Using a process-centered approach to minimize the effort of compliance

 The complexity of different quality standards can, in principle, be covered by different approaches and strategies. In-depth process mapping of quality control (QC) work streams was used by the analytical laboratories of Lonza AG to show up the principle differences in being compliant to different quality systems. The results identified two main drivers for all necessary actions: process-related activities and infrastructure-related activities. In addition, a clear indication of the economic impact of these driving forces was gained, which led the laboratories to decide on a process-oriented approach. This approach has the advantage of being able to reflect the different demands of different quality assurance (QA) regulations within the same QC organizational structure. Following the process helps avoid unnecessary efforts in analytical work and represents a very economical approach, at the same time, providing high flexibility to react to different QA or customer demands. Received: 5 July 2002 Accepted: 12 November 2002 Acknowledgements The process-oriented approach resulted from many, very challenging discussions for which I would like to thank the staff of my organization (Analytics & QC), especially, the QA staff and the LIMS team. Presented at Analytica Conference, 23–26 April 2002, Munich, Germany Correspondence to B. Ciommer     

Controlled enzyme-immobilisation on capillaries for microreactors for peptide mapping

In the present paper, the covalent immobilisation of the digesting enzyme trypsin has been achieved through photo-immobilisation on a portion of a silica capillary, thus leading to the construction of a capillary electrophoretic (CE)-microreactor for peptide mapping. The CE-microreactor is characterised by being a single piece, thus ensuring no fluidic or electrical leakage. The enzyme was immobilised with a surface density of 15.8 g/cm², the stability was high (80% after 38 days) and the rate of conversion was 0.2 ng/s. On-line protein mapping was tested with proteins of different dimensions, showing competitiveness in terms of time (completed map within 15 min) and exhaustive maps of small proteins. The results of the CE-microreactor and the potential to immobilise biocomponents easily on a desired portion of the capillary indicate further developments towards the construction of a variety of miniaturised enzymatic screening devices for high-throughput screening analysis.     

Real-time sensing and three-dimensional display of far outdoor scenes based on asymmetric integral imaging

A new asymmetric integral imaging (AII) system for real-time pickup and three-dimensional (3-D) display of far outdoor scenes based on dynamic-pixel-mapping (DPM) is proposed. DPM is a digital process to transform the elemental images captured with a lens array into the perspective-variant object images (POIs) whose structures are matched with those of display lenses, where the orders of pixels in each POI are reversely mapped, and then capture a set of virtual elemental images (EIs) at the specific depth planes from the back-propagated POIs. This DPM enables an asymmetrical use of pickup and display lens arrays, allowing the long-ranged pickup of far outdoor scenes and their resolution-enhanced 3-D reconstruction. Experiments with a pair of pickup and display lens arrays whose pitches and focal lengths are given by 7.5 mm, 30 mm and 1.2 mm, 8 mm, respectively, show that the effective pickup-range and resolution of the proposed system have been increased up to 6 m and 1600×1600 pixels, respectively, from 0.064 m and 480×480 pixels of the conventional systems employing the same pickup and display lens arrays. In addition, experiments with an implemented test bed confirms that the proposed system can provide real-time 3-D images in 25 frames per second.     

Bounds for the fundamental solutions of elliptic and parabolic equations

It is shown that any elloptic or parabolic operator in nondivergence form with measurable coefficients has a global fundamental solution verifying certain pointwise bounds.     

Studies on defect formation in femtosecond laser-irradiated PMMA and PDMS

We report here our results on the spectroscopic and elemental analysis of femtosecond (fs) laser-modified regions in polymers of polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) in the context of defect formation and emission in the visible region. Different physical and chemical models are used to explain the changes in modified regions. We found that the emission intensity, recorded from the fs-modified regions of polymers, decreased over time to a constant value. We also demonstrate that these materials are suitable for the preparation of the microstructures en route for light guiding applications. The fs laser-irradiated regions exhibited paramagnetic behavior as was confirmed from electron spin resonance studies through the formation of peroxide-type free radicals. Raman mapping was performed in the modified regions which consisted of defects and found that the modulations in intensity are predominant in the central portion of the structure compared to edges. Elemental analysis has been performed in the modified regions using field emission scanning electron microscope instrument and energy-dispersive X-ray absorption spectroscopy to estimate the percentage contents of individual elements which resulted in defect formation such as paramagnetic and optical centers.     

Strong Convergence Theorems for the Generalized Viscosity Implicit Rules of Asymptotically Nonexpansive Mappings in the Intermediate Sense in Hilbert Spaces

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to introduce the generalized viscosity implicit rules of one asymptotically nonexpansive mapping in the intermediate sense in Hilbert spaces. We obtain some strong convergence theorems under certain assumptions imposed on the parameters. We also give a numerical example to support our main results. The results obtained in this paper improve and extend many recent ones in this culture.     

Multi-objective optimal design of feedback controls for dynamical systems with hybrid simple cell mapping algorithm

This paper presents a study of multi-objective optimal design of full state feedback controls. The goal of the design is to minimize several conflicting performance objective functions at the same time. The simple cell mapping method with a hybrid algorithm is used to find the multi-objective optimal design solutions. The multi-objective optimal design comes in a set of gains representing various compromises of the control system. Examples of regulation and tracking controls are presented to validate the control design.     

Dynamic stability of a class of fractional-order nonlinear systems via fixed point theory

In this paper, the problem of the uniform stability for a class of fuzzy fractional-order genetic regulatory networks with random discrete delays, distributed delays, and parameter uncertainties is studied. Although there is a portion of literature on using fixed point theorems to study the stability of fractional neural networks, most of them required the fractional order to be in $\left(\frac{1}{2},1\right)$. However, the case of the fractional-order belonging to $(0,\frac{1}{2})$ has not been discussed. To solve it, this work proposes a novel idea of using fixed point theory to study the stability of fuzzy (0,1) order neural networks, the problem of the uniqueness of the solution of the considered genetic regulatory networks is resolved, and a novel sufficient condition to guarantee the uniform stability of above genetic regulatory networks is also derived. Eventually, an example is given to demonstrate that the obtained result is effective.     

Characterizations of ( m,n )-Jordan Derivations and ( m,n )-Jordan Derivable Mappings on Some Algebras

Let R be a ring, M be a R-bimodule and m, n be two fixed nonnegative integers with m + n = 0. An additive mapping δ from R into M is called an(m, n)-Jordan derivation if(m +n)δ(A~2) = 2 mAδ(A) + 2nδ(A)A for every A in R. In this paper, we prove that every(m, n)-Jordan derivation with m = n from a C*-algebra into its Banach bimodule is zero. An additive mappingδ from R into M is called a(m, n)-Jordan derivable mapping at W in R if(m + n)δ(AB + BA) =2mδ(A)B + 2 mδ(B)A + 2 nAδ(B) + 2 nBδ(A) for each A and B in R with AB = BA = W. We prove that if M is a unital A-bimodule with a left(right) separating set generated algebraically by all idempotents in A, then every(m, n)-Jordan derivable mapping at zero from A into M is identical with zero. We also show that if A and B are two unital algebras, M is a faithful unital(A, B)-bimodule and U = [A M N B] is a generalized matrix algebra, then every(m, n)-Jordan derivable mapping at zero from U into itself is equal to zero.     

Fixed points of multivalued quasi-nonexpansive mappings using a faster iterative process

In this article, we prove some strong and weak convergence theorems for quasi-nonexpansive multivalued mappings in Banach spaces. The iterative process used is independent of Ishikawa iterative process and converges faster. Some examples are provided to validate our results. Our results extend and unify some results in the contemporary literature.