Model-driven engineering for mobile robotic systems: a systematic mapping study

Software and Systems Modeling - Mobile robots operate in various environments (e.g. aquatic, aerial, or terrestrial), they come in many diverse shapes and they are increasingly becoming parts of...     

Metabolism of phospholipids in the yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe

The fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe is an important model organism for the study of fundamental questions in eukaryotic cell and molecular biology. A plethora of cellular processes are membrane associated and/or dependent on the proper functioning of cellular membranes. Phospholipids are not only the basic building blocks of cellular membranes; they also serve as precursors to numerous signaling molecules. In this review, we describe the biosynthetic pathways leading to major S. pombe phospholipids, how these pathways are regulated, and what is known about degradation and turnover of fission yeast phospholipids. This review also addresses the synthesis, regulation and the role of water-soluble phospholipid precursors. The last chapter of the review is devoted to the use of S. pombe for the biotechnological production of value-added lipid molecules.     

Non-pinched, minimum energy distillation designs

Non-pinched, minimum energy solutions are important class of distillation designs that offer the potential advantage of a better trade-off between capital investment and operating costs. In this paper, two important tasks associated with non-pinched distillation designs are studied. Thus the novel contributions of this work to the literature are

(1) A comprehensive methodology for finding non-pinched minimum energy designs.

(2) Understanding of the reasons for the existence of non-pinched distillation designs.

It is shown that the recent shortest stripping line distance approach of Lucia et al. [Lucia, A., Amale, A. and Taylor, R., 2007, Distillation pinch points and more. Comput Chem Eng, available on-line] is capable of systematically and reliably finding non-pinched, minimum energy distillation designs. In addition, we provide an understanding of the reasons behind the existence of non-pinched designs, which include trajectories that follow unstable branches of a pinch point curve in azeotropic systems, the inherent looping structure of trajectories in hydrocarbon separations, and the presence of ancillary constraints in multi-unit processes like extraction/distillation. Several distillation examples are studied and many numerical results and geometric illustrations are presented that show the shortest stripping line distance methodology is indeed a powerful and systematic tool for computing non-pinched, minimum energy designs and that support the underlying reason we provide for the existence of non-pinched designs.     

Urinary cytology of transitional-cell carcinoma

The authors report on their experience about urinary cytology in 1991. They studied 100 patients with cytology and histology, carried by cystoscopy and cold-mapping biopsy, trying to have notice about cytological value and proficiency.     

Asymmetric alumina membranes electrochemically formed in oxalic acid solution

Alumina membranes were fabricated by anodizing aluminium metal in 0.15 M oxalic acid. The growth kinetics of the porous layer were investigated in the temperature range –1 to 16 °C using linear potential scans up to 70 V. The faradaic efficiencies of metal oxidation and of porous layer formation, determined by applying Faraday's law, were found to be independent of both temperature and electrical charge. SEM analysis of the metal-side and solution-side surfaces revealed different morphologies. After dissolution of the barrier layer in phosphoric acid, the metal-side surface showed circular pores whose size of about 90 nm was found to be uniform and independent of temperature. The pore population was also practically independent of temperature and a value of about 4 × 10¹³ pores m^–2 was determined. On the solution-side surface the presence of a deposit partially occluding the mouths of pores was observed. This coating could be removed by chemical etching in NaOH or thermal treatment at 870 °C, where decomposition of oxalate occurs. This supports the hypothesis that the deposit consists of an aluminium salt containing oxalate anions precipitated from the solution. The results show that it is possible to control the morphological characteristics of the anodic alumina membranes by careful choice of experimental conditions.     

Material constant sensitivity boundary integral equation for anisotropic solids

In this paper, the material constant sensitivity boundary integral equation is presented, and its numerical solution proposed, based on boundary element techniques. The formulation deals with plane problems with general rectilinear anisotropy. Expressions for the computation of sensitivities for displacements, tractions, strains and stresses are derived, both for boundary and interior points. The sensitivities can be computed with respect to the bulk material properties or to the properties of part of the domain (inclusions, coatings, etc.). To assess the accuracy of the proposed approach, the computed results are compared to analytical ones derived from exact solutions obtained by complex potential theory, when possible, or finite difference derivatives otherwise. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Convective cooling of supercritical carbon dioxide inside tubes: heat transfer analysis through neural networks

In a previous work, convective heating of carbon dioxide was studied with neural networks (NN), obtaining a totally heuristical heat transfer equation from the direct regression of experimental data. In the present work, the analysis focuses on the cooling process, which has a technical relevance in various applications, as for example in transcritical refrigeration cycles. Heat transfer around the critical zone presents a marked enhancement, that follows the peaks in thermophysical properties like thermal conductivity and heat capacity. Similarly, other properties like density and enthalpy, present a strong variation in narrow temperature intervals around the critical point.This constitutes then a highly non-linear phenomenon, for which it is advisable to use a very flexible function approximator like the NNs. NN models were applied both in terms of dimensionless numbers and of physical quantities, obtaining the two corresponding NN architectures. The choice of the optimal number of neurons in the NN hidden layer is discussed. The NN models are then compared with a recent correlation from literature, for which the validation results present an AAD of 27% and a bias of −26% with an evident prediction shifting. On the other hand the NN models in terms of dimensionless numbers and of physical quantities have AAD and bias of 14% and −4%, and of 7% and −2%, respectively, showing a largely better performance.     

Symmetry properties and bifurcation analysis of a class of periodically forced chemical reactors

In this work, we discuss how periodic forcing may induce symmetry properties into mathematical models of chemical reactors. We define a class of reactors subjected to discontinuous periodic forcing, and show that all the reactors belonging to this class have spatio-temporal symmetry. This symmetry and its influence on the possible bifurcation scenarios are discussed. The bifurcation analysis is carried out with suitable discrete systems that exploit a property of the Poincaré map. In fact, it is shown that the spatio-temporal symmetry induced by the forcing makes the Poincaré map of the continuous system an iterate of another map. On this basis, a technique to implement parameter continuation methods is proposed. With such a technique, it is also possible to characterize symmetric and nonsymmetric regimes and unstable limit sets otherwise undetected with “bruteforce” approaches. Examples for reverseflow reactors and networks of n-reactors with periodically switched feed and discharge positions are presented.