Influence of ring frame process parameters on yarn structure and fabric assistance

An attempt has been made to study the influence of ring frame parameters i.e. yarn twist multiplies, spindle speed and ring frame draft on yarn characteristics to exploit the translation of yarn structures into the fabric assistance. Understanding the relationship between yarn structure and fabric strength helps in engineering the yarn structure to improve the strength translation of yarns to fabric strength. Accordingly, study on fabric strength in weft/warp direction per yarn, weft/ warp break force inside fabric, weft/warp pull-out force and yarn failure zone length are also carried out. Yarn structure is found to affect the fabric thickness and fabric tensile behaviour. The yarn diameter has a direct effect on the yarn pull out force. The yarn structure also plays a dominant role in deciding the yarn failure zone length

Cyber-Empathic Design: A data-driven framework for product design

One of the critical tasks in product design is to map information from the consumer space to the design space. Currently, this process is largely dependent on the designer to identify and map how psychological and consumer level factors relate to engineered product attributes. In this way current methodologies lack provision to test a designer’s cognitive reasoning and could therefore introduce bias while mapping from consumer to design space. Also, current dominant frameworks do not include user-product interaction data in design decision making and neither do they assist designers in understanding why a consumer has a particular perception about a product. This paper proposes a new framework — Cyber-Empathic Design — where user-product interaction data is acquired via embedded sensors in the products. To understand the motivations behind consumer perceptions, a network of latent constructs is used which forms a causal model framework. Structural Equation Modeling is used as the parameter estimation and hypothesis testing technique making the framework falsifiable in nature. To demonstrate the framework and demonstrate its effectiveness a case study of sensor integrated shoes is presented in this work, where two models are compared — one survey based and using the Cyber-Empathic framework model. It is shown that the Cyber-Empathic framework results in improved fit. The case study also demonstrates the technique to test a designers’ cognitive hypothesis.</jats:p

Multiflagellarity leads to the size-independent swimming speed of bacteria

Flagella are essential organelles of bacteria enabling their swimming motility. While monotrichous or uniflagellar bacteria possess a single flagellum at one pole of their body, peritrichous bacteria grow multiple flagella over the body surface, which form a rotating helical bundle propelling the bacteria forward. Although the adaptation of bacterial cellular features is under strong evolutionary pressure, existing evidence suggests that multiflagellarity confers no noticeable benefit to the swimming of peritrichous bacteria in bulk fluids compared with uniflagellar bacteria. This puzzling result poses a long-standing question: why does multiflagellarity emerge given the high metabolic cost of flagellar synthesis? Contrary to the prevailing wisdom that its benefit lies beyond the basic function of flagella in steady swimming, here we show that multiflagellarity provides a significant selective advantage to bacteria in terms of their swimming ability, allowing bacteria to maintain a constant swimming speed over a wide range of body size. By synergizing experiments of immense sample sizes with quantitative hydrodynamic modeling and simulations, we reveal how bacteria utilize the increasing number of flagella to regulate the flagellar motor load, which leads to faster flagellar rotation neutralizing the higher fluid drag on their larger bodies. Without such a precise balancing mechanism, the swimming speed of uniflagellar bacteria generically decreases with increasing body size. Our study sheds light on the origin of multiflagellarity, a ubiquitous cellular feature of bacteria. The uncovered difference between uniflagellar and multiflagellar swimming is important for understanding environmental influence on bacterial morphology and useful for designing artificial flagellated microswimmers.Comment: 23 pages, 4 figure

Near infrared photoacoustic detection of sentinel lymph nodes with gold nanobeacons

Detection of sentinel lymph node (SLN) using photoacoustic imaging is an emerging technique for noninvasive axillary staging of breast cancer. Due to the absence of intrinsic contrast inside the lymph nodes, exogenous contrast agents are used for photoacoustic detection. In this work, we have demonstrated near infrared detection of SLN with gold nanobeacons (GNBs) providing the photoacoustic contrast in a rodent model. We found that size dictates the in vivo characteristics of these nanoparticles in SLN imaging. Larger nanobeacons with high payloads of gold were not as efficient as smaller size nanobeacons with lower payloads for this purpose. Colloidal GNBs were designed as a nanomedicine platform with “soft” nature that is amenable to bio-elimination, an essential feature for in vivo efficacy and safety. The GNBs were synthesized as lipid- or polymer-encapsulated colloidal particles incorporating tiny gold nanoparticles (2–4 nm) in three tunable sizes (90 nm, 150 nm and 290 nm). Smaller GNBs were noted trafficking through the lymphatic system and accumulating more efficiently in the lymph nodes in comparison to the bigger nanoagents. At 20 min, the GNBs reached the SLN and were no longer observed within the draining lymphatic vessel. Within 1 h post-injection, the contrast ratio of the lymph nodes with the surrounding blood vessels was 9:1. These findings were also supported by analytical measurements of the ex vivo tissue samples. Results indicate that cumulative nanoparticle deposition in lymph nodes is size dependent and that high payloads of gold, although offering greater contrast in vitro, may yield nanoagents with poor intradermal migration and lymphatic transport characteristics

Phase dependent view of Cyclotron lines from model accretion mounds on Neutron Stars

In this paper we make a phase dependent study of the effect of the distortion of local magnetic field due to confinement of accreted matter in X-ray pulsars on the cyclotron spectra emitted from the hotspot . We have numerically solved the Grad-Shafranov equation for axisymmetric static MHD equilibria of matter confined at the polar cap of neutron stars. From our solution we model the cyclotron spectra that will be emitted from the region, using a simple prescription and integrating over the entire mound. Radiative transfer through the accretion column overlying the mound may significantly modify the spectra in comparison to those presented here. However we ignore this in the present paper in order to expose the effects directly attributable to the mound itself. We perform a spin phase dependent analysis of the spectra to study the effect of the viewing geometry.Comment: 13 pages, 19 figure