Traveling Material↔Semiotic Environments of Disability, Rehabilitation, and Physical Activity

In this article, we apply narrative dialogism and new materialism to health research. We examine how material↔semiotic environments (MSEs) affect the rehabilitation process of Patrick, a man who exercised with the aim to recover from spinal cord injury. The MSEs are considered embedded subcases within the overall holistic case of Patrick. Three MSEs were identified: the hospital gym, the personal gym, and the adapted gym. These are examined using the analytical lens of assemblages. First, the mutually affecting components of each MSE are described. Second, a larger environmental assemblage is identified, which is termed exercise-is-restitution assemblage. This composite assemblage illuminates the associations between the three MSEs, and reveals how restitution resonated across time and space. The article contributes to the literature by reconceptualizing restitution. It highlights the importance of the materiality of health-related narratives, and it reveals the potential of MSE for transforming rehabilitation and improving exercise promotion and maintenance

Highlights on HIV eradication in 2013

Almost 20 years after the introduction of HAART, scientific community, doctors and patients are still struggling with the absence of effective strategies aimed at eradicating HIV infection, or at preventing it through a vaccin

A Nonlocal Elasto-Plastic Model for Structured Soils at Large Strains for the Particle Finite Element Method

This work presents a robust and mesh-independent implementation of an elasto-plastic constitutive model at large strains, appropriate for structured soils, into a Particle Finite Element code specially developed for geotechnical simulations. The constitutive response of structured soils is characterized by softening and, thus, leading to strain localization. Strain localization poses two numerical challenges: mesh dependence of the solution and computability of the solution. The former is mitigated by employing a non-local integral type regularization whereas an Implicit-Explicit integration scheme is used to enhance the computability. The good performance of these techniques is highlighted in the simulation of the cone penetration test in undrained conditions.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Nanostructure and phase engineering of manganese oxide thin films grown by pulsed laser deposition: a Raman and XRD study

Manganese, showing stable oxidation states spanning from +2 to +7, gives rise to a variety of oxides (MnOx) whose exploitation in several technological fields, such as energy conversion and storage, catalysis, sensing, environmental and biomedical engineering, is highly promising. Nevertheless, the chemical complexity and the structural richness of MnOx – involving mixed-valence and metastable species – make the correct identification by Raman spectroscopy challenging, further complicated by the laser sensitivity, the poor Raman activity, and the conflicting literature scenario. Moreover, a careful optimization of the material in terms of phase, structure, and morphology is highly desirable in view of the final application, where a precise control over the materials properties is essential. In this work, we discuss the capability of room-temperature pulsed laser deposition (PLD), followed by post-deposition thermal treatments, to successfully grow engineered and pure MnOx thin films, whose phase and morphology at the nanoscale can be totally decoupled and independently optimized. The detailed Raman characterization of these films enabled a clear identification of specific MnOx phases and poses the basis for the rationale of the MnOx Raman spectra. Starting from the same MnO PLD target, we obtained five different MnOx phases (i.e., MnO, Mn3O4, Mn2O3, amorphous MnO2, and α-MnO2) with tailored and tunable degree of porosity and crystallinity, by modulating process parameters like the O2 deposition partial pressure (vacuum – 100 Pa), the type of substrate, and the annealing temperature (300–900 °C) and atmosphere (air/vacuum). The Raman spectroscopy reliability of the MnOx phase assignment was assessed by thoroughly investigating the impact of the exciting laser power, and it was further validated by energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, X-ray photoemission spectroscopy, and X-ray diffraction, providing additional insights into the compositional properties and the crystalline structure

Untangling the Immunological Implications of Nadir on CD4+ Cell Recovery during Suppressive Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy

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An in-depth view of the microscopic dynamics of Ising spin glasses at fixed temperature

Using the dedicated computer Janus, we follow the nonequilibrium dynamics of the Ising spin glass in three dimensions for eleven orders of magnitude. The use of integral estimators for the coherence and correlation lengths allows us to study dynamic heterogeneities and the presence of a replicon mode and to obtain safe bounds on the Edwards-Anderson order parameter below the critical temperature. We obtain good agreement with experimental determinations of the temperature-dependent decay exponents for the thermoremanent magnetization. This magnitude is observed to scale with the much harder to measure coherence length, a potentially useful result for experimentalists. The exponents for energy relaxation display a linear dependence on temperature and reasonable extrapolations to the critical point. We conclude examining the time growth of the coherence length, with a comparison of critical and activated dynamics.Comment: 38 pages, 26 figure

Conservation of energy and momenta in nonholonomic systems with affine constraints

We characterize the conditions for the conservation of the energy and of the components of the momentum maps of lifted actions, and of their `gauge-like' generalizations, in time-independent nonholonomic mechanical systems with affine constraints. These conditions involve geometrical and mechanical properties of the system, and are codified in the so-called reaction-annihilator distribution

The effect of thermal treatment on structure and surface composition of PtCo electro-catalysts for application in PEMFCs operating under automotive conditions

Ontem, como aqui escrevi, José Eduardo Moniz, Director-Geral da TVI, fez uma conferência intitulada A Televisão num Mundo Audiovisual em Mudança na UCP. No vídeo, Moniz fala de seis assuntos: 1) televisão generalista e novas plataformas, 2) perfil de oferta para o telespectador, 3) surgimento do quinto canal, 4) três canais de notícias, 5) programação de qualidade, e 6) blocos informativos

Matching microscopic and macroscopic responses in glasses

We first reproduce on the Janus and Janus II computers a milestone experiment that measures the spin-glass coherence length through the lowering of free-energy barriers induced by the Zeeman effect. Secondly we determine the scaling behavior that allows a quantitative analysis of a new experiment reported in the companion Letter [S. Guchhait and R. Orbach, Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 157203 (2017)]. The value of the coherence length estimated through the analysis of microscopic correlation functions turns out to be quantitatively consistent with its measurement through macroscopic response functions. Further, non-linear susceptibilities, recently measured in glass-forming liquids, scale as powers of the same microscopic length.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure