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Graphical abstract, The assessment of Parkinson’s disease currently relies on the history of the present illness, the clinical interview, the physical examination, and structured instruments. Drawbacks to the use of clinical ratings include the reliance on real-time human vision to quantify small differences in motion and significant inter-rater variability due to inherent subjectivity in scoring the procedures. Rating tools are semi-quantitative by design, however, in addition to significant inter-rater variability, there is inherent subjectivity in administering these tools, which are not blinded in clinical settings. Sophisticated systems to quantify movements are too costly to be used by some providers with limited resources. A simple procedure is described to obtain continuous quantitative measurements of movements of people with Parkinson’s disease for objective analysis and correlation with visual observation of the movements. • Inexpensive accelerometers are attached to the upper and lower extremities of patients with Parkinson’s disease and related conditions to generate a continuous, three-dimensional recorded representation of movements occurring while performing tasks to characterize the deficits of Parkinson’s disease. • Movements of the procedure are rated by trained examiners live in real-time and later by videotapes. • The output of the instrumentation can be conveyed to experts for interpretation for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes.

This research tool is a pilot intended to address needs among law enforcement agencies for guidance on new strategies. Its two broad objectives are to synthesize and disseminate information on policing strategies and to provide agencies with general assistance on implementing novel strategies. Because it is a pilot, it is expected to develop over time with improvements to the research core, content, and presentation and functionality.

Clinical radiosensitivity is a significant impediment to tumour control and cure, in that it restricts the total doses which can safely be delivered to the whole radiotherapy population, within the tissue tolerance of potentially radiosensitive (RS) individuals. Understanding its causes could lead to personalization of radiotherapy.We screened tissues from a unique bank of RS cancer patients for expression defects in major DNA double-strand break repair proteins, using Western blot analysis and subsequently reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis.We hypothesized that abnormalities in expression of these proteins may explain the radiosensitivity of some of our cancer patients. The cells from one patient showed a reproducibly consistent expression reduction in two complex-forming DNA double-strand break repair protein components (DNA Ligase IV and XRCC4). We also showed a corresponding reduction in both gene products at the mRNA level. Additionally, the mRNA inducibility by ionizing radiation was increased for one of the proteins in the patient's cells. We confirmed the likely functional significance of the non-homologous end-joining (NHEJ) expression abnormalities with a DNA double strand break (DNA DSB) repair assay.We have identified a novel biological phenotype linked to clinical radiosensitivity. This is important in that very few molecular defects are known in human radiotherapy subjects. Such knowledge may contribute to the understanding of radiation response mechanisms in cancer patients and to personalization of radiotherapy.

Article history: Received July 2 2013 Received in revised format September 7 2013 Accepted November 23 2013 Available online November 27 2013 This exploratory paper will investigate the concept of supply chain risk management involving supplier monitoring within a cooperative supply chain. Inventory levels and stockouts are the key metrics. Key to this concept is the assumptions that (1) out-of-control supplier situations are causal triggers for downstream supply chain disruptions, (2) these triggers can potentially be predicted using statistical process monitoring tools, and (3) carrying excess inventory only when needed is preferable as opposed to carrying excess inventory on a continual basis. Simulation experimentation will be used to explore several supplier monitoring strategies based on statistical runs tests, specifically "runs up and down" and/or "runs above and below" tests. The sensitivity of these tests in detecting non-random supplier behavior will be explored and their performance will be investigated relative to stock-outs and inventory levels. Finally, the effects of production capacity and yield rate will be examined. Results indicate out-of-control supplier signals can be detected beforehand and stock-outs can be significantly reduced by dynamically adjusting inventory levels. The largest benefit occurs when both runs tests are used together and when the supplier has sufficient production capacity to respond to downstream demand (i.e., safety stock) increases. When supplier capacity is limited, the highest benefit is achieved when yield rates are high and, thus, yield loss does not increase supplier production requirements beyond its available capacity.

Pulsed laser radiation was directed at an inductively coupled plasma containing a high concentration of an alkaline earth matrix and a lower concentration of a test analyte. When the laser was tuned to an ionic resonance line of the matrix there was a universal transient enhancement of emission lines from the test analyte, irrespective of its identity. The effect was observed for Mg, Sr, Ba, Y, and Zn analytes in the presence of Mg, Sr, and Ca matrices. The enhancement is attributed to heating of the electrons in the plasma by superelastic collisions between electrons and excited matrix ions. By analogy to the laser-based experiments, a model is proposed for plasma-based matrix effects in the ICP, in which energy lost in the form of radiation from matrix ions cools the plasma, resulting in reduced emission from analyte species. The magnitudes of the radiative losses for 0.05 M Ca and Ba matrices were calculated to be 8.7 W cm−3 and 8.3 W cm−3, respectively. The model accounts for observed differences between group I and group II matrices.

An 83-year-old female was treated with mastectomy and postoperative radiotherapy for breast cancer 30 years prior to developing a new small patch of thickening and scaliness on her left upper back, within the previous radiotherapy field. Serial excision biopsies revealed this to be a lymphangioendothelioma with no suggestion of malignancy. In early 2006 the lesion began to enlarge and take on a more erythematous plaque-like appearance. She was reviewed by a specialist dermatologist and an excision biopsy revealed a low-grade cutaneous angiosarcoma; this was approximately 38 years after radiotherapy to this region, the longest reported period between irradiation and in-field angiosarcoma development (the previous being 16 years). To our knowledge, this is the first case of post-radiotherapy angiosarcoma with a diagnosed precursor lesion. The lesion was treated with surgical excision and adjuvant radiotherapy. After further in- and out of- field recurrences, low dose radiotherapy elicited a surprisingly rapid and complete response within the treated areas; this was unusual in that these tumours are characteristically radiation-resistant. The radiosensitive case we report here raises the possibility that radiation should be more widely considered in the therapy of this disease. Methods of treatment of this rare malignancy are discussed.

MSCI 100, a first year course dedicated to Management Engineering, introduces the main concepts of this discipline to students in their first term. The course’s main goals are introducing core principles that students will apply throughout their undergraduate studies and also preparing them for their first co-operative education term. In Fall 2015, this course was pedagogically redesigned based on authentic self-directed learning, accommodating different learners, and providing students with opportunities to develop professional skills (especially teamwork, project planning, time management and critical thinking).The course was designed holistically with emphasis on integrating concepts and communicating the course plan to students. Although engineering design was an inherent part of the course, there were no memory-driven tests and no math. The course’s learning outcomes were instead formulated around students’ understanding of improving effectiveness and efficiency in various facets of business through the development of their professional skills.There were numerous teaching innovations from the perspective of a first year engineering course. The essence of many course deliverables was for students to experience constructive failure-recovery cycles. This allowed them to learn from their mistakes as they completed case study challenges, hands-on activities, unique assessments and a final team project requiring integration of knowledge and skills. These activities were supported by various groups on campus.A panel of educators was formed near the end of the term so students could reflect on their learning process and be provided with the educators' feedback.. Moreover, the results from the course evaluations indicated that the restructuring of MSCI 100 was largely successful. Most students were able to fully grasp fundamental concepts and apply critical thinking skills. In this paper, we share reasons for redesigning the course, our experience in delivery and assessment, the impact of different teaching and learning methods and finally feedback on switching to in-depth, student-centered learning.

This article takes an evolutionary view of supply chains to suggest a series of distinct, contextual phases for supply chain execution and what maturity might mean at each phase. For example, what is best practice in a mature industry might not be best practice in a pioneering situation.Three industry examples—from the automotive, electronics, and shipbuilding industries—are used to illustrate different phases through which supply chains can evolve and how each phase can differ in the details. Each phase of evolution is described and a preliminary taxonomy is presented to set up a maturity model for industrial supply chains. The model is based on six steps of which the first three are regional and concern initial sourcing, chain organization, and expansion. The next three steps concern international and global operations with chain restructuring and redesign, resulting in lean supply chain management.

The aversion dynamics research agenda has incorporated within dispatching heuristics a number of real-world observations involving risk mitigation practices used by real schedulers. One such observation is that schedulers occasionally offload risky jobs from a primary machine to otherwise less desirable machine (older, slower) during periods of peak load to avoid the effects the risky job can have on subsequent jobs. This paper examines this situation within the proportional parallel machine environment. Safety time is used to adjust dispatching priorities of risky jobs to reflect the aversion. The effect of various safety time values on performance is studied. Robust safety time values and/or intervals are identified across a variety of experimental factors related to risk level, percent risky jobs in the job stream, and due date distribution.

Electric relay manufacture and assembly is an example of high-precision machining followed by an assembly process. During machining, parts exhibit dimensional variance and manufacturers have several techniques and strategies for how to maximise production and improve efficiency when variance is present. One approach is to measure the variance, select parts appropriately for the best match, perform the minimum amount of adjustment and rework, and then perform the assembly. This approach is difficult in practice because measurement errors also occur and confound the knowledge about each part's dimensions. In this paper, we consider a new matching approach to increase the production rate. We propose a part-combination selection method in which a pair of assembly parts in buffers is optimally selected using a target of an estimated assembly error, and an adjustment machine is then optimally selected using a range of estimated assembly errors. Furthermore, we consider an analytical approach to estimate the opt...

Scheduling research has had relatively little impact on manufacturing practice, yet within the last several years, there has been an explosive growth in the development and implementation of computer-based scheduling systems in industry. Changes in the environment have increased the stakes and the opportunities for the results of scheduling research to influence manufacturing competitiveness. This paper draws on field-related experiences with the development and implementation of scheduling systems to propose high-impact research topics.

Literature on lot-sizing models with random yields has been traditionally limited to random occurrences that cannot be anticipated in advance; for instance, day-to-day production errors and minor machine repairs. However, in reality, manufacturing processes are subject to other risks that are anticipatory, or non-random, in nature. One example would be yield loss resulting from non-random events such as process, product or material changes. Yield uncertainties of these types are temporary in nature with an impact that decays over time until the manufacturing system fully re-stabilises. One way of reducing the impact of such events is to split the lot and to process a small sub-batch in advance to stabilise the process, thus absorbing the risk associated with the change event. We refer to this approach as ‘anticipatory batch insertion’. This paper presents an exploratory study to analyse the performance of batch insertion under various scenarios related to product sensitivity, risk magnitude and schedule h...

Programable spatial light modulators (SLMs) have significantly advanced the configurable optical trapping of particles. Typically, these devices are utilized in the Fourier plane of an optical system, but direct imaging of an amplitude pattern can potentially result in increased simplicity and computational speed. Here we demonstrate high-resolution direct imaging of a digital micromirror device (DMD) at high numerical apertures (NA), which we apply to the optical trapping of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). We utilise a (1200 x 1920) pixel DMD and commercially available 0.45 NA microscope objectives, finding that atoms confined in a hybrid optical/magnetic or all-optical potential can be patterned using repulsive blue-detuned (532 nm) light with 630(10) nm full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) resolution, within 5% of the diffraction limit. The result is near arbitrary control of the density the BEC without the need for expensive custom optics. We also introduce the technique of time-averaged DMD potentials, demonstrating the ability to produce multiple grayscale levels with minimal heating of the atomic cloud, by utilising the high switching speed (20 kHz maximum) of the DMD. These techniques will enable the realization and control of diverse optical potentials for superfluid dynamics and atomtronics applications with quantum gases. The performance of this system in a direct imaging configuration has wider application for optical trapping at non-trivial NAs., Comment: 9 pages

In a number of industries, an amount of adjustment after a primary operation is required to produce high-quality assembly products and the choice of the resource for the second operation depends on the precision of the first. In this case, the efficient and effective running of the system relies on how the second resources are allocated. Unfortunately, precise and accurate measurement for the processing error and required adjustment of the first operation is not always possible and errors can arise in the error measurement itself. In this paper we investigate a dynamic matching technique used to estimate the measurement error and to subsequently allocate the appropriate resources in a real-time fashion. A case study of a high-quality relay production system is used to illustrate the issues and potential results obtained when the proposed strategy of dynamic matching is used. A computational experiment is used to investigate the method and the two main results indicate: (1) the proposed method yields the maximum production rate and (2) the effectiveness of the method depends on measurement accuracy, but is low over a wide range of measurement accuracy.

We review the literature on executing production schedules in the presence of unforeseen disruptions on the shop floor. We discuss a number of issues related to problem formulation, and discuss the functions of the production schedule in the organization and provide a taxonomy of the different types of uncertainty faced by scheduling algorithms. We then review previous research relative to these issues, and suggest a number of directions for future work in this area. � 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Aversion dynamics (AD) scheduling is a general approach used to create special job sequences that reduce (mitigate) the potential negative impacts associated with events such as machine upgrades or repairs. Upgrades and repairs may go as planned, but they can also be unstable processes that require one or more shifts until performance re-stabilizes to a steady-state level. To consider these phenomena, special AD sequences are constructed using hybrid scheduling heuristics that combine an underlying heuristic for robust performance throughout the scheduling horizon and a specialized modifying heuristic for time periods around the anticipated event. Previous research into the behaviour of the AD heuristics examined the deterministic and stochastic characteristics of the problem and investigated the benefits associated with special job sequencing around known and anticipated events. This research explores the concept of protecting priority jobs around the anticipated event to ensure that the high-valued or i...

This paper presents an adaptive scheduling framework for large-scale computer networks facing significant environmental dynamics such as shifts in job mix and available resources. The presented framework detects changes in the job stream, and other events, and evolves scheduling policies at two distinct levels—operational and tactical—in response to the changes, making adaptations such as reassigning resources and adjusting sequencing heuristics. The paper also presents a simulation of a computer network facing dynamic job arrival rates, which demonstrates that even a simple implementation of the framework can lead to major gains in performance.

Manufacturing control is concerned with what is done where, when and why in manufacturing. Over time, methods and practices have developed for efficient and effective inventory control, resource utilization and ensuring customer delivery. A limited review of the production research literature from the past two centuries was undertaken to determine the prior existence and awareness of a number of present practices. Rather than focus on one particular practice and explore it exhaustively, 22 practices were researched, five of which are described at greater depth. It is clear from this limited review of the historical literature that many of the same or similar manufacturing problems have been consciously recognized and dealt with in the past, often with the same concepts and philosophies. The elegant and sophisticated mathematical modelling and justification of the present might have been absent in the past, but the common sense basis of the solutions can be observed.

Job shops are the most perplexing and challenging of environments for computerized scheduling systems. Some vendors call them problematic and avoid them whenever possible. The development of a generic scheduling tool that can be widely installed has eluded the many vendors who have tried. Installations in job shops are still painfully slow and are heavily customized. The wide variety of types of industry and processes found in the job shop category explains part of the problem. However, there is an additional challenge facing a scheduling tool after it has been installed: will it be used and does it really help the scheduler do the task of scheduling? Is the tool used for rough planning in the next few days or is it really used for dispatching on the fly by the people sequencing work? Few studies have looked at these issues and vendors are not willing to share this information. Furthermore, few customers who have invested significantly in the purchase and installation of a scheduling tool perform an unbiased postmortem or will share the results. In this study, we will present two field studies where computer scheduling aids were considered and discuss the requirements that will support the scheduler in the daily dispatch task. We have found that while analytical and algorithmic aids have limited benefits to a typical job shop, the appropriate use of computer technology can address information overload, cue filtering, and assist the scheduler in problem solving. We describe seven steps of the job shop scheduling task and the implications of each.

Production schedules released to the shop floor have two important functions: allocating shop resources to different jobs to optimize some measure of shop performance and serving as a basis for planning external activities such as material procurement, preventive maintenance and delivery of orders to customers. Schedule modification may delay or render infeasible the execution of external activities planned on the basis of the predictive schedule. Thus it is of interest to develop predictive schedules that can absorb disruptions without affecting planned external activities while maintaining high shop performance. We present a predictable scheduling approach, that inserts additional idle time into the schedule to absorb the impacts of breakdowns. The effects of disruptions on planned support activities are measured by the deviations of job completion times in the realized schedule from those in the predictive schedule. We apply our approach to minimizing total tardiness on a single machine with stochastic...

The theory and practice of what has traditionally been called scheduling have been relatively close in some domains, while remaining worlds apart in others. Success at higher levels of production control has often been seen where the execution issues can be glossed over, especially in industries where there are prolonged periods of stability and maturity. Scheduling theory at the detailed level has been particularly successful in process industries or in situations where there are relatively few machines with significant setup issues. Unfortunately, the theory and practice have not been close in intermittent job shops or industries where there is inherent uncertainty or human judgment is necessary. This paper discusses the traditional scheduling problem and develops a framework based on the practice of scheduling that assists in understanding the requirements for an extended definition of scheduling that goes beyond the sequencing problem.

Modeling involves a series of stages, from the initial concept or abstraction to potential use in industry, or some form of colleague or student exposure - a variety of processes and users. Modeling also implies a number of modeling paradigms - from optimization to simulations. A modeling environment supports the modeling life cycle and "general" modeling, not just one technique such as linear programming. We describe an information systems approach to the design of an integrated modeling environment - OMAC. The design requirements, system's architecture, and modeling capability of the OMAC modeling environment are discussed.

Background: Understanding the basis of clinical radiosensitivity is a key goal of radiation research. In this study, we used the limiting dilution assay (LDA) to analyze in vitro radiosensitivity of cell lines from individuals with breast and other cancers, who had been treated with ionizing radiation, and who either had a non-radiosensitive (RS) radiation response or who were clinically RS. Methods: Lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCLs) were created from 29 cancer patients including 19 RS patients, 10 controls who had not developed severe normal tissue reactions, and 1 ataxia telangiectasia RS control cell line. The clinically RS patients had grade 3 or grade 4 reactions; one had a grade 2 reaction. All cells were exposed to graded doses of gamma-radiation in vitro and cell survival assessed via LDA. Cell survival was expressed on non-linear regression analysis-fitted survival curves and also as the surviving fraction at 2 Gray (Gy) (SF2). Results: Our LDA analysis yielded two notable positive results. Firstly, it could distinguish control cells from cells from pooled breast cancer cases with severe reactions of all types (acute reactors, consequential late reactors and late reactors). Secondly, two radiosensitivity outliers were detected on the fitted curves, corresponding clinically to grade 3 and 4 late radiation reactions in breast and head and neck cancer cases respectively. The assay showed considerable cell survival heterogeneity. Conclusions: The LDA as used here may provide unique clinical utility in detecting potential RS breast cancer patients prior to radiotherapy (RT), a form of personalized medicine. The assay may be especially useful in situations where its results can be temporally available prior to therapy initiation (e.g., those patients not undergoing RT until some months after surgery, typically those having adjuvant chemotherapy prior to RT). Two LCLs from RS outliers could potentially yield insight into the cellular and/or genetic basis of radiosensitivity, for example by undertaking genomic analyses on these cell lines.

In this chapter we focus on the detailed, operational modeling of Emergency Departments—the flows and general processes, and not on clinical decision making. On the flow level, an Emergency Department shares a number of characteristics with a general repair shop, and while there are key differences, the flow and resource interrelationships are similar. We use this perspective to assist researchers with the decomposition and analysis of Emergency Departments, as well as the review of detailed research on Emergency Departments. We examine the scope of research efforts, methodologies employed, types of data included in the modeling, and the implementation of research results in practice. The chapter is anchored by an extensive field study at a medium-sized Emergency Department, whose methodology and key results are presented along with insights from the hospital.

Chapter 1 establishes baseline principles of intuitive user interface (UI) design as a form of effective human communication. It presents the core design principles that support the UI is Communication concept. This chapter explores effective human communication, what it means for a UI to be intuitive, how consistency is often required to be intuitive, when it makes strategic sense to not be intuitive, using inductive UI principles as a way to design tasks to be self-explanatory, how to ask intuitive questions, and a general user model to help you understand typical user behavior.

This chapter applies a communication-driven design process to some real design problems. The chapter covers both desktop and mobile examples. It’s the proof of the pudding.

Chapter 3 explores visual UI design from the communication perspective. It covers the importance of good visual design, how to work with designers, layout and designing for scanning, the effective use of visual design elements, and how to demand the user’s attention when needed. The chapter covers both desktop and mobile visual design.

Chapter 5 presents a communication-driven design process. Good design decisions require a good process. This chapter defines exactly what design is and identifies the classic design mistakes, both of which have profound implications for the design process itself. The chapter then explores specific ways in which having a communication focus affects the design process.

Chapter 2 establishes the language of UI—essentially the parts of speech employed in user interfaces. The chapter presents interaction design by exploring the language of UI from the perspective of effective human communication. This chapter explores basic control interactions, control usage, commands, labels, feedback, errors, warnings, and confirmations. It then explores how to compose these elements into tasks through grouping, task steps, navigation, and dynamic elements. Covers both desktop and mobile interaction.

Chapter 4 covers the human side of human/computer interaction. It explores how people react to software emotionally, how our UI can have a good personality and tone, motivating users by providing value, minimizing user effort, being forgiving and trustworthy, being smart, and making the experience enjoyable. The ultimate goal is to have the same standards for software interaction as we do for social interaction.

The hierarchical production planning (HPP) paradigm has become an accepted planning and control strategy for many medium-to-large manufacturing situations. While the paradigm appears intuitively obvious and appropriate for many factories, there are a number of modern manufacturing situations where the application of the HPP approach may not be appropriate. By understanding the fundamental principles and concepts inherent in the HPP approach, it is possible to identify situations suitable for HPP with little or no adaptation, and situations where HPP must be extensively modified before use. A poor understanding of HPP

The researchers conducted an indepth field project to study the planning and scheduling process in the printed circuit board industry. The formal versus informal scheduling practices are compared, and several aspects of the scheduling situation discussed. Heuristics and techniques used to address instability in the manufacturing system are presented. Instability refers to the manufacturing state when expected or unexpected changes are encountered—e.g. changes in policies, procedures, or a machine fails. The ability to encode the heuristics as a formal model or computer program and have the heuristics mechanically applied is also discussed. The study also provides insights regarding the existence and nature of scheduler expertise.

The hierarchical production planning (HPP) paradigm that is used to control production in many industries has been developed and refined during the past century. In this paper, the basic concepts underlying the HPP paradigm will be briefly reviewed and an enhanced paradigm introduced for rapidly changing industries. The proposed enhancements view the decision making as a dynamic information system in which the role of information is dramatically different from the traditional approaches. The enhancements are at three levels: structural topology of the decision layers, adaptive framework for the internal structure of an enhanced layer, and a special class of heuristics for managing capacity when faced by change.

Backgrounds: Multiple polymorphisms affecting smoking behavior have been identified through genome-wide association studies. Circulating levels of the nicotine metabolite cotinine is a marker of recent smoking exposure. Hence, genetic variants influencing smoking behavior are expected to be associated with cotinine levels. Methods: We conducted an analysis in a lung cancer case-control study nested within the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) cohort. We investigated the effects of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) previously associated with smoking behavior on (i) circulating cotinine and (ii) lung cancer risk. A total of 894 cases and 1,805 controls were analyzed for cotinine and genotyped for 10 polymorphisms on 7p14, 8p11, 10q23, 15q25, and 19q13. Results: Two variants in the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor subunit genes CHRNA5 and CHRNA3 on 15q25, rs16969968 and rs578776, were associated with cotinine (P = 0.001 and 0.03, respectively) in current smokers and with lung cancer risk (P < 0.001 and P 0.001, respectively). Two 19q13 variants, rs7937 and rs4105144, were associated with increased cotinine (P = 0.003 and P < 0.001, respectively) but decreased lung cancer risk (P = 0.01 for both, after adjusting for cotinine). Variants in 7p14, 8p11, and 10q23 were not associated with cotinine or lung cancer risk. Conclusions: 15q25 and 19q13 SNPs were associated with circulating cotinine. The directions of association for 15q25 variants with cotinine were in accordance with that expected of lung cancer risk, whereas SNPs on 19q13 displayed contrasting associations of cotinine and lung cancer that require further investigation. Impact: This study is the largest to date investigating the effects of polymorphisms affecting smoking behavior on lung cancer risk using circulating cotinine measures as proxies for recent smoking behavior. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 20(10); 2250-61. (C) 2011 AACR.

Before probing the history of manufacturing control systems, we have to ask a question. What is a manufacturing planning and control system? In theory, there is a simple answer– it is a system of “things” that work together to control what is done where, by who, using what set of resources (machines, tools, and materials), at what time, and in what quantity.