Practical Considerations of the Pallet-Loading Problem

Selection of Municipal Drinking Water Treatment Approach using Multiple Criteria

Batteries have been the predominant energy storage system used in electric vehicles. Battery packs have a large number of cells that develop charge, thermal, and capacity imbalances over time, limiting the power, range, and lifetime. Electronic battery management and state of charge (SoC) equalization methods are necessary to mitigate such imbalances. Today, it is possible to find a wide range of battery equalization methods in the literature, but how to decide which of these methods should be applied in practice? This paper compares 24 SoC equalization circuits that are typically found in automotive applications. We employ an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) approach to rank these equalization circuits according to multiple decision criteria (energy efficiency, equalization speed, implementation and control simplicity, hardware size, and total price). We also prepared a survey to collect design preferences from multiple battery balancing experts from around the world in order to better understand the relative importance of different criteria. The obtained results confirm that automotive engineers continue to favor passive balancing methods because of their low price, small PCB size, and implementation simplicity—despite the energy efficiency benefits of active balancing.

Turbuhaler and Diskus are commonly used powder inhaler devices for patients with respiratory disease. Their effectiveness is limited in part by a patient's ability to use them correctly. This has led to numerous studies being conducted over the last decade to assess the correct use of these devices by patients and health care professionals. These studies have generally used device-specific checklists to assess technique, this being the most feasible and accessible method for assessment. However, divergence between the checklists and scoring systems for the same device in different studies makes direct comparison of results difficult and at times inappropriate. Little evidence is available to assess the relative importance of different criteria; however, brief patient training based on specific inhaler technique checklists leads to significant improvement in asthma outcomes. This paper reviews common checklists and scoring systems used for Turbuhaler and Diskus, discusses the problem of heterogeneity between different checklists, and finally recommends suitable checklists and scoring systems for these devices based on the literature and previous findings. Only when similar checklists are used across different research studies will accurate comparisons and meta-analysis be possible.

Basketball arenas are crucial spaces that must meet specific standards to ensure the sustainability of the sport and the quality of play. While Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) assesses these standards, it often assumes that all performance indicators are equally important, potentially leading to a gap between design intent and actual user experience. This study aims to bridge this gap by using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to prioritize evaluation criteria for Turkish professional basketball arenas designed for national and international matches, regional/local competitions, and training programs. Existing studies and reports indicate that basketball arenas in Turkey often fall short in meeting necessary physical requirements and exhibit performance deficiencies. To address this gap, this study identifies factors determining arena performance, categorized as technical, functional, and behavioral based on Preiser's framework. These criteria were further categorized according to different spaces within the arena, including general use areas, administrative spaces, and athlete-specific areas. A panel of expert sports facility design professionals provided judgments about the relative importance of these criteria using pairwise comparisons. The AHP method was then employed to calculate priority weights for each criterion. The results reveal the relative importance of different criteria for each space. For example, in general use areas, "furniture suitability/sufficiency" and "provision of ergonomic conditions for the disabled" ranked highest. In administrative spaces, "fire protection" and "accessibility" were deemed most important, while in athlete-specific areas, "visual and auditory privacy" and "security" took precedence. This study demonstrates the potential of AHP for developing a systematic and reliable framework for qualitative evaluations that measure user satisfaction. AHP-based evaluation models offer a valuable tool for architects, facility managers, and decision-makers to assess architectural design quality, prioritize design criteria, and support user-centered design processes.

This study presents a two-phase algorithm for solving the Manufacturer's Pallet Loading Problem (MPLP) while considering overhang and stability constraints using a block approach. The MPLP involves determining a loading pattern that can load the most identical rectangular boxes onto a larger rectangular pallet. The proposed model is developed to obtain the maximum number of boxes that could be loaded onto a layer considering and without considering the overhang according to eight predetermined block arrangements (BAs) in the first phase. Then, the obtained overhang solutions are checked against the stability constraint in the second phase. Finally, the maximum number of boxes per layer is determined based on the results from the two phases. The validity and the performance of the proposed algorithm have been tested on available datasets in the literature. The proposed algorithm increased the number of boxes per layer; one to six boxes while considering overhang and stability, improving the pallet area utilization by 2.5% up to 14.3% for the tested datasets.

Enhancing pallet load stability: A MILP model for the Manufacturer’s Pallet Loading Problem with interlocking constraints

Authorities in a number of countries rely increasingly on cost-effectiveness analysis to determine reimbursement status or clinical guidance for pharmaceuticals. This study compared the use of health economic evidence across five reimbursement committees (Australia, Ontario and British Columbia in Canada, Finland, and France) and one clinical guidance committee (England and Wales). Health economic evidence was found to support decision making, although cost-effectiveness is less important in some identifiable situations. Since the relative importance of cost-effectiveness varies, it will be difficult to implement a single explicit threshold. Further research may make patterns of decision making, distributional concerns, and the importance of different criteria more transparent, which would help to narrow the gap between the theory and practice of health economic evaluations. While the use of health economic evidence and the outcome of decision making are similar across committees, there is presently only limited knowledge to what extent prescribing patterns are influenced by decisions.

Mass Spectrometry (MS) has revolutionized the way we study biomolecules, especially proteins, their interactions and posttranslational modifications (PTM). As such MS has established itself as the leading tool for the analysis of PTMs mainly because this approach is highly sensitive, amenable to high throughput and is capable of assigning PTMs to specific sites in the amino acid sequence of proteins and peptides. Along with the advances in MS methodology there have been improvements in biochemical, genetic and cell biological approaches to mapping the interactome which are discussed with consideration for both the practical and technical considerations of these techniques. The interactome of a species is generally understood to represent the sum of all potential protein-protein interactions. There are still a number of barriers to the elucidation of the human interactome or any other species as physical contact between protein pairs that occur by selective molecular docking in a particular spatiotemporal biological context are not easily captured and measured.PTMs massively increase the complexity of organismal proteomes and play a role in almost all aspects of cell biology, allowing for fine-tuning of protein structure, function and localization. There are an estimated 300 PTMS with a predicted 5% of the eukaryotic genome coding for enzymes involved in protein modification, however we have not yet been able to reliably map PTM proteomes due to limitations in sample preparation, analytical techniques, data analysis, and the substoichiometric and transient nature of some PTMs. Improvements in proteomic and mass spectrometry methods, as well as sample preparation, have been exploited in a large number of proteome-wide surveys of PTMs in many different organisms. Here we focus on previously published global PTM proteome studies in the Apicomplexan parasites T. gondii and P. falciparum which offer numerous insights into the abundance and function of each of the studied PTM in the Apicomplexa. Integration of these datasets provide a more complete picture of the relative importance of PTM and crosstalk between them and how together PTM globally change the cellular biology of the Apicomplexan protozoa. A multitude of techniques used to investigate PTMs, mostly techniques in MS-based proteomics, are discussed for their ability to uncover relevant biological function.

A novel multi objective Loading Pattern Optimization by Gravitational Search Algorithm (GSA) for WWER1000 core

Effects of antecedent hydrologic conditions, time dependence, and climate cycles on the suspended sediment load of the Salinas River, California