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BackgroundHIV and HCV have been linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Their impact on long-term outcomes following ST-segment myocardial infarction (STEMI) has not been previously studied.MethodsWe leveraged data from a STEMI registry (n = 1208) at an inner-city health system to assess the influence of HIV and HCV on post-STEMI outcomes. Cox regression was used to compare HIV-monoinfected (n = 22), HCV-monoinfected (n = 26) and HIV-HCV-coinfected patients (n = 8) with the neither-infected group (n = 1152) with regard to death, death or any readmission, and death or CVD readmission.ResultsThe cohort was majority black or Hispanic. Median follow-up was 4.3 years. Compared to the neither-infected group, the HIV-monoinfected group showed near-significantly higher risks of death or any readmission (HR = 1.62, 95% CI = 0.96, 2.74) and death or CVD readmission (HR = 1.82, 95% CI = 0.98, 3.39) after full adjustment. On similar comparison, the HCV-monoinfected group exhibited significantly higher risks of death (HR = 2.09, 95% CI = 1.05, 4.15) and death or any readmission (HR = 1.68, 95% CI = 1.07, 2.65), whereas the HIV-HCV-coinfected group showed higher risk of death (HR = 6.51, 95% CI = 2.28, 18.61).ConclusionsIn this cohort composed mostly of race-ethnic minorities, HIV monoinfection tended to be associated with 1.6-to-1.8-fold higher risk of death or readmission for any cause or CVD over long-term follow-up compared to neither infection, whereas HCV monoinfection was associated with 1.7-to-2.1-fold higher risk of death and death or any readmission, and HIV-HCV coinfection with 6.5-fold higher risk of death. These associations require further study in larger populations, but highlight the importance of identifying and treating HIV and HCV in patients presenting with STEMI.

A diode laser sensor was developed for partial pressure and temperature measurements using a single water vapor transition. The Lorentzian half-width and line intensity of the transition were calibrated for conditions relevant to proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell operation. Comparison of measured and simulated harmonics from wavelength-modulation spectroscopy is shown to yield accuracy of [+ or -] 2.5% in water vapor partial pressure and [+ or -] 3[degrees]C in temperature despite the use of a single transition over a narrow range of temperatures. Collisional half-widths in air or hydrogen are measured so that calibrations can be applied to both anode and cathode channels of a PEM fuel cell. An in situ calibration of the nonlinear impact of modulation on laser wavelength is presented and used to improve the accuracy of the numerical simulation of the signal. OCIS codes: 300.1030, 280.4788.

In hierarchical production planning systems an aggregate plan is developed in order to set overall production levels. This is followed by a disaggregation step in which individual product families are scheduled for production on shared resources. Each product family is given a time slot during which it will have exclusive use of the resources. The objective in disaggregation is to minimize setup costs during the changeovers among product families while maintaining feasibility with the constraints imposed by the aggregate plan. Past solution approaches to this problem have employed discrete-time formulations. In this paper we introduce a continuous-time solution method. The problem is formulated as a set of linear equations that can be solved simultaneously. An algorithm that provides an iterative solution to the simultaneous equations is proposed. Convergence properties are discussed and it is shown that the proposed method is effective over a range of problem types., 1. Introduction Aggregate production planning and production plan disaggregation have two purposes. Aggregate planning attempts to maximize total profit or minimize total cost while considering decision variables such as production [...]

Modern manufacturing systems are highly automated and require distributed architectures in order to integrate enterprise-wide planning and decision making while providing scalability. In this paper, we introduce an architecture for scheduling and controlling a manufacturing system using distributed objects. We design a cell object, which encapsulates data and methods for scheduling and controlling the cell resources. New jobs entering the manufacturing system are allocated to cells based on schedules computed in real time by these distributed cell objects. We demonstrate the efficacy of this approach through empirical trials that compare it to scheduling and job dispatching using other methods. Index Terms--Discrete event systems, distributed control, flexible manufacturing systems, object-oriented methods.

The learning curve is a fundamental model used by engineers in cost estimating. In industry, it is typical to use the deterministic model for projecting cost, which is also suggested in standard textbooks. However, the parameters for the model are obtained from actual data, which usually come from a stochastic process. In this technical note, we investigate a particular phenomenon of the stochastic learning model that indicates that a bias may exist in the parameter estimates simply due to random behaviour in learning. The findings suggest that, on average, projections of cost from a model whose parameters are estimated from early data points are, on average, optimistic about the future cost reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a great deal of interest in the use of multicriteria decision making models in the evaluation of capital investment projects. These models allow the user to bring difficult-to-quantify criteria into the investment decision. One example of this type is the nontraditional capital investment criteria (NCIC) method. In this paper we extend this method to include imprecision in the evaluation of the importance of criteria. This is done using fuzzy sets, either as triangular fuzzy numbers (TFNs) or as linguistic variables. As in the case of NCIC using crisp sets, we provide consistency checks on the pairwise comparisons of decision makers and interpret the vector weights from the pairwise comparisons in monetary terms., INTRODUCTION The nontraditional capital investment criteria (NCIC) method was developed by Boucher and Wicks (MacStravic) [4, 38]. This method is similar in some respects to Saaty's analytic hierarchy process (AHP) [...]