Tensile True Stress - Strain Curves and Essential Work of Fracture Analysis of Polyethylene Blown Films

Characterization of mode-I fracture toughness of ductile polymeric thin films is nontrivial. In order to gain understanding about the fracture mechanics and the processing-structure-property relationships of metallocene linear low-density polyethylene (m-LLDPE) thin film, a custom-built double-edge notched tensile (DENT) test fixture was developed to perform the mode-I fracture test on m-LLDPE thin films, and the essential work of fracture (EWF) analysis, which employs an unique energy partitioning concept, was used to characterize the fracture toughness of the thin films. Effects of specimen geometry, strain rate, film orientation, processing parameters, and resin densities on the specific essential work of fracture, we, and the specific non-essential work of fracture, wp, were investigated. The usefulness of the methodology incorporating the EWF analysis and the custom-built film fixture for characterizing LLDPE fracture toughness is evaluated and discussed, and the correlations between the EWF parameters and the films’ Elmendorf tear properties were also made. The visual, full-field stress distributions of the EWF film specimens were measured in-situ during mode-I facture testing by the photoelastic method, and the deformation in the process zone of post-mortem specimen was also characterized. A new experimental approach has been developed to directly quantify and partition the total mode-I fracture energy of m-LLDPE blown films. Three distinctive deformation zones have been identified from the photoelastic observation of the m-LLDPE blown films during the mode-I facture testing. These three zones include the essential work zone due to necking and crack propagation, the non-essential plastic deformation zone, and a newly proposed recoverable viscoelastic deformation zone. The tensile true stress-strain curves of m-LLDPE blown films and the full-field strain mapping of the mode-I DENT specimen were generated to allow for quantitative energy partitioning at each deformation zone in-situ as defined by the EWF approach. The current approach allows to perform directly quantification and partitioning of the total mode-I fracture energy for the exact physical interpretation of the EWF parameters and their correlation to material characteristics

AdapterBias: Parameter-efficient Token-dependent Representation Shift for Adapters in NLP Tasks

Transformer-based pre-trained models with millions of parameters require large storage. Recent approaches tackle this shortcoming by training adapters, but these approaches still require a relatively large number of parameters. In this study, AdapterBias, a surprisingly simple yet effective adapter architecture, is proposed. AdapterBias adds a token-dependent shift to the hidden output of transformer layers to adapt to downstream tasks with only a vector and a linear layer. Extensive experiments are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of AdapterBias. The experiments show that our proposed method can dramatically reduce the trainable parameters compared to the previous works with a minimal decrease in task performances compared with fine-tuned pre-trained models. We further find that AdapterBias automatically learns to assign more significant representation shifts to the tokens related to the task in consideration.Comment: The first two authors contributed equally. This paper was published in Findings of NAACL 202

Graphlet and Orbit Computation on Heterogeneous Graphs

Many applications, ranging from natural to social sciences, rely on graphlet analysis for the intuitive and meaningful characterization of networks employing micro-level structures as building blocks. However, it has not been thoroughly explored in heterogeneous graphs, which comprise various types of nodes and edges. Finding graphlets and orbits for heterogeneous graphs is difficult because of the heterogeneity and abundance of semantic information. We consider heterogeneous graphs, which can be treated as colored graphs. By applying the canonical label technique, we determine the graph isomorphism problem with multiple states on nodes and edges. With minimal parameters, we build all non-isomorphic graphs and associated orbits. We provide a Python package that can be used to generate orbits for colored directed graphs and determine the frequency of orbit occurrence. Finally, we provide four examples to illustrate the use of the Python package.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figure

Microfluidic Mixing: A Review

The aim of microfluidic mixing is to achieve a thorough and rapid mixing of multiple samples in microscale devices. In such devices, sample mixing is essentially achieved by enhancing the diffusion effect between the different species flows. Broadly speaking, microfluidic mixing schemes can be categorized as either “active”, where an external energy force is applied to perturb the sample species, or “passive”, where the contact area and contact time of the species samples are increased through specially-designed microchannel configurations. Many mixers have been proposed to facilitate this task over the past 10 years. Accordingly, this paper commences by providing a high level overview of the field of microfluidic mixing devices before describing some of the more significant proposals for active and passive mixers

Evaluation of Lentiviral-Mediated Expression of Sodium Iodide Symporter in Anaplastic Thyroid Cancer and the Efficacy of In Vivo Imaging and Therapy

Anaplastic thyroid carcinoma (ATC) is one of the most deadly cancers. With intensive multimodalities of treatment, the survival remains low. ATC is not sensitive to 131I therapy due to loss of sodium iodide symporter (NIS) gene expression. We have previously generated a stable human NIS-expressing ATC cell line, ARO, and the ability of iodide accumulation was restored. To make NIS-mediated gene therapy more applicable, this study aimed to establish a lentiviral system for transferring hNIS gene to cells and to evaluate the efficacy of in vitro and in vivo radioiodide accumulation for imaging and therapy. Lentivirus containing hNIS cDNA were produced to transduce ARO cells which do not concentrate iodide. Gene expression, cell function, radioiodide imaging and treatment were evaluated in vitro and in vivo. Results showed that the transduced cells were restored to express hNIS and accumulated higher amount of radioiodide than parental cells. Therapeutic dose of 131I effectively inhibited the tumor growth derived from transduced cells as compared to saline-treated mice. Our results suggest that the lentiviral system efficiently transferred and expressed hNIS gene in ATC cells. The transduced cells showed a promising result of tumor imaging and therapy

A new measles mumps rubella (MMR) vaccine: a randomized comparative trial for assessing the reactogenicity and immunogenicity of three consecutive production lots and comparison with a widely used MMR vaccine in measles primed children

AbstractObjectives: A multicenter, single-blind, randomized, controlled clinical study was conducted in healthy 15–18-month-old children in order to assess the immunogenicity and reactogenicity of three consecutive lots of a new measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, GSK MMR.Design: A total of 500 enrolled subjects were randomized into four groups to receive either a single dose of one of the three lots of GSK MMR (three groups — 125 subjects in each group) or Merck MMR vaccine (125 subjects). Once clinical consistency had been demonstrated, the data were pooled and compared with the widely used Merck vaccine. Solicited local and general symptoms were recorded using diary cards, and antibody levels were determined using ELISA assays.Results: No differences in the incidence of local and general symptoms or seroconversion rates were seen in the groups receiving different lots of GSK MMR. Compared with Merck MMR, there was a significantly lower incidence of local pain (P<0.001) and swelling (P=0.038) in infants receiving the GSK MMR vaccine. The incidences of all other solicited local and general symptoms were comparable between the two groups. No signs of suspected meningitis were reported. No serious adverse events were reported by the investigator to be related to vaccination. Equivalent seroconversion rates and post-vaccination GMTs were observed in the groups receiving the two MMR vaccines. In conclusion, the new GSK MMR vaccine administered in measles-primed children demonstrated satisfactory immunogenicity and safety profiles as good as the Merck MMR vaccine

Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome Caused by Enteroviral Infection

A 4-year-old boy presented with enteroviral infection complicated with atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome (aHUS). Enterovirus RNA was detected by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) of both blood and kidney biopsy specimens. A survey of the complement system did not reveal a specific complement defect. Supportive therapy with blood components transfusion, plasma therapy, and immunosuppressants was administered, however, renal function did not recover. The results of this report demonstrate that the enterovirus is the cause of aHUS

Carcinoma ex pleomorphic adenoma of soft palate with cavernous sinus invasion

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Carcinoma ex pleomorphic adenoma (CXPA) is an aggressive salivary gland malignancy and rare in minor salivary gland. A soft palate CXPA initially presenting as direct cavernous sinus (CS) invasion is very rare.</p> <p>Case Presentation</p> <p>A 60-year-old male had a 3-month history of a small soft palatal mass with progressing left cheek numbness, proptosis, and disturbed vision. Biopsy of soft palatal tumor showed pleomorphic adenoma. Magnetic resonance imaging showed a tumor involving left maxilla, and extended from pterygopalatine fossa, inferior orbital fissure to CS. Excision of tumor revealed CXPA. Adjuvant concomitant chemo-radiation therapy (CCRT) was given. The tumor recurred 5 months later in left CS which was re-treated with CCRT. The disease status was stable at 2 years after the diagnosis of CXPA.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We present this case to emphasize that patients with symptoms such as facial numbness, proptosis and disturbed vision should be carefully investigated for lesions invading CS by perineural spread.</p