1,354,299 research outputs found
A robust and fail-safe semi-active vertical damper to improve ride comfort
No full textIn recent years, the technical progress in railway engineering has led to the integration of electronic elements in suspension components that once were purely mechanical. Many studies have been carried out, developing active and semi-active suspensions. Among these, semi-active suspensions are particularly attractive due to their simpler design compared to fully active ones. In this context, this paper proposes a semi-active vertical damper to be implemented on the secondary suspension stage of rail vehicles. A prototype is developed by modifying a pre-existing passive damper through the addition of an external servo-valve which manages an additional by-pass channel between the compression and rebound chambers. The prototype is characterised on a dedicated test rig. A reduced vehicle model is then developed as the starting point in developing a sliding mode controller to manage the semi-active feature of the damper. A time-varying sliding surface containing the state of the system and car body accelerations is proposed. Finally, the damper prototype is tested on a hardware-in-the-loop test rig, focusing the experimental campaign on quantifying the damper performance, the evaluation of the controller robustness and a failure analysis to study the behaviour of the proposed solution even in the case of unexpected failures
An experimental methodology to support development of yaw damper prototypes based on a hardware-in-the-loop test bench
No full textResearch and development of innovative suspension components for rail vehicles have involved huge investments in recent years. Research efforts have focussed on designing and optimising suspension systems to deal with the new challenges introduced in railway dynamics by the continuous increase in vehicle speed. In particular, yaw dampers have been a relevant research topic due to their influence on vehicle stability. In this context, this paper aims to propose a Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) methodology for testing yaw dampers under experimental conditions close to real operating scenarios, comparing the influence of different prototypes on the stability of high-speed rail vehicles. A reduced vehicle model is proposed for real-time integration in HIL tests. This model provides a reference stroke to be imposed on the prototype tested, considering the actual damping force provided by the device being analysed. Two yaw damper prototypes are introduced to validate the proposed methodology by means of comparative analysis at different vehicle speeds. The experimental results provided by the HIL test bench are then compared with corresponding analysis done using Multi-Body (MB) simulations. The proposed HIL methodology has proved to be able to test physical prototypes and define guidelines to assist damper manufacturers developing and optimising yaw damper components
Immunomagnetic selection of progenitor cells from peripheral blood after thawing with an automatic system in a pediatric patient with a neuroblastoma
No full textBACKGROUND: Immunomagnetic selection of peripheral blood progenitor cells (PBPCs) in patients with tumoral infiltration in marrow makes it possible to reduce contamination of cellular concentrates, but this procedure cannot always be used, mainly because of the low cellular count in apheresis concentrates. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS: In this case two cellular concentrates taken separately at two different times were selected and cryopreserved; they were thawed with an automatic instrument. RESULTS: After manipulation, a selected concentrate containing 24.16x106 CD34+ cells with a purity of 90.15 percent was obtained; vitality after thawing and selection was 88 and 96 percent, respectively. The engraftment was achieved on Day + 17 from the infusion of the previously selected PBPCs, as the literature also shows us. CONCLUSION: The time passed between the infusion and the engraftment gives us evidence of the efficacy of immunomagnetic selection carried out after thawing 2 cell units that were collected at different times from the same patient. In this way, it has been possible to perform an autologous transplant in a patient in which CD34+ cells transplant is recommended, but from whom the number of collected cells after a single mobilization cycle would not have been sufficient for the engraftment
On the implementation of hydraulic-interconnected-suspensions at the primary suspension stage of high-speed rail vehicles
No full textIn recent years, huge investments have been made to improve the dynamic performance of high-speed trains. Research into innovative suspension components has been part of the development of this transport system for decades. Innovative devices can allow rail vehicles to deal with the constantly increasing speed required by the global market. Among the most innovative suspension layouts proposed in railway dynamics in past years, limited attention has been given to Hydraulic Interconnected Suspensions (HIS). This layout is composed of two hydraulic cylinders with external hydraulic connections. Hydraulic Interconnected Suspensions allow promising tuning capabilities due to their ability to offer different responses based on the specific inputs given to the cylinders. This layout is rarely considered for rail vehicles, and the few previous works related to this topic considered the HIS layout to be applied at the secondary suspension stage. In this context, this paper proposes applying an HIS layout to the primary suspension stage of rail vehicles, in order to overcome the trade-offs between ride comfort, running safety and maximum car body displacement that need to be considered by bogie manufacturers when designing and optimising these mechanical systems. A nonlinear physical model of the HIS is proposed for co-simulation with a Multi-body (MB) model of a high-speed train. The improvement provided implementing an HIS at the primary suspension stage is then compared to similar enhancements that could be made when tuning and varying the standard suspension components of a bogie
KAOS: A new automated computational method for the identification of overexpressed genes
No full textBackground: Kinase over-expression and activation as a consequence of gene amplification or gene fusion events is a well-known mechanism of tumorigenesis. The search for novel rearrangements of kinases or other druggable genes may contribute to understanding the biology of cancerogenesis, as well as lead to the identification of new candidate targets for drug discovery. However this requires the ability to query large datasets to identify rare events occurring in very small fractions (1-3 %) of different tumor subtypes. This task is different from what is normally done by conventional tools that are able to find genes differentially expressed between two experimental conditions. Results: We propose a computational method aimed at the automatic identification of genes which are selectively over-expressed in a very small fraction of samples within a specific tissue. The method does not require a healthy counterpart or a reference sample for the analysis and can be therefore applied also to transcriptional data generated from cell lines. In our implementation the tool can use gene-expression data from microarray experiments, as well as data generated by RNASeq technologies. Conclusions: The method was implemented as a publicly available, user-friendly tool called KAOS (Kinase Automatic Outliers Search). The tool enables the automatic execution of iterative searches for the identification of extreme outliers and for the graphical visualization of the results. Filters can be applied to select the most significant outliers. The performance of the tool was evaluated using a synthetic dataset and compared to state-of-the-art tools. KAOS performs particularly well in detecting genes that are overexpressed in few samples or when an extreme outlier stands out on a high variable expression background. To validate the method on real case studies, we used publicly available tumor cell line microarray data, and we were able to identify genes which are known to be overexpressed in specific samples, as well as novel ones
A Meta-Heuristic Optimization Procedure for the Identification of the Nonlinear Model Parameters of Hydraulic Dampers Based on Experimental Dataset of Real Working Conditions
No full textHydralic dampers are widely implemented in railway vehicle suspension stages, especially in high-speed passenger trains. They are designed to be mounted in different positions to improve comfort, stability, and safety performances. Numerical simulations are often used to assist the design and optimization of these components. Unfortunately, hydraulic dampers are highly nonlinear due to the complex fluid dynamic phenomena taking place inside the chambers and through the by-pass orifices. This requires accurate damper models to be developed to estimate the influence of the nonlinearities of such components during the dynamic performances of the whole vehicle. This work aims at presenting a new parametric damper model based on a nonlinear lumped element approach. Moreover, a new model tuning procedure will be introduced. Differently from the typical sinusoidal characterization cycles, this routine is based on experimental tests of real working conditions. The set of optimal model parameters will be found through a metaheuristic iterative approach able to minimize the differences between numerical and experimental damper forces. The performances of the optimal model will be compared with the ones of the most common Maxwell model generally implemented in railway multibody software programs
Summarizing probe intensities of Affymetrix GeneChip 3' expression arrays taking into account day-to-day variability
No full textInduction of regulatory T cells after prophylactic treatment with photopheresis in renal transplant recipients
No full textExtracorporeal photopheresis (ECP), originally used to treat cutaneous T-cell lymphoma, also has been applied to the therapy of transplant rejection. Our aim was to investigate the biologic response in two children who underwent kidney transplantation with ECP as prophylactic treatment. They received conventional immunosuppressive therapy and ECP immediately after transplantation: six applications over the course of 3 weeks. During a 12-month follow-up, the clinical course was favorable in both patients; renal histology was normal 6 months after transplantation. When compared with four transplanted controls, the ECP-treated patients showed lower tumor necrosis factor-a serum levels in the short-term and a marked increase of Foxp3-positive T-regulatory cells. T-regulatory cells were still higher than in the controls I year after transplantation. These preliminary results suggest. that the addition of ECP to standard immunosuppressive therapy induces a tolerogenic shift in the immune system of kidney transplanted patients and may pave the way to preventing chronic rejection
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Innovative passive yaw damper to increase the stability and curve-taking performance of high-speed railway vehicles
No full textYaw dampers are implemented on high-speed trains to reduce their tendency towards unstable movement (hunting) while running at high-speed. Although they have a positive influence on the vehicle's stability, these devices impose a steering resistance action on the bogies while negotiating tight curves at low speed, and so standard passive devices must be designed taking conflicting objective functions into account. This paper presents an innovative yaw damper able to overcome this trade-off by introducing a passive solution able to modify this component's working behaviour during different vehicle operating conditions. To quantify the efficacy of this solution, numerical models of innovative and standard dampers were developed and validated by means of experimental tests. Then, they were co-simulated with a multibody model of a real test case vehicle running under different operating conditions
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