Materials review for improved automotive gas turbine engine

The potential role of superalloys, refractory alloys, and ceramics in the hottest sections of engines operating with turbine inlet temperatures as high as 1370 C is examined. The convential superalloys, directionally solidified eutectics, oxide dispersion strenghened alloys, and tungsten fiber reinforced superalloys are reviewed and compared on the basis of maximum turbine blade temperature capability. Improved high temperature protective coatings and special fabrication techniques for these advanced alloys are discussed. Chromium, columbium, molybdenum, tantalum, and tungsten alloys are also reviewed. Molbdenum alloys are found to be the most suitable for mass produced turbine wheels. Various forms and fabrication processes for silicon nitride, silicon carbide, and SIALON's are investigated for use in highstress and medium stress high temperature environments

Trusty URIs: Verifiable, Immutable, and Permanent Digital Artifacts for Linked Data

To make digital resources on the web verifiable, immutable, and permanent, we propose a technique to include cryptographic hash values in URIs. We call them trusty URIs and we show how they can be used for approaches like nanopublications to make not only specific resources but their entire reference trees verifiable. Digital artifacts can be identified not only on the byte level but on more abstract levels such as RDF graphs, which means that resources keep their hash values even when presented in a different format. Our approach sticks to the core principles of the web, namely openness and decentralized architecture, is fully compatible with existing standards and protocols, and can therefore be used right away. Evaluation of our reference implementations shows that these desired properties are indeed accomplished by our approach, and that it remains practical even for very large files.Comment: Small error corrected in the text (table data was correct) on page 13: "All average values are below 0.8s (0.03s for batch mode). Using Java in batch mode even requires only 1ms per file.

Moderating Effects of Harm Avoidance on Resting State Functional Connectivity of the Anterior Insula

As an index of behavioral inhibition and an individual’s propensity to avoid, rather than seek, potentially dangerous situations, harm avoidance has been linked to internalizing psychopathology. Altered connectivity within intrinsic functional neural networks (i.e., default mode [DMN], central executive [CEN] and salience networks [SN]) has been related to internalizing psychopathology; however, less is known about the effects of harm avoidance on functional connectivity within and between these networks. Importantly, harm avoidance may be distinguishable from trait anxiety and have clinical relevance as a risk factor for internalizing psychopathology. A sample of young adults (n = 99) completed a resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan and self-report measures of harm avoidance and trait anxiety. Whole brain seed-to-voxel and seed-to-network connectivity analyses were conducted using anterior insula seeds to examine associations between harm avoidance/trait anxiety and connectivity. After adjusting for sex and age, there was a significant negative effect of harm avoidance on connectivity between the anterior insula and clusters in the precuneus/posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) left superior/middle frontal gyrus, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and bilateral inferior parietal lobule (IPL)/angular gyrus. Seed-to-network analyses indicated a negative effect of harm avoidance on connectivity between the right anterior insula and anterior and posterior DMN. There were no effects of trait anxiety on functional connectivity of the anterior insula. Overall, the results indicate that individual differences in harm avoidance relate to disruptions in internetwork connectivity that may contribute to deficits in appropriately modulating attentional focus

Testing forest ecosystem management in boreal mixedwoods of northwestern Quebec: initial response of aspen stands to different levels of harvesting

The SAFE (sylviculture et am

DBpedia SPARQL Benchmark – Performance Assessment with Real Queries on Real Data

Abstract. Triple stores are the backbone of increasingly many Data Web appli-cations. It is thus evident that the performance of those stores is mission critical for individual projects as well as for data integration on the Data Web in gen-eral. Consequently, it is of central importance during the implementation of any of these applications to have a clear picture of the weaknesses and strengths of current triple store implementations. In this paper, we propose a generic SPARQL benchmark creation procedure, which we apply to the DBpedia knowledge base. Previous approaches often compared relational and triple stores and, thus, settled on measuring performance against a relational database which had been con-verted to RDF by using SQL-like queries. In contrast to those approaches, our benchmark is based on queries that were actually issued by humans and applica-tions against existing RDF data not resembling a relational schema. Our generic procedure for benchmark creation is based on query-log mining, clustering and SPARQL feature analysis. We argue that a pure SPARQL benchmark is more use-ful to compare existing triple stores and provide results for the popular triple store implementations Virtuoso, Sesame, Jena-TDB, and BigOWLIM. The subsequent comparison of our results with other benchmark results indicates that the per-formance of triple stores is by far less homogeneous than suggested by previous benchmarks. 1

Reproducibility, bioinformatic analysis and power of the SAGE method to evaluate changes in transcriptome

The serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE) method is used to study global gene expression in cells or tissues in various experimental conditions. However, its reproducibility has not yet been definitively assessed. In this study, we have evaluated the reproducibility of the SAGE method and identified the factors that affect it. The determination coefficient (R(2)) for the reproducibility of SAGE is 0.96. However, there are some factors that can affect the reproducibility of SAGE, such as the replication of concatemers and ditags, the number of sequenced tags and double PCR amplification of ditags. Thus, corrections for these factors must be made to ensure the reproducibility and accuracy of SAGE results. A bioinformatic analysis of SAGE data is also presented in order to eliminate these artifacts. Finally, the current study shows that increasing the number of sequenced tags improves the power of the method to detect transcripts and their regulation by experimental conditions

Genetic ancestry inference from cancer-derived molecular data across genomic and transcriptomic platforms

Genetic ancestry-oriented cancer research requires the ability to perform accurate and robust genetic ancestry inference from existing cancer-derived data, including whole exome sequencing, transcriptome sequencing, and targeted gene panels, very often in the absence of matching cancer-free genomic data. Here we examined the feasibility and accuracy of computational inference of genetic ancestry relying exclusively on cancer-derived data. A data synthesis framework was developed to optimize and assess the performance of the ancestry inference for any given input cancer-derived molecular profile. In its core procedure, the ancestral background of the profiled patient is replaced with one of any number of individuals with known ancestry. The data synthesis framework is applicable to multiple profiling platforms, making it possible to assess the performance of inference specifically for a given molecular profile and separately for each continental-level ancestry; this ability extends to all ancestries, including those without statistically sufficient representation in the existing cancer data. The inference procedure was demonstrated to be accurate and robust in a wide range of sequencing depths. Testing of the approach in four representative cancer types and across three molecular profiling modalities showed that continental-level ancestry of patients can be inferred with high accuracy, as quantified by its agreement with the gold standard of deriving ancestry from matching cancer-free molecular data. This study demonstrates that vast amounts of existing cancer-derived molecular data are potentially amenable to ancestry-oriented studies of the disease without requiring matching cancer-free genomes or patient self-reported ancestry

Moderating Effects of Harm Avoidance on Resting-State Functional Connectivity of the Anterior Insula

As an index of behavioral inhibition and an individual’s propensity to avoid, rather than seek, potentially dangerous situations, harm avoidance has been linked to internalizing psychopathology. Altered connectivity within intrinsic functional neural networks (i.e., default mode [DMN], central executive [CEN] and salience networks [SN]) has been related to internalizing psychopathology; however, less is known about the effects of harm avoidance on functional connectivity within and between these networks. Importantly, harm avoidance may be distinguishable from trait anxiety and have clinical relevance as a risk factor for internalizing psychopathology. A sample of young adults (n = 99) completed a resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan and self-report measures of harm avoidance and trait anxiety. Whole brain seed-to-voxel and seed-to-network connectivity analyses were conducted using anterior insula seeds to examine associations between harm avoidance/trait anxiety and connectivity. After adjusting for sex and age, there was a significant negative effect of harm avoidance on connectivity between the anterior insula and clusters in the precuneus/posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) left superior/middle frontal gyrus, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and bilateral inferior parietal lobule (IPL)/angular gyrus. Seed-to-network analyses indicated a negative effect of harm avoidance on connectivity between the right anterior insula and anterior and posterior DMN. There were no effects of trait anxiety on functional connectivity of the anterior insula. Overall, the results indicate that individual differences in harm avoidance relate to disruptions in internetwork connectivity that may contribute to deficits in appropriately modulating attentional focus