1,157 research outputs found
Preparation, characterization, physical testing and performance of fluorocarbon membranes and separators
The direct fluorination method of converting carefully selected hydrocarbon substrates to fluorinated membranes was successfully applied to produce promising, novel membranes for electrochemical devices. A family of polymer blends was identified which permits wide latitude in the concentration of both crosslinks and carboxyl groups in hydrocarbon membranes. These membranes were successfully fluorinated and are potentially competitive with commercial membranes in performance, and potentially much cheaper in price
Preparation, characterization, physical testing and performance of flurocarbon membranes and separators
The direct fluorination method of converting carefully selected hydrocarbon substrates to fluorinated membranes was successfully applied to produce promising, novel membranes for electrochemical devices. A family of polymer blends was identified which permits wide latitude in the concentration of both crosslinks and carboxyl groups in hydrocarbon membranes. The membranes of paragraph two were successfully fluorinated
Fractional Curve Flows and Solitonic Hierarchies in Gravity and Geometric Mechanics
Methods from the geometry of nonholonomic manifolds and Lagrange-Finsler
spaces are applied in fractional calculus with Caputo derivatives and for
elaborating models of fractional gravity and fractional Lagrange mechanics. The
geometric data for such models are encoded into (fractional) bi-Hamiltonian
structures and associated solitonic hierarchies. The constructions yield
horizontal/vertical pairs of fractional vector sine-Gordon equations and
fractional vector mKdV equations when the hierarchies for corresponding curve
fractional flows are described in explicit forms by fractional wave maps and
analogs of Schrodinger maps.Comment: latex2e, 11pt, 21 pages; the variant accepted to J. Math. Phys.; new
and up--dated reference
Lax Tensors, Killing Tensors and Geometric Duality
The solution of the Lax tensor equations in the case
was analyzed. The Lax tensors on
the dual metrics were investigated. We classified all two dimensional metrics
having the symmetric Lax tensor . The Lax tensors of the
flat space, Rindler system and its dual were found.Comment: 9 pages LATE
Extraction of reliable information from time-domain pressure and flow signals measured by means of forced oscillation techniques
This paper aims to give a proof-of-concept for the possible application of the forced oscillation lung function test to assess the viscoelastic properties of the airways and tissue. In particular, a novel signal processing algorithm is employed on non-stationary, noisy, (relatively) short time series of respiratory pressure and flow signals. This novel technique is employed to filter the useful information from the signals acquired under two measurement conditions: pseudo-functional residual capacity (PFRC) and pseudo-total lung capacity (PTLC). The PFRC is the measurement performed at lowest lung volume with maximum deflation, and the PTLC is measurement performed at the maximum lung volume under maximum inflation. The results suggest that the proposed technique is able to extract information on the viscoelastic properties of the lung tissue at a macroscopic level. The conclusion of this preliminary study is that the proposed combination of signal processing method and lung function test is suited to be employed on a large database in order to deliver reference values and perform further statistical analysis
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Influencing the physiology and decisions of groups: Physiological linkage during group decision-making
Many of the most important decisions in our society are made within groups, yet we know little about how the physiological responses of group members predict the decisions that groups make. In the current work, we examine whether physiological linkage from “senders” to “receivers”—which occurs when a sender’s physiological response predicts a receiver’s physiological response—is associated with senders’ success at persuading the group to make a decision in their favor. We also examine whether experimentally manipulated status—an important predictor of social behavior—is associated with physiological linkage. In groups of 5, we randomly assigned 1 person to be high status, 1 low status, and 3 middle status. Groups completed a collaborative decision-making task that required them to come to a consensus on a decision to hire 1 of 5 firms. Unbeknownst to the 3 middle-status members, high- and low-status members surreptitiously were told to each argue for different firms. We measured cardiac interbeat intervals of all group members throughout the decision-making process to assess physiological linkage. We found that the more receivers were physiologically linked to senders, the more likely groups were to make a decision in favor of the senders. We did not find that people were physiologically linked to their group members as a function of their fellow group members’ status. This work identifies physiological linkage as a novel correlate of persuasion and highlights the need to understand the relationship between group members’ physiological responses during group decision-making
Note on counterterms in asymptotically flat spacetimes
We consider in more detail the covariant counterterm proposed by Mann and
Marolf in asymptotically flat spacetimes. With an eye to specific practical
computations using this counterterm, we present explicit expressions in general
dimensions that can be used in the so-called `cylindrical cut-off' to
compute the action and the associated conserved quantities for an
asymptotically flat spacetime. As applications, we show how to compute the
action and the conserved quantities for the NUT-charged spacetime and for the
Kerr black hole in four dimensions.Comment: 13 pages, v. 2 added reference
The burden of clostridium difficile infection in patients with liver cirrhosis
Clostridium Difficile Infection (CDI) has registered a dramatically increasing incidence in the general population over the past decades. Nowadays, Clostridium Difficile is the leading cause of hospital-acquired diarrhea in Europe and North America. Liver cirrhosis is the final stage of any chronic liver disease (CLD). The most common causes are chronic hepatitis C or B and viral co-infections, alcohol misuse, and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). CLD and cirrhosis are listed among the ten leading causes of death in the US. Cirrhosis due to any etiology disrupts the homeostatic role of the liver in the body. Cirrhosis-associated immune dysfunction (CAID) leads to alterations in both inherited and acquired systemic and local liver immunity. CAID is caused by increased systemic inflammation and immunodeficiency and it is responsible for 30% of mortality rates all over the world. Clostridium Difficile infection frequently affects patients suffering from liver cirrhosis because of the high number of prolonged hospitalizations, regular use of antibiotics for the prevention or treatment of SBP, proton pump inhibitor (PPI) use, and an overall immunocompromised state. Clostridium Difficile is a Gram-positive bacterium responsible for the high morbidity and mortality rates in patients with cirrhosis, with an essential increase in a 30-day mortality
Vortex stability in nearly two-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensates with attraction
We perform accurate investigation of stability of localized vortices in an
effectively two-dimensional ("pancake-shaped") trapped BEC with negative
scattering length. The analysis combines computation of the stability
eigenvalues and direct simulations. The states with vorticity S=1 are stable in
a third of their existence region, , where is
the number of atoms, and is the corresponding collapse
threshold. Stable vortices easily self-trap from arbitrary initial
configurations with embedded vorticity. In an adjacent interval, , the unstable vortex
periodically splits in two fragments and recombines. At , the fragments do not recombine, as each one collapses by
itself. The results are compared with those in the full 3D Gross-Pitaevskii
equation. In a moderately anisotropic 3D configuration, with the aspect ratio
, the stability interval of the S=1 vortices occupies
of their existence region, hence the 2D limit provides for a reasonable
approximation in this case. For the isotropic 3D configuration, the stability
interval expands to 65% of the existence domain. Overall, the vorticity
heightens the actual collapse threshold by a factor of up to 2. All vortices
with are unstable.Comment: 21 pages, 8 figures, to appear in Physical Review
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