Abstract-The combination of predictive data-driven models with frequent glucose measurements may provide for an early warning of impending glucose excursions and proactive regulatory interventions for diabetes patients. However, from a modeling perspective, before the benefits of such a strategy can be attained, we must first be able to quantitatively characterize the behavior of the model coefficients as well as the model predictions as a function of prediction horizon. We need to determine if the model coefficients reflect viable physiologic dependencies of the individual glycemic measurements and whether the model is stable with respect to small changes in noise levels, leading to accurate near-future predictions with negligible time lag. We assessed the behavior of linear autoregressive data-driven models developed under three possible modeling scenarios, using continuous glucose measurements of nine subjects collected on a minute-by-minute basis for approximately 5 days. Simulation results indicated that stable and accurate models for near-future glycemic predictions (<60 min) with clinically acceptable time lags are attained only when the raw glucose measurements are smoothed and the model coefficients are regularized. This study provides a starting point for further needed investigations before real-time deployment can be considered.

Abstract-This paper tests the hypothesis that a "universal," data-driven model can be developed based on glucose data from one diabetic subject, and subsequently applied to predict subcutaneous glucose concentrations of other subjects, even of those with different types of diabetes. We employed three separate studies, each utilizing a different continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) device, to verify the model's universality. Two out of the three studies involved subjects with type 1 diabetes and the other one with type 2 diabetes. We first filtered the subcutaneous glucose concentration data by imposing constraints on their rate of change. Then, using the filtered data, we developed data-driven autoregressive models of order 30, and used them to make short-term, 30-min-ahead glucose-concentration predictions. We used same-subject model predictions as a reference for comparisons against cross-subject and cross-study model predictions, which were evaluated using the root-mean-squared error (RMSE) and Clarke error grid analysis (EGA). We found that, for each studied subject, the average crosssubject and cross-study RMSEs of the predictions were small and indistinguishable from those obtained with the same-subject models. These observations were corroborated by EGA, where better than 99.0% of the paired sensor-predicted glucose concentrations lay in the clinically acceptable zone A. In addition, the predictive capability of the models was found not to be affected by diabetes type, subject age, CGM device, and interindividual differences. We conclude that it is feasible to develop universal glucose models that allow for clinical use of predictive algorithms and CGM devices for proactive therapy of diabetic patients.

ABSTRACT:There is an increasing interest in comprehensive study of heavy fuel oil (HFO) due to its growing use in furnaces, boilers, marines, and recently in gas turbines. In this work, the thermal combustion characteristics and chemical composition of HFO were investigated using a range of techniques. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) was conducted to study the non-isothermal HFO combustion behavior. Chemical characterization of HFO was accomplished using various standard methods in addition to direct infusion atmospheric pressure chemical ionization Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (APCI-FTICR MS), high resolution 1 H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), 13 C NMR, and two dimensional hetero-nuclear multiple bond correlation (HMBC) spectroscopy. By analyzing thermogravimetry and differential thermogravimetry (TG/DTG) results, three different reaction regions were identified in the combustion of HFO with air, specifically, low temperature oxidation region (LTO), fuel deposition (FD) and high temperature oxidation (HTO) region. At the high end of the LTO region, a mass transfer resistance (skin effect) was evident. Kinetic analysis in LTO and HT|O regions was conducted using two different kinetic models to calculate the apparent activation energy. In both models, HTO activation energies are higher than those for LTO. The FT-ICR MS technique resolved thousands of aromatic and sulfur containing compounds in the HFO sample and provided compositional details for individual molecules of three major class species. The major classes of compounds included species with one sulfur atom (S 1 ), with two sulfur atoms 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 2 (S 2 ), and purely hydrocarbons (HC). The DBE (double bond equivalent) abundance plots established for S 1 and HC provided additional information on their distributions in the HFO sample. The 1 H NMR and 13 C NMR results revealed that nearly 59% of the 1 H nuclei were distributed as paraffinic CH 2 and 5% were in aromatic groups. Nearly 21% of 13 C nuclei were distributed in aromatic groups indicating that most paraffinic CH 2 groups are attached to aromatic rings. A negligible amount of olefins was present and an appreciable quantity of monoaromatic and poly-aromatic content were observed. Molecular connectivity between the hydrogen and carbon atoms using HMBC spectra was utilized to propose several plausible skeletal structures in HFO.