Repair of congenital heart disease in the presence of high pulmonary pressure has always been a contentious issue. Pulmonary vascular resistance (PVR) is considered important for establishing operability in these patients. However, PVR estimation is not always accurate and cannot solely be relied upon to make critical decision of operability. Clinical examination, chest X-ray, and echocardiogra...

This paper describes the environmental effects and performance analysis of 2.45 GHz Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) based RFID systems. Piezoelectric materials and their underlying principles are reviewed to describe the nature of SAWs. A performance analysis is conducted to measure the readability and read range for individual tags, compared to multiple tags in a field environment. On the other ha...

Non-square process control systems, with fewer inputs than the controlled outputs, are quite common in chemical processes. In these systems, it is impossible to control all measured variables at specific set points and many of the outputs are controlled within an interval. The objective of this paper is to introduce a multivariable Operability methodology for such non-square systems to be used ...

The operability of a vessel in the sea environment, i.e. the capability to accomplish its mission is a major performance indicator of the vessel. It is well known that adverse sea conditions induce significant dynamic motions, velocities, accelerations and loads, which deteriorate the performance of both the crew and the various subsystems onboard, including the hull form itself. For example, t...

One of the most serious threats to the development of the learning object economy as described by Downes (2002) is the consistent campaign by the controllers of copyright to undermine, and render inoperable, the public domain. The learning object economy is the system of learning object repositories, distribution systems and rights’ management that is currently being developed by a wide variety...