Bipolar Nickel-hydrogen Batteries for Aerospace Applications

A bipolar nickel-hydrogen battery which effectively addresses all key requirements for a spacecraft power system, including long-term reliability and low mass, is discussed. The design of this battery is discussed in the context of system requirements and nickel-hydrogen battery technology in general. To achieve the ultimate goal of an aerospace application of a bipolar Ni-H2 battery several objectives must be met in the design and development of the system. These objectives include: maximization of reliability and life; high specific energy and energy density; reasonable cost of manufacture, test, and integration; and ease in scaling for growth in power requirements. These basic objectives translate into a number of specific design requirements, which are discussed

Associations between parent-infant interactions, cortisol and vagal regulation in infants, and socioemotional outcomes: A systematic review.

Emotional regulation in early infancy develops mainly through social interactions with caregivers and is a key process in socioemotional functioning. The use of physiological measures such as vagal tone and cortisol can help researchers understand what underlies this association between parent-infant interaction, emotion regulation, and socioemotional functioning. This review integrates 39 studies from four databases. We first examine associations between parent-infant interactions and physiological measures of emotion regulation in children aged 0-24 months. We then examine the association between these physiological measures and children's socioemotional outcomes. The results provide insights into which aspects of parent-infant interactions are associated with the physiological functioning of infants and which socioemotional outcomes in infants may be influenced by this functioning

Effects of mole fraction variations and scaling on total variability in InGaAs MOSFETs

Variability is one of the major roadblocks for III-V semiconductors in nanoscale devices, according to the recent International Roadmap for Devices and Systems (IRDS). A particular concern is the detrimental effect of variability of threshold voltage due to channel compositional variations. In this paper, we investigate the impact of this variability source and the effects of scaling on the performance of Dual-Gate-Ultra-Thin-Body (DG-UTB) In0.53Ga0.47As MOSFETs. We model mole fraction variations in terms of the Indium content by taking into account the spatial inhomogeneity of the channel and the corresponding bandgap variations, analyzing the effects on threshold voltage variability. We thus define a variability source, i.e., Band Gap Fluctuation (BGF), and we compare the associated variability with the ones from other important sources, namely, Random Dopant Fluctuation (RDF), Work Function Fluctuation (WFF), Body- and Gate-Line Edge Roughness (B-LER and G-LER). We then define three corner cases for mole fraction variations to determine worst-case variability. Finally, the impact of scaling on variability is assessed by comparing results for two technology nodes on the linear and saturation threshold voltage, V-T,V-lin,V- V-T,V-sat, on-current, I-ON, leakage current, I-OFF, and linear and saturation sub-threshold slope, SS. We find that although scaling has no impact on BGF-induced V-T variability, it increases the total V-T, lin variability as well as that for I-ON and I-OFF

The influence of the COVID-19 lockdown on infants' physiological regulation during mother-father-infant interactions in Switzerland.

In this study, we investigated the physiological regulation of vagal tone during dyadic and triadic parent-infant interactions in infants born before or around the COVID-19 lockdown in Switzerland. We hypothesized that there would be a decrease in vagal tone in triadic interactions compared with dyadic interactions, as triadic interactions are more complex and therefore more resource demanding. However, we expected this difference to be smaller for infants who experienced the period of confinement, as the lockdown led parents to spend more time at home. We also hypothesized that parents would have less stressful interactional events in the triadic interaction because they would be used to interacting with the child together. This study included 36 parents with their 3 month-old infants. Eighteen families met the study authors before the onset of the pandemic (pre-COVID) and 18 met them after its onset, having experienced a period of confinement during the infants' first 3 months of life (COVID). Results showed that the COVID group had no decrease in vagal tone during triadic interactions, whereas the pre-COVID group did. This difference could not, however, be explained by less stressful interactional events in triadic interactions, as the COVID group showed more stressful interactional events in mother-father-infant interactions

Towards a continuum theory of clustering in a freely cooling inelastic gas

We performed molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the clustering instability of a freely cooling dilute gas of inelastically colliding disks in a quasi-one-dimensional setting. We observe that, as the gas cools, the shear stress becomes negligibly small, and the gas flows by inertia only. Finite-time singularities, intrinsic in such a flow, are arrested only when close-packed clusters are formed. We observe that the late-time dynamics of this system are describable by the Burgers equation with vanishing viscosity, and predict the long-time coarsening behavior.Comment: 7 pages, 5 eps figures, to appear in Europhys. Let

Attempted density blowup in a freely cooling dilute granular gas: hydrodynamics versus molecular dynamics

It has been recently shown (Fouxon et al. 2007) that, in the framework of ideal granular hydrodynamics (IGHD), an initially smooth hydrodynamic flow of a granular gas can produce an infinite gas density in a finite time. Exact solutions that exhibit this property have been derived. Close to the singularity, the granular gas pressure is finite and almost constant. This work reports molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of a freely cooling gas of nearly elastically colliding hard disks, aimed at identifying the "attempted" density blowup regime. The initial conditions of the simulated flow mimic those of one particular solution of the IGHD equations that exhibits the density blowup. We measure the hydrodynamic fields in the MD simulations and compare them with predictions from the ideal theory. We find a remarkable quantitative agreement between the two over an extended time interval, proving the existence of the attempted blowup regime. As the attempted singularity is approached, the hydrodynamic fields, as observed in the MD simulations, deviate from the predictions of the ideal solution. To investigate the mechanism of breakdown of the ideal theory near the singularity, we extend the hydrodynamic theory by accounting separately for the gradient-dependent transport and for finite density corrections.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication on Physical Review

Vaccination for seasonal influenza in patients with cancer: Recommendations of the Italian Society of Medical Oncology (AIOM)

Background: Influenza virus causes annual epidemics in the winter\u2013spring season with significant morbidity in the general population and important mortality in high-risk groups, including cancer patients. Opinions on the suitability of patients with malignancies not undergoing active treatment and in different phases of antineoplastic therapy, to receive influenza vaccination, vary considerably among oncologists, sometimes even within one center. Methods: We reviewed available data, including recommendations by national health authorities, on impact of influenza in patients with cancer and their capacity to mount protective immunological responses to vaccination, thus allowing, on behalf of Italian Association of Medical Oncology, to make suitable recommendations for the prevention and treatment of seasonal influenza. Results and discussion: Patients with cancer often have disease- or treatment-related immunosuppression, and as a consequence, they may have a suboptimal serologic response to influenza vaccination. The protective effect of the differ- ent preparations of influenza vaccines in patients with cancer has not been widely investigated, especially in adult patients harboring solid tumors. The optimal timing for administration of influenza vaccines in patients receiving chemotherapy is also not clearly defined. However, since vaccination is the most effective method, along with antiviral drugs in selected patients, for preventing influenza infection, it has to be recommended for cancer patients. Implementing vaccination of close contacts of oncology patients would be an additional tool for enhancing protection in fragile patient populations

Shear viscosity and chemical equilibration of the QGP

We have investigated, in the frame work of the transport approach, different aspects of the QGP created in Heavy Ion Collisions at RHIC and LHC energies. The shear viscosity $\eta$ has been calculated by using the Green-Kubo relation at the cascade level. We have compared the numerical results for $\eta$ obtained from the Green-Kubo correlator with the analytical formula in both the Relaxation Time Approximation (RTA) and the Chapman-Enskog approximation (CE). From this comparison we show that in the range of temperature explored in a Heavy Ion collision the RTA underestimates the viscosity by about a factor of 2, while a good agreement is found between the CE approximation and Gree-Kubo relation already at first order of approximation. The agreement with the CE approximation supplies an analytical formula that allows to develop kinetic transport theory at fixed shear viscosity to entropy density ratio, $\eta/s$. We show some results for the build up of anisotropic flows $v_{2}$ in a transport approach at fixed shear viscosity to entropy density ratio, $\eta/s$. We study the impact of a T-dependent $\eta/s(T)$ on the generation of the elliptic flows at both RHIC and LHC. We show that the transport approach provides, in a unified way, a tool able to naturally describe the $v_{2}(p_{T})$ in a wide range of $p_{T}$, including also the description of the rise and fall and saturation of the $v_{2}(p_{T})$ observed at LHC. Finally, we have studied the evolution of the quark-gluon composition employing a Boltzmann-Vlasov transport approach that include: the mean fields dynamics, associated to the quasi-particle model, and the elastic and inelastic collisions for massive quarks and gluons. Following the chemical evolution from an initial gluon dominated plasma we predict a quark dominance close to $T_{C}$ paving the way to an hadronization via quark coalescence.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, Invited Talk given by S. Plumari at the 11th International Conference on Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions (NN2012), San Antonio, Texas, USA, May 27-June 1, 2012. To appear in the NN2012 Proceedings in Journal of Physics: Conference Series (JPCS

Recovery of adrenal insufficiency is frequent after adjuvant mitotane therapy in patients with adrenocortical carcinoma

Mitotane is a steroidogenesis inhibitor and adrenolytic drug used for treatment of adrenocortical cancer (ACC). Mitotane therapy causes adrenal insufficiency requiring glucocorticoid replacement in all patients. However, it is unclear whether chronic therapy with mitotane induces complete destruction of zona fasciculata and whether hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis can recover after treatment cessation. Our objective was to assess the HPA axis recovery in a cohort of patients after cessation of adjuvant mitotane therapy for ACC. We retrospectively reviewed patient files with stage I-II-III ACC in two referral centers in Canada and Italy. Data on demographics, tumor characteristics, hormonal profile, and HPA axis were collected. Data from 23 patients with pathologically proven ACC treated with adjuvant mitotane for a minimum of two years were analyzed. Eight patients were males and 15 were females and the median age was 41 years old (range 18 to 73). After mitotane cessation, 18/23 (78.3%) patients achieved a complete HPA axis recovery while 3/23 (13.0%) were unable to tolerate glucocorticoid withdrawal despite having normal hormonal test values and 2/23 (8.7%) never achieved recovery. The mean time interval between mitotane cessation and HPA axis recovery was 2.7 years. A high proportion of patients achieved HPA axis recovery following cessation of mitotane adjuvant therapy. However, complete recovery was often delayed up to 2.5 years and regular assessment of the hormonal profile is required