Missouri University of Science and Technology

About: Missouri University of Science and Technology is a education organization based out in Rolla, Missouri, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Control theory & Artificial neural network. The organization has 9380 authors who have published 21161 publications receiving 462544 citations. The organization is also known as: Missouri S&T & University of Missouri–Rolla.

Oxidative Phosphorylation-Dependent and -Independent Oxygen Consumption by Individual Preimplantation Mouse Embryos

Abstract: The self-referencing electrode technique was employed to noninvasively measure gradients of dissolved oxygen in the medium immediately surrounding developing mouse embryos and, thereby, characterized changes in oxygen consumption and utilization during development. A gradient of depleted oxygen surrounded each embryo and could be detected >50 microm from the embryo. Blastocysts depleted the surrounding medium of 0.6+/-0.1 microM of oxygen, whereas early cleavage stage embryos depleted the medium of only 0.3+/-0.1 microM of oxygen, suggesting a twofold increase in oxygen consumption at the blastocyst stage. Mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) accounted for 60-70% of the oxygen consumed by blastocysts, while it accounted for only 30% of the total oxygen consumed by cleavage-stage embryos. The amount of oxygen consumed by non-OXPHOS mechanisms remained relatively constant throughout preimplantation development. By contrast, the amount of oxygen consumed by OXPHOS in blastocysts is greater than that consumed by OXPHOS in cleavage-stage embryos. The amount of oxygen consumed by one-cell embryos was modulated by the absence of pyruvate from the culture medium. Treatment of one-cell embryos and blastocysts with diamide, an agent known to induce cell death in embryos, resulted in a decline in oxygen consumption, such that the medium surrounding dying embryos was not as depleted of oxygen as that surrounding untreated control embryos. Together these results validate the self-referencing electrode technique for analyzing oxygen consumption and utilization by preimplantation embryos and demonstrate that changes in oxygen consumption accompany important physiological events, such as development, response to medium metabolites, or cell death.

An Empirical Investigation on End-Users' Acceptance of Enterprise Systems

Abstract: Despite the huge investments by organizations in ERP implementation, maintenance, and user training, ERP implementation failures and less-than-satisfactory productivity improvements are common. End-users' reluctance or unwillingness to adopt or use the newly implemented ERP system is often cited as one of the main reasons for ERP failures. To examine factors leading to the lack of end-user acceptance of ERP systems, we reviewed the literature on user adoption of IT in mandatory contexts, developed hypotheses to explain ERP user acceptance, and conducted a survey study to test the hypotheses. In particular, we examined end-users' attitudes toward system use and symbolic adoption, which refers to users' voluntary mental acceptance of a system, to understand user acceptance in the ERP context. Four cognitive constructs-perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived compatibility, and perceived fit-were hypothesized as the antecedents. The research model was tested through a survey of end-users' perceptions concerning adopting and using a newly implemented ERP system. The findings support most of our hypotheses. Specifically, perceived compatibility and perceived ease of use have both direct and indirect effects mediated by attitude on symbolic adoption, while perceived fit and perceived usefulness influence symbolic adoption by being fully mediated through attitude. The study provides managerial implications for organizations that are striving to engender user acceptance of newly adopted enterprise systems and applications.

Powder characterisation techniques and effects of powder characteristics on part properties in powder-bed fusion processes

Abstract: Powder-bed fusion is a class of Additive Manufacturing (AM) processes that bond successive layers of powder to facilitate the creation of parts with complex geometries. As AM technology transitions from the fabrication of prototypes to end-use parts, the understanding of the powder properties needed to reliably produce parts of acceptable quality becomes critical. Consequently, this has led to the use of powder characterisation techniques such as scanning electron microscopy, laser light diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and differential thermal analysis to study the effect of powder characteristics on part properties. Utilisation of these powder characterisation methods to study particle morphology, chemistry, and microstructure has resulted in significant strides being made towards the optimisation of powder properties. This paper reviews methods commonly used in characterising AM powders, and the effects of powder characteristics on the part properties in powder-bed fusion processes.

An Affine Projection Sign Algorithm Robust Against Impulsive Interferences

Abstract: A new affine projection sign algorithm (APSA) is proposed, which is robust against non-Gaussian impulsive interferences and has fast convergence. The conventional affine projection algorithm (APA) converges fast at a high cost in terms of computational complexity and it also suffers performance degradation in the presence of impulsive interferences. The family of sign algorithms (SAs) stands out due to its low complexity and robustness against impulsive noise. The proposed APSA combines the benefits of the APA and SA by updating its weight vector according to the L 1-norm optimization criterion while using multiple projections. The features of the APA and the L 1-norm minimization guarantee the APSA an excellent candidate for combatting impulsive interference and speeding up the convergence rate for colored inputs at a low computational complexity. Simulations in a system identification context show that the proposed APSA outperforms the normalized least-mean-square (NLMS) algorithm, APA, and normalized sign algorithm (NSA) in terms of convergence rate and steady-state error. The robustness of the APSA against impulsive interference is also demonstrated.

Analysis of the Isolated Induction Generator

Abstract: The increasing rate of depletion of conventional energy resources and the ability of induction generators to convert mechanical power over a wide range of rotor speeds have given rise to an interest in the possible contribution of wind energy to provide fuel displacement.