Risk Quantification and Evaluation Modelling

In this paper authors have discussed risk quantification methods and evaluation of risks and decision parameter to be used for deciding on ranking of the critical items, for prioritization of condition monitoring based risk and reliability centered maintenance (CBRRCM). As time passes any equipment or any product degrades into lower effectiveness and the rate of failure or malfunctioning increases, thereby lowering the reliability. Thus with the passage of time or a number of active tests or periods of work, the reliability of the product or the system, may fall down to a low value known as a threshold value, below which the reliability should not be allowed to dip. Hence, it is necessary to fix up the normal basis for determining the appropriate points in the product life cycle where predictive preventive maintenance may be applied in the programme so that the reliability (the probability of successful functioning) can be enhanced, preferably to its original value, by reducing the failure rate and increasing the mean time between failure. It is very important for defence application where reliability is a prime work. An attempt is made to develop mathematical model for risk assessment and ranking them. Based on likeliness coefficient β1 and risk coefficient β2 ranking of the sub-systems can be modelled and used for CBRRCM.Defence Science Journal, Vol. 64, No. 4, July 2014, pp. 378-384, DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/dsj.64.6366

Role of magnesium in essential hypertension

Beneficial role of magnasium supplementation in prevention of complications in coronary artery disease (Iseri,1984) in ischaemic heart disease (Altura,1988) and in the treatment of patients with AMI (Abraham,1990) has been well documented. One study showed that magnesium supplementation reduced arterial blood pressure in patients with hypertension (Dykner& Waster,1983).Renin profiling, nevertheless,has revealed higher,and lower magnesium levels in low renin and high renin hypertensives respectively (Resnick LM et a1 1983).The significance of this seems to be that the influence of magnesium intake on blood pressure may differ according to the underlying state of magnesium metabolism in hypertensive patients. These observations remain largely unconfirmed. Recently it has been reported that a disordered metabolism of magnesium and calcium ions is present in women with pregnancy induced hypertension (Singh, HJ 1993).So the objective of this study was to investigate the magnesium status in serum, erythrocyte and in urine of untreated hypertensive patients. Work was further extended to investigate the relationship between serum and urinary magnesium levels,plasma renin activity (PRA) and plasma renin concentration (PRC) in normotensive and age and sex-matched untreated hypertensives

Elastic Scattering of Medium-Energy Protons

This work was supported by National Science Foundation Grant PHY 75-00289 and Indiana Universit

The Optical Potential for Medium-Energy Proton Scattering

This work was supported by National Science Foundation Grant PHY 76-84033 and Indiana Universit

Localization of gravity in brane world with arbitrary extra dimensions

We study the induced 4-dimensional linearized Einstein field equations in an m-dimensional bulk space by means of a confining potential. It is shown that in this approach the mass of graviton is quantized. The cosmological constant problem is also addressed within the context of this approach. We show that the difference between the values of the cosmological constant in particle physics and cosmology stems from our measurements in two different scales, small and large.Comment: 8 pages. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:gr-qc/0408004, arXiv:gr-qc/0607067, arXiv:0704.1035, arXiv:0707.3558, arXiv:0710.266

Electronic structure and ferroelectricity in SrBi2Ta2O9

The electronic structure of SrBi2Ta2O9 is investigated from first-principles, within the local density approximation, using the full-potential linearized augmented plane wave (LAPW) method. The results show that, besides the large Ta(5d)-O(2p) hybridization which is a common feature of the ferroelectric perovskites, there is an important hybridization between bismuth and oxygen states. The underlying static potential for the ferroelectric distortion and the primary source for ferroelectricity is investigated by a lattice-dynamics study using the Frozen Phonon approach.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures. Phys. Rev. B, in pres

Phenomenological and Microscopic Optical-Model Descriptions of 99 MeV 6-Li Scattering

This work was supported by National Science Foundation Grants PHY 76-84033A01, PHY 78-22774, and Indiana Universit

Impact of Obesity on Disease Activity and Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases

INTRODUCTION:We conducted a cohort study on the impact of obesity on disease activity and Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) measures in the inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) Partners cohort.METHODS:We performed a cross-sectional and longitudinal study within IBD Partners, an internet-based cohort of >15,000 patients living with Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC). We included adult patients with IBD, with recorded body mass index (BMI), with at least 6 months of follow-up, excluding patients with BMI < 18.5 kg/m2. We evaluated the independent effect of World Health Organization classes of obesity on risk of clinical relapse or persistent disease activity (using validated disease activity indexes) and PROMIS measures, using multivariate logistic regression and linear regression, respectively.RESULTS:We included 7,296 patients with IBD (4,748 patients with CD, 19.5% obese; 2,548 patients with UC with intact colon, 20.3% obese). Obesity was independently, and in a dose-dependent fashion, associated with an increased risk of persistent disease activity or relapse in both patients with CD (class II or III obesity vs normal BMI: adjusted odds ratio, 1.86; 95% confidence interval, 1.30-2.68) and UC (adjusted odds ratio, 2.97; 95% confidence interval, 1.75-5.17). Obesity was also independently associated with higher anxiety, depression, fatigue, pain, and inferior social function scores in patients with CD and UC at baseline and with worsening depression, fatigue, pain, and social function in patients with CD on longitudinal assessment.DISCUSSION:Obesity at baseline is independently associated with worsening disease activity and PROMIS measures in patients with IBD

Glass Transition of Hard Sphere Systems: Molecular Dynamics and Density Functional Theory

The glass transition of a hard sphere system is investigated within the framework of the density functional theory (DFT). Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are performed to study dynamical behavior of the system on the one hand and to provide the data to produce the density field for the DFT on the other hand. Energy landscape analysis based on the DFT shows that there appears a metastable (local) free energy minimum representing an amorphous state as the density is increased. This state turns out to become stable, compared with the uniform liquid, at some density, around which we also observe sharp slowing down of the $alpha$ relaxation in MD simulations.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure