Defining Dry Eye from a Clinical Perspective

Over the past decades, the number of patients with dry eye disease (DED) has increased dramatically. The incidence of DED is higher in Asia than in Europe and North America, suggesting the involvement of cultural or racial factors in DED etiology. Although many definitions of DED have been used, discrepancies exist between the various definitions of dry eye disease (DED) used across the globe. This article presents a clinical consensus on the definition of DED, as formulated in four meetings with global DED experts. The proposed new definition is as follows: “Dry eye is a multifactorial disease characterized by a persistently unstable and/or deficient tear film (TF) causing discomfort and/or visual impairment, accompanied by variable degrees of ocular surface epitheliopathy, inflammation and neurosensory abnormalities.” The key criteria for the diagnosis of DED are unstable TF, inflammation, ocular discomfort and visual impairment. This definition also recommends the assessment of ocular surface epitheliopathy and neurosensory abnormalities in each patient with suspected DED. It is easily applicable in clinical practice and should help practitioners diagnose DED consistently. This consensus definition of DED should also help to guide research and clinical trials that, to date, have been hampered by the lack of an established surrogate endpoint.     

Control of Wind-Induced Self-Excited Oscillations by Transfer of Internal Energy to Higher Modes of Vibration. II: Application to Taut Cables

In Part I of this paper, a theoretical basis is presented using a two-degrees-of-freedom model. In this second part of the study, the passive control and the two types of semiactive controls introduced in Part I are examined numerically for a taut cable experiencing wind-induced galloping motion. The passive and the semiactive control schemes for taut cables show a good similarity with the results obtained for the two-degrees-of-freedom model. The potential of using these control schemes in practical applications to flexible structures is demonstrated.     

Sensorless control of synchronous reluctance motors using on‐line parameter identification method not affected by position estimation accuracy

This paper presents a novel on‐line parameter identification method for sensorless control of Synchronous Reluctance Motors (SynRMs). Although conventional sensorless control methods based on mathematical models usually need some complex measurements of motor parameters in advance, the proposed identification method does not require them and can be realized on‐line. The proposed method identifies motor parameters under sensorless control, so rotor position and velocity cannot be used to identify these parameters. However, the proposed method does not need rotor position and velocity, and identified parameters are not affected by these estimation errors. The sensorless control using identified motor parameters is realized, and the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by experimental results. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 155(3): 62–69, 2006; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/eej.20258     

A load dispatch method using fractional programming and semidefinite programming

This paper describes a load dispatch method which minimizes power cost—[fuel cost]/[electric output]—for a power system with thermal plants and energy storage facilities. The proposed method employs fractional programming to convert a minimization problem with fractional objective function to a series of quadratic minimization problems, and semidefinite programming to solve converted problems. The method provides the optimum time‐dependent power output/input and storage level of energy storage facilities as well as time‐dependent power output of thermal plants. The method has been applied to a power system with five thermal plants, two energy storage facilities of various performances, and five load demands. The optimum load scheme of four time mesh points is obtained for the thermal plants and energy storage facilities. The fractional programming successfully converges the optimal scheme through a few iterations. The semidefinite programming deals with a variable matrix of 164 dimensions, and 185 inequality constraints. © 2001 Scripta Technica, Electr Eng Jpn, 138(2): 49–58, 2002     

Influence of third monomer on the crystal phase transition behavior of ethylene-tetrafluoroethylene copolymer

Crystal phase transition between the low- and high-temperature phases has been investigated for ethylene (E)-tetrafluoroethylene (TFE) alternating copolymer (ETFE) containing the third monomeric species by the temperature dependent measurements of wide-angle X-ray diffraction (WAXD) and small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and differential scanning calorimetry. Nonafluoro-1-hexene (NFH) and hexafluoropropylene (HFP) were chosen as the third monomers, where they are different in the side-branch length, -(CF₂)₃CF₃ and -CF₃, respectively. In the case of E/TFE/NFH copolymer (ET-C4F9), the crystal phase transition temperature of the original ETFE two-components copolymer was not very much affected by the existence of NFH in the range of NFH content from 0.7 to 3 mol%. Contrarily, the crystal phase transition temperature of E/TFE/HFP copolymer (ET-CF3) was found to decrease drastically with increasing HFP content. The melting temperature and the higher-order structure were also affected sensitively depending on the HFP content. This difference in phase transition behavior between ET-C4F9 and ET-CF3 copolymers is reasonably interpreted as follows: the short side groups (-CF₃) of HFP monomeric unit are included in the crystal lattice of E/TFE chains and the unit cell is expanded gradually with an increment of the HFP content, resulting in the decrease in phase transition point because of easier thermal motion of the chains. On the other hand, the long side groups [-(CF₂)₃CF₃] of NFH monomeric units are excluded out of the crystal lattice and located on the lamellar surfaces or in the amorphous region and do not affect very much the phase transition temperature even when the NFH content is increased. In association with such a change in crystal structure, the long period of stacked lamellar structure was found to decrease remarkably in the case of NFH, whereas it does not change very much for HFP, consistent with the interpretation of the above-mentioned WAXD data.     

ILU factorization well suited to the vector processor using a variant of the 5-point difference scheme

The implementation on the vector processor of Incomplete LU factorization in the Preconditioned Conjugate Gradient method and other Preconditioned CG-like methods for the numerical solutions of the partial differential equations is discussed. For sufficient vectorization, a variant of the standard 5-point difference scheme for 2-dimensional problems is introduced. The convergence property of ILU factorization for this variant is examined in comparison with that vectorized with the usual hyperplane ordering method for the standard 5-point difference scheme on the vector processor. The efficiency and effectiveness of this factorization for the variant of the difference scheme is demonstrated through several computational experiments.     

EDM-Lathe for Micromachining

In this paper a new type of micro-EDM machine is proposed. The machine operates similarly to a turning lathe. An electrode fabrication system is installed which makes it possible to fabricate on-the-machine complex microelectrodes with sharp edges and corners. A prototype set of equipment was realized and test machining proved that a machine of this type can produce microcylindrical, overhung cavities, or cylindrical microholes with larger internal diameters than the entrance diameter. This result reveals the possibility of fabrication of various microparts such as microball bearings.     

Adsorption of trypsin onto poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate)/polystyrene composite microspheres and its enzymatic activity

Poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate)/polystyrene (PHEMA/PS) composite microspheres were produced by emulsifier-free seeded emulsion polymerization for styrene in the presence of PHEMA seed particles. Effects of the surface characteristics of the PHEMA/PS composite microspheres on the adsorption immobilization of trypsin and on its enzymatic activity were discussed. Above 5 mol% of HEMA content, trypsin molecules adsorbed had high activity, 65–100% of the activity of free trypsin. The excellence of the composite microspheres as a carrier for trypsin seems to be closely related with the surface heterogeneity consisting of both hydrophilic and hydrophobic parts.