The sustainable design of small passenger vessels and large size pleasure craft indicates new trends: lower speed, reduced fuel consumption and better seakeeping in all range of velocities. Small amplitudes of roll motion are considered one of the most important comfort parameter. These trends call for reviewing some commonly used concepts and designer practice. Fundamental parameters as metacentric height and midsection form affect comfort as well as ship safety in counteracting way.Round bilge, due to good seakeeping characteristics and to large amount of available data from systematic series is the most common hull form choice when cruising speed implies displacement or semi displacement mode. Hard chine hull forms are generally chosen when relative speed leads to some hydrodynamic lift, although recently they have been considered for low relative speed. They allow simplified and cheaper construction and among their interesting features is higher roll damping. This appears very attractive for craft that are generally fitted with stabilizing systems and ask for the most reduced roll motions at any and zero speed.This paper presents the results of experimental tests relative to roll decay of two ship models of the same dimensions, displacement and GM values: they have the same warped bottom hull form developed at University of Naples, the first is hard chine and the second has round bilge from transom to midship. Both of them are suitable for displacement and semi-displacement craft operating at medium-low relative speed. The tests have been carried out at University of Naples towing tank, in calm water, at Fn ranging from 0.0 to 0.45. Natural roll frequencies and linear and non linear damping coefficients are reported for all tested speeds allowing a fair comparison of the roll characteristics due to the variation in hull form.Copyright © 2013 by ASME

Helminth parasites that inhabit mammalian body surfaces have a highly evolved relationship with the immune system. Many of these resident helminths carry out functions to ensure their survival in the hosts. To attain this objective helminth parasites adopt immunoregulatory mechanisms to counter host’s hostile immune response. Indeed, immunomodulatory molecules have been discovered in the worm’s extracts and in their excretion/secretion. In this review, we discuss the state of our understanding of the interplay between helminths and immune pathways. We also highlight the key challenges that must be confronted in identification of the helminth-derived molecules involved in immune modulation.  We consider whether helminth-derived signaling hold promise for the design of novel therapeutic approaches for the treatment of inflammatory disorders (inflammatory bowel disease, allergies, and autoimmune diseases).

Maturity of companies, organizational culture and costs are some of the major limiting factors for implementation of cost-effective six sigma methodology in Bosnian companies.  Purpose of this paper is to analyze possibilities of applying six sigma concept in a medium-sized company with 200 employees. Considering all characteristics of the company, in this case, implementation model was proposed and tested. The project included process monitoring using statistical process control charts for two different periods, before and after improvement. Dominant defect and its causes were identified and it was found out that the process was out of control. Implementation of improvement measures, dominant defect was eliminated but the process has remained out of control. As a conclusion, the test indicated that the model is effective but it takes more iteration to achieve the desired state.