Applying the principles of sustainability in cultural heritage objects care: the case study of cuneiform tablet

This paper discusses application of sustainability principles in the care of museum’s collections and more specifically, in the case of cuneiform tablet collection. The principles of sustainability are inherently present in the idea of memory institutions and their rules of collection preservation. This paper shows how digitalization of collections and the new ways of data storage are well suited for reaching goals of preservation of the collection for future and simultaneously widening access to the collection for those interested. Various methods and approaches employed to achieve protection and opening the collection are presented

Advantageous Description of Short Fatigue Crack Growth Rates in Austenitic Stainless Steels with Distinct Properties

In this work two approaches to the description of short fatigue crack growth rate under large-scale yielding condition were comprehensively tested: (i) plastic component of the J-integral and (ii) Polak model of crack propagation. The ability to predict residual fatigue life of bodies with short initial cracks was studied for stainless steels Sanicro 25 and 304L. Despite their coarse microstructure and very different cyclic stress-strain response, the employed continuum mechanics models were found to give satisfactory results. Finite element modeling was used to determine the J-integrals and to simulate the evolution of crack front shapes, which corresponded to the real cracks observed on the fracture surfaces of the specimens. Residual fatigue lives estimated by these models were in good agreement with the number of cycles to failure of individual test specimens strained at various total strain amplitudes. Moreover, the crack growth rates of both investigated materials fell onto the same curve that was previously obtained for other steels with different properties. Such a "master curve" was achieved using the plastic part of J-integral and it has the potential of being an advantageous tool to model the fatigue crack propagation under large-scale yielding regime without a need of any additional experimental data

Toward a reliable detection of arachnophobia: subjective, behavioral, and neurophysiological measures of fear response

IntroductionThe administration of questionnaires presents an easy way of obtaining important knowledge about phobic patients. However, it is not well known how these subjective measurements correspond to the patient’s objective condition. Our study aimed to compare scores on questionnaires and image evaluation to the objective measurements of the behavioral approach test (BAT) and the neurophysiological effect of spiders extracted from fMRI measurements. The objective was to explore how reliably subjective statements about spiders and physiological and behavioral parameters discriminate between phobics and non-phobics, and what are the best predictors of overall brain activation.MethodsBased on a clinical interview, 165 subjects were assigned to either a “phobic” or low-fear “control” group. Finally, 30 arachnophobic and 32 healthy control subjects (with low fear of spiders) participated in this study. They completed several questionnaires (SPQ, SNAQ, DS-R) and underwent a behavioral approach test (BAT) with a live tarantula. Then, they were measured in fMRI while watching blocks of pictures including spiders and snakes. Finally, the respondents rated all the visual stimuli according to perceived fear. We proposed the Spider Fear Index (SFI) as a value characterizing the level of spider fear, computed based on the fMRI measurements. We then treated this variable as the “neurophysiological effect of spiders” and examined its contribution to the respondents’ fear ratings of the stimuli seen during the fMRI using the redundancy analysis (RDA).ResultsThe results for fear ranks revealed that the SFI, SNAQ, DS-R, and SPQ scores had a significant effect, while BAT and SPQ scores loaded in the same direction of the first multivariate axis. The SFI was strongly correlated with both SPQ and BAT scores in the pooled sample of arachnophobic and healthy control subjects.DiscussionBoth SPQ and BAT scores have a high informative value about the subject’s fear of spiders and together with subjective emotional evaluation of picture stimuli can be reliable predictors of spider phobia. These parameters provide easy and non-expensive but reliable measurement wherever more expensive devices such as magnetic resonance are not available. However, SFI still reflects individual variability within the phobic group, identifying individuals with higher brain activation, which may relate to more severe phobic reactions or other sources of fMRI signal variability

Proceedings of the 16th International colloquium Mechanical Fatigue of Materials

The XVI International Colloquium on Mechanical Fatigue of Metals was organized by the Institute of Physics of Materials, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in Brno, in September 24-26, 2012. The Colloquium has been opened to participants from all countries interested in the subject of fatigue of metallic materials. The proceedings contains 39 abstracts of 35 oral and of 4 poster contributions by 122 authors from 18 countries to be presented during the Colloquium