Rheological Model for Wood

Wood as the most important natural and renewable building material plays an important role in the construction sector. Nevertheless, its hygroscopic character basically affects all related mechanical properties leading to degradation of material stiffness and strength over the service life. Accordingly, to attain reliable design of the timber structures, the influence of moisture evolution and the role of time- and moisture-dependent behaviors have to be taken into account. For this purpose, in the current study a 3D orthotropic elasto-plastic, visco-elastic, mechano-sorptive constitutive model for wood, with all material constants being defined as a function of moisture content, is presented. The corresponding numerical integration approach, with additive decomposition of the total strain is developed and implemented within the framework of the finite element method (FEM). Moreover to preserve a quadratic rate of asymptotic convergence the consistent tangent operator for the whole model is derived. Functionality and capability of the presented material model are evaluated by performing several numerical verification simulations of wood components under different combinations of mechanical loading and moisture variation. Additionally, the flexibility and universality of the introduced model to predict the mechanical behavior of different species are demonstrated by the analysis of a hybrid wood element. Furthermore, the proposed numerical approach is validated by comparisons of computational evaluations with experimental results.Comment: 37 pages, 13 figures, 10 table

Microarray screening of Guillain-Barré syndrome sera for antibodies to glycolipid complexes

Objective: To characterize the patterns of autoantibodies to glycolipid complexes in a large cohort of Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) and control samples collected in Bangladesh using a newly developed microarray technique. Methods: Twelve commonly studied glycolipids and lipids, plus their 66 possible heteromeric complexes, totaling 78 antigens, were applied to polyvinylidene fluoride–coated slides using a microarray printer. Arrays were probed with 266 GBS and 579 control sera (2 μL per serum, diluted 1/50) and bound immunoglobulin G detected with secondary antibody. Scanned arrays were subjected to statistical analyses. Results: Measuring antibodies to single targets was 9% less sensitive than to heteromeric complex targets (49.2% vs 58.3%) without significantly affecting specificity (83.9%–85.0%). The optimal screening protocol for GBS sera comprised a panel of 10 glycolipids (4 single glycolipids GM1, GA1, GD1a, GQ1b, and their 6 heteromeric complexes), resulting in an overall assay sensitivity of 64.3% and specificity of 77.1%. Notable heteromeric targets were GM1:GD1a, GM1:GQ1b, and GA1:GD1a, in which exclusive binding to the complex was observed. Conclusions: Rationalizing the screening protocol to capture the enormous diversity of glycolipid complexes can be achieved by miniaturizing the screening platform to a microarray platform, and applying simple bioinformatics to determine optimal sensitivity and specificity of the targets. Glycolipid complexes are an important category of glycolipid antigens in autoimmune neuropathy cases that require specific analytical and bioinformatics methods for optimal detection

Summary care record early adopter programme: an independent evaluation by University College London.

Benefits The main potential benefit of the SCR is considered to be in emergency and unscheduled care settings, especially for people who are unconscious, confused, unsure of their medical details, or unable to communicate effectively in English. Other benefits may include improved efficiency of care and avoidance of hospital admission, but it is too early for potential benefits to be verified or quantified. Progress As of end April 2008, the SCR of 153,188 patients in the first two Early Adopter sites (Bolton and Bury) had been created. A total of 614,052 patients in four Early Adopter sites had been sent a letter informing them of the programme and their choices for opting out of having a SCR. Staff attitudes and usage The evaluation found that many NHS staff in Early Adopter sites (which had been selected partly for their keenness to innovate in ICT) were enthusiastic about the SCR and keen to see it up and running, but a significant minority of GPs had chosen not to participate in the programme and others had deferred participation until data quality improvement work was completed. Whilst 80 per cent of patients interviewed were either positive about the idea of having a SCR or ?did not mind?, others were strongly opposed ?on principle?. Staff who had attempted to use the SCR when caring for patients felt that the current version was technically immature (describing it as ?clunky? and ?complicated?), and were looking forward to a more definitive version of the technology. A comparable technology (the Emergency Care Summary) introduced in Scotland two years ago is now working well, and over a million records have been accessed in emergency and out-of-hours care. Patient attitudes and awareness Having a SCR is optional (people may opt out if they wish, though fewer than one per cent of people in Early Adopter sites have done so) and technical security is said to be high via a system of password protection and strict access controls. Nevertheless, the evaluation showed that recent stories about data loss by government and NHS organisations had raised concerns amongst both staff and patients that human fallibility could potentially jeopardise the operational security of the system. Despite an extensive information programme to inform the public in Early Adopter sites about the SCR, many patients interviewed by the UCL team were not aware of the programme at all. This raises important questions about the ethics of an ?implied consent? model for creating the SCR. The evaluation recommended that the developers of the SCR should consider a model in which the patient is asked for ?consent to view? whenever a member of staff wishes to access their record. Not a single patient interviewed in the evaluation was confident that the SCR would be 100 per cent secure, but they were philosophical about the risks of security breaches. Typically, people said that the potential benefit of a doctor having access to key medical details in an emergency outweighed the small but real risk of data loss due to human or technical error. Even patients whose medical record contained potentially sensitive data such as mental health problems, HIV or drug use were often (though not always) keen to have a SCR and generally trusted NHS staff to treat sensitive data appropriately. However, they and many other NHS patients wanted to be able to control which staff members were allowed to access their record at the point of care. Some doctors, nurses and receptionists, it seems, are trusted to view a person?s SCR, whereas others are not, and this is a decision which patients would like to make in real time

A performance comparison of the contiguous allocation strategies in 3D mesh connected multicomputers

The performance of contiguous allocation strategies can be significantly affected by the distribution of job execution times. In this paper, the performance of the existing contiguous allocation strategies for 3D mesh multicomputers is re-visited in the context of heavy-tailed distributions (e.g., a Bounded Pareto distribution). The strategies are evaluated and compared using simulation experiments for both First-Come-First-Served (FCFS) and Shortest-Service-Demand (SSD) scheduling strategies under a variety of system loads and system sizes. The results show that the performance of the allocation strategies degrades considerably when job execution times follow a heavy-tailed distribution. Moreover, SSD copes much better than FCFS scheduling strategy in the presence of heavy-tailed job execution times. The results also show that the strategies that depend on a list of allocated sub-meshes for both allocation and deallocation have lower allocation overhead and deliver good system performance in terms of average turnaround time and mean system utilization

Paraxial propagation in amorphous optical media with screw dislocation

We study paraxial beam propagation parallel to the screw axis of a dislocated amorphous medium that is optically weakly inhomogeneous and isotropic. The effect of the screw dislocation on the beam's orbital angular momentum is shown to change the optical vortex strength, rendering vortex annihilation or generation possible. Furthermore, the dislocation is shown to induce a weak \textit{biaxial} anisotropy in the medium due to the elasto-optic effect, which changes the beam's spin angular momentum as well as causing precession of the polarization. We derive the equations of motion of the beam and demonstrate the optical Hall effect in the dislocated medium. Its application with regard to determining the Burgers vector as well as the elasto-optic coefficients of the medium is explained

Transverse Fivebranes in Matrix Theory

M-theory on the maximally supersymmetric plane wave background of eleven-dimensional supergravity admits spherical BPS transverse M5-branes with zero light-cone energy. We give direct evidence that the single M5-brane state corresponds to the trivial (X=0) classical vacuum in the large N limit of the plane wave matrix theory. In particular, we show that the linear fluctuation spectrum of the spherical fivebrane matches exactly with the set of exactly protected excited states about the X=0 vacuum in the matrix model. These states include geometrical fluctuations of the sphere, excitations of the worldvolume two-form field, and fermion excitations. In addition, we propose a description of multiple fivebrane states in terms of matrix model vacua. Finally, we discuss how to obtain the continuum D2/M2 and NS5/M5 theories on spheres from the matrix model. The matrix model can be viewed as a regularization for these theories.Comment: Latex file, 2 eps figures, 22 pages; v2: typo correcte

A unique case of atrial fibrillation secondary to squamous cell lung carcinoma

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is widely considered to be the most prevalent cardiac arrhythmia with an incidence of roughly 1-2% in the United States alone. The incidence of AF has been known to increase with advancing age and thus presents a significant burden on healthcare systems across the globe. AF arises as a result of several mechanisms including structural changes that occur to the heart overtime. Here we present a case in which a 63-year-old male with no past medical history except heavy tobacco use presented to the emergency department complaining of shortness of breath. He also endorsed having palpitations and a productive cough for several weeks prior to presenting to the emergency department. An EKG was obtained which revealed AF with rapid ventricular response. His chest x-ray revealed an irregular opacification of the left lung; however, a chest computed tomography was obtained which revealed a left hilar mass extending to the left upper lobe. The mass was causing obstruction of the left upper lobe and was encasing the left main pulmonary artery and left. This case highlights a rare etiology of AF. While many causes of AF have been elucidated, including hypertension and valvular heart disease, a much lesser-known cause includes lung carcinoma resulting in mass effect on the heart. Representing almost 19% of all cancer deaths, lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death. Although lung cancer screenings are recommended for certain populations, the majority of lung cancer cases present at an advanced stage and thus treatment options are limited. Our patient presents a unique case involving a lung mass causing AF due to mass effect on the left heart. Although the patient in this case had other risk factors for AF including advanced age and cigarette smoking, it can be presumed that due to the anatomical location of his lung mass, his AF was a result of his SCC. Though the mortality for lung cancer remains high, new treatments, including pembrolizumab, have the potential to drastically alter the way these cancers are treated

The inclusion of delirium in version 2 of the National Early Warning Score will substantially increase the alerts for escalating levels of care: findings from a retrospective database study of emergency medical admissions in two hospitals

YesBackground The National Early Warning Score (NEWS) is being replaced with NEWS2 which adds 3 points for new confusion or delirium. We estimated the impact of adding delirium on the number of medium/high level alerts that are triggers to escalate care. Methods Analysis of emergency medical admissions in two acute hospitals (York Hospital (YH) and Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust hospitals (NH)) in England. Twenty per cent were randomly assigned to have delirium. Results The number of emergency admissions (YH: 35584; NH: 35795), mortality (YH: 5.7%; NH: 5.5%), index NEWS (YH: 2.5; NH: 2.1) and numbers of NEWS recorded (YH: 879193; NH: 884072) were similar in each hospital. The mean number of patients with medium level alerts per day increased from 55.3 (NEWS) to 69.5 (NEWS2), a 25.7% increase in YH and 64.1 (NEWS) to 77.4 (NEWS2), a 20.7% increase in NH. The mean number of patients with high level alerts per day increased from 27.3 (NEWS) to 34.4 (NEWS2), a 26.0% increase in YH and 29.9 (NEWS) to 37.7 (NEWS2), a 26.1% increase in NH. Conclusions The addition of delirium in NEWS2 will have a substantial increase in medium and high level alerts in hospitalised emergency medical patients. Rigorous evaluation of NEWS2 is required before widespread implementation because the extent to which staff can cope with this increase without adverse consequences remains unknown

Green Corrosion Inhibitors

Corrosion is an unavoidable fact in everyday life but always receive attention to control due to its technical, economical, and esthetical importance. Corrosion inhibitors are one of the most widely used and economically viable methods protecting metals and alloys against corrosion. Typical corrosion inhibitors are bio-toxic organic compounds, which have serious issue on toxicity. Considering the toxicity of the inhibitors, there is a tremendous interest in searching for an eco-friendly, and non-toxic green corrosion inhibitor. This chapter briefly discusses the importance and different methods of corrosion inhibitors with a particular emphasis given to the discussion on the different characteristic feature of the green corrosion inhibitors reported in the literature as a comparative view of organic inhibitors