scholarly journals Blind to Chemistry: Molecular Contaminant Films We Could Be Missing During Visual Inspections and the Potential Impact to System Performance

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-20
Author(s):  
Elaine Seasly ◽  
Walter Wrigglesworth

Abstract Throughout the assembly, integration, and test process, molecular contamination levels of space mission hardware are monitored to meet system performance requirements. Qualitatively, reflective surfaces and witness mirrors are continuously inspected for the visible presence of molecular contaminant films. Quantitatively, periodic reflectance measurements of witness mirrors indicate changes of mirror reflectivity over time due to the accumulation of molecular contaminant films. However, both methods only consider the presence of a contaminant film and not the molecular composition. Additionally, there is a risk that hardware may appear to be “visibly clean” even with a molecular contaminant film present on critical surfaces. To address these issues, experiments were performed to quantify the maximum molecular contaminant film that could be missed in visual inspections on witness mirrors with five different contaminants present. The corresponding changes in mirror reflectivity were modeled using the program STACK to determine the impact to space mission hardware performance. The results of this study not only show the criticality in considering the chemical make-up of molecular contaminant films on system performance, but also the need to recognize and understand the limitations of traditional visual inspection techniques on detecting molecular contaminant films.

Author(s):  
Joseph R. Piacenza ◽  
Scott Proper ◽  
Mir Abbas Bozorgirad ◽  
Christopher Hoyle ◽  
Irem Y. Tumer

Optimizing the topology of complex infrastructure systems can minimize the impact of cascading failures due to an initiating failure event. This paper presents a model-based design approach for the concept-stage robust design of complex infrastructure systems, as an alternative to modern network analysis methods. This approach focuses on system performance after cascading has occurred and examines design tradeoffs of the resultant (or degraded) system state. In this research, robustness is classically defined as the invariability of system performance due to uncertain failure events, implying that a robust network has the ability to meet minimum performance requirements despite the impact of cascading failures. This research is motivated by catastrophic complex infrastructure system failures such as the August 13th Blackout of 2003, highlighting the vulnerability of systems such as the North American power grid (NAPG). A mathematical model was developed using an adjacency matrix, where removing network connections simulates uncertain failure events. Performance degradation is iteratively calculated as failures cascade throughout the system, and robustness is measured by the lack of performance variability over multiple cascading failure scenarios. Two case studies are provided: an extrapolated IEEE 14 test bus and the Oregon State University (OSU) campus power network. The overarching goal of this research is to understand key system design tradeoffs between robustness, performance objectives, and cost, and explore the benefits of optimizing network topologies during the concept-stage design of these systems (e.g., microgrids).


BMJ Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. e043863
Author(s):  
Jingyuan Wang ◽  
Ke Tang ◽  
Kai Feng ◽  
Xin Lin ◽  
Weifeng Lv ◽  
...  

ObjectivesWe aim to assess the impact of temperature and relative humidity on the transmission of COVID-19 across communities after accounting for community-level factors such as demographics, socioeconomic status and human mobility status.DesignA retrospective cross-sectional regression analysis via the Fama-MacBeth procedure is adopted.SettingWe use the data for COVID-19 daily symptom-onset cases for 100 Chinese cities and COVID-19 daily confirmed cases for 1005 US counties.ParticipantsA total of 69 498 cases in China and 740 843 cases in the USA are used for calculating the effective reproductive numbers.Primary outcome measuresRegression analysis of the impact of temperature and relative humidity on the effective reproductive number (R value).ResultsStatistically significant negative correlations are found between temperature/relative humidity and the effective reproductive number (R value) in both China and the USA.ConclusionsHigher temperature and higher relative humidity potentially suppress the transmission of COVID-19. Specifically, an increase in temperature by 1°C is associated with a reduction in the R value of COVID-19 by 0.026 (95% CI (−0.0395 to −0.0125)) in China and by 0.020 (95% CI (−0.0311 to −0.0096)) in the USA; an increase in relative humidity by 1% is associated with a reduction in the R value by 0.0076 (95% CI (−0.0108 to −0.0045)) in China and by 0.0080 (95% CI (−0.0150 to −0.0010)) in the USA. Therefore, the potential impact of temperature/relative humidity on the effective reproductive number alone is not strong enough to stop the pandemic.


BMC Medicine ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bimandra A. Djaafara ◽  
Charles Whittaker ◽  
Oliver J. Watson ◽  
Robert Verity ◽  
Nicholas F. Brazeau ◽  
...  

Abstract Background As in many countries, quantifying COVID-19 spread in Indonesia remains challenging due to testing limitations. In Java, non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) were implemented throughout 2020. However, as a vaccination campaign launches, cases and deaths are rising across the island. Methods We used modelling to explore the extent to which data on burials in Jakarta using strict COVID-19 protocols (C19P) provide additional insight into the transmissibility of the disease, epidemic trajectory, and the impact of NPIs. We assess how implementation of NPIs in early 2021 will shape the epidemic during the period of likely vaccine rollout. Results C19P burial data in Jakarta suggest a death toll approximately 3.3 times higher than reported. Transmission estimates using these data suggest earlier, larger, and more sustained impact of NPIs. Measures to reduce sub-national spread, particularly during Ramadan, substantially mitigated spread to more vulnerable rural areas. Given current trajectory, daily cases and deaths are likely to increase in most regions as the vaccine is rolled out. Transmission may peak in early 2021 in Jakarta if current levels of control are maintained. However, relaxation of control measures is likely to lead to a subsequent resurgence in the absence of an effective vaccination campaign. Conclusions Syndromic measures of mortality provide a more complete picture of COVID-19 severity upon which to base decision-making. The high potential impact of the vaccine in Java is attributable to reductions in transmission to date and dependent on these being maintained. Increases in control in the relatively short-term will likely yield large, synergistic increases in vaccine impact.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 195
Author(s):  
Akash Gupta ◽  
Adnan Al-Anbuky

Hip fracture incidence is life-threatening and has an impact on the person’s physical functionality and their ability to live independently. Proper rehabilitation with a set program can play a significant role in recovering the person’s physical mobility, boosting their quality of life, reducing adverse clinical outcomes, and shortening hospital stays. The Internet of Things (IoT), with advancements in digital health, could be leveraged to enhance the backup intelligence used in the rehabilitation process and provide transparent coordination and information about movement during activities among relevant parties. This paper presents a post-operative hip fracture rehabilitation model that clarifies the involved rehabilitation process, its associated events, and the main physical movements of interest across all stages of care. To support this model, the paper proposes an IoT-enabled movement monitoring system architecture. The architecture reflects the key operational functionalities required to monitor patients in real time and throughout the rehabilitation process. The approach was tested incrementally on ten healthy subjects, particularly for factors relevant to the recognition and tracking of movements of interest. The analysis reflects the significance of personalization and the significance of a one-minute history of data in monitoring the real-time behavior. This paper also looks at the impact of edge computing at the gateway and a wearable sensor edge on system performance. The approach provides a solution for an architecture that balances system performance with remote monitoring functional requirements.


2021 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-119
Author(s):  
Xinming Xia ◽  
Wan-Hsin Liu

AbstractThis paper analyses how China’s investments in Germany have developed over time and the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in this regard, based on four different datasets, including our own survey in mid-2020. Our analysis shows that Germany is currently one of the most attractive investment destinations for Chinese investors. Chinese state-owned enterprises have played an important role as investors in Germany — particularly in large-scale projects. The COVID-19 pandemic has had some negative but rather temporary effects on Chinese investments in Germany. Germany is expected to stay attractive to Chinese investors who seek to gain access to advanced technologies and know-how in the future.


2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 180-190
Author(s):  
Ireneusz Wlodarczyk

AbstractWe computed the impact solutions of the potentially dangerous Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) 2001 BB16 based on 47 optical observations from January 20.08316 UTC, 2001, through February 09.15740 UTC, 2016, and one radar observation from January 19.90347 UTC, 2016. We used two methods to sample the starting Line of Variation (LOV). First method, called thereafter LOV1, with the uniform sampling of the LOV parameter, out to LOV = 5 computing 3000 virtual asteroids (VAs) on both sides of the LOV, which gives 6001 VAs and propagated their orbits to JD2525000.5 TDT=February 12, 2201. We computed the non-gravitational parameterA2=(34.55±7.38)·10–14 au/d2 for nominal orbit of 2001 BB16 and possible impacts with the Earth until 2201. For potential impact in 2195 we find A2=20.0·10−14 au/d2. With a positive value of A2, 2001 BB16 can be prograde rotator. Moreover, we computed Lyapunov Time (LT) for 2001 BB16, which for all VAs, has a mean value of about 25 y. We showed that impact solutions, including the calculated probability of a possible collision of a 2001 BB16 asteroid with the Earth depends on how to calculate and take into account the appropriate gravitational model, including the number of perturbing massive asteroids. In some complicated cases, it may depend also on the number of clones calculated for a given sigma LOV1. The second method of computing the impact solutions, called thereafter LOV2, is based on a non-uniformly sampling of the LOV. We showed that different methods of sampling the LOV can give different impact solutions, but all computed dates of possible impacts of the asteroid 2001 BB16 with the Earth occur in accordance at the end of the 22nd century.


Author(s):  
Emilia Grzędzicka ◽  
Jiří Reif

AbstractPlant invasions alter bird community composition worldwide, but the underlying mechanisms still require exploration. The investigation of feeding guild structure of bird communities can be informative in respect to the potential impact of invasion features on the availability of food for birds. For this purpose, we focused on determining the influence of the invasive Sosnowsky’s Hogweed Heracleum sosnowskyi on the abundance of birds from various feeding guilds. In spring and summer 2019, birds were counted three times on 52 pairs of sites (control + Heracleum) in southern Poland, at various stages of Sosnowsky’s Hogweed development (i.e. sprouting, full growth and flowering, all corresponding to respective bird counts). We have shown that the presence of invader negatively affected the abundance of birds from all feeding guilds. However, a closer examination of the invaded sites uncovered that responses of particular guilds differed in respect to development stages expressed by a set of characteristics of the invader. Ground and herb insectivores were more common on plots with a higher number of the invader, while the abundance of bush and tree insectivores was negatively correlated with hogweeds’ height. Granivores were not affected by the invader’s features, while the abundance of omnivores was negatively related to the number of flowering hogweeds. Besides showing the general negative impact of the invader on different feeding guilds, our research has shown that certain aspects of Sosnowsky’s Hogweed invasion may support or depress occurrence of different birds on invaded plots. Knowledge of these aspects may facilitate our capacity for coping with challenges the invasive plants put in front of bird conservationists.


Sensors ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (12) ◽  
pp. 4196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caibo Hu ◽  
Chuang Shi ◽  
Jinping Chen ◽  
Yidong Lou ◽  
Fei Wang

The BeiDou system satellites may be unhealthy due to many reasons, affecting system performance in different ways. Therefore, it is important to analyze the causes and characteristics of the satellites’ unhealthy states. In this study, these states are classified into five types based on the broadcast ephemeris. Three criteria are presented, based on which a general classification method is proposed. Data from July 2017 to June 2018 are analyzed to validate the method, from which we know that the average unhealthy duration due to satellite maneuvers is much longer than the duration of unhealthy states related to satellite orbit or clock anomalies, and the other unhealthy states may be caused by inbound or outbound satellites. Statistics show that most of the time, the number of unhealthy satellites is no more than two and the average positioning accuracy in the service area will decrease by no more than 0.75 and 1.2 meters when one or two BDS satellites are unhealthy, respectively.


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