Arabian adventures

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is one of the world’s most rapidly urbanising countries. Despite the recent downturn in the economy, the region continues to undergo rapid development, particularly around Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Consequently the country is host to many major civil engineering projects including the world’s tallest building, artificial offshore islands, new international airports, metro systems and high-speed rail networks

FMRI study of parallax under topic driven stimuli

Little is known regarding the brain regions responsible for the perception of 3 dimensional (3D) versus 2 dimensional (2D) images. Thus, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to determine activation patterns in the human brain under stereoscopic or monoscopic stimuli (e.g. 3D or 2D). To examine whether these regions differ as a function of subject matter, stimuli were separated based on the image themes: locations, objects, and plants and animals. A block design was used to collect data from subjects who were asked to view images in 2 and 3 dimensions in 6 runs. The goal of this study was to determine whether the activation pattern using passive 3D viewing is similar to what has been previously demonstrated using other 3D viewing techniques. A secondary aim was to determine if the stimulus thematic content altered the brain regions involved. The results revealed that in addition to lateral occipital complex (LOC), which has been previously discussed in literature, the supramarginal gyrus and parietal operculum cortex are involved in 3D image perception

Segmentation of X-ray CT and Ultrasonic Scans of Impacted Composite Structures for Damage State Interpretation and Model Generation

Composites are frequently used in aerospace structural applications due to their high strength to weight performance, but due to their layered structure they are vulnerable to transverse impacts. Impact damage in composite laminates often consists of highly interactive damage modes composed of delamination, matrix cracking, and fiber breakage. In order to ensure the safety of composite structures, a variety of non-destructive evaluation (NDE) techniques are used to characterize impact damage. However, procedures for utilizing NDE to create and validate models of residual strength after impact are not yet established due to either limitations in the characterization of impact damage, as in the case of Ultrasonic pulse-echo scanning (UT), or due to the complexity of interpretation of the NDE technique, as in the case of X-ray computed tomography (CT). Improved quantification of damage from CT and UT characterization may lead to improved predictive capabilities for the prediction of structural performance after an impact event.This work presents a novel automatic damage segmentation procedure for CT scans of impacted composites that converts the complex 3D dataset into simplified damage visualizations and 2D damage maps for each composite layer. The results of this procedure were utilized to create and validate a modeling procedure to improve UT characterization of impact damage, and to validate and generate finite element models of impact damage and residual strength performance. The generated residual strength models were created with varying levels of damage modeling fidelity and it was found that the level of damage modeling needed for accurate failure prediction depends greatly on the structural geometry and the presence of major damage features. This NDE and modeling effort was supported by a series of impact and residual strength experiments for flat and stringer stiffened composite panels. The developed techniques proved capable of characterizing impact damage in a variety of structural configurations and establishing models that incorporate this damage at different levels of complexity

Manchester Healthy Living Programme: A case study

This paper reviews: health promotion initiatives; the evidence highlighting the need for such initiatives; and evaluates one health promotion initiative, the 'Manchester Healthy Living Programme'. This paper is separated in to two separate sections. Study 1. Evaluation of the Manchester Healthy Living Project. The evaluation involved a self-assessment questionnaire during the 10-week healthy living course. The questionnaire assessed the participants' knowledge, attitudes, and behaviour before and after the project. The 15 questions related to diet, exercise and lifestyle. 9 adults and 10 young people participated (n=19). The findings showed that all participants increased their self-assessed scores after the project when compared to before. The biggest increase was seen in the questions relating to knowledge. The findings lead onto the second study, which investigated the effectiveness of health initiatives in changing behaviour. Study 2. Health Promotion Initiatives and Behaviour Change. The second study addressed the findings from the Healthy Living Programme and reviewed evidence from similar health promotion initiatives, which assessed the effectiveness of health promotion. The findings showed that the methods for evaluation such as, interviews and long-term follow up studies show the greatest behaviour change, and that health promotion is more effective in relation to behaviour change when carried out on a one-one basis

Cell-cell communication enhances the capacity of cell ensembles to sense shallow gradients during morphogenesis

Collective cell responses to exogenous cues depend on cell-cell interactions. In principle, these can result in enhanced sensitivity to weak and noisy stimuli. However, this has not yet been shown experimentally, and, little is known about how multicellular signal processing modulates single cell sensitivity to extracellular signaling inputs, including those guiding complex changes in the tissue form and function. Here we explored if cell-cell communication can enhance the ability of cell ensembles to sense and respond to weak gradients of chemotactic cues. Using a combination of experiments with mammary epithelial cells and mathematical modeling, we find that multicellular sensing enables detection of and response to shallow Epidermal Growth Factor (EGF) gradients that are undetectable by single cells. However, the advantage of this type of gradient sensing is limited by the noisiness of the signaling relay, necessary to integrate spatially distributed ligand concentration information. We calculate the fundamental sensory limits imposed by this communication noise and combine them with the experimental data to estimate the effective size of multicellular sensory groups involved in gradient sensing. Functional experiments strongly implicated intercellular communication through gap junctions and calcium release from intracellular stores as mediators of collective gradient sensing. The resulting integrative analysis provides a framework for understanding the advantages and limitations of sensory information processing by relays of chemically coupled cells.Comment: paper + supporting information, total 35 pages, 15 figure

The West Virginia Autism Training Center @ Marshall University Magazine, Spring 2018

https://mds.marshall.edu/ac_magazine/1008/thumbnail.jp

The West Virginia Autism Training Center @ Marshall University Magazine, Fall 2015

https://mds.marshall.edu/ac_magazine/1003/thumbnail.jp

The West Virginia Autism Training Center @ Marshall University Magazine, Fall 2014

https://mds.marshall.edu/ac_magazine/1002/thumbnail.jp

The West Virginia Autism Training Center @ Marshall University Magazine, Fall 2016

https://mds.marshall.edu/ac_magazine/1005/thumbnail.jp

The West Virginia Autism Training Center @ Marshall University

https://mds.marshall.edu/ac_magazine/1009/thumbnail.jp