Storage Pool Research Articles

Model-Based Decision Support Tools at Jugos S.A. Concentrated Fruit Juice Plant

We describe the development of a decision-support tool to assist in the operations of a large concentrated apple and pear juice plant. The tool’s objective is to generate detailed schedules of clarified juice batches to be produced in the following weeks considering incoming fruit forecasts, commercial commitments, and infrastructural constraints. The tool is based on two interactive modules, PLANNER and SIMOPT, with different and complementary purposes. Each module is based on mixed-integer models with specific inputs, outputs, and user interfaces. PLANNER consists of three submodules: (i) planning assigns a batch of concentrated juice to be produced on a specific day, taking into account cleaning activities, rest days, raw material availability, and production and storage constraints; (ii) preprocessing organizes juice orders in batches; and (iii) pooling provides a detailed monitoring of semielaborated juice in storage pools in terms of inventories and sugar and acid content. Finally, SIMOPT provides a detailed optimal operative condition of the plant together with a thorough calculation of specific costs. This information is used by PLANNER to evaluate the corresponding economic objective functions. Besides providing optimal target conditions to the plant and feasible production schedules, the developed tools generate production guidelines in the long term and allow performing scenario studies.

A Morphometric Analysis of Platelet Dense Granules of Patients with Unexplained Bleeding: A New Entity of Delta-Microgranular Storage Pool Deficiency.

One thousand and eighty patients, having prolonged bleeding times, frequent epistaxis, menorrhagia or easy bruising or other bleeding manifestations, and excluding those with von Willebrand’s disease, were evaluated for platelet dense granule deficiency. The mean diameter of platelet dense granules was determined for all patients using image analysis. Four hundred and ninety-nine had “classic” dense (delta) granule storage pool deficiency (δ-SPD). Five hundred and eighty-one individuals (53.8%) were found to have a normal mean number of dense granules, but for some of these patients, the dense granules were smaller than for the controls. Of the patients having a normal number of dense granules, 165 (28.4%) were found to have significantly smaller granules than the platelets obtained from the control subjects. Their average granule diameter was 123.35 ± 0.86 nm, that is more than three standard deviations below the mean of the control data. Total δ-granule storage pool volumes (TDGV)/platelet were calculated using these measurements. Individuals with δ-SPD had half the number of granules (2.25 ± 0.04 DG/PL) and storage pool volume (3.88 ± 1.06 × 106 nm3) when compared to our control data (4.64 ± 0.11 DG/PL; 10.79 × 106 nm3 ± 0.42). Individuals having a bleeding history but a normal average of small dense granules had a calculated storage pool volume statistically different than controls and essentially the same storage pool volume as patients with δ-SPD. We have identified a sub-classification of δ-SPD that we have defined as micro-granular storage pool deficiency (δ-MGSPD).

The Effect of Selenium on Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis: Systemic Review and MetaAnalysis

Background: Selenium forms a significant component of seleno-proteins in the body. Seleno-methionine is integrated into proteins instead of methionine and acts as a storage pool. In proteins, the active form of Selenium is seleno-cysteine.in this review we aim to prevail the results of selenium effect on thyroid status in recent clinical trials. The systemic review aims to find out the correlation between supplementation of Selenium and anti-TPO antibodies and T4 levels in Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis. Selenium supplementation decreases the level of anti-TPO antibodies. The supplementation of Selenium increases the level of T4 levels. Methods: The mean and standard deviation (SD) of all 8 studies was were calculated. One of the researches had all the information in figures, and only the levels of anti-TPO antibodies and FT4 were obtained. Heterogenicity was estimated using I2. Results: The p-value calculated for Anti-TPO by SPSS of the eight groups had a p-value of 0.142. The p-value calculated for T4 levels by SPSS of the five groups had a p-value of 0.239. The heterogenicity test was zero after the I2 test. The studies that were included in the systematic review were assessed by Prisma diagram and selected among the articles resulted from search keywords selenium and anti TPO and hashimotho thyroiditis on different data sources. All the participants were evaluated by sex, ages, duration of the study and the levels of anti TPO AB and thyroxin (t4) and then using SPSS software to deploy metanalysis in the systematic review. Conclusion: In 6 of 8 studies it was a relation of selenium and thyroid status, whereas 2 studies were not. As we ran meta analysis on the data we realized that there is not significant desired effect from selenium on thyroid antibodies against previous metanalysis done by other researchers.

The Reliability Research and Risk Analysis of Spent Fuel Pool under Internal Fire

The Fukushima nuclear disaster has raised the focus on the reliability and risk evaluation of the spent fuel pool (SFP), especially the fire risk. From a safety point of view, the low decay heat of the spent fuel assemblies and large water inventory may make the accident progress very slow, but a large number of fuel assemblies stored inside the pool and without containment above the SFP building might bring greater risk. For pressurized water reactor HPR1000 nuclear power plant, the reliability and risk of spent fuel pool under internal fire is assessed. The fire probabilistic safety analysis method is used to assess the reliability and risk of spent fuel pool under internal fire. Through quantitative analysis, we can know more about which aspects play a leading role in the internal fire risk contribution.

Prediction of Flash Flood using Rainfall by MLP Classifier

Flood are one of the unfavorable natural disasters. A flood can result in a huge loss of human lives and properties. It can also affect agricultural lands and destroy cultivated crops and trees. The flood can occur as a result of surface-runoff formed from melting snow, long-drawn-out rains, and derisory drainage of rainwater or collapse of dams. Today people have destroyed the rivers and lakes and have turned the natural water storage pools to buildings and construction lands. Flash floods can develop quickly within a few hours when compared with a regular flood. Research in prediction of flood has improved to reduce the loss of human life, property damages, and various problems related to the flood. Machine learning methods are widely used in building an efficient prediction model for weather forecasting. This advancement of the prediction system provides cost-effective solutions and better performance. In this paper, a prediction model is constructed using rainfall data to predict the occurrence of floods due to rainfall. The model predicts whether “flood may happen or not” based on the rainfall range for particular locations. Indian district rainfall data is used to build the prediction model. The dataset is trained with various algorithms like Linear Regression, K- Nearest Neighbor, Support Vector Machine, and Multilayer Perceptron. Among this, MLP algorithm performed efficiently with the highest accuracy of 97.40%. The MLP flash flood prediction model can be useful for the climate scientist to predict the flood during a heavy downpour with the highest accuracy.

Platelet Electron Microscopy: Utilizing LEAN Methodology to Optimize Laboratory Workflow.

Platelet electron microscopy (PEM) is the gold standard methodology for diagnosing storage pool disorder, defined as a paucity of delta granules, alpha granules, or both. PEM literature is limited with few published resources and without well-developed interlaboratory standardization for the preparation and examination of platelet samples. Whole mount (WM) dense body (DB) counts for 300 pediatric cases were reviewed to determine whether counting fewer platelets could yield the same results. For 6 cases, DB average was determined on the day of WM preparation and on 2 consecutive days. Both WM and thin section (TS) preparations were examined for all cases. Employing LEAN methodology, an algorithm was developed to markedly decrease the number of platelets counted and still ensure accurate results. WMs decay with time; a statistically significant difference in DB counts was noted between day 0 and day 1 (p < .1). Twelve of 300 cases required both WM and TS preparations for a complete diagnosis. It is possible to maintain accuracy and decrease 100 platelet DB counts by >75%. WMs must be counted on the day they are prepared to avoid false paucity of DB secondary to sample decay. An accurate evaluation of platelet morphology requires both the WM and TS techniques.

NO placental inflammation.

NO placental inflammation.

McCune Albright Syndrome: Gastrointestinal Polyps and Platelet Dysfunction over 12 Years

Background and Objective: Gastrointestinal (GI) polyps with unknown malignant potential and a platelet storage pool deficiency that increases the risk of severe intraoperative and other types of bleeding have been identified in McCune-Albright syndrome (MAS). The natural course of these disorders has not been well characterized. The aim of this study was to report the follow-up of GI polyps and platelet dysfunction (PD) in a cohort of 28 patients with MAS. Methods: Twenty-eight patients with MAS (15 females) were included. Endoscopic screening for GI polyps was undertaken in 14 subjects and 19 were tested for PD. Results: Six subjects (5 males) were diagnosed with GI polyps at a median age of 23 (range 15–43) years, and were monitored for a median period of 8 (range 4.5–11.5) years. At endoscopic follow-up, the 4 patients with hamartomatous polyps at first endoscopy had either normal findings (n = 2), or duodenal gastric metaplasia (n = 2). Two patients with caecal polyps were identified. Of 8 subjects with a platelet storage pool deficiency, 5 required transfusions during surgery, and subsequent platelet cover in 2 markedly reduced intraoperative blood loss. Conclusions: New polyps with uncertain malignant potential are diagnosed after long term follow-up in MAS. Platelet cover reduces the need for red blood cell transfusion during orthopaedic surgery and may be useful to reduce non-operative bleeding events. We recommend regular upper and lower endoscopy and screening for PD in all MAS patients.

Borated aluminum cask design for onsite intermediate storage: Neutronics design and certification analysis

Storage and cooling of used fuel are essential components back-end management of nuclear fuel cycle. After a cooling period in a used fuel pool of up to several years to allow for radioactive decay to sufficiently lessen the heat load, the fuel can be recycled or disposed. In some countries, the fuel is transferred to dry cask storage, though pool storage is the most common management policy worldwide. Consequently, used fuel volume in the pools is continually accumulating, and considerations of an intermediate or additional storage strategy warrant study.Within this context, this paper presents an intermediate stage used fuel cooling cask design, motivated to alleviate used fuel accumulation in the storage pools. While used fuel can be reracked, there is still a firm criticality design constraint. The cask will be fabricated with a borated aluminum alloy. This paper will present potential designs based on neutronics modeling for occupational safety. Additionally, analysis is provided as to obtaining a United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission Certificate of Compliance. This research will lead to prototype development, performance testing, and eventual commercialization.

Safety aspects of spent fuel management in nuclear power plants during transition to decommissioning

The main purpose of this paper is to introduce the system/equipment maintain experience of nuclear power plants entering to decommissioning during the post-operation transition phase (spent fuel wet storage). In the early stage of the post-operation transition phase, the reactor must first enter to a permanent shutdown state, and all spent fuel would have been taken out of the reactor and been transferred to the spent fuel pool (SFP). Before moving all spent fuel to the dry storage facility, active cooling of the spent fuel pool water is required for maintaining safety in order to prevent spread of radioactive contamination and to ensure spent fuel storage safety. With decrease in decay heat and sources of radiation, industry experience shows total risks related to nuclear energy or radiation safety during SFP storage period shall be significant lower than that during commercial operations. Therefore, the changes made to spent fuel pool cooling and cleanup systems (SFPCCSs), makeup water systems, and backup electrical systems to comply with the regulatory requirements could further provide a simpler and more cost-effective operating characteristic. Referring to the renew version of licensing basis documents preparing by various nuclear utilities, this paper focuses on summarizing the practical activities of spent fuel management in detail during the spent fuel wet storage period.

Mutation of the Atypical Kinase ABC1K3 Partially Rescues the PROTON GRADIENT REGULATION 6 Phenotype in Arabidopsis thaliana.

Photosynthesis is an essential pathway providing the chemical energy and reducing equivalents that sustain higher plant metabolism. It relies on sunlight, which is an inconstant source of energy that fluctuates in both intensity and spectrum. The fine and rapid tuning of the photosynthetic apparatus is essential to cope with changing light conditions and increase plant fitness. Recently PROTON GRADIENT REGULATION 6 (PGR6-ABC1K1), an atypical plastoglobule-associated kinase, was shown to regulate a new mechanism of light response by controlling the homeostasis of photoactive plastoquinone (PQ). PQ is a crucial electron carrier existing as a free neutral lipid in the photosynthetic thylakoid membrane. Perturbed homeostasis of PQ impairs photosynthesis and plant acclimation to high light. Here we show that a homologous kinase, ABC1K3, which like PGR6-ABC1K1 is associated with plastoglobules, also contributes to the homeostasis of the photoactive PQ pool. Contrary to PGR6-ABC1K1, ABC1K3 disfavors PQ availability for photosynthetic electron transport. In fact, in the abc1k1/abc1k3 double mutant the pgr6(abc1k1) the photosynthetic defect seen in the abc1k1 mutant is mitigated. However, the PQ concentration in the photoactive pool of the double mutant is comparable to that of abc1k1 mutant. An increase of the PQ mobility, inferred from the kinetics of its oxidation in dark, contributes to the mitigation of the pgr6(abc1k1) photosynthetic defect. Our results also demonstrate that ABC1K3 contributes to the regulation of other mechanisms involved in the adaptation of the photosynthetic apparatus to changes in light quality and intensity such as the induction of thermal dissipation and state transitions. Overall, we suggests that, besides the absolute concentration of PQ, its mobility and exchange between storage and active pools are critical for light acclimation in plants.

Classification of Management Alternatives to Combat Reservoir Sedimentation

Sedimentation is steadily depleting reservoir capacity worldwide, threatening the reliability of water supplies, flood control, hydropower energy and other benefits that form the basis of today’s water-intensive society. The strategies available to combat reservoir sedimentation may be classed into four broad categories. Three proactive categories seek to improve the sediment balance across reservoirs by: (a) reducing sediment yield from the watershed, (b) routing sediment-laden flows around or through the storage pool, and (c) removing deposited sediment following deposition. The fourth category (d) consists of strategies that adapt to capacity loss, without addressing the sediment balance. Successful management will typically combine multiple strategies. This paper presents a comprehensive classification of both proactive and adaptive strategies, consistent with current international practice. Functional descriptions and examples are given for each strategy, and criteria are provided to differentiate between them when there is potential for ambiguity. The classification categories can be used as a checklist of strategies to consider in evaluating sediment management alternatives for new designs as well as remedial work at existing sediment-challenged reservoirs. This will also help practitioners to more clearly describe and communicate the nature of their management activities. Widespread application of both active and adaptive strategies is required to bring sedimentation under control to sustain benefits of water storage for today’s and future generations.

Void Fraction in Spent Fuel Pool under Loss of Cooling Accident

Void Fraction in Spent Fuel Pool under Loss of Cooling Accident

A comprehensive time course study of tissue nitric oxide metabolites concentrations after oral nitrite administration

Nitrite and nitrate are considered nitric oxide (NO) storage pools. The assessment of their tissue concentrations may improve our understanding of how they attenuate pathophysiological mechanisms promoting disease. We hypothesized that significant differences exist when the tissue concentrations of nitrite, nitrate, and nitrosylated species (RXNO) are compared among different tissues, particularly when nitrite is administered orally because nitrite generates various NO-related species in the stomach. We studied the different time-dependent changes in plasma and tissue concentrations of nitrite, nitrate, and RXNO after oral nitrite 15 mg/kg was administered rats, which were euthanized 15, 30, 60, 120, 240, 480 or 1440 min after nitrite administration. A control group received water. Arterial blood samples were collected and the rats were perfused with a PBS solution containing NEM/DTPA to prevent the destruction of RXNO. After perfusion, heart, aorta, mesenteric artery, brain, stomach, liver and femoral muscle were harvested and immediately stored at −70°C until analyzed for their nitrite, nitrate and RXNO contents using an ozone-based reductive chemiluminescence assay. While nitrite administration did not increase aortic nitrite or nitrate concentrations for at least 60 min, both aorta and mesenteric vessels stored nitrite from 8 to 24 h after its administration and their tissue concentrations increased from 10 to 40-fold those found in plasma. In contrast, the other studied tissues showed only transient increases in the concentrations of these NO metabolites, including RXNO. The differences among tissues may reflect differences in mechanisms regulating cellular influx of nitrite. These findings have important pharmacological and clinical implications.

Three Invasive Tree Species Change Soil Chemistry in Guam Forests

Research Highlights: Established stands of Leucaena leucocephala (Lam.) de Wit, Spathodea campanulata P. Beauv., and Vitex parviflora Juss. modified soils in Guam’s limestone forests, reducing storage pools of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus. Background and Objectives: Invasive plants may engineer negative changes in ecosystem properties. This study was conducted to determine changes in soil chemistry following infestations of three problematic tree species on Guam. Materials and Methods: Minerals, metals, and mineralization dynamics were measured in invaded sites and paired sites with biodiverse native tree cover. Results: Most soil properties were significantly changed by long-term infestations of the invasive tree species. The soils within invaded sites exhibited total carbon, total nitrogen, and available phosphorus that were less than native sites. In contrast, the carbon/nitrogen ratio increased for every species-site combination. The other chemical properties were idiosyncratic among the sites and species. Conclusions: Mitigation and restoration activities that include the removal of these trees from project sites may require many years for the below-ground ecosystems to return to their native state. These three invasive trees decrease the ability of Guam soils to sequester recalcitrant forms of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus.

Cloud Computing Security using by Applying Cryptography Technique

Cloud computing is the provision of computing and storage capacity to users as a service. Cloud storage is a type of networked online storage where data is stored in virtualized storage pools as a subservice of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) in cloud computing. Cloud computing plays a significant role in the efficient use of resources and in the utilization of service. Regardless of the cloud category (e.g. private, public, hybrid or inter-cloud), all service providers rely on domain server data. As a rapid development and deployment of cloud computing and cloud storage, users are increasingly concerned about security and privacy issues involved in these techniques. This paper provides a summary of basic security problems that consist of conventional security issues. It also addresses the additional challenges resulting from the cloud computing paradigm being used by cloud system providers and consumers. In addition, solutions suggested by some researchers are presented with a focus on cryptographic techniques which support secure storage of the cloud.

Do Carbon Reserves Increase Tree Survival during Stress and Following Disturbance?

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Carbon (C) storage provides trees with a pool of C that can be remobilized and used to sustain vital physiological processes when photosynthesis and/or C transport cannot meet a plant’s current demands. As such, it may be an important determinant of tree survival in many cases. However, we do not yet know how often tree mortality occurs as the result of carbon limitation, and therefore it remains unclear whether C storage is important for preventing tree death. The purpose of this review is therefore to summarize and assess recent research regarding the role of C storage in tree survival under different stressors and disturbances. RECENT FINDINGS: Both recent and older work have identified many potential mechanisms by which C storage may influence tree survival, and there is evidence that higher tissue non-structural carbohydrate concentrations or total content can be associated with survival and recovery following defoliation and aboveground tissue destruction and under deep shade, drought, flooding, biotic attack, and freezing temperatures. However, in most cases, there is also evidence suggesting that C storage does not always or even often influence survival. Both drought and flooding may lead to inhibition of C transport, particularly to the roots, suggesting that increased root storage specifically might play a critical role in survival; however, this remains to be tested. In some cases, the ability to maintain C assimilation and transport might be more critical than increasing storage. Though C storage can affect survival, we are far from knowing how common or uncommon this pattern is. Future work exploring the relationship between survival and storage needs to focus on measuring C storage in all organs and tissues, considering the importance of total storage content, not just concentrations, identifying the relevant compounds in different species that constitute the actual storage pool, and carefully separating out the effects of storage from other factors that also tend to change when storage concentrations are altered.

Use of Model-Based Compartmental Analysis and a Super-Child Design to Study Whole-Body Retinol Kinetics and Vitamin A Total Body Stores in Children from 3 Lower-Income Countries

ABSTRACTBackgroundModel-based compartmental analysis has been used to describe and quantify whole-body vitamin A metabolism and estimate total body stores (TBS) in animals and humans.ObjectivesWe applied compartmental modeling and a super-child design to estimate retinol kinetic parameters and TBS for young children in Bangladesh, Guatemala, and the Philippines.MethodsChildren ingested [13C10]retinyl acetate and 1 or 2 blood samples were collected from each child from 6 h to 28 d after dosing. Temporal data for fraction of dose in plasma [13C10]retinol were modeled using WinSAAM software and a 6-component model with vitamin A intake included as weighted data.ResultsModel-predicted TBS was 198, 533, and 1062 μmol for the Bangladeshi (age, 9–17 mo), Filipino (12–18 mo), and Guatemalan children (35–65 mo). Retinol kinetics were similar for Filipino and Guatemalan groups and generally faster for Bangladeshi children, although fractional transfer of plasma retinol to a larger exchangeable storage pool was the same for the 3 groups. Recycling to plasma from that pool was ∼2.5 times faster in the Bangladeshi children compared with the other groups and the recycling number was 2–3 times greater. Differences in kinetics between groups are likely related to differences in vitamin A stores and intakes (geometric means: 352, 727, and 764 μg retinol activity equivalents/d for the Bangladeshi, Filipino, and Guatemalan children, respectively).ConclusionsBy collecting 1 or 2 blood samples from each child to generate a composite plasma tracer data set with a minimum of 5 children/time, group TBS and retinol kinetics can be estimated in children by compartmental analysis; inclusion of vitamin A intake data increases confidence in model predictions. The super-child modeling approach is an effective technique for comparing vitamin A status among children from different populations. These trials were registered at www.clinicaltrials.gov as NCT03000543 (Bangladesh), NCT03345147 (Guatemala), and NCT03030339 (Philippines).

A Highly Reliable Metadata Service for Large-Scale Distributed File Systems

Many massive data processing applications nowadays often need long, continuous, and uninterrupted data accesses. Distributed file systems are used as the back-end storage to provide the global namespace management and reliability guarantee. Due to increasing hardware failures and software issues with the growing system scale, metadata service reliability has become a critical issue as it has a direct impact on file and directory operations. Existing metadata management mechanisms can provide fault tolerance capability to some level but are inadequate. They often have limitations in system availability, state consistence, and performance overhead and lack an effective mechanism to offer metadata reliability. This paper introduces a novel highly reliable metadata service to address these issues in large-scale file systems. Different from traditional strategies, this proposed reliable metadata service adopts a new active-standby architecture for fault tolerance and uses a holistic approach to improve file system availability. A new shared storage pool (SSP) is designed for transparent metadata synchronization and replication between active and standby servers. Based on the SSP, a new policy called multiple actives multiple standbys (MAMS) is presented to perform metadata service recovery in case of failures. A new global state recovery strategy and a smart client fault tolerance mechanism are achieved to maintain the continuity of metadata service. We have implemented such highly reliable metadata service in a prototype file system CFS (Clover file system) and conducted extensive tests to evaluate it. Experimental results confirm that it can significantly improve file system reliability with fast failover under different failure scenarios while having negligible influence on performance. Compared with typical reliability designs in Hadoop Avatar, Hadoop HA, and Boom-FS file systems, the mean-time-to-recovery (MTTR) with the highly reliable metadata service was reduced by 80.23, 65.46 and 28.13 percent, respectively.

NetStor: Network and Storage Traffic Management for Ensuring Application QoS in a Hyperconverged Data-Center

For the rapid increase in resource requirements in large scale Data Centers (DCs), enterprises have brought hyperconverged architecture where the storage pool is built up by the individual storage components associated with different servers, and it is shared among all the Virtual Machines (VMs) or containers through a common network infrastructure. Due to the sharing of network bandwidth among the application generated network traffic and the storage traffic from shared storage infrastructure, quality of service (QoS) performances of networking and storage intensive applications are affected, which further impacts VM or container migrations with dynamic workload scenarios. In this article, we propose NetStor to ensure QoS for various collocated network and storage intensive workloads over a hyperconverged architecture and ensure QoS during VM or container migration. NetStor uses a workload estimation strategy for VMs and containers, and applies the strategic decisions for resource allocation and migration based on environmental learning and workload characterization. NetStor supports a dynamic QoS provisioning that is workload-agnostic catering to both VMs and containers, and is unique to the best of our knowledge. We have implemented NetStor over a hyperconverged DC architecture on a testbed and found that NetStor can enhance network performance significantly compared to other related mechanisms discussed in the literature.