Ford Motor Company (United Kingdom)

OBJECTIVE: Focal brain lesions can have important remote effects on the function of distant brain regions. The resulting network dysfunction may contribute significantly to behavioral deficits observed after stroke. This study investigates the behavioral significance of changes in the coherence of spontaneous activity in distributed networks after stroke by measuring resting state functional connectivity (FC) using functional magnetic resonance imaging. METHODS: In acute stroke patients, we measured FC in a dorsal attention network and an arm somatomotor network, and determined the correlation of FC with performance obtained in a separate session on tests of attention and motor function. In particular, we compared the behavioral correlation with intrahemispheric FC to the behavioral correlation with interhemispheric FC. RESULTS: In the attention network, disruption of interhemispheric FC was significantly correlated with abnormal detection of visual stimuli (Pearson r with field effect = -0.624, p = 0.002). In the somatomotor network, disruption of interhemispheric FC was significantly correlated with upper extremity impairment (Pearson r with contralesional Action Research Arm Test = 0.527, p = 0.036). In contrast, intrahemispheric FC within the normal or damaged hemispheres was not correlated with performance in either network. Quantitative lesion analysis demonstrated that our results could not be explained by structural damage alone. INTERPRETATION: These results suggest that lesions cause state changes in the spontaneous functional architecture of the brain, and constrain behavioral output. Clinically, these results validate using FC for assessing the health of brain networks, with implications for prognosis and recovery from stroke, and underscore the importance of interhemispheric interactions.

Executive Overview Toyota's Production System (TPS) is based on “lean” principles including a focus on the customer, continual improvement and quality through waste reduction, and tightly integrated upstream and downstream processes as part of a lean value chain. Most manufacturing companies have adopted some type of “lean initiative,” and the lean movement recently has gone beyond the shop floor to white-collar offices and is even spreading to service industries. Unfortunately, most of these efforts represent limited, piecemeal approaches—quick fixes to reduce lead time and costs and to increase quality—that almost never create a true learning culture. We outline and illustrate the management principles of TPS that can be applied beyond manufacturing to any technical or service process. It is a true systems approach that effectively integrates people, processes, and technology—one that must be adopted as a continual, comprehensive, and coordinated effort for change and learning across the organization.

This article reviews the changing understanding of the word “innovation”. It contains a summary of the critical criteria for innovation to take place, based upon a study of previous researchers’ work in this area. Explores the way in which developments in materials and other technologies have acted to allow innovation to take place. It is argued that materials development is a constant source of new opportunity, and that other advances periodically occur that also support successful change. Micro‐electronics is cited as a technology that has become a major enabler to innovation. The pressures on modern industry to achieve improvements to the quality, cost and development time of products are reviewed, and it is postulated that the response to these pressures encourages conservatism in new designs and thus acts to suppress innovation.

A new mechanism of hydrodynamic lubrication termed “inlet suction,” applicable to low convergence, micropocketed bearings, has been identified. In this, sliding of one of the bearing surfaces generates a subambient pressure in pockets close to the bearing inlet. Because this pressure is less than the external atmospheric pressure, lubricant is “sucked” into the bearing through the inlet land. This is quite a different mechanism from classical entrainment due to shear. In the current paper flow, hydrodynamic load support and friction are calculated using analytical solutions for simple pocketed bearings having a wide range of convergence ratios, including parallel surfaces. It is found that for the parallel case, inlet suction provides the only mechanism of hydrodynamic load support, and that inlet suction continues to play a major role in load support and friction reduction up to quite high convergence ratios. This mechanism of lubrication is believed to be responsible for the enhanced lubricant film formation and reduced friction of textured bearings, previously reported by a number of authors.

This Guide has been written to provide guidance for individuals involved in curriculum design who wish to develop research skills and foster the attributes in medical undergraduates that help develop research. The Guide will provoke debate on an important subject, and although written specifically with undergraduate medical education in mind, we hope that it will be of interest to all those involved with other health professionals' education. Initially, the Guide describes why research skills and its related attributes are important to those pursuing a medical career. It also explores the reasons why research skills and an ethos of research should be instilled into professionals of the future. The Guide also tries to define what these skills and attributes should be for medical students and lays out the case for providing opportunities to develop research expertise in the undergraduate curriculum. Potential methods to encourage the development of research-related attributes are explored as are some suggestions as to how research skills could be taught and assessed within already busy curricula. This publication also discusses the real and potential barriers to developing research skills in undergraduate students, and suggests strategies to overcome or circumvent these. Whilst we anticipate that this Guide will appeal to all levels of expertise in terms of student research, we hope that, through the use of case studies, we will provide practical advice to those currently developing this area within their curriculum.

When expressed using volumetric concentrations (as is industry practice), the addition of relatively small amounts of ethanol or methanol (e.g., 10% by volume) to gasoline appears to result in disproportionately large, nonlinear increases in research octane number (RON) and motor octane number (MON). As a result, volumetric “blending octane numbers” are of limited value for estimating the octane number of alcohol−gasoline blends because they vary with alcohol content and base gasoline composition. We show that RON and MON increases with alcohol content are approximately linear when expressed using molar concentrations. Moreover, molar-based blending octane numbers are effectively equal to the octane numbers of the pure alcohols for most base gasolines. A limited dependence on gasoline composition was observed, namely, greater-than-predicted octane numbers for ethanol−gasoline blends with unusually high isoparaffin content. We suggest that octane numbers of methanol−gasoline and ethanol−gasoline blends can be estimated conveniently and more accurately from their molar composition by linear interpolation between the octane numbers of the base gasoline and the pure alcohol.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Transcarotid artery revascularization (TCAR) is comprised of carotid artery stent placement with cerebral protection via proximal carotid artery clamping and reversal of cerebral arterial flow. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the safety and efficacy of TCAR performed by a broad group of physicians with variable TCAR experience. METHODS: The ROADSTER 2 study is a prospective, open label, single arm, multicenter, postapproval registry for patients undergoing TCAR. Patients considered at high risk for complications from carotid endarterectomy with symptomatic stenosis ≥50% or asymptomatic stenosis ≥80% were included. The primary end point was procedural success, which encompassed technical success plus the absence of stroke, myocardial infarction, or death within the 30-day postoperative period. Secondary end points included technical success and individual/composite rates of stroke, death, and myocardial infarction (MI). All patients underwent independent neurological assessments before the procedure, within 24 hours, and at 30 days after TCAR. An independent clinical events committee adjudicated all major adverse events. RESULTS: Between 2015 and 2019, 692 patients (Intent to Treat Population) were enrolled at 43 sites. Sixty cases had major protocol violations, leaving 632 patients adhering to the Food and Drug Administration-approved protocol (per-protocol population). The majority (81.2%) of operators were TCAR naïve before study initiation. Patients underwent TCAR for neurological symptoms in 26% of cases, and all patients had high-risk factors for carotid endarterectomy (anatomic-related 44%; physiological 32%; both 24%). Technical success occurred in 99.7% of all cases. The primary end point of procedural success rate in the Intent to Treat population was 96.5% (per-protocol 97.9%). The early postoperative outcomes in the Intent to Treat population included stroke in 13 patients (1.9%), death in 3 patients (0.4%), and MI in 6 patients (0.9%). The composite 30-day stroke/death rate was 2.3%, and stroke/death/MI rate was 3.2%. In the per-protocol population, there were strokes in 4 patients (0.6%), death in one patient (0.2%), and MI in 6 patients (0.9%) leading to a composite 30-day stroke/death rate of 0.8% and stroke/death/MI rate of 1.7%. CONCLUSIONS: TCAR results in excellent early outcomes with high technical success combined with low rates of postprocedure stroke and death. These results were achieved by a majority of operators new to this technology at the start of the trial. Adherence to the study protocol and peri-procedural antiplatelet therapy optimizes outcomes. Longer-term follow-up data are needed to confirm these early outcomes. Registration: URL: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT02536378.

An approach based on stochastic dynamic programming is proposed to develop optimal operating policies for automotive powertrain systems. The goal is to minimize fuel consumption and tailpipe emissions. Unlike in the conventional approach, the minimization is performed not for a predetermined drive cycle, but in a stochastic "average" sense over a class of trajectories from an underlying Markov chain drive cycle generator. The objective of this paper is to introduce the approach and illustrate its applications. with several examples.

Lead intoxication has been recognized as a clinical entity since ancient times. Hippocrates (370 B.C.) was probably the first person to associate lead with clinical symptoms, since when the harmful effects of lead on the body have been well documented. Early observations culminated in the brilliant monograph of Tanquerel des Planches (1839) in which the clinical aspects of the disease were completely outlined and most of the early signs of the disease were mentioned. So complete was this work that virtually nothing has been added to des Planches9s observations since their publication. The earliest reference to lead anaemia was made in 1831 by Laennec, who described thinness of the blood and pallor of the tissues in cases of lead poisoning at necropsy. The first direct evidence of the effect of lead on red blood cells was presented by Andral and Gavarret (1840), who counted the number of red blood cells in cases of lead poisoning and found the count to be much lower than normal. Since these early reports a great deal of work has been undertaken to try to discover the means by which lead causes anaemia, but it is probably true to say that at the present time this mechanism is still not fully understood. This review is an attempt to draw together at least some of the theories which have been advanced in the past and to present them, it is hoped, in an easily accessible manner for future workers in this field.

An electronic throttle is a low-power dc servo drive which positions the throttle plate. Its application in modern automotive engines leads to improvements in vehicle drivability, fuel economy, and emissions. Transmission friction and the return spring limp-home nonlinearity significantly affect the electronic throttle performance. The influence of these effects is analyzed by means of computer simulations, experiments, and analytical calculations. A dynamic friction model is developed in order to adequately capture the experimentally observed characteristics of the presliding-displacement and breakaway effects. The linear part of electronic throttle process model is also analyzed and experimentally identified. A nonlinear control strategy is proposed, consisting of a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller and a feedback compensator for friction and limp-home effects. The PID controller parameters are analytically optimized according to the damping optimum criterion. The proposed control strategy is verified by computer simulations and experiments.

It is shown that a simple parallel pad bearing containing a closed pocket can support load if it operates in an ambient pressure that is appreciably in excess of the cavitation pressure of the lubricating fluid. This arises due to fluid flow driven by subambient pressures in the inlet region of the pad (‘inlet suction’). Maximum load capacity occurs when the pocket is located near the inlet to the bearing and under conditions such that cavitation is just provoked.

In this article, the cornering stiffness estimation problem based on the vehicle bicycle (one-track) model is studied. Both time-domain and frequency-domain-based methods are analyzed, aiming to estimate the effective cornering stiffness, defined as the ratio between the lateral force and the slip angle at the two axles. Several methods based on the bicycle model were developed, each having specific pros/cons related to practical implementations. The developed algorithms were evaluated on the basis of the simulation data from the bicycle model and the CarSimTM software. Finally, selected algorithms were evaluated using experimental data.

<div class="htmlview paragraph">An exploratory study was conducted to investigate the feasibility of friction stir spot welding advanced high-strength steel sheet metals. The fixed pin approach was used to weld 600MPa dual phase steel and 1310MPa martensitic steel. A single tool, made of polycrystalline cubic boron nitride, survived over one hundred welding trials without noticeable degradation and wear. Solid-state metallurgical bonding was produced with welding time in the range of 2 to 3 seconds, although the bonding ligament width was relatively small. The microstructures and hardness variations in the weld regions are discussed. The results from tensile-shear and cross-tensile tests are also presented.</div>

<div class="htmlview paragraph">The Friction Stir Spot Welding (FSSW) process is a derivative of the friction stir welding (FSW) process, without lateral movement of the tool during the welding process. It has been used in the production of aluminum doors, engine hoods, and decklids in the Japanese automotive industry. It has the benefits of operation and investment cost savings, weight reduction, high repeatability and consistence, low maintenance, better work environment and recycleability vs. other aluminum spot joining methods such as resistance spot welding (RSW) and riveting. This paper provides a comprehensive literature review of the technology, including joining mechanisms, process controls, process parameter development, fracture behaviors, metallurgy, temperature, tool geometry, and material flow. Variations of the process, joining of aluminum to steel, steel to steel, magnesium, weldbonding (with adhesive), process simulation, and industrial applications are also discussed.</div>

<div class="htmlview paragraph">A comprehensive laboratory evaluation was carried out on recent three-way catalyst formulations. The evaluation of selectivity characteristics was made in a synthetic exhaust mixture where “window” widths and positions for three-way conversion and their change after durability runs were determined. The durability runs were made in combusted gases from laboratory pulse-flame exhaust generators using both contaminant-free fuel and fuels with 1975 levels of Pb, P and S. A thorough evaluation of the “oxygen-storage” capability of the catalysts was performed and the results correlated with engine dynamometer experiments designed to utilize this property of three-way catalysts which allows a wider A/F ratio tolerance. A new technique which involves intentional modulation of the A/F ratio was found to extend the usefulness of such catalysts.</div> <div class="htmlview paragraph">The implications of the chemical formulation of the catalysts in the overall design of the system, which includes fuel metering and feedback control along with the catalyst, are discussed.</div>

The integration of brakes and steering actuators in vehicle lateral dynamics control is of primary relevance due to the high control authority these actuators insure. Moreover this is a challenging control problem as it is MIMO, intrinsically non-linear due to tyres characteristic and with high plant uncertainty due to variations of major parameters. This paper presents the application of state feedback linearization technique to the problem and shows some vehicle test results. The controller results globally stable, smooth and effective with the steering actuator and uses the braking correction only in critical cases.

Abstract This paper presents an investigation of the driveline torsional vibration behaviour, referred to as judder, which takes place during the clutch engagement process, particularly on small trucks with diesel engines. A non-linear multibody dynamic model of the clutch mechanism is employed to study the effect of various clutch system and driveline components on the clutch actuation performance. The paper demonstrates that judder is affected by driveline inertial changes, variation in the coefficient of friction, μ, of the friction disc linings with slip speed, v , and the loss of clamp load. The results of the simulations show that various friction materials with different μ- v characteristics produce torsional self-excited vibrations of the driveline. The results also show that loss of clamp load relating to the speed of clutch actuation also contributes to judder. Furthermore, it is shown that the simulation results conform closely to the experimental findings.

Effects of oxygen content of fuels on combustion characteristics and emissions were investigated on both an optical single cylinder direct injection (DI) diesel engine and a multi-cylinder engine. Three fuels were derived from conventional diesel fuel (Finnish City diesel summer grade) by blending Rapeseed Methyl Ester (RME) or Diglyme and Butyl-Diglyme of different quantities to make their oxygen content 3%, 3% and 9%, respectively. The experimental results with three tested fuels show that the fuel spray development was not affected apparently by the oxygenating. Compared with the base fuel, the ignition delay to pilot injection was shortened by 0%, 11% and 19% for three oxygenated fuels, respectively. The ignition delay to main injection was shortened by 10%, 19% and 38%, respectively. With regard to emissions, the smoke level was reduced by 24% to 90%, depending on fuel properties and engine running conditions. The penalties of increased NOx emissions and fuel consumption were up to 19% and 24%, respectively.

<div class="htmlview paragraph">The ceramic insert concept far an uncooled, DI diesel engine was evaluated. Small improvements in fuel consumption were projected for this engine relative to a ceramic coated engine. A PSZ cylinder head plate, lip insert in the piston and above-the-rings cylinder liner operated successfully for short term tests after finite element analyses, Weibull failure analyses and iterative testing and design modifications. Heat loss was reduced 25% and the fuel consumption was improved 5 to 9% relative to a water-cooled engine. The combustion analysis parameters indicated that the ceramic insert engine provided higher in-cylinder temperatures relative to the ceramic coated engine.</div>

Purpose – Businesses are always seeking resilient strategies so they can weather unpredictable competitive environments. One source of unpredictability is the unsustainability of commerce's environmental, economic or social impacts and the limitations this places on businesses. Another is poor resilience causing erroneous and unexpected outputs. Companies prospering long-term must have both resilience and sustainability, existing in a symbiotic state. The purpose of this paper is to explore the two concepts and their relationship, their combined benefits and propose an approach for supporting decision makers to proactively build both characteristics. Design/methodology/approach – The paper looks at businesses as complex adaptive systems, how their resilience and sustainability can be defined and how these might be exhibited. It then explores how they can be combined in practice. Findings – The two qualities are related but have different purposes, moreover resilience has two major forms related to timescales. Both kinds of resilience are identified as key for delivering sustainability, yet the reverse is also found to be true. Both are needed to deliver either and to let businesses flourish. Practical implications – Although the ideal state of resilient sustainability is difficult to define or achieve, pragmatic ways exist to deliver the right direction of change in organisational decisions. A novel approach to this is explored based on transition engineering and robustness engineering. Originality/value – This paper links resilience and sustainability explicitly and develops a holistic pragmatic approach for working through their implications in strategic decision making.