MicroCT imaging of long bones: archaeozoology and domestication from a digital perspective

X-ray microCT imaging offers the possibility to study interior structure of animal remains detecting agerelated changes of bone microstructure. In the present paper we analyse patterns in the development of diaphyseal structure in canids. In particular, the first metacarpal of present-day and archaeological red fox (Vulpes vulpes) and wolf (Canis lupus) individuals have been analysed. Variables describing bone structure were measured by inferring bone development through observation of cross-sections. Results show how bone structure changes through life and how this approach allows to separate young individuals from older ones. This is important both from a zooarchaeological perspective, since microCT imaging is a non-invasive tool to estimate the age at death of animal remains, and to discriminate taxa characterized by a close morphology but different adult body size

Quantum computing with trapped ions: a beginner's guide

This pedagogical article explains the basics of quantum computing using one of the most-used platform for scalable quantum computers: trapped ions. The suitability of the solution is addressed by showing its performance towards DiVincenzo criteria.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure

Networks of Cells and Petri Nets

We introduce a new class of P systems, called networks of cells, with rules allowing several cells to simultaneously interact with each other in order to produce some new objects inside some other output cells. We define different types of behavior for networks of cells by considering alternative strategies for the application of the rules: sequential application, free parallelism, maximal parallelism, locally-maximal parallelism and minimal parallelism. We devise a way for translating network of cells into place- transition nets with localities (PTL-nets, for short) - a specific class of Petri nets. Then, for such a construction, we show a behavioral equivalence between network of cells and corresponding PTL-nets only in the case maximal parallelism, sequential execution, and free parallelism, whereas we observe that, in the case of locally-maximal parallelism and minimal parallelism, the corresponding PTL-nets are not always able to mimic the behavior of network of cells. Also, we address the reverse problem of finding a corresponding network of cells for a given PTL-net by obtaining similar results concerning the relation- ships between their semantics. Finally, we present network-of-cells-based models of two classical synchronization problems: producer/consumer and dining philosophers

On the Assessment of an Unstructured Finite-Volume DES/LES Solver for Turbomachinery Applications

Improvements in mean flow and performances simulation in turbomachinery has brought research to focus more demanding topics like turbulence effects on turbines. Although overall performances are well predicted by Unsteady-RANS, other phenomena such as aerodynamic noise or transition need more accurate prediction of turbulent flow features. Thus different kinds of equation modeling other than URANS are needed to cope with this issue. The success of Detached-Eddy Simulation and Large-Eddy Simulation applications in reproducing physical behavior of flow turbulence is well documented in literature. Despite that, LES simulations are still computationally very expensive and their use for investigating industrial configurations requires a careful assessment of both numerical and closure modeling techniques. Moreover LES solvers are usually developed on a structured mesh topology for sake of simplicity of high-order schemes implementation. Application to complex geometries like those of turbomachinery is therefore difficult. The present work addresses this issue considering the feasibility of converting an operative in-house URANS solver, widely validated for applicative purposes, into higher resolution DES and LES, in order to face turbulence computation of turbomachinery technical cases. The solver presents a 3D unstructured finite-volume formulation, which is kept in LES approach in order to handle complex geometries and it is developed to perform unsteady simulations on turbine stages. Preliminary assessment of the solver has been performed to evaluate and improve the accuracy of the convective fluxes discretization on an inviscid bump test case. First a DES-based approach has been implemented, as it is less computationally challenging and numerically demanding than LES. A square cylinder test case has been assessed and compared with experiments. Then, a pure LES with a Smagorinsky sub-grid scale model has been evaluated on the test case of incompressible periodic channel flow in order to assess the capability of the solver to correctly sustain a time developing turbulent field

STREAmS: a high-fidelity accelerated solver for direct numerical simulation of compressible turbulent flow

We present STREAmS, an in-house high-fidelity solver for large-scale, massively parallel direct numerical simulations (DNS) of compressible turbulent flows on graphical processing units (GPUs). STREAmS is written in the Fortran 90 language and it is tailored to carry out DNS of canonical compressible wall-bounded flows, namely turbulent plane channel, zero-pressure gradient turbulent boundary layer and supersonic oblique shock-wave/boundary layer interactions. The solver incorporates state-of-the-art numerical algorithms, specifically designed to cope with the challenging problems associated with the solution of high-speed turbulent flows and can be used across a wide range of Mach numbers, extending from the low subsonic up to the hypersonic regime. The use of cuf automatic kernels allowed an easy and efficient porting on the GPU architecture minimizing the changes to the original CPU code, which is also maintained. We discuss a memory allocation strategy based on duplicated arrays for host and device which carefully minimizes the memory usage making the solver suitable for large scale computations on the latest GPU cards. Comparison between different CPUs and GPUs architectures strongly favor the latter, and executing the solver on a single NVIDIA Tesla P100 corresponds to using approximately 330 Intel Knights Landing CPU cores. STREAmS shows very good strong scalability and essentially ideal weak scalability up to 2048 GPUs, paving the way to simulations in the genuine high-Reynolds number regime, possibly at friction Reynolds number $Re_{\tau} > 10^4$. The solver is released open source under GPLv3 license and is available at https://github.com/matteobernardini/STREAmS.Comment: 11 pages, 11 figure

Primary Undifferentiated Large Cell Carcinoma of the Lacrimal Gland

Purpose To report a unique case of primary undifferentiated large cell carcinoma (LCCA) of the lacrimal gland, a tumor not previously described in the ophthalmic literature. Design Single interventional case report. Participants A patient affected by undifferentiated LCCA of the lacrimal gland. Methods A 65-year-old white man with a 3-month history of a painful mass in the left lacrimal gland fossa underwent an incisional biopsy that revealed a "high-grade" epithelial malignancy. Systemic workup revealed enlargement of the regional lymph nodes, and subsequently the patient underwent extended exenteration with clear histologic margins and radical neck lymphadenectomy followed by adjunctive radiotherapy. Fifteen months postoperatively, the patient is alive and well without evidence of local recurrence or metastatic disease. Main Outcome Measures Treatment result, evidence of local recurrences or distant metastasis, and follow-up. Results Histologic examination revealed a poorly circumscribed tumor composed of large cells invading orbital fat, lateral rectus muscle, and peripheral nerves. The surrounding orbital bone was infiltrated, but the surgical margins were clear. The cell population was composed of large cells (>30 μm) with eosinophilic cytoplasm and ovoid and irregular nuclei containing a prominent nucleoli and coarse chromatin. The cell borders were well defined. Mitosis figures were abundant, and Ki-67 was positive in more than 60% of the cells. The cells were arranged in cords and trabeculae or irregular sheets of discohesive cells. The immunophenotype analysis showed positivity for cytokeratin but negative cytokeratin 20 stains, which is considered a distinctive feature of LCCA. Conclusions Undifferentiated LCCAs are rare tumors of the major salivary glands, especially the parotid gland. Primary undifferentiated LCCA of the lacrimal gland has never been reported in the literature. Differential diagnosis must include a primary source in another organ. Given the aggressive nature of the tumor, radical surgery followed by radiotherapy is recommended, but evidence-based indications regarding the preferred line of treatment are lacking and the prognosis remains guarded. Financial Disclosure(s) The author(s) have no proprietary or commercial interest in any materials discussed in this article.Fil: Bernardini, Francesco P.. Ospedale Evangelico Internazionale; ItaliaFil: Croxatto, Juan Oscar. Fundación Oftalmología Argentina "J. Malbrán"; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Bandelloni, Roberto. No especifíca

A Hybrid Approach to Modeling Biological Systems

This paper investigates a hybrid approach to modeling molecular interactions in biology. P systems, π-calculus, and Petri nets models, and two tools, Daikon, used in software reverse-engineering, and PRISM, a probabilistic model checker, are investigated for their expressiveness and complementary roles in describing and analyzing biological systems. A simple case study illustrates this approach

Using X-ray Microtomography to Discriminate Between Dogs’ and Wolves’ Lower Carnassial Tooth

Dogs and wolves exhibit similar dental features since they belong to the same species. Here we explore a new method to discriminate between wild and domestic forms, based on the analysis of the internal structure of the teeth. We analysed the lower first molar of 21 dogs and 17 wolves. X-ray microtomographic analyses were performed and tooth tissue proportions were assessed by the proportion of the dentine volume. As a result, dog molars show a lower percentage of dentine than those of wolves. This analysis offers promising applications in the study of dog domestication origins

Assessment of heat transfer and Mach number effects on high-speed turbulent boundary layers

High-speed vehicles experience a highly challenging environment in which the free-stream Mach number and surface temperature greatly influence aerodynamic drag and heat transfer. The interplay of these two parameters strongly affects the near-wall dynamics of high-speed turbulent boundary layers in a non-trivial way, breaking similarity arguments on velocity and temperature fields, typically derived for adiabatic cases. In this work, we present direct numerical simulations of flat-plate zero-pressure-gradient turbulent boundary layers spanning three free-stream Mach numbers [2,4,6] and four wall temperature conditions (from adiabatic to very cold walls), emphasising the choice of the diabatic parameter $\mathit{\Theta}$ (Zhang, Bi, Hussain & She, J. Fluid Mech., vol. 739, pp. 392-420) to recover a similar flow organisation at different Mach numbers. We link qualitative observations on flow patterns to first- and second-order statistics to explain the strong decoupling of temperature-velocity fluctuations that occurs at reduced wall temperatures and high Mach numbers. For these cases, we find that the mean temperature gradient in the near-wall region can reach such a strong intensity that it promotes the formation of a secondary peak of thermal production in the viscous sublayer, which is in direct contrast with the monotonic behaviour of adiabatic profiles. We propose different physical mechanisms induced by wall-cooling and compressibility that result in apparently similar flow features, such as a higher peak in the streamwise velocity turbulence intensity, and distinct ones, such as the separation of turbulent scales