bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Xenon ventilation computed tomography and the management of asthma in the elderly
Authors: Park Heung‐Woo , Jung Jae‐Woo , Kim Kyung‐Mook , Kim Tae‐Wan , Lee So‐Hee , Lee Chang Hyun , Goo Jin Mo , Min Kyung‐Up , Cho Sang‐Heon 
Published: February 2014

AbstractBackground and objectiveXenon ventilation computed tomography (CT) has shown potential in assessing the regional ventilation status in subjects with asthma. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the usefulness of xenon ventilation CT in the management of asthma in the elderly.MethodsTreatment‐naïve asthmatics aged 65 years or older were recruited. Before initiation of medication, spirometry with bronchodilator (BD) reversibility, questionnaires to assess the severity of symptoms including a visual analogue scale (VAS), tests to evaluate cognitive function and mood, and xenon ventilation CT were performed. Xenon gas trapping (XT) on xenon ventilation CT represents an area where inhaled xenon gas was not expired and was trapped. Symptoms and lung functions were measured again after the 12‐week treatment.ResultsA total of 30 elderly asthmatics were enrolled. The severity of dyspnoea measured by the VAS showed a significant correlation with the total number of areas of XT on the xenon ventilation CT taken in the pre‐BD wash‐out phase (r = −0.723, P < 0.001). The total number of areas of XT significantly decreased after BD inhalation, and differences in the total number of areas of XT (between the pre‐ and post‐BD wash‐out phases) at baseline showed significant correlations with the per cent increases in forced expiratory volume in 1 s after subsequent anti‐asthma treatment (r = −0.775, P < 0.001).ConclusionsXenon ventilation CT may be an objective and promising tool in the measurement of dyspnoea and prediction of the treatment response in elderly asthmatics.
Neogene upper‐crustal cooling of the Olympus range (northern Aegean): major role of Hellenic back‐arc extension over propagation of the North Anatolia Fault Zone
Authors: Coutand Isabelle , Walsh Michael , Louis Bertha , Chanier Frank , Ferrière Jacky , Reynaud Jean‐Yves 
Published: February 2014

AbstractThe North Anatolian Fault Zone (NAFZ) is one of the most hazardous active faults on Earth, yet its Pliocene space‐time propagation across the north Aegean domain remains poorly constrained. We use low‐temperature multi‐thermochronology and inverse thermal modelling to quantify the cooling history of the upper crust across the Olympus range. This range is located in the footwall of a system of normal faults traditionally interpreted as resulting from superposed Middle–Late Miocene N–S stretching, related to the back‐arc extension of the Hellenic subduction zone, and a Pliocene‐Quaternary transtensional field, attributed to the south‐westward propagation of the NAFZ. We find that accelerated exhumational cooling occurred between 12 and 6 Ma at rates of 15–35 °C Ma−1 and decreased to <3 °C Ma−1 by 8–6 Ma. The absence of significant Plio‐Pleistocene cooling across Olympus suggests that crustal exhumation there is driven by late Miocene back‐arc extension, while the impact of the NAFZ remains limited.
Vector competence of Culex pipiens quinquefasciatus (Diptera: Culicidae) for West Nile virus isolates from Florida
Authors: Richards Stephanie L. , Anderson Sheri L. , Lord Cynthia C. 
Published: February 2014

AbstractObjectivesTo assess vector competence (infection, dissemination and transmission) of Culex pipiens quinquefasciatus for Florida (FL) West Nile virus (WNV) isolates.MethodsWest Nile virus isolates (WN‐FL‐03: NY99 genotype; WN‐FL‐05‐558, WN‐FL‐05‐2186, WN‐FL‐05‐510: WN02 genotype) collected from different regions of FL were used for vector competence experiments in Cx. p. quinquefasciatus from Alachua County and Indian River County in FL. Mosquitoes from both colonies were fed blood containing 7.9 ± 0.2 log10 plaque‐forming units WNV/ml ± SE and incubated at 28 °C for 14 days. Vector competence, including rates of infection, dissemination, and transmission, was compared between colonies for WN‐FL‐03 using chi‐squared. Virus titres in bodies, legs and saliva were compared using anova. Daily measurements of in vitro replication of WNV isolates were evaluated in Vero cells so that a standardised virus dose for each isolate could be delivered to mosquitoes.ResultsInfection and dissemination rates were high (≥95%) and not affected by isolate or colony (infection, P = 0.679; dissemination, P = 0.799). Transmission rates were low (≤20%), detected in one colony and affected by isolate (P = 0.008). Body and leg titres differed between isolates (body titre, P = 0.031; leg titre, P = 0.044) and colonies (body titre, P = 0.001; leg titre, P = 0.013) while saliva titre did not differ between isolates (P = 0.462).ConclusionsVariation in vector competence of mosquito populations may be attributed, in part, to exposures to WNV with genetic differences leading to different rates of replication in mosquitoes. Evaluation of vector competence for different WNV isolates may help us understand vector–virus interactions and, hence, the role of vectors in complex virus transmission cycles in nature.
Strategic Trade Policy through the Tax System
Authors: Becker Johannes 
Published: February 2014

AbstractIf conventional instruments of strategic trade policy are unavailable, the system of foreign profit taxation and transfer price guidelines may serve as surrogate policy instruments. In this paper, I consider a model where firms from two countries compete with each other on a market in a third country. Both firms have affiliates in the third country where (part of) the production takes place. I analyse optimal policy choices of the firms' residence countries aiming at strategically manipulating the competitiveness of their firms. I show that, first, countries prefer the tax exemption system over the tax credit system if there is no intra‐firm trade. Second, if the headquarters provide inputs for production in the affiliate, countries prefer the tax exemption system if the transfer price for these inputs is close to the headquarters' variable cost and if the residence country's tax rate is high. However, if transfer prices are high and the residence country's tax rate is low, I show that the tax credit system is an optimal tax policy choice for both countries. From a policy perspective, the view that the tax exemption system is generally the best policy response if domestic firms' competitiveness is a policy goal has to be qualified.
Changes in hematology measurements in healthy and diseased dog blood stored at room temperature for 24 and 48 hours using theXT‐2000iV analyzer
Authors: Bourgès‐Abella Nathalie H. , Geffré Anne , Deshuillers Pierre L. , Braun Jean‐Pierre D. , Trumel Catherine 
Published: February 2014

BackgroundChanges in canine hematology measurements may occur when analyses are delayed due to shipment of specimens to a laboratory.ObjectiveThe purpose of this study was to report changes in hematologic variables in healthy and diseased canine blood measured with a SysmexXT‐2000iV during storage at room temperature for 24 and 48 hours.MethodsEDTA‐K3 blood samples from 42 healthy and diseased dogs were measured on a SysmexXT‐2000iV analyzer within one hour of sampling, and after storage for 24 and 48 hours at room temperature in the dark.ResultsStorage caused little or no change inRBCcount,HGBconcentration andMCH, while there was a moderate increase inHCT,MCVand reticulocytes count, and a moderate decrease inMCHC. Decreased platelet counts by impedance (PLT‐I) and optical (PLT‐O) measurements were associated with increased mean platelet volume (MPV), platelet‐large cell ratio (P‐LCR) and platelet distribution width (PDW), including a right shift in the platelet histogram and a dispersion of the platelet dot plot on the scattergram. The total and differentialWBCcount remained stable except for decreased monocyte counts. In the scatterplots, monocytes shifted into the lymphocyte population after 24 hours, and neutrophil population shifted to the right appearing in the eosinophil gate at 48 hours of storage. The disease status had only a small effect on storage‐induced changes, and observed changes had no consequences for clinical decisions.ConclusionsBlood storage at room temperature was accompanied by moderate variations in some hematologic variables, awareness of which helps in avoiding misinterpretations.
Planar Linkage Synthesis for Rigid Body Guidance Using Poles and Rotation Angles
Authors: Zimmerman Ronald A. 
Published: February 2014

A graphical four bar linkage synthesis method for planar rigid body guidance is presented. This method, capable of synthesis for up to five specified coupler positions, uses the poles and rotation angles, which are constraints, to define guiding links. Faster and simpler than traditional graphical synthesis methods, this method, allows the designer to see and consider most or all the possible solutions within a few seconds before making any free choices. All of the guiding links satisfying five specified coupler positions can be obtained graphically within 30 minutes without plotting any Burmester curves and without any mechanism design software. For four positions, both the circle and center point curves are simultaneously traced by corresponding circle-center point pairs using three poles having a common subscript and the corresponding rotation angles without any additional construction. This method eliminates the iterative construction required in previous methods which were based on free choices rather than constraints. The tedious plotting of Burmester curves graphically using pole quadrilaterals is also eliminated. The simplicity of the method makes four and five position synthesis practical to do graphically.
A corresponding analytical solution is presented which provides a simpler formulation than the previous solution method. This new method requires two fewer equations and provides a new way to plot Burmester curves analytically.
The Development of a Longitudinal Control System for a Sports-Utility-Vehicle
Authors: Hamersma Herman , Els Schalk 
Published: February 2014

A common problem with sports-utility-vehicles is the low rollover threshold, due to a high center of gravity. Instead of modifying the vehicle to increase the rollover threshold, the aim of the control system is to prevent the vehicle from exceeding speeds that would cause the vehicle to reach its rollover threshold. The aim of the autonomous longitudinal control system, discussed here, is to improve the vehicle’s safety by controlling the vehicle’s longitudinal behavior.
In order to develop a control system that autonomously controls the longitudinal degree of freedom, an experimentally validated mathematical model of the test vehicle (a 1997 Land Rover Defender 110 Wagon) was used — the model was developed in MSC.ADAMS/View. The control system was developed by generating a reference speed that the vehicle must track. This reference speed was formulated by taking into account the vehicle’s limits due to lateral acceleration, combined lateral and longitudinal acceleration and the vehicle’s performance capabilities.
The MSC.ADAMS/View model of the test vehicle was used to evaluate the performance of the control system on various racetracks for which the GPS coordinates were available. The simulation results indicate that the control system performed as expected by limiting the vehicle’s acceleration vector to the prescribed limits.
An Investigation of the Ward Leonard System for Use in a Hybrid or Electric Passenger Vehicle
Authors: Telford Cody L. , Todd Robert H. 
Published: February 2014

Since the early 1900’s demand for fuel efficient vehicles has motivated the development of electric and hybrid electric vehicles. Unfortunately, some components used in these vehicles are expensive and complex. Todays consumer electric vehicles use dangerously high voltage, expensive electronic controllers, complex battery management systems and AC motors. The goal of this research at BYU is to increase safety by lowering the operating voltage and decrease cost by eliminating expensive controllers and decrease the number of battery cells.
This paper specifically examines the use of a Ward Leonard Motor Control system for use in a passenger vehicle. The Ward Leonard System provides an alternative control method to expensive and complex systems used today.
A Control Factor metric was developed as a result of this research to measure the Ward Leonard System’s ability to reduce the size and cost of the electronic controller for application in an EV or HEV. A bench top model of the Ward Leonard system was tested validating the Control Factor metric. The Ward Leonard system is capable of reducing the controller size by 77% and potentially reducing its cost by this amount or more. This work also provides performance characteristics for automotive designers and offers several design alternatives for EV and HEV architectures allowing a reduction in voltage, the use of AC inverters, AC motors, expensive controllers and high cell count battery packs.
Two Paths to Isochronicity in a Class of One Degree of Freedom Oscillators
Authors: Kovacic Ivana N. , Rand Richard H. 
Published: February 2014

We propose a class of problems in nonlinear vibrations related to avoiding undesirable hysteresis and jump phenomena by designing an oscillator for which the backbone curve is a straight vertical line. In particular we consider the class of conservative oscillators of the form: x..+xx.2+fx=0 and we choose f(x) so that the frequency of oscillation is independent of amplitude. We do this in two ways:
1) by expanding f(x) in a power series and using a perturbation method to compute the coefficients, and
2) by starting with a simple harmonic oscillator (which has a straight line backbone curve), and choosing a transformation which puts the resulting equation in the above form.
We show that both methods result in a closed form expression for f(x) which involves the imaginary error function erfi(z).
A Fatal Accident Case and Lessons for Entertainment Engineering
Authors: Iino Kenji , Nakao Masayuki 
Published: February 2014

On May 5th, 2007, a six-car stand-up roller coaster Fujin-Raijin II, during a ride, dropped one of its two wheel assemblies from the second car. Losing its balance, the second car tilted to the left by about 45 degrees. The rider in the left side of the front row jammed her head between the passenger support structure and the handrail of the maintenance walkway and was killed instantly. The next day, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) instructed a nationwide inspection of similar attractions.
Investigations revealed that the main axle had a crack caused by metal fatigue and the owner of the amusement park, bankrupt in 2009, had been running the coaster for 15 years without changing the axle and reporting “in good condition” upon visual inspection only. The applicable law required, and still does, annual testing with magnetic particles, ultrasound, or liquid penetrant. The axle, at the time of its failure, had only about 25% of cross-sectional area remaining intact where the crack had grown. A maintenance worker later reported looseness with the axle fit in the pressure-receiving hole. The fit was originally designed tight to receive the bending force.
People pay and wait in long lines for the excitement of unusual thrill from short amusement rides. The rides take passengers through unusual movements and G-forces to make them scream and laugh. Mechanical parts of the vehicles thus are subjected to unusual loading conditions. Machine design for such rides requires serious design reviews, failure analysis, frequent inspection, and thorough maintenance. Engineering ethics call for amusement park owners’ and workers’ awareness of design and operations for an unusual environment.
Analyzing Transdisciplinary Design Processes in Industry: An Overview
Authors: Gericke Kilian , Qureshi A. J. , Blessing Lucienne 
Published: February 2014

Integrated product design and development in today’s highly competitive, demanding and economically challenging world is a complex process depending upon input of many individuals, groups, organizations and even communities, which collaborate to realize the product. Due to the multi-technology nature of modern products, the design process requires multi-disciplinary resources.
Engineering design literature provides an extensive knowledge base of product design processes, most of which are specific in an explicit or an implicit way to a specific discipline. This is because some time ago, the products were perceived to be rather mono-disciplinary.
Recently, design processes have been described for integrated products from inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary team perspective (e.g. [1]), however, they too take product specific and discipline specific point of view.
This paper takes a transdisciplinary perspective towards product design and presents results from an empirical study carried out to analyze the design process of different integrated products belonging to different disciplines/industrial segments; all of which involve multi-disciplinary or transdisciplinary involvement.
A framework based on key findings from the transdisciplinary consolidation of academic design process models presented by Gericke and Blessing and Eisenbart et al. is developed and used to provide answers to the following research questions:
• How well does the literature based trans-disciplinary design process apply to the trans-disciplinary industrial context?
• Are there similarities between design processes across organizations regarding presence of process stages and design states?
• Are there any elements that deviate from the literature-based framework?
Indices and Computational Strategy for Unmanned Ground Wheeled Vehicle Mobility Estimation and Enhancement
Authors: Gray Jeremy P. , Vantsevich Vladimir V. , Overholt Jim L. 
Published: February 2014

The United States Army began developing Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV) in the early 1900’s. Concurrently, researchers developed and enhanced passenger and commercial ground vehicles. Although significant progress has been made for improving vehicle mobility for all ground vehicles throughout the past century, mobility has lacked a concise mutually agreed definition and analytical standardized criteria. The implementations of improved technologies, such as vehicle traction control, stability control, and torque vectoring systems require researchers to take a step back and reevaluate mobility criteria. UGVs require additional enhancement to include on-line mobility estimation since the vehicle cannot predict nor anticipate terrain conditions on their own prior to the vehicle traversing those conditions.
This paper analyzes methodologies researchers have employed for defining and improving vehicle mobility of wheeled vehicles. The analysis is done from a view point of concurrent mobility methodologies’ enhancement and applicability to wheeled UGVs.
This analysis is then used to develop off-line and on-line analytical criterion for mobility estimation, and to derive a strategy which can be applied to wheeled vehicles, both manned and unmanned. The on-line mobility estimation enables the UGV to make control changes as the events occur rather than after the event, causing the vehicle to then optimize its reaction to regain control.
Tooth Flank Breakage: Influences on Subsurface Initiated Fatigue Failures of Case Hardened Gears
Authors: Stahl Karsten , Höhn Bernd-Robert , Tobie Thomas 
Published: February 2014

Pitting and tooth root breakage are typical fatigue failure modes of case hardened gears. Both failure types are usually initiated at the surface or close to the surface. General trends in modern gear industry, such as improved gear design with adequate flank modifications, high-quality gear materials and high-performance lubricants, modern manufacturing processes with additional post-processes as shot peening and superfinishing as well as advanced calculation methods, have allowed an optimized utilization of the allowable pitting and bending stress numbers in recent years. As a result of the increased power density, however, the stresses below the surface rise with the consequence of an increased risk of fatigue failure initiation in the material below the surface.
This paper describes main characteristics of a failure mode characterized by tooth breakages which start in the area of the active flank from cracks that are typically initiated at a considerable depth beneath the loaded flank surface. Based on theoretical and experimental investigations, relevant influence parameters related to gear design, operating conditions and material strength on the failure mode “Tooth Flank Breakage” will be discussed and basic principles of a developed calculation model to evaluate the risk of such failures presented. Finally, exemplarily experimental results from gear running tests, which failed due to flank breakage, are compared to the results of the new calculation model.
Adding Non-Smooth Analysis Capabilities to General-Purpose Multibody Dynamics by Co-Simulation
Authors: Fancello Matteo , Masarati Pierangelo , Morandini Marco 
Published: February 2014

Multi-rigid-body dynamics problems with unilateral constraints, like frictionless and frictional contacts, are characterized by nonsmooth dynamics. The issue of nonsmoothness can be addressed with methods that apply a mathematical regularization, called continuous contact methods; alternatively, hard constraints with complementarity approaches can be proficiently used.
This work presents an attempt at integrating consistently modeled unilateral constraints in a general purpose multibody formulation and implementation originally designed to address intrinsically smooth problems. The focus is on the analysis of generally smooth problems, characterized by significant multidisciplinarity, with the need to selectively include nonsmooth events localized in time and in specific components of the model. A co-simulation approach between the smooth Differential-Algebraic Equations solver and the classic Moreau-Jean timestepping approach is devised as an alternative to entirely redesigning a monolithic nonsmooth solver, in order to provide elements subject to frictionless and frictional contact in the general-purpose, free multibody solver MBDyn. The implementation uses components from the INRIA’s Siconos library for the solution of Complementarity Problems. The proposed approach is applied to several problems of increasing complexity to empirically evaluate its properties and versatility.
The applicability of the family of second-order accurate, A/L stable multistep integration algorithms used by MBDyn to nonsmooth dynamics is also discussed and assessed.