Matrix cracking and stress strain behaviour of continuous fibre ceramic composite laminates.

Matrix damage and its effects on mechanical properties have been examined for SiC (Nicalon1) fibre reinforced glass and glass ceramic matrix composites under quasi-static and fatigue loading conditions. Nicalon/Pyrex laminates of different lay-ups have been tested under quasi-static tension. The elastic moduli have been measured and matrix damage monitored as a function of applied strain. The mechanical properties are strongly influenced by the presence of crystalline regions in the matrix which promote microcracking. Laminated plate theory is used to provide bounds to the moduli of the laminates. For unidirectional and simple crossply Nicalon/CAS2 laminates the quasi-static stress/strain behaviour and associated matrix damage accumulation have been examined in detail. The damage development with applied stress was quantified by counts of crack density (in both longitudinal and transverse plies), stiffness loss and cumulative residual strain. The quasi static stress/strain behaviour during continuous tests (accumulating damage) and discontinuous tests (constant damage) have been modelled using a stress analysis based on Aveston, Cooper and Kelly (ACK) theory. The continuous stress/strain behaviour of (0/90) crossply laminates has been modelled using a shear-lag analysis developed previously to describe the transverse ply cracking behaviour of polymer matrix composites. The analysis is modified to account for longitudinal ply cracking. Matrix damage development in unidirectional and (0/90) crossply laminates under quasistatic cycling and high frequency fatigue loading have been studied. For unidirectional laminates stable stress/strain hysteresis loops were obtained during quasi-static cycling, corresponding to stable matrix damage states. These and similar loops obtained after high frequency fatigue are modelled using, the discontinuous stress/strain analysis. It is suggested that the effect of high frequency fatigue is to decrease the interfacial shear strength

Post-Newtonian corrections to the motion of spinning bodies in NRGR

In this paper we include spin and multipole moment effects in the formalism used to describe the motion of extended objects recently introduced in hep-th/0409156. A suitable description for spinning bodies is developed and spin-orbit, spin-spin and quadrupole-spin Hamiltonians are found at leading order. The existence of tidal, as well as self induced finite size effects is shown, and the contribution to the Hamiltonian is calculated in the latter. It is shown that tidal deformations start formally at O(v^6) and O(v^10) for maximally rotating general and compact objects respectively, whereas self induced effects can show up at leading order. Agreement is found for the cases where the results are known.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figures. Typos corrected, to appear in Physical Review

Proteomic profiling reveals sub proteomes of the human placenta

Proteomic characterisation of the placenta has largely been focused on effect of disease, anatomical features or specific cell types. We describe an unbiased proteomic mapping analysis to investigate how the placental proteome changes throughout the organ. A transverse slice of a human placenta was sectioned into 1 × 1cm samples. Sections were analysed using label free proteomics. Analysis revealed two distinct sub-proteomes that did not have anatomical significance. One had a muscular proteome and the other had distinct immunomodulation functions. Chorionic plate enriched proteins highlighted the fetal tissues high energy requirements whilst mechanisms of the decidua observed included modulation of cortisone levels

Characterization of immune response to neurofilament light in experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis

PMCID: PMC3856490This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.PMCID: PMC385649

Classical String in Curved Backgrounds

The Mathisson-Papapetrou method is originally used for derivation of the particle world line equation from the covariant conservation of its stress-energy tensor. We generalize this method to extended objects, such as a string. Without specifying the type of matter the string is made of, we obtain both the equations of motion and boundary conditions of the string. The world sheet equations turn out to be more general than the familiar minimal surface equations. In particular, they depend on the internal structure of the string. The relevant cases are classified by examining canonical forms of the effective 2-dimensional stress-energy tensor. The case of homogeneously distributed matter with the tension that equals its mass density is shown to define the familiar Nambu-Goto dynamics. The other three cases include physically relevant massive and massless strings, and unphysical tahyonic strings.Comment: 12 pages, REVTeX 4. Added a note and one referenc

Farm Performance From Holstein-Friesian Cows of Three Genetic Strains on Grazed Pasture

Dairy selection objectives and farm production systems in USA and Europe are different from those in New Zealand (NZ). The use of overseas semen in NZ in the last 20 years has changed the genetics of the former NZ Holstein-Friesian (HF) strain. This trial was designed to demonstrate the genetic progress in the NZ HF dairy herd in the last 25 years and how high production potential North American HF cows perform under pasture-based feeding systems

Effective field theories for QED bound states: extending Nonrelativistic QED to study retardation effects

Nonrelativistic QED bound states are difficult to study because of the presence of at least three widely different scales: the masses, three-momenta ($p_i$) and kinetic energies ($K_i$) of the constituents. Nonrelativistic QED (NRQED), an effective field theory developed by Caswell and Lepage, simplifies greatly bound state calculations by eliminating the masses as dynamical scales. As we demonstrate, NRQED diagrams involving only photons of energy $E_\gamma \simeq p_i$ contribute, in any calculation, to a unique order in $\alpha$. This is not the case, however, for diagrams involving photons with energies $E_\gamma \simeq K_i$ (``retardation effects"), for which no simple counting counting rules can be given. We present a new effective field theory in which the contribution of those ultra-soft photons can be isolated order by order in $\alpha$. This is effectively accomplished by performing a multipole expansion of the NRQED vertices.Comment: 39 pages, 9 Postscript figures, uses Rev.tex V3.0 and epsf.te

Generality of shear thickening in suspensions

Suspensions are of wide interest and form the basis for many smart fluids. For most suspensions, the viscosity decreases with increasing shear rate, i.e. they shear thin. Few are reported to do the opposite, i.e. shear thicken, despite the longstanding expectation that shear thickening is a generic type of suspension behavior. Here we resolve this apparent contradiction. We demonstrate that shear thickening can be masked by a yield stress and can be recovered when the yield stress is decreased below a threshold. We show the generality of this argument and quantify the threshold in rheology experiments where we control yield stresses arising from a variety of sources, such as attractions from particle surface interactions, induced dipoles from applied electric and magnetic fields, as well as confinement of hard particles at high packing fractions. These findings open up possibilities for the design of smart suspensions that combine shear thickening with electro- or magnetorheological response.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in Nature Material

Canonical formalism for the Born-Infeld particle

In the previous paper (hep-th/9712161) it was shown that the nonlinear Born-Infeld field equations supplemented by the "dynamical condition" (certain boundary condition for the field along the particle's trajectory) define perfectly deterministic theory, i.e. particle's trajectory is determined without any equations of motion. In the present paper we show that this theory possesses mathematically consistent Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations. Moreover, it turns out that the "dynamical condition" is already present in the definition of the physical phase space and, therefore, it is a basic element of the theory.Comment: 14 pages, LATE

Canonical Gravity, Diffeomorphisms and Objective Histories

This paper discusses the implementation of diffeomorphism invariance in purely Hamiltonian formulations of General Relativity. We observe that, if a constrained Hamiltonian formulation derives from a manifestly covariant Lagrangian, the diffeomorphism invariance of the Lagrangian results in the following properties of the constrained Hamiltonian theory: the diffeomorphisms are generated by constraints on the phase space so that a) The algebra of the generators reflects the algebra of the diffeomorphism group. b) The Poisson brackets of the basic fields with the generators reflects the space-time transformation properties of these basic fields. This suggests that in a purely Hamiltonian approach the requirement of diffeomorphism invariance should be interpreted to include b) and not just a) as one might naively suppose. Giving up b) amounts to giving up objective histories, even at the classical level. This observation has implications for Loop Quantum Gravity which are spelled out in a companion paper. We also describe an analogy between canonical gravity and Relativistic particle dynamics to illustrate our main point.Comment: Latex 16 Pages, no figures, revised in the light of referees' comments, accepted for publication in Classical and Quantum Gravit