The influence of estrogen on skeletal muscle myosin regulatory light chain phosphorylation, post-tetanic potentiation, work, and power in C57BL/6 mice

Estrogen hormones are implicated in influencing skeletal muscle contractile function and specifically, the interactions between myosin and actin that facilitate contraction. Myosin regulatory light chain (RLC) phosphorylation (RLC-p) is highly associated with an increase in the percentage of myosin proteins strongly bound to actin during contractile activity. Myosin RLC-p is also highly associated with post-tetanic potentiation (PTP) i.e. the short-term increase in force observed following tetanic stimulation characteristic of fast-twitch skeletal muscle. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of ovarian hormone deficiency and 17β-Estradiol (E2) replacement, on the PTP of concentric twitch force and myosin RLC-p of mouse fast twitch skeletal muscle. To this end, 4-month-old wildtype C57BL/6 mice were allocated to the ovariectomized (OVX), ovariectomized with E2 replacement (OVX+E), or sham-ovariectomized (SHAM) condition (n=8 mice). Extensor digitorum longus (EDL) muscles were surgically extracted and mounted for in vitro contractile experiments at 25° C involving the use of a brief potentiating stimulus (PS) to induce PTP. The PS, consisting of four equally spaced tetani (400Hz, 100ms) over 10.5s, significantly increased concentric twitch force and myosin RLC-p levels across condition groups. However, no significant differences in PTP, myosin RLC-p, or rates of force development and relaxation were observed between muscles of the OVX, OVX+E and SHAM conditions. A significant drop in relative tetanic force amongst the first and second tetanus within the PS was observed of muscles from OVX mice compared to that of OVX+E and SHAM mice. Specific force, calculated as the ratio of force to muscle PCSA, total work, peak work, and power production, were significantly increased following the PS across conditions, and were significantly less of muscles from OVX mice compared to OVX+E and SHAM, both prior to and following the PS. Data are contrary to the primary hypothesis that E2 influences myosin RLC-p and PTP in fast twitch skeletal muscle, though are suggestive of an influence of OVX and E2 on skeletal muscle quality

Resource Constrained Semantic Segmentation for Waste Sorting

This work addresses the need for efficient waste sorting strategies in Materials Recovery Facilities to minimize the environmental impact of rising waste. We propose resource-constrained semantic segmentation models for segmenting recyclable waste in industrial settings. Our goal is to develop models that fit within a 10MB memory constraint, suitable for edge applications with limited processing capacity. We perform the experiments on three networks: ICNet, BiSeNet (Xception39 backbone), and ENet. Given the aforementioned limitation, we implement quantization and pruning techniques on the broader nets, achieving positive results while marginally impacting the Mean IoU metric. Furthermore, we propose a combination of Focal and Lov\'asz loss that addresses the implicit class imbalance resulting in better performance compared with the Cross-entropy loss function.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure

Vibration-Based Experimental Identification of the Elastic Moduli Using Plate Specimens of the Olive Tree

Mechanical parameters of the olive wood plate have been computed by data inversion of vibrational experimental tests. A numerical-experimental method has allowed the evaluation of the two transverse shear moduli and the four in-plane moduli of a thick orthotropic olive tree plate. Therefore, the natural flexural vibration frequencies of olive trees plates have been evaluated by the impulse technique. For our purposes, we define the objective function as the difference between the numerical computation data and the experimental ones. The Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm was chosen as optimization strategy in order to minimize the matching error: the evaluation of the objective function has required a complete finite element simulation by using the ANSYS code. As input, we have used the uniaxial test data results obtained from the olive plates. The converged elastic moduli with n = 10 natural modes were E1 = 14.8 GPa, E2 = 1.04 GPa, G12 = 4.45 GPa, G23 = 4.02 GPa, G13 = 4.75 GPa, ν12 = 0.42, and ν13 = 0.42. The relative root mean square (RMS) errors between the experimental frequencies and the computed one is 9.40%. Then, it has been possible to obtain a good agreement between the measured and calculated frequencies. Therefore, it has been found that for plates of moderate thickness the reliability of the estimated values of the transverse shear moduli is good

Fatigue strength of corroded bolted connection

This note summarizes some recent investigation results on the behavior of corroded steel bolted joints under uniaxial fatigue loading. Fatigue test specimens, were made up using S355 structural steel plates joined together with preloaded M12 bolts of class 10.9 with a geometry that corresponds to the Δσ = 112 MPa EC3 detail category. The accelerated corrosion process was accomplished using an electrolyte consisting of an aqueous 5% NaCl solution whereby the specimens were treated. In particular, during the corrosion process specimens were repeatedly immersed for 2 minutes in the electrolyte and then removed keeping them 60 minutes long in free air at 35 °C. An atmospheric corrosion in marine-industrial environment is wellrepresented through corrosion test. Fatigue loading tests and surface morphology measurement of uncorroded and corroded specimens were performed and the results were compared

numerical analyses of corroded bolted connections

Abstract The interaction between fatigue and corrosion is the phenomena that is called Corrosion Fatigue (CF) and regarding steel structures subjected to cyclic loads. The S-N curves proposed by the main International Standards for fatigue life assessment do not take into account the state of degradation of the detail. For this reason, in this paper, a local approach is used to determine the fatigue life of corroded bolted joint with preload high strength bolts. In particular, fatigue life estimates are presented using the strain life method based on numerical analysis conducted on the joint, assuming that the crack nucleation phase is predominant in the whole fatigue life. The models used to simulate bolted joint are implemented using solid and contact elements and the geometry is realized taking into account the geometric imperfections produced by pitting corrosion. These imperfections were measured by surface surveys with a 3D profilometer. In conclusion, the results of the numerical analysis conducted on corroded joint model were compared with the experimental results obtained from cyclical tests

Crossmodal Links between Vision and Touch in Spatial Attention: A Computational Modelling Study

Many studies have revealed that attention operates across different sensory modalities, to facilitate the selection of relevant information in the multimodal situations of every-day life. Cross-modal links have been observed either when attention is directed voluntarily (endogenous) or involuntarily (exogenous). The neural basis of cross-modal attention presents a significant challenge to cognitive neuroscience. Here, we used a neural network model to elucidate the neural correlates of visual-tactile interactions in exogenous and endogenous attention. The model includes two unimodal (visual and tactile) areas connected with a bimodal area in each hemisphere and a competition between the two hemispheres. The model is able to explain cross-modal facilitation both in exogenous and endogenous attention, ascribing it to an advantaged activation of the bimodal area on the attended side (via a top-down or bottom-up biasing), with concomitant inhibition towards the opposite side. The model suggests that a competitive/cooperative interaction with biased competition may mediate both forms of cross-modal attention

Model-Free Plant Tuning

Given a static plant described by a differentiable input-output function, which is completely unknown, but whose Jacobian takes values in a known polytope in the matrix space, this paper considers the problem of tuning (i.e., driving to a desired value) the output, by suitably choosing the input. It is shown that, if the polytope is robustly nonsingular (or has full rank, in the nonsquare case), then a suitable tuning scheme drives the output to the desired point. The proof exploits a Lyapunov-like function and applies a well-known game-theoretic result, concerning the existence of a saddle point for a min-max zero-sum game. When the plant output is represented in an implicit form, it is shown that the same result can be obtained, resorting to a different Lyapunov-like function. The case in which proper input or output constraints must be enforced during the transient is considered as well. Some application examples are proposed to show the effectiveness of the approach

Thermal simulations for optical transition radiation screen for Eli-NP compton gamma source

The ELI-NP GBS (Extreme Light Infrastructure-Nuclear Physics Gamma Beam Source) is a high brightness elec-tron LINAC that is being built in Romania. The goal for this facility is to provide high luminosity gamma beam through Compton Backscattering. A train of 32 bunches at 100Hz with a nominal charge of 250pC is accelerated up to 740 MeV. Two interaction points with an IR Laser beam produces the gamma beam at different energies. In order to measure the electron beam spot size and the beam proper-ties along the train, the OTR screens must sustain the ther-mal and mechanical stress due to the energy deposited by the bunches. This paper is an ANSYS study of the issues due to the high quantity of energy transferred to the OTR screen. They will be shown different analysis, steady-state and thermal transient analysis, where the input loads will be the internal heat generation equivalent to the average power, deposited by the ELI-GBS beam in 512 ns, that is the train duration. Each analyses will be followed by the structural analysis to investigate the performance of the OTR materi