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Profile of Marius Clore

In a hangar-style space draped in dim blue light stand seven tall, cylindrical machines. The machines, NMR spectrometers, resemble wingless man-made satellites. Most of them rest at floor level, with a sample loading port reached by a small staircase, but a few protrude above the floor. Marius Clore. Image courtesy of Marius Clore. NMR spectrometers operate at the atomic level, and the size of a spectrometer reflects the strength of its superconducting magnets. By exploiting the magnetic fields of atomic nuclei and using high-pulse radio waves, NMR spectrometers help researchers like Marius Clore, a molecular biophysicist and structural biologist at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases at the NIH in Bethesda, Maryland, determine the structure and dynamics of molecules such as proteins and nucleic acids. For nearly four decades, Clore, elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 2014, has studied the molecular structure and dynamics of biological macromolecules, and spearheaded the development and refinement of biomolecular NMR. Through work carried out in three countries on two continents, he has pushed the limits of NMR technology, laying the foundation for 3D and 4D NMR techniques and ushering in discoveries such as the high-resolution, 3D structure of the immune modulator interleukin-1β. However, Clore’s path to NMR was not straightforward. Clore grew up in the Chelsea area of central London during the 1960s. Along with his mother and father, a film producer who worked on the 1981 film The French Lieutenant’s Woman , which starred actress Meryl Streep, Clore lived in a two-story apartment near the home field of Chelsea Football Club. Around the age of five years, Clore, who started attending the French Lycee school in London, already knew what he wanted to do when he grew up. “I was a little bit of a hypochondriac,” …

Simulation of logistics to supply Corn Stover to the Ontario Power Generation (OPG) Plant in Lambton, Ontario.

The overall goal of this research is to investigate the logistics of agricultural biomass in Ontario, Canada using the Integrated Biomass Supply Analysis and Logistics Model (IBSAL). The supply of corn stover to the Ontario Power Generation (OPG) power plant in Lambton is simulated. This coal-fired power plant is currently not operating and there are no active plans by OPG to fuel it with biomass. Rather, this scenario is considered only to demonstrate the application of the IBSAL Model to this type of scenario. Five scenarios of delivering corn stover to the Lambton Generating Station (GS) power plant in Lambton Ontario are modeled: (1) truck transport from field edge to OPG (base scenario); (2) farm to central storage located on the highway, then truck transport bales to OPG; (3) direct truck transport from farm (no-stacking) to OPG; (4) farm to a loading port on Lake Huron and from there on a barge to OPG; and (5) farm to a railhead and then to OPG by rail. The net amount of annual biomass demand at the power plant was set to be 124,264 dry tonnes (dt) to produce 5% of the baseload fuel requirement of the power plant. For Scenario 1 the amount of biomass required to be harvested is 160,123 dt per year with delivery cost of $37/t. For Scenario 2 the amount of biomass is 155,730 dt per year with delivery cost of $48/t. For Scenario 3 the amount of biomass is 151,141t per year with delivery cost of $33/t. The differences in the amount of biomass and cost are due to dry matter loss and transport distance. For Scenario 4 the amount of biomass is 172,480 t per year with delivery cost of $94/t. Eight barges are required to deliver the entire supply of biomass to the power plant within a time period of 6 months. For Scenario 5 the amount of biomass is 170,686 t per year with delivery cost of $81/t. The required biomass could be delivered using 264 trips. The purchase cost of biomass is not included in this output.

Creating annual delivery programs of liquefied natural gas

The annual delivery program (ADP) setup is an important problem in liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply chain planning. The ADP for an actor in the chain is the complete sailing schedule of the ships in the fleet for the coming year. In this paper we focus on the ADP planning problem for one of the world’s largest producers of LNG. The producer is responsible for the LNG inventories at the liquefaction plant, the loading port with a limited number of berths, and the routing and scheduling of a heterogeneous fleet of LNG ships. In addition, the producer has to fulfill a set of long-term contracts to customers all around the world. The objective is to design an ADP to fulfill the long-term contracts at minimum cost, while maximizing revenue from selling LNG in the spot market. A mixed integer programming (MIP) formulation of the ADP planning problem is presented and solved with a branch-and-cut algorithm. Several types of valid inequalities are developed that allow us to reduce the linear programming gap of the MIP formulation. The computational study shows that the problem is very complex, but that the valid inequalities are effective.

A New Formulation Based on Customer Delivery Patterns for a Maritime Inventory Routing Problem

In this paper we address a maritime inventory routing problem encountered by one of the world’s largest producers of liquefied natural gas (LNG). The producer is responsible for the LNG inventories at the liquefaction plant, the loading port with a limited number of berths, and the routing and scheduling of a heterogeneous fleet of LNG ships. In addition, the producer has to fulfill a set of long-term contracts to customers all around the world. The producer’s goal is to create a minimum-cost long-term delivery program that respects the long-term contracts while maximizing revenue from selling LNG in the spot market. We introduce a new formulation for this problem arising from a novel decomposition scheme based on delivery patterns. To solve this formulation, we develop an exact branch-price-and-cut algorithm. Computational results show that this new formulation provides much tighter lower bounds than the only known mixed integer programming (MIP) formulation for this problem. Furthermore, on a set of 27 benchmark instances, the proposed branch-price-and-cut method clearly outperforms a commercial MIP solver applied to the existing MIP model.

Atmospherically deposited trace metals from bulk mineral concentrate port operations

Although metal exposures in the environment have declined over the last two decades, certain activities and locations still present a risk of harm to human health. This study examines environmental dust metal and metalloid hazards (arsenic, cadmium, lead and nickel) associated with bulk mineral transport, loading and unloading port operations in public locations and children's playgrounds in the inner city of Townsville, northern Queensland. The mean increase in lead on post-play hand wipes (965μg/m2/day) across all sites was more than 10-times the mean pre-play loadings (95μg/m2/day). Maximum loading values after a 10-minute play period were 3012μg/m2, more than seven times the goal of 400μg/m2 used by the Government of Western Australia (2011). Maximum daily nickel post-play hand loadings (404μg/m2) were more than 26 times above the German Federal Immission Control Act 2002 annual benchmark of 15μg/m2/day. Repeat sampling over the 5-day study period showed that hands and surfaces were re-contaminated daily from the deposition of metal-rich atmospheric dusts. Lead isotopic composition analysis of dust wipes (208Pb/207Pb and 206Pb/207Pb) showed that surface dust lead was similar to Mount Isa type ores, which are exported through the Port of Townsville. While dust metal contaminant loadings are lower than other mining and smelting towns in Australia, they exceeded national and international benchmarks for environmental quality. The lessons from this study are clear — even where operations are considered acceptable by managing authorities, targeted assessment and monitoring can be used to evaluate whether current management practices are truly best practice. Reassessment can identify opportunities for improvement and maximum environmental and human health protection.

C-25: Evaluation of closed system medical device for low volume storage for clinical studies involving regulatory T cells

Clinical use of low volume cellular therapeutics requires closed system medical devices for storage, transport, and delivery. The regulatory T cells have been considered as key regulators in various immunological processes and there has been a great interest in using them as immunotherapy. The objective of the current study was to evaluate the use of CellSeal ® Closed-System Cryogenic Vial (Cook Medical, IN, USA) for the application of short-term low volume storage of separated and expanded regulatory T cells and preparation for clinical studies. The CellSeal cryogenic vial is a newly CE Marked medical device intended for the freezing and storage of tissue, cells, blood and blood components for the purpose of introduction into the body by means of infusion or other means of administration. The CellSeal cryogenic vial is made of materials that are stable and durable during freezing and low temperature storage. The design of the CellSeal cryogenic vial has an loading port for ease of loading, a microbial barrier vent to prevent pressure from building up in the vial during loading and to allow air back into the vial during retrieval, tubing that can be sealed to create a functionally closed system, and a retrieval port allowing maximum recovery of the stored volume. The retrieval port on CellSeal offers seamless transfer at the point of care to standard delivery needles or infusion sets for delivery to patients. The current study provides supportive data for use of a single dose of autologous regulatory T cells cryopreserved using CellSeal vials to be injected in vivo to induce prolongation of organ allograft survival. For cryopreservation, separated and expanded regulatory T cells were counted and resuspended in Cryostor CS10 (BioLife Solutions Inc., WA, USA). The cell concentration per single dose was calculated so the volume of the final dose (3 × 10 6 /kg of patient’s body weight) was frozen and stored in 2 mL CellSeal cryogenic vials using a controlled rate freezer and stored in vapor phase of liquid nitrogen. After cryopreservation, the cells were thawed, resuspended in 5% human serum albumin, and evaluated for viability, phenotype, potency and recovery. After 12 weeks of storage, the phenotype and the potency of the cells remained stable. The viability of the cells was complied with the release criteria of the study (>70%). The cells also had a high degree of recovery. The current results indicate that CellSeal cryogenic vials met expectations in preparation for two clinical trials using regulatory T cells. We conclude that the CellSeal cryogenic vials can be highly suitable for low volume storage in clinical trial settings in cellular therapy.

English

According to the International Maritime Organization's regulations, there are factors that affect the energy efficiency of ship, cargo capacity and voyage distance. This document analyzes the information gathered from the detailed trials of the Energy Efficiency Operational Indicator of Taiwan’s bulk carrier and uses it to investigate the influence of various characteristics of voyage on the indicator value. The course of bulk carriers is mostly irregular because of chart; it is often difficult to estimate its navigation route in advance. Due to the cargo loading port or others, the course changes temporarily. Therefore, navigation distance is one of the main factors that influence EEOI value of bulk carrier. Other secondary factors are different to some extent, depending on the size of the ship. For Capesize bulk carrier, cargo loading capacity may be influenced by season, but for Panamax size and Handysize bulk carrier, it could be due to oil consumption. Therefore, to use the source (existing bulk carriers) effectively and to meet ships’ EEOI standard or the mutual recognition value, the optimum planning for navigation has to be reduced for it to be unexpectedly good.   Key words: Energy efficiency operational indicator, bulk carrier, Grey relation.

THE COMPARISON OF THEORETICAL TO PRACTICAL CARGO LOADING RATE OF BUTANE - ANALYSIS OF LPG CARRIER RELIQUEFACTION PLANT

This paper presents a performance of reliquefaction plant analysis in order to assess possible cargo loading rate for Butane (C4H10). The highest cargo loading rate is essential in use of LPG carriers because of economical point of view. Loading and discharging cargo time at ports substantially influences on a financial effect of the ship owner. Because of different cargo grades, which number is continuously increasing, crucial is to know real efficiency of gas plan, before signing some contract with customer. On board these types of ships the highest efficiency of reliquefaction plant is crucial. After short description of fully refrigerated gas carrier, theoretical data of analysed ship, taken from ship documentation is shown. Taking into account this data, expected cargo compressors parameters and cargo loading rate are discussed, explained and assumed. In next step, real ambient Butane loading process carried out on board LPG carrier is described. All essential values and reliquefaction plant readings, taken in loading port are presented. The comparison of theoretical result based on available documentation to practical effects obtained in the port is performed. Analysis, mainly taking into account gas plan, answers if it operated with the highest possible efficiency and met cargo loading parameters expected according to ship manuals. Conclusions are discussed.

Allocation of liabilities between parties involved in shipping LNG from eastern Australia

LNG shipping tonnage represents about 400 vessels worldwide and it has high safety records compared with other types of tonnage. Serious attention to the operational safety of LNG vessels is dictated by their high value as assets, substantial time required to build new LNG vessels, limited availability of replacement tonnage on the market, heavy dependence of the LNG supply chain on shipping efficiency and reliability, and high costs of delay in LNG supply. Notwithstanding the high safety record of LNG vessels, shipping is historically considered a high-risk enterprise. Liability of shipowners is usually limited to accommodate navigational risks to achieve reasonable transport costs. Such limitation of liability is stipulated in various legislative acts within local and international maritime law. Liability regimes in different countries and regions vary; consequently, study must be undertaken for each particular port to understand their individual liability regimes. This extended abstract discusses the liability regime for LNG vessels calling to Port Gladstone. For the parties involved in the transport of LNG, including sellers, buyers, charterers, shipowners and port authorities, it is important to understand the liability regime in the LNG loading port to ensure proper risk assessment and management of LNG shipping. There are various tools for such risk management, which may include a combination of insurance arrangements, liability and indemnity agreements, allocation of liabilities and indemnities for shipping and insurance requirements in LNG sale purchase agreements, safety assurance policies and procedures, and the inclusion of special requirements in the port and terminal regulations. This extended abstract provides shipping stakeholders with information on methods of managing risks for potential shipping liabilities.

재고수준을 고려한 제철원료 수송을 위한 선박 일정계획 수립 모형

A ship scheduling model is presented for the raw material transportation problem with yard storage constraints in a steel mill. The problem is formulated as 0, 1 mixed integer programming considering such constraints as loading port conditions, ship size and hold capacity, unloading conditions, and yard storage space. In addition, inventory related constraints including safety stock are taken into consideration to support the continuous operations of steel making process. The proposed model has been implemented and applied successfully to a real world problem, and its results show the improvement of performance compared to the traditional method. For example, the arrival dates of ships are determined satisfying the constraints. The total inventory level is minimized at the stock yard as a result. Also, the safety inventory level is always kept at the planning stage, and the standard deviation of total inventory level is reduced significantly. Further research is expected to develop efficient heuristics to have a better response time for even larger scale problems.

A construction and improvement heuristic for a liquefied natural gas inventory routing problem

We present a large scale ship routing and inventory management problem for a producer and distributor of liquefied natural gas (LNG). The problem contains multiple products, inventory and berth capacity at the loading port and a heterogeneous fleet of ships. The goal is to create an annual delivery program to fulfill the producer’s long-term contracts at minimum cost, while maximizing the revenue from selling LNG in the spot market. To solve this problem we have developed a construction and improvement heuristic (CIH). The CIH is a multi-start local search heuristic that constructs a set of solutions using a greedy insertion procedure. The solutions are then improved using either a first-descent neighborhood search, branch-and-bound on a mathematical formulation, or both. Tests on real-life instances show that the CIH provides good solutions in a short amount of time.

The Maritime Pickup and Delivery Problem with Time Windows and Split Loads

The purpose of this paper is to present an exact solution method for an important planning problem faced by many shipping companies dealing with transportation of bulk cargoes. A bulk shipping company usually has a set of contract cargoes that it is committed to carry and will try to derive additional revenue from optional spot cargoes. Each cargo, either it is a contract or spot cargo, consists of a given quantity to be picked up in a given loading port and delivered in a given unloading port within specified time windows. The shipping company controls a fixed fleet for the purpose of transporting the cargoes. In most of the literature on ship routing and scheduling problems, a cargo cannot be transported by more than one ship. By introducing split loads, this restriction is removed and each cargo can be transported by several ships. The resulting planning problem can be denoted as a maritime pickup and delivery problem with time windows and split loads (PDPTWSL). We present an arc flow formulation of the PDPTWSL. We also suggest a solution method based on a priori generation of single ship schedules and two alternative path flow models that deal with the selection of ship schedules and assignment of cargo quantities to the schedules. Computational results show that the solution method can provide optimal solutions to small realistic planning instances. We also believe this paper provides an important starting point for research on other exact solution methods for the maritime PDPTWSL.

Development and Initial Results of a Low Cost, Disposable, Point-of-Care Testing Device for Pathogen Detection

Development of small footprint, disposable, fast, and inexpensive devices for pathogen detection in the field and clinic would benefit human and veterinary medicine by allowing evidence-based responses to future out breaks. We designed and tested an integrated nucleic acid extraction and amplification device employing a loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) or reverse transcriptase-LAMP assay. Our system provides a screening tool with polymerase-chain-reaction-level sensitivity and specificity for outbreak detection, response, and recovery. Time to result is ∼90 min. The device utilizes a swab that collects sample and then transfers it to a disc of cellulose-based nucleic acid binding paper. The disc is positioned within a disposable containment tube with a manual loading port. In order to test for the presence of target pathogens, LAMP reagents are loaded through the tube's port into contact with the sample containing cellulose disc. The reagents then are isothermally heated to 63°C for ∼1 h to achieve sequence-specific target nucleic acid amplification. Due to the presence of a colorimetric dye, amplification induces visible color change in the reagents from purple to blue. As initial demonstrations, we detected methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus genomic DNA, as well as recombinant and live foot-and-mouth disease virus.

A rolling horizon heuristic for creating a liquefied natural gas annual delivery program

In this paper a maritime inventory routing problem for one of the world’s largest producers of liquefied natural gas (LNG) is presented. The producer is responsible for the LNG inventories at the liquefaction plant, the loading port with a limited number of berths, and the routing and scheduling of a heterogeneous fleet of LNG ships. In addition, the producer has to fulfill a set of long-term contracts to customers all around the world.The goal is to create an annual delivery program (ADP) to fulfill the long-term contracts at minimum cost, while maximizing revenue from selling LNG in the spot market. An ADP is a complete schedule of every ship’s sailing plan for the coming year.A mixed integer programming (MIP) formulation of the ADP planning problem is presented, and it is based on a priori generation of all possible scheduled voyages within the planning horizon. Due to the size and complexity of the problem, a rolling horizon heuristic (RHH) is proposed. The RHH solves the problem by iteratively solving sub-problems with shorter planning horizons. The RHH finds solutions to the problem within a reasonable amount of time, and creates very good ADPs according to the problem owner.

The Export Performance in Major Ports of India Through Containers by Custom House Agents

Containerization started in India in the year 1973 in a limited way with the creation of short-term container handling facilities at Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT) and Cochin Port Trust (CoPT). Since then, the container traffic has been recording remarkable growth particularly since 1992-1993, in tune with the growing use of containers for all types of cargo in the international trade. The port operations start with the ship reaching the port area. The ship has to call upon the port where it wants to dock, to get the permission to anchor on the port. The ship will get the permission only on submission of the Import General Manifest (IGM) to the customs (through the port authorities). IGM is the list of material which will be unloaded at the said port with details like the loading port, consignor, consignee, quantity, etc.

The Export Performance in Major Ports of India Through Containers by Custom House Agents

Containerization started in India in the year 1973 in a limited way with the creation of short-term container handling facilities at Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT) and Cochin Port Trust (CoPT). Since then, the container traffic has been recording remarkable growth particularly since 1992-1993, in tune with the growing use of containers for all types of cargo in the international trade. The port operations start with the ship reaching the port area. The ship has to call upon the port where it wants to dock, to get the permission to anchor on the port. The ship will get the permission only on submission of the Import General Manifest (IGM) to the customs (through the port authorities). IGM is the list of material which will be unloaded at the said port with details like the loading port, consignor, consignee, quantity, etc.

液化天然ガス（LNG）ローリー出荷基地能力増強に伴う計装設備対応について

液化天然ガス（LNG）ローリー出荷基地能力増強に伴う計装設備対応について

The intermodal and noncontainerised supply chain connecting Northern Europe to North America

Intermodality is often discussed in the research literature from the point of view of containerised transports. This paper illustrates an intermodal and noncontainerised supply chain solution through the case of a Finnish paper producing company. The supply chain connecting Northern Europe to North America is analysed with respect to different transportation modes and product flows throughout the chain. After identifying the key success factors, research was carried out on the further improvement potential of the supply chain. The research results show that the pre-transport from the production to the loading port runs in a very efficient way. The longest warehousing time is in those points, where the switch in the transportation mode occurs, i.e., in the port of loading and the port of discharge. In order to lower the amount of working capital bound to the products during the extensive warehousing time, the company management needs to reconsider its supply chain management policy in general and customer ...

물류촉진형 통관제도 구축방안

본 논문은 최근의 급변하는 국제무역환경, 통관제도의 발전내역, 컨테이너물동량의 변화추이 등을 살펴보고 물류현장에서의 경험과 다양한 의견 수렴을 토대로 부산항에 대하여 부두지역에서의 컨테이너화물 물류를 촉진할 수 있는 효율적인 통관제도를 연구하였다. 항만지역 컨테이너의 흐름을 더욱 원활히 하기 위하여 해상 수입화물의 적하목륵 제출<TEX>$\sim$</TEX>하선신고<TEX>$\sim$</TEX>반입신고 구간에서 보세운송신고와 수입통관에 제한을 두고 있는 구간을 개선하는 방안을 제시하였고, 물류보안 강화를 통한 항만경쟁력을 확보하기 위하여 수출화물 선적지세관 선별검사제도와 환적 컨테이너 고체작업 예정신고제 및 컨테이너번호 봉인번호 추적체계 도입 등을 제시하였다. This thesis describes the key elements for efficient customs clearance system which can facilitate flow of maritime container cargo in the pier area of Busan port, on the basis of considering great changes on international trade environment, development of customs clearance system, variation of commercial container traffic, and diverse views originated from field experience in the distribution industry. To facilitate the flow of maritime containers, reform plan of bonded-transportation and import declaration is proposed to relieve the customs restriction during the days from discharging cargos to taking them into bonded warehouse. Also, various plans to strengthen maritime security, such as customs exam of high-risk export cargos in loading port, pre-declaration of transit container replacement, container tracing system, are proposed to improve Busan port's competitiveness in safety.

タンカーのカーゴオイルポンプ及びバラストポンプの取扱い

The handling liquid for tankers varies widely from low viscosity to high viscosity liquid. Recently, even VLCC starts handling high viscosity liquid. Since the heating device is not equipped to the cargo tank of VLCC, it is quite important to examine whether it is possible to discharge at the unloading port even though the viscosity at loading port was not high by heating. And cargo oil pump and ballast pump require a lot of valve manipulation during unloading and de-ballasting and there is a case of water hammer due to wrong manipulation and pump becomes inoperative. As a recent trend, it is occurring on ballast pump. There is a case of abnormal temperature rise of pump bearing occurs depending on the unloading condition. This is introducing cautions for these matters.