Accuracy of the QUAD4 thick shell element

The accuracy of the relatively new QUAD4 thick shell element is assessed via comparison with a theoretical solution for thick homogeneous and honeycomb flat simply supported plates under the action of a uniform pressure load. The theoretical thick plate solution is based on the theory developed by Reissner and includes the effects of transverse shear flexibility which are not included in the thin plate solutions based on Kirchoff plate theory. In addition, the QUAD4 is assessed using a set of finite element test problems developed by the MacNeal-Schwendler Corp. (MSC). Comparison of the COSMIC QUAD4 element as well as those from MSC and Universal Analytics, Inc. (UAI) for these test problems is presented. The current COSMIC QUAD4 element is shown to have excellent comparison with both the theoretical solutions and also those from the two commercial versions of NASTRAN that it was compared to

Andrew Melville, sacred chronology and world history: the Carmina Danielis 9 and the Antichristus

The accepted view of the ecclesiastical reformer Andrew Melville (1545–1622) as the dynamic leader of the Presbyterian movement in Jacobean Scotland has been severely eroded in recent years, with particular criticism of the actual importance of his contribution to the Kirk and to Scottish higher education. While this reductionism has been necessary, it has resulted in an inversion of the overwhelmingly positive traditional image of Melville, and does not give us a rounded assessment of his life and works. This article attempts to partially redress this balance by looking at a neglected aspect of Melville's Latin writings, which showcase his talents as a humanist intellectual and biblical commentator. It focuses on two long poems that are both commentaries and paraphrases of Daniel and Revelation: the Carmina Danielis and the Antichristus. Through these poems, we see how Melville engaged with two problems exercising reformed theologians across Europe: the dating of key biblical events and the historicised meaning of prophecies within these texts. We also find evidence that Melville read widely among both contemporary and ancient commentators on both these issues

Effect of Low-Carbohydrate, Unlimited Calorie Diet on the Treatment of Childhood Obesity: A Prospective Controlled Study

Background: Childhood obesity has been recognized as the new epidemic in developed countries. Caloric restriction with physical activity is the main therapeutic treatment available for these children. We compared two different dietary protocols to assess treatment efficacy. Methods: Obese children from the Pediatric Endocrinology clinic were prospectively recruited for the study. Children and their parents were allowed to choose one of two dietary protocols: (1) carbohydrate restricted diet (\u3c30 g/day), with unlimited calories, protein, and fat (High protein, Low CHO Diet), and (2) calorie restricted diet (Low Cal Diet). Anthropometric data were measured at baseline and at the 2 month follow up appointment. Results: Thirty-seven children completed the study of whom 27 chose High Protein, Low CHO Diet and 10 chose Low Cal diet. No differences in gender ratio, age, or BMI were observed at baseline. At 2 months, children in the High Protein, Low CHO Diet lost an average of 5.21 ± 3.44 kg (p \u3c 0.001) and decreased their BMI by 2.42 ± 1.3 points (p \u3c 0.001), compared to the children in the Low Cal Diet who gained an average of 2.36 ± 2.54 kg and 1.00 point on the BMI value (p \u3c 0.001). Conclusions: A high protein, low carbohydrate, unlimited calorie diet was superior to a restricted calorie protocol for weight loss in obese school age children; moreover, compliance was better

Aquatic Eddy Correlation: Quantifying the Artificial Flux Caused by Stirring-Sensitive O2 Sensors

In the last decade, the aquatic eddy correlation (EC) technique has proven to be a powerful approach for non-invasive measurements of oxygen fluxes across the sediment water interface. Fundamental to the EC approach is the correlation of turbulent velocity and oxygen concentration fluctuations measured with high frequencies in the same sampling volume. Oxygen concentrations are commonly measured with fast responding electrochemical microsensors. However, due to their own oxygen consumption, electrochemical microsensors are sensitive to changes of the diffusive boundary layer surrounding the probe and thus to changes in the ambient flow velocity. The so-called stirring sensitivity of microsensors constitutes an inherent correlation of flow velocity and oxygen sensing and thus an artificial flux which can confound the benthic flux determination. To assess the artificial flux we measured the correlation between the turbulent flow velocity and the signal of oxygen microsensors in a sealed annular flume without any oxygen sinks and sources. Experiments revealed significant correlations, even for sensors designed to have low stirring sensitivities of ~0.7%. The artificial fluxes depended on ambient flow conditions and, counter intuitively, increased at higher velocities because of the nonlinear contribution of turbulent velocity fluctuations. The measured artificial fluxes ranged from 2-70 mmol m(-2) d(-1) for weak and very strong turbulent flow, respectively. Further, the stirring sensitivity depended on the sensor orientation towards the flow. For a sensor orientation typically used in field studies, the artificial flux could be predicted using a simplified mathematical model. Optical microsensors (optodes) that should not exhibit a stirring sensitivity were tested in parallel and did not show any significant correlation between O2 signals and turbulent flow. In conclusion, EC data obtained with electrochemical sensors can be affected by artificial flux and we recommend using optical microsensors in future EC-studies

Microwave Schottky diagnostic systems for the Fermilab Tevatron, Recycler, and CERN LHC

A means for non-invasive measurement of transverse and longitudinal characteristics of bunched beams in synchrotrons has been developed based on high sensitivity slotted waveguide pickups. The pickups allow for bandwidths exceeding hundreds of MHz while maintaining good beam sensitivity characteristics. Wide bandwidth is essential to allow bunch-by-bunch measurements by means of a fast gate. The Schottky detector system is installed and successfully commissioned in the Fermilab Tevatron, Recycler and CERN LHC synchrotrons. Measurement capabilities include tune, chromaticity, and momentum spread of single or multiple beam bunches in any combination. With appropriate calibrations, emittance can also be measured by integrating the area under the incoherent tune sidebands

Beam instrumentation for the Tevatron Collider

The Tevatron in Collider Run II (2001-present) is operating with six times more bunches and many times higher beam intensities and luminosities than in Run I (1992-1995). Beam diagnostics were crucial for the machine start-up and the never-ending luminosity upgrade campaign. We present the overall picture of the Tevatron diagnostics development for Run II, outline machine needs for new instrumentation, present several notable examples that led to Tevatron performance improvements, and discuss the lessons for future colliders

BAR-PLUS: the Bologna Annotation Resource Plus for functional and structural annotation of protein sequences

We introduce BAR-PLUS (BAR+), a web server for functional and structural annotation of protein sequences. BAR+ is based on a large-scale genome cross comparison and a non-hierarchical clustering procedure characterized by a metric that ensures a reliable transfer of features within clusters. In this version, the method takes advantage of a large-scale pairwise sequence comparison of 13 495 736 protein chains also including 988 complete proteomes. Available sequence annotation is derived from UniProtKB, GO, Pfam and PDB. When PDB templates are present within a cluster (with or without their SCOP classification), profile Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) are computed on the basis of sequence to structure alignment and are cluster-associated (Cluster-HMM). Therefrom, a library of 10 858 HMMs is made available for aligning even distantly related sequences for structural modelling. The server also provides pairwise query sequence–structural target alignments computed from the correspondent Cluster-HMM. BAR+ in its present version allows three main categories of annotation: PDB [with or without SCOP (*)] and GO and/or Pfam; PDB (*) without GO and/or Pfam; GO and/or Pfam without PDB (*) and no annotation. Each category can further comprise clusters where GO and Pfam functional annotations are or are not statistically significant. BAR+ is available at http://bar.biocomp.unibo.it/bar2.0

Surface Temperature Probability Distributions in the NARCCAP Hindcast Experiment: Evaluation Methodology, Metrics, and Results

Methodology is developed and applied to evaluate the characteristics of daily surface temperature distributions in a six-member regional climate model (RCM) hindcast experiment conducted as part of the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP). A surface temperature dataset combining gridded station observations and reanalysis is employed as the primary reference. Temperature biases are documented across the distribution, focusing on the median and tails. Temperature variance is generally higher in the RCMs than reference, while skewness is reasonably simulated in winter over the entire domain and over the western United States and Canada in summer. Substantial differences in skewness exist over the southern and eastern portions of the domain in summer. Four examples with observed long-tailed probability distribution functions (PDFs) are selected for model comparison. Long cold tails in the winter are simulated with high fidelity for Seattle, Washington, and Chicago, Illinois. In summer, theRCMs are unable to capture the distribution width and long warm tails for the coastal location of Los Angeles, California, while long cold tails are poorly realized for Houston, Texas. The evaluation results are repeated using two additional reanalysis products adjusted by station observations and two standard reanalysis products to assess the impact of observational uncertainty. Results are robust when compared with those obtained using the adjusted reanalysis products as reference, while larger uncertainties are introduced when standard reanalysis is employed as reference. Model biases identified in this work will allow for further investigation into associated mechanisms and implications for future simulations of temperature extremes

A focused telephonic nursing intervention delivers improved adherence to A1c testing

Compliance with hemoglobin A1c (A1c) testing is suboptimal despite the clear national recommendations and guidelines established for care of patients with diabetes. Recent studies have demonstrated a relationship between participation in a diabetes disease management (DM) program and improved adherence to A1c testing. A focused intervention study was initiated to investigate the ability of a DM program to drive improvement in A1c testing. A cohort of 36,327 members experienced a statistically significant increase (29%) in A1c testing while participating in the 6-month focused intervention. This finding demonstrated that a focused DM intervention is able to deliver improvement in a clinical process metric critical for managing patients with diabetes, thereby reducing their risk of disease exacerbation

Sequence alignment, mutual information, and dissimilarity measures for constructing phylogenies

Existing sequence alignment algorithms use heuristic scoring schemes which cannot be used as objective distance metrics. Therefore one relies on measures like the p- or log-det distances, or makes explicit, and often simplistic, assumptions about sequence evolution. Information theory provides an alternative, in the form of mutual information (MI) which is, in principle, an objective and model independent similarity measure. MI can be estimated by concatenating and zipping sequences, yielding thereby the "normalized compression distance". So far this has produced promising results, but with uncontrolled errors. We describe a simple approach to get robust estimates of MI from global pairwise alignments. Using standard alignment algorithms, this gives for animal mitochondrial DNA estimates that are strikingly close to estimates obtained from the alignment free methods mentioned above. Our main result uses algorithmic (Kolmogorov) information theory, but we show that similar results can also be obtained from Shannon theory. Due to the fact that it is not additive, normalized compression distance is not an optimal metric for phylogenetics, but we propose a simple modification that overcomes the issue of additivity. We test several versions of our MI based distance measures on a large number of randomly chosen quartets and demonstrate that they all perform better than traditional measures like the Kimura or log-det (resp. paralinear) distances. Even a simplified version based on single letter Shannon entropies, which can be easily incorporated in existing software packages, gave superior results throughout the entire animal kingdom. But we see the main virtue of our approach in a more general way. For example, it can also help to judge the relative merits of different alignment algorithms, by estimating the significance of specific alignments.Comment: 19 pages + 16 pages of supplementary materia