1,586 research outputs found

    Hybrid perturbation/Bubnov-Galerkin technique for nonlinear thermal analysis

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    A two step hybrid analysis technique to predict the nonlinear steady state temperature distribution in structures and solids is presented. The technique is based on the regular perturbation expansion and the classical Bubnov-Galerkin approximation. The functions are obtained by using the regular perturbation method. These functions are selected as coordinate functions and the classical Bubnov-Galerkin technique is used to compute their amplitudes. The potential of the proposed hybrid technique for the solution of nonlinear thermal problems is discussed. The effectiveness of this technique is demonstrated by the effects of conduction, convection, and radiation modes of heat transfer. It is indicated that the hybrid technique overcomes the two major drawbacks of the classical techniques: (1) the requirement of using a small parameter in the regular perturbation method; and (2) the arbitrariness in the choice of the coordinate functions in the Bubnov-Galerkin technique. The proposed technique extends the range of applicability of the regular perturbation method and enhances the effectiveness of the Bubnov-Galerkin technique

    Numerical Simulations of Various Rotor Designs in Hover and Forward Flight

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    This paper presents numerical simulations of different rotor designs using high-fidelity CFD methods. Firstly, hover results are presented for the PSP rotor blade. The impact of a transitional turbulence model on the blade performance was examined and good correlation with test data was obtained. A grid sensitivity study indicated an influence on the transition location predictions, however, the effect on the integrated loads was not significant. The surface pressure distributions and sectional loads were also examined. The PSP rotor was also simulated in forward flight and blade surface pressure was compared with wind tunnel data. The predictions were found to follow data obtained from pressure transducers

    Embryonic development of the squid, Illex illecebrosus, and effect of temperature on development rates

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    Development stages for artificially fertilized and naturally spawned eggs of Illex illecebrosus were observed and a staging scheme proposed which relates to earlier studies on naturally spawned eggs of Illex coindetii and artificially fertilized eggs of Todarodes pacificus. Photographs and descriptions of stages provide a reference for embryonic development of small ommastrephid eggs and an aid to the identification of egg masses of the species in nature, an essential step in understanding its life cycle. Embryonic development in Illex illecebrosus fails at temperatures below 12.5°C. and the development rate at 21°C is nearly twice that at 12.5°C. This temperature requirement restricts the spatial and temporal distribution of spawning in this squid, and temperature-related development rates allow prediction of the age of egg masses found in nature in water masses of a particular temperature

    Adjunct primer for the use of national comprehensive cancer network guidelines for the surgical management of cutaneous malignant melanoma patients

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    Recently, a Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) survey of melanoma patterns of care by the Mayo Clinic, Scottsdale showed remarkable deviations from best practice patterns throughout the country. The study, which analyzed the SEER records of 35,126 stage I to III cutaneous malignant melanoma patients treated from 2004 to 2006, showed that adherence to National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) therapeutic resection margins occurred in less than 36% of patients. Similarly, considerable variation in the quality of melanoma care in the United States when assessed using 26 quality indicators drawn by a panel of melanoma experts was independently reported. These observations underscore the significant lack of adherence to published best practice patterns reflected by the NCCN guidelines. The untoward effects of these variations in practice pattern can have an inordinate impact on the survival of melanoma patients in whom long term outcomes are affected by the adequacy of surgical management. Thin malignant melanoma is curable; however, thick or node positive melanoma is often incurable. This outcome is determined not only by the stage at presentation but by the use of best practice patterns as reflected in current NCCN cutaneous melanoma practice guidelines

    Perspectives on Continental Rifting Processes From Spatiotemporal Patterns of Faulting and Magmatism in the Rio Grande Rift, USA

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    Analysis of spatiotemporal patterns of faulting and magmatism in the Rio Grande rift (RGR) in New Mexico and Colorado, USA, yields insights into continental rift processes, extension accommodation mechanisms, and rift evolution models. We combine new apatite (U‐Th‐Sm)/He and zircon (U‐Th)/He thermochronometric data with previously published thermochronometric data to assess the timing of fault initiation, magnitudes of fault exhumation, and growth and linkage patterns of rift faults. Thermal history modeling of these data reveals contemporaneous rift initiation at ca. 25 Ma in both the northern and southern RGR with continued fault initiation, growth, and linkage progressing from ca. 25 to ca. 15 Ma. The central RGR, however, shows no evidence of Cenozoic fault‐related exhumation as observed with thermochronometry and instead reveals extension accommodated through Late Cenozoic magmatic injection. Furthermore, faulting in the northern and southern RGR occurs along an approximately north‐south strike, whereas magmatism in the central RGR occurs along the northeast to southwest trending Jemez lineament. Differences in deformation orientation and rift accommodation along strike appear to be related to crustal and lithospheric properties, suggesting that rift structure and geometry are at least partly controlled by inherited lithospheric‐scale architecture. We propose an evolutionary model for the RGR that involves initiation of fault‐accommodated extension by oblique strain followed by block rotation of the Colorado Plateau, where extension in the RGR is accommodated by faulting (southern and northern RGR) and magmatism (central RGR). This study highlights different processes related to initiation, geometry, extension accommodation, and overall development of continental rifts.Plain Language SummaryWe identify patterns of faulting and volcanism in the Rio Grande rift (RGR) in the western United States to better understand how continental rifts evolve. Using methods for documenting rock cooling ages (thermochronology), we determined that rifting began around 25 million years ago (Ma) in both the northern and southern RGR. Rift faults continued to develop and grow for another 10 to 15 million years. The central RGR, however, shows that rift extension occurred through volcanic activity both as eruptions at the surface and as magma injection below the surface since ~15 Ma. Interestingly, RGR faulting in the north and south parts of the rift occurs on a north‐south line, while volcanism in the central RGR is along a northeast to southwest line. The differences in the location and orientation of faulting and volcanic activity may be related to the thickness of the lithosphere beneath different parts of the rift. Using these patterns of faulting and magmatism, we propose the RGR evolved through a combination of (1) oblique strain—extension diagonal to the rift and (2) block rotation—where the Colorado Plateau is the rotating block. This detailed study highlights different processes related to the accommodation of extension and the overall development of continental rifts.Key PointsInitiation of the Rio Grande rift appears to be synchronous ~25 Ma and does not support a northward propagation modelExtension is accommodated by faulting in the northern and southern Rio Grande rift and by magmatic injection in the central Rio Grande riftDifferent rift accommodation mechanisms may be controlled by preexisting weaknesses and lithospheric properties (i.e., thickness)Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/152704/1/tect21226.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/152704/2/wrcr21226-sup-00001-2019TC005635-SI.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/152704/3/tect21226_am.pd

    A comparison of flare forecasting methods, I: results from the “All-clear” workshop

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    YesSolar flares produce radiation which can have an almost immediate effect on the near-Earth environ- ment, making it crucial to forecast flares in order to mitigate their negative effects. The number of published approaches to flare forecasting using photospheric magnetic field observations has prolifer- ated, with varying claims about how well each works. Because of the different analysis techniques and data sets used, it is essentially impossible to compare the results from the literature. This problem is exacerbated by the low event rates of large solar flares. The challenges of forecasting rare events have long been recognized in the meteorology community, but have yet to be fully acknowledged by the space weather community. During the interagency workshop on “all clear” forecasts held in Boulder, CO in 2009, the performance of a number of existing algorithms was compared on common data sets, specifically line-of-sight magnetic field and continuum intensity images from MDI, with consistent definitions of what constitutes an event. We demonstrate the importance of making such systematic comparisons, and of using standard verification statistics to determine what constitutes a good prediction scheme. When a comparison was made in this fashion, no one method clearly outperformed all others, which may in part be due to the strong correlations among the parameters used by different methods to characterize an active region. For M-class flares and above, the set of methods tends towards a weakly positive skill score (as measured with several distinct metrics), with no participating method proving substantially better than climatological forecasts.This work is the outcome of many collaborative and cooperative efforts. The 2009 “Forecasting the All-Clear” Workshop in Boulder, CO was sponsored by NASA/Johnson Space Flight Center’s Space Radiation Analysis Group, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and the NOAA/Space Weather Prediction Center, with additional travel support for participating scientists from NASA LWS TRT NNH09CE72C to NWRA. The authors thank the participants of that workshop, in particular Drs. Neal Zapp, Dan Fry, Doug Biesecker, for the informative discussions during those three crazy days, and NCAR’s Susan Baltuch and NWRA’s Janet Biggs for organizational prowess. Workshop preparation and analysis support was provided for GB, KDL by NASA LWS TRT NNH09CE72C, and NASA Heliophysics GI NNH12CG10C. PAH and DSB received funding from the European Space Agency PRODEX Programme, while DSB and MKG also received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and in- novation programme under grant agreement No. 640216 (FLARECAST project). MKG also acknowledges research performed under the A-EFFort project and subsequent service implementation, supported under ESA Contract number 4000111994/14/D/MPR. YY was supported by the National Science Foundation under grants ATM 09-36665, ATM 07-16950, ATM-0745744 and by NASA under grants NNX0-7AH78G, NNXO-8AQ90G. YY owes his deepest gratitude to his advisers Prof. Frank Y. Shih, Prof. Haimin Wang and Prof. Ju Jing for long discussions, for reading previous drafts of his work and providing many valuable comments that improved the presentation and contents of this work. JMA was supported by NSF Career Grant AGS-1255024 and by a NMSU Vice President for Research Interdisciplinary Research Grant

    Melanoma cells break down LPA to establish local gradients that drive chemotactic dispersal.

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    The high mortality of melanoma is caused by rapid spread of cancer cells, which occurs unusually early in tumour evolution. Unlike most solid tumours, thickness rather than cytological markers or differentiation is the best guide to metastatic potential. Multiple stimuli that drive melanoma cell migration have been described, but it is not clear which are responsible for invasion, nor if chemotactic gradients exist in real tumours. In a chamber-based assay for melanoma dispersal, we find that cells migrate efficiently away from one another, even in initially homogeneous medium. This dispersal is driven by positive chemotaxis rather than chemorepulsion or contact inhibition. The principal chemoattractant, unexpectedly active across all tumour stages, is the lipid agonist lysophosphatidic acid (LPA) acting through the LPA receptor LPAR1. LPA induces chemotaxis of remarkable accuracy, and is both necessary and sufficient for chemotaxis and invasion in 2-D and 3-D assays. Growth factors, often described as tumour attractants, cause negligible chemotaxis themselves, but potentiate chemotaxis to LPA. Cells rapidly break down LPA present at substantial levels in culture medium and normal skin to generate outward-facing gradients. We measure LPA gradients across the margins of melanomas in vivo, confirming the physiological importance of our results. We conclude that LPA chemotaxis provides a strong drive for melanoma cells to invade outwards. Cells create their own gradients by acting as a sink, breaking down locally present LPA, and thus forming a gradient that is low in the tumour and high in the surrounding areas. The key step is not acquisition of sensitivity to the chemoattractant, but rather the tumour growing to break down enough LPA to form a gradient. Thus the stimulus that drives cell dispersal is not the presence of LPA itself, but the self-generated, outward-directed gradient
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