2,633 research outputs found
Current status of research and application in vascular stents
Cardiovascular diseases have been the leading cause of death in modern society. Using vascular stents to treat these coronary and peripheral artery diseases has been one of the most effective and rapidly adopted medical interventions. During the twenty-five years' development of vascular stents, revolutionary cardiovascular stents like drug eluting stents and endothelial progenitor cells capture stents have emerged. In this review, the evolution of vascular stents is summarized, aiming to provide a glimpse into the future of vascular stents. Advanced designs, focusing on the investigations of new substrates, new platforms, new drugs and new biomolecules are currently under evaluation with promising clinical studies. The concept of "time sequence functional stent" has been raised in this paper. It presents anti-proliferative properties in the first phase after implantation and subsequently support endothelialization. It also shows long-term inertness without release of toxic ions or toxic degradation products. The success of this concept is briefly presented with a clinical study in this model stents
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A tensile deformation model for in-situ dendrite/metallic glass matrix composites
In-situ dendrite/metallic glass matrix composites (MGMCs) with a composition of Ti46Zr20V12Cu5Be17 exhibit ultimate tensile strength of 1510 MPa and fracture strain of about 7.6%. A tensile deformation model is established, based on the five-stage classification: (1) elastic-elastic, (2) elastic-plastic, (3) plastic-plastic (yield platform), (4) plastic-plastic (work hardening), and (5) plastic-plastic (softening) stages, analogous to the tensile behavior of common carbon steels. The constitutive relations strongly elucidate the tensile deformation mechanism. In parallel, the simulation results by a finite-element method (FEM) are in good agreement with the experimental findings and theoretical calculations. The present study gives a mathematical model to clarify the work-hardening behavior of dendrites and softening of the amorphous matrix. Furthermore, the model can be employed to simulate the tensile behavior of in-situ dendrite/MGMCs
Quantum escape of the phase in a strongly driven Josephson junction
A quantum mechanical analysis of the Josephson phase escape in the presence
of both dc and ac bias currents is presented. We find that the potential
barrier for the escape of the phase is effectively suppressed as the resonant
condition occurs, i.e. when the frequency of the ac bias matches the
Josephson junction energy level separation. This effect manifests itself by a
pronounced drop in the dependence of the switching current on the power
of the applied microwave radiation and by a peculiar double-peak structure
in the switching current distribution . The developed theory is in a
good accord with an experiment which we also report in this paper. The obtained
features can be used to characterize certain aspects of the quantum-mechanical
behavior of the Josephson phase, such as the energy level quantization, the
Rabi frequency of coherent oscillations and the effect of damping.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, to be published in Physical Review B (Rapid
Communication
Gaussian-weighted moving-window robust automatic threshold selection
A multi-scale, moving-window method for local thresholding based on Robust Automatic Threshold Selection (RATS) is developed. Using a model for the noise response of the optimal edge detector in this context, the reliability of thresholds computed at different scales is determined. The threshold computed at the smallest scale at which the reliability is suffcient is used. The performance on 2-D images is evaluated on synthetic an natural images in the presence of varying background and noise. Results show the method deals better with these problems than earlier versions of RATS at most noise levels
Multiple Particle Tracking in a Fluidised Bed
Positron Emission Particle Tracking (PEPT) is a versatile method for following the motion of a single radioactive tracer particle in a fluidised bed. However, there are many applications in which it would be useful to be able to follow the motion of two or more particles simultaneously in cooperative motion. The tracers are labelled with different intensities of radiation and located by converging sequentially on centres of activity. Two 600&#;m polyethylene particles have been followed in a 15 cm diameter bed and their contact events studied
Nonlinear parametric instability in double-well lattices
A possibility of a nonlinear resonant instability of uniform oscillations in
dynamical lattices with harmonic intersite coupling and onsite nonlinearity is
predicted. Numerical simulations of a lattice with a double-well onsite
anharmonic potential confirm the existence of the nonlinear instability with an
anomalous value of the corresponding power index, 1.57, which is intermediate
between the values 1 and 2 characterizing the linear and nonlinear (quadratic)
instabilities. The anomalous power index may be a result of competition between
the resonant quadratic instability and nonresonant linear instabilities. The
observed instability triggers transition of the lattice into a chaotic
dynamical state.Comment: A latex text file and three pdf files with figures. Physical Review
E, in pres
Wigner Crystals in the lowest Landau level at low filling factors
We report on results of finite-size numerical studies of partially filled
lowest Landau level at low electron filling factors. We find convincing
evidence suggesting that electrons form Wigner Crystals at sufficiently low
filling factors, and the critical filling factor is close to 1/7. At nu=1/7 we
find the system undergoes a phase transition from Wigner Crystal to the
incompressible Laughlin state when the short-range part of the Coulomb
interaction is modified slightly. This transition is either continuous or very
weakly first order.Comment: 5 papges RevTex with 8 eps figures embedded in the tex
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Technical specification action requirements for AFW system failures: Method development and application to four PWR plants
Failures in the auxiliary feedwater (AFW) system of pressurized water reactors (PWRs) are considered to involve substantial risk whether a decision is made to either continue power operation while repair is being done, or to shut down the plant to undertake repairs. Technical specification action requirements usually require immediate plant shutdown in the case of multiple failures in the system (in some cases, immediate repair of one train is required when all AFW trains fail). This paper presents a probabilistic risk assessment-based method to quantitatively evaluate and compare both the risks of continued power operation and of shutting the plant down, given known failures in the system. The method is applied to the AFW system for four different PWRs. Results show that the risk of continued power operation and plant shutdown both are substantial, but the latter is larger than the former over the usual repair time. This was proven for four plants with different designs: two operating Westinghouse plants, one operating Asea-Brown Boveri Combustion Engineering Plant, and one of evolutionary design. The method can be used to analyze individual plant design and to improve AFW action requirements using risk-informed evaluations
An optimally efficient technique for the solution of systems of nonlinear parabolic partial differential equations
This paper describes a new software tool that has been developed for the efficient solution of systems of linear and nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs) of parabolic type. Specifically, the software is designed to provide optimal computational performance for multiscale problems, which require highly stable, implicit, time-stepping schemes combined with a parallel implementation of adaptivity in both space and time. By combining these implicit, adaptive discretizations with an optimally efficient nonlinear multigrid solver it is possible to obtain computational solutions to a very high resolution with relatively modest computational resources. The first half of the paper describes the numerical methods that lie behind the software, along with details of their implementation, whilst the second half of the paper illustrates the flexibility and robustness of the tool by applying it to two very different example problems. These represent models of a thin film flow of a spreading viscous droplet and a multi-phase-field model of tumour growth. We conclude with a discussion of the challenges of obtaining highly scalable parallel performance for a software tool that combines both local mesh adaptivity, requiring efficient dynamic load-balancing, and a multigrid solver, requiring careful implementation of coarse grid operations and inter-grid transfer operations in parallel
Low-Temperature Thermodynamics of and su(3)-invariant Spin Chains
We formulate the thermodynamic Bethe Ansatz (TBA) equations for the closed
(periodic boundary conditions) quantum spin chain in an external
magnetic field, in the (noncritical) regime where the anisotropy parameter
is real. In the limit , we recover the TBA equations of the
antiferromagnetic su(3)-invariant chain in the fundamental representation. We
solve these equations for low temperature and small field, and calculate the
specific heat and magnetic susceptibility.Comment: 31 pages, UMTG-16
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