Multiphysical failure processes in concrete: a consistent multiscale homogenization procedure

Durability and strength capabilities of concrete materials are vastly affected by the combined action of temperature and mechanical loading, which give rise to multiphysical failure processes. Such a phenomenon involves complex cracking, degradation and transport mechanisms on different scale lengths of concrete mixtures which, in turn, depend on the particular properties of the different constituents. Thus, the macroscopic observation of relevant concrete mechanical features such as strength, ductility and durability are the result of several different properties, processes and mechanisms which are not only coupled but moreover, depend on multiple scales. Particularly, regarding the pore pressure and thermal actions, most of the degradation processes in concrete are controlled by the heterogeneities of the microscopic scale. In the case of the mechanical actions both the micro and mesoscales play a relevant role. In this context, multiphysical failure processes in cementitious material-based mixtures like concrete can only and fully be understood and accurately described when considering its multiscale and multiconstituent features. In the realm of the theoretical and computational solid mechanics many relevant proposals were made to model the complex and coupled thermo-hydromechanical response behavior of concrete. Most of them are related to macroscopic formulations which account for the different mechanisms and transport phenomena through empirical, dissipative, poromechanical theories. Moreover, although relevant progress was made regarding the formulation of multiscale theories and approaches, none of the existing proposals deal with multiphysical failure processes in concrete. It should be said in this sense that, among the different multiscale approaches for material modeling proposed so far, those based on computational homogenization methods have demonstrated to be the most effective ones due to the involved versatility and accuracy. In this work a thermodynamically consistent semi-concurrent multiscale approach is formulated for modeling the thermo-poro-plastic failure behavior of concrete materials. A discrete approach is considered to represent the RVE material response. After formulating the fundamental equations describing the proposed homogenizations of the thermodynamical variables, the constitutive models for both the skeleton and porous phases are described. Then, numerical analyses are presented to demonstrate the predictive capabilities of the proposed thermodynamically consistent multiscale homogenization procedure for thermo-mechanical failure processes in concrete mixtures

Optimizing DDRADseq in non-model species: A Case Study in Eucalyptus dunnii Maiden

Restriction site-associated DNA sequencing (RADseq) and its derived protocols, such as double digest RADseq (ddRADseq), offer a flexible and highly cost-effective strategy for efficient plant genome sampling. This has become one of the most popular genotyping approaches for breeding, conservation, and evolution studies in model and non-model plant species. However, universal protocols do not always adapt well to non-model species. Herein, this study reports the development of an optimized and detailed ddRADseq protocol in Eucalyptus dunnii, a non-model species, which combines different aspects of published methodologies. The initial protocol was established using only two samples by selecting the best combination of enzymes and through optimal size selection and simplifying lab procedures. Both single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and simple sequence repeats (SSRs) were determined with high accuracy after applying stringent bioinformatics settings and quality filters, with and without a reference genome. To scale it up to 24 samples, we added barcoded adapters. We also applied automatic size selection, and therefore obtained an optimal number of loci, the expected SNP locus density, and genome-wide distribution. Reliability and cross-sequencing platform compatibility were verified through dissimilarity coefficients of 0.05 between replicates. To our knowledge, this optimized ddRADseq protocol will allow users to go from the DNA sample to genotyping data in a highly accessible and reproducible way.Instituto de BiotecnologíaFil: Aguirre, Natalia Cristina. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Biotecnología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Filippi, Carla Valeria. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Biotecnología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Zaina, Giusi. University of Udine. Department of Agricultural, Food, Environmental and Animal Sciences; ItaliaFil: Rivas, Juan Gabriel. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Biotecnología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Acuña, Cintia Vanesa. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Biotecnología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Villalba, Pamela Victoria. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Biotecnología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Garcia, Martin Nahuel. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Biotecnología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Gonzalez, Sergio Alberto. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Biotecnología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Rivarola, Maximo Lisandro. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Biotecnología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Martinez, Maria Carolina. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Biotecnología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Puebla, Andrea Fabiana. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Biotecnología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Morgante, Michele. University of Udine. Department of Agricultural, Food, Environmental and Animal Sciences; ItaliaFil: Hopp, Horacio Esteban. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Biotecnología; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Paniego, Norma Beatriz. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Biotecnología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Marcucci Poltri, Susana Noemi. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Biotecnología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

Pathological and Incidental Findings on Brain MRI in a Single-Center Study of 229 Consecutive Girls with Early or Precocious Puberty

Central precocious puberty may result from organic brain lesions, but is most frequently of idiopathic origin. Clinical or biochemical factors which could predict a pathological brain MRI in girls with CPP have been searched for. With the recent decline in age at pubertal onset among US and European girls, it has been suggested that only girls with CPP below 6 years of age should have brain MRI performed

Stochastic particle packing with specified granulometry and porosity

This work presents a technique for particle size generation and placement in arbitrary closed domains. Its main application is the simulation of granular media described by disks. Particle size generation is based on the statistical analysis of granulometric curves which are used as empirical cumulative distribution functions to sample from mixtures of uniform distributions. The desired porosity is attained by selecting a certain number of particles, and their placement is performed by a stochastic point process. We present an application analyzing different types of sand and clay, where we model the grain size with the gamma, lognormal, Weibull and hyperbolic distributions. The parameters from the resulting best fit are used to generate samples from the theoretical distribution, which are used for filling a finite-size area with non-overlapping disks deployed by a Simple Sequential Inhibition stochastic point process. Such filled areas are relevant as plausible inputs for assessing Discrete Element Method and similar techniques

Maternal serum steroid levels are unrelated to fetal sex: a study in twin pregnancies

Increased prenatal exposure to testosterone (T) in females of an opposite-sex (OS) twin pair may have an effect on the development of sex-typical cognitive and behavioral patterns. The prenatal exposure to T due to hormone transfer in OS twin females may occur in two ways, one directly via the feto–fetal transfer route within the uterus, the other indirectly through maternal–fetal transfer and based in the maternal–fetal compartment. Although some studies in singletons indeed found that women pregnant with a male fetus have higher T levels during gestation than women pregnant with a female fetus, many other studies could not find any relation between the sex of the fetus and maternal serum steroid levels. Therefore at present it is unclear whether a pregnant woman bearing a male has higher levels of T than a woman bearing a female. Up to this point, no-one has investigated this issue in twin pregnancies. We examined the relationship between maternal serum steroid levels and sex of fetus in 17 female–female, 9 male–male and 29 OS twin pregnancies. No differences were observed between the maternal serum steroid levels of women expecting single-sex and mixed-sex offspring. It is concluded that the source of prenatal T exposure in females probably comes from the fetal unit, which is the direct route of fetal hormone transfer

A comparative study on the effects of a pesticide (cypermethrin) and two metals (copper, lead) to serum biochemistry of Nile tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus

The present study was designed to compare the responses in freshwater fish Oreochromis niloticus exposed to a synthetic pyrethroid, cypermethrin (CYP); an essential metal, copper (Cu); and a nonessential metal, lead (Pb). Fish were exposed to 0.05 μg/l CYP, 0.05 mg/l Cu, and 0.05 mg/l Pb for 4 and 21 days, and the alterations in serum enzyme activities, metabolite, and ion levels were determined. Alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) activities increased in response to CYP, Cu, and Pb exposures at both exposure periods. While elevations in alkaline phosphatase (ALP) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) activities and in cholesterol level were observed in pesticide-exposed fish at 4 and 21 days, they increased in Cu- and Pb-exposed fish at 21 days. Although metal-exposed fish showed increases in cortisol and glucose levels at 4 days followed by a return to control levels at the end of the exposure period, their levels elevated in pesticide-exposed fish at both exposure periods. Total protein levels decreased in Pb- and pesticide-exposed fish at 21 days. Na+ and Cl− levels decreased in pesticide-exposed fish at both exposure periods and in Cu- and Pb-exposed fish at 21 days. The exposures of pesticide and metals caused an elevation in K+ level at the end of the exposure period. The present study showed that observed alterations in all serum biochemical parameters of fish-treated pesticide were higher than those in fish exposed to metals

Mortality from gastrointestinal congenital anomalies at 264 hospitals in 74 low-income, middle-income, and high-income countries: a multicentre, international, prospective cohort study

Background: Congenital anomalies are the fifth leading cause of mortality in children younger than 5 years globally. Many gastrointestinal congenital anomalies are fatal without timely access to neonatal surgical care, but few studies have been done on these conditions in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). We compared outcomes of the seven most common gastrointestinal congenital anomalies in low-income, middle-income, and high-income countries globally, and identified factors associated with mortality. // Methods: We did a multicentre, international prospective cohort study of patients younger than 16 years, presenting to hospital for the first time with oesophageal atresia, congenital diaphragmatic hernia, intestinal atresia, gastroschisis, exomphalos, anorectal malformation, and Hirschsprung's disease. Recruitment was of consecutive patients for a minimum of 1 month between October, 2018, and April, 2019. We collected data on patient demographics, clinical status, interventions, and outcomes using the REDCap platform. Patients were followed up for 30 days after primary intervention, or 30 days after admission if they did not receive an intervention. The primary outcome was all-cause, in-hospital mortality for all conditions combined and each condition individually, stratified by country income status. We did a complete case analysis. // Findings: We included 3849 patients with 3975 study conditions (560 with oesophageal atresia, 448 with congenital diaphragmatic hernia, 681 with intestinal atresia, 453 with gastroschisis, 325 with exomphalos, 991 with anorectal malformation, and 517 with Hirschsprung's disease) from 264 hospitals (89 in high-income countries, 166 in middle-income countries, and nine in low-income countries) in 74 countries. Of the 3849 patients, 2231 (58·0%) were male. Median gestational age at birth was 38 weeks (IQR 36–39) and median bodyweight at presentation was 2·8 kg (2·3–3·3). Mortality among all patients was 37 (39·8%) of 93 in low-income countries, 583 (20·4%) of 2860 in middle-income countries, and 50 (5·6%) of 896 in high-income countries (p<0·0001 between all country income groups). Gastroschisis had the greatest difference in mortality between country income strata (nine [90·0%] of ten in low-income countries, 97 [31·9%] of 304 in middle-income countries, and two [1·4%] of 139 in high-income countries; p≤0·0001 between all country income groups). Factors significantly associated with higher mortality for all patients combined included country income status (low-income vs high-income countries, risk ratio 2·78 [95% CI 1·88–4·11], p<0·0001; middle-income vs high-income countries, 2·11 [1·59–2·79], p<0·0001), sepsis at presentation (1·20 [1·04–1·40], p=0·016), higher American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) score at primary intervention (ASA 4–5 vs ASA 1–2, 1·82 [1·40–2·35], p<0·0001; ASA 3 vs ASA 1–2, 1·58, [1·30–1·92], p<0·0001]), surgical safety checklist not used (1·39 [1·02–1·90], p=0·035), and ventilation or parenteral nutrition unavailable when needed (ventilation 1·96, [1·41–2·71], p=0·0001; parenteral nutrition 1·35, [1·05–1·74], p=0·018). Administration of parenteral nutrition (0·61, [0·47–0·79], p=0·0002) and use of a peripherally inserted central catheter (0·65 [0·50–0·86], p=0·0024) or percutaneous central line (0·69 [0·48–1·00], p=0·049) were associated with lower mortality. // Interpretation: Unacceptable differences in mortality exist for gastrointestinal congenital anomalies between low-income, middle-income, and high-income countries. Improving access to quality neonatal surgical care in LMICs will be vital to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 3.2 of ending preventable deaths in neonates and children younger than 5 years by 2030