor unit designed air velocity should not be higher than 1.6m/s