Factors controlling ductility in ultrafine grain aluminum alloys under monotonic and cyclic loading

Ultrafine grained (UFG) Al processed by severe plastic deformation (SPD) methods are characterized by high strength and a limited uniform ductility. Friction stir processing (FSP), an offshoot of friction stir welding has emerged as a new technique to produce UFG alloys. FSP-UFG Al alloys show a distinctly different behavior with higher uniform elongation and improved high cycle fatigue life as compared to other SPD processed variants. The objective of this work was to study the microstructural basis for such mechanical behavior in FSP-UFG Al alloys. To study the mechanical behavior of FSP Al alloys, a subsize bending fatigue and uniaxial tensile test beds were designed. These subsize test systems were validated using commercial alloys for which standard handbook test data are available. A commercial Al-Li alloy in different microstructural conditions was investigated using the subsize fatigue test bed. The results indicated that grain shape, texture, precipitate type and precipitate distribution controlled the high cycle fatigue life. To understand the mechanical behavior of UFG Al, an Al-Mg-Zn alloy was selected. The subsize high cycle fatigue tests conducted on this alloy show a significant difference in low angle boundary stability compared to their coarse grain counterpart. Key observations on the UFG Al-Mg-Zn alloy include: (a) Fatigue induced room temperature recrystallization. (b) Improved fatigue life at higher stresses (normalized) compared to corresponding coarse grained alloy in T6 condition. (c) Beneficial effect of distributed second phases on fatigue life through enhanced dislocation storage. Subsize tensile tests conducted on the UFG Al alloy suggests, that dislocation annihilation controls the deformation process. The experimental data indicated that such annihilation mechanisms were active even within the matrix. The role of low angle boundaries with consequent boundary diffusion was found to be significant in this regard. A diffusion based model proposed for UFG Al ductility fits the expected stress-strain trend --Abstract, page iv

IMPORTANCE OF LOCAL DEITIES AMONG THE MAHISHYA COMMUNITY OF EAST MIDNAPORE: A STUDY THROUGH NARRATIVES FROM EVERYDAY LIFE

People of rural India have been worshiped a number of village deities which are totally unknown to the urban population. Moreover which are specif to locality, villages and village community as well. These deities have no place in the great tradition of India but they have played dominant role in little tradition. They are popular to the villagers for their charismatic power. Villagers have been facing different problems in their personal and family lives throughout the year. In those crises, they have prayed to them to get relief from the probable hazardous situations. They felt that it is the blessing of their local deities.This paper has been prepared on the basis of field experiences which have been gathered during October, 2018 to January, 2019 from two villages (namely, Bahadurpur village of Bhagawanpur-II Block and Ali Chak village of Khejuri-I Block) of East Midnapore. Researchers have been revealed that in both villages people have been worshipped ‘Smasan Kali’ and Lord Hori as their ‘Grama Devi’ and ‘Grama Devata’. There are different existing popular narratives regarding these deities and their kind miraculous power. Researchers have been collected several narratives from there about these local deities. Villagers have gathered their motivation from those stories. So, this paper has been able to explore the dominant role of these deities in local level. This has been attempted to find out the significance of the narratives in context of deities in village life

A nonparametric regression-based linkage scan of rheumatoid factor-IgM using sib-pair squared sums and differences

Parametric linkage methods for quantitative trait locus mapping require explicit specification of the probability model of the quantitative trait and hence can lead to misleading linkage inferences when the model assumptions are not valid. Ghosh and Majumder developed a nonparametric regression method based on kernel-smoothing for linkage mapping of quantitative trait locus using squared differences in trait values of independent sib pairs, which is relatively more robust than parametric methods with respect to violations in distributional assumptions. In this study, we modify the above mentioned nonparametric regression method by considering local linear polynomials instead of the Nadaraya-Watson estimator and squared sums of sib-pair trait values in addition to squared differences to perform a genome-wide scan of rheumatoid factor-IgM levels on sib pairs in the Genetic Analysis Workshop 15 simulated data set. We obtain significant evidence of linkage very close to the quantitative trait locus controlling for RF-IgM. We find that the simultaneous use of squared differences and squared sums increases the power to detect linkage compared to using only squared differences. However, because of all the sib pairs are selected for rheumatoid arthritis, there is reduced variance of RF-IgM values, and empirical power to detect linkage is not very high. We also compare the performance of our method with two linear regression approaches: the classical Haseman-Elston method using squared sib-pair trait differences and its extension proposed by Elston et al. using mean-corrected sib-pair cross-products. We find that the proposed nonparametric method yields more power than the linear regression approaches

Disseminated Histoplasmosis in an immuno- competent Individual

Disseminated histoplasmosis in an immunocompetent individual is a rare phenomenon. The microconidia of this dimorphic fungus are transmitted through inhalational route and undergo dissemination. Cytopenias in the background of immunocompetence is an extremely rare finding in disseminated histoplasmosis. Here, we report a case of disseminated histoplasmosis in an immunocompetent patient presenting with fever, hepatosplenomegaly and bicytopenia

Topology of the conceptual network of language

We define two words in a language to be connected if they express similar concepts. The network of connections among the many thousands of words that make up a language is important not only for the study of the structure and evolution of languages, but also for cognitive science. We study this issue quantitatively, by mapping out the conceptual network of the English language, with the connections being defined by the entries in a Thesaurus dictionary. We find that this network presents a small-world structure, with an amazingly small average shortest path, and appears to exhibit an asymptotic scale-free feature with algebraic connectivity distribution.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, Revte

Epidemiology of community-acquired meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus obtained from the UK West Midlands region

Between January 2005 and December 2005, 199 meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) isolates were obtained from nonhospitalised patients presenting skin and soft tissue infections to local general practitioners. The study area incorporated 57 surgeries from three Primary Care Trusts in the Lichfield, Tamworth, Burntwood, North and East Birmingham regions of Central England, UK. Following antibiotic susceptibility testing, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, Panton-Valentine leukocidin gene detection and SCCmec element assignment, 95% of the isolates were shown to be related to hospital epidemic strains EMRSA-15 and EMRSA-16. In total 87% of the isolate population harboured SCCmec IV, 9% had SCCmec II and 4% were identified as carrying novel SCCmec IIIa-mecI. When mapped to patient home postcode, a diverse distribution of isolates harbouring SCCmec II and SCCmec IV was observed; however, the majority of isolates harbouring SCCmec IIIa-mecI were from patients residing in the north-west of the study region, highlighting a possible localised clonal group. Transmission of MRSA from the hospital setting into the surrounding community population, as demonstrated by this study, warrants the need for targeted patient screening and decolonisation in both the clinical and community environments