Long discontinuous carbon fibre/polypropylene composites for high volume structural applications

A processing route is presented to manufacture discontinuous carbon fibre reinforced polypropylene (CF.PP) composites, using much longer fibre lengths (25mm) and higher volume fractions (up to 45%) than previously reported in the literature. Carbon fibre tows are coated with different ratios of polypropylene, blended with a maleic anhydride coupling agent, to investigate the influence of the interfacial shear strength at the microscale on the macroscale composite properties. Improvements in the tensile performance at the macroscale (70% increase) are not as high as those reported for the interfacial shear strength at the microscale (300%), following the addition of the coupling agent. Consequently, the tensile strength of the CF.PP material is only 45% of values reported for carbon fibre/epoxy systems, however, the tensile stiffness is comparable. This demonstrates the potential for using CF.PP for structural applications, following further process optimisation to overcome the current high levels of porosity (3.3% at 0.45Vf) to improve the tensile strength

A922 Sequential measurement of 1 hour creatinine clearance (1-CRCL) in critically ill patients at risk of acute kidney injury (AKI)

Meeting abstrac

An integrated systems biology approach to the study of preterm birth using "-omic" technology - a guideline for research

Preterm birth is the leading cause of neonatal mortality and perinatal morbidity. The etiology of preterm is multi-factorial and still unclear. As evidence increases for a genetic contribution to PTB, so does the need to explore genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics in its study. This review suggests research guidelines for the conduct of high throughput systems biology investigations into preterm birth with the expectation that this will facilitate the sharing of samples and data internationally through consortia, generating the power needed to study preterm birth using integrated "-omics" technologies. The issues to be addressed include: (1) integrated "-omics" approaches, (2) phenotyping, (3) sample collection, (4) data management-integrative databases, (5) international consortia and (6) translational feasibility. This manuscript is the product of discussions initiated by the "-Omics" Working Group at the Preterm Birth International Collaborative Meeting held at the World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland in April 2009

The Receptor Tyrosine Kinase FGFR4 Negatively Regulates NF-kappaB Signaling

NFκB signaling is of paramount importance in the regulation of apoptosis, proliferation, and inflammatory responses during human development and homeostasis, as well as in many human cancers. Receptor Tyrosine Kinases (RTKs), including the Fibroblast Growth Factor Receptors (FGFRs) are also important in development and disease. However, a direct relationship between growth factor signaling pathways and NFκB activation has not been previously described, although FGFs have been known to antagonize TNFα-induced apoptosis. assays. FGF19 stimulation of endogenous FGFR4 in TNFα-treated DU145 prostate cancer cells also leads to a decrease in IKKβ activity, concomitant reduction in NFκB nuclear localization, and reduced apoptosis. Microarray analysis demonstrates that FGF19 + TNFα treatment of DU145 cells, in comparison with TNFα alone, favors proliferative genes while downregulating genes involved in apoptotic responses and NFκB signaling.These results identify a compelling link between FGFR4 signaling and the NFκB pathway, and reveal that FGFR4 activation leads to a negative effect on NFκB signaling including an inhibitory effect on proapoptotic signaling. We anticipate that this interaction between an RTK and a component of NFκB signaling will not be limited to FGFR4 alone

Behavioral genetics and taste

This review focuses on behavioral genetic studies of sweet, umami, bitter and salt taste responses in mammals. Studies involving mouse inbred strain comparisons and genetic analyses, and their impact on elucidation of taste receptors and transduction mechanisms are discussed. Finally, the effect of genetic variation in taste responsiveness on complex traits such as drug intake is considered. Recent advances in development of genomic resources make behavioral genetics a powerful approach for understanding mechanisms of taste

Curing Kinetic and Thermomechanical Behaviour of Co-Anhydride Cured Aminoglycidyl Epoxy Resins

Curing behaviour and thermo-mechanical properties of a technical grade of N,N,N’,N’-tetraglycidyl-4,4’-diamino-diphenylmethane (TGDDM-Araldite MY721), cured in the presence of an anhydride hardener mixture consisting of maleic anhydride (MA) and pyromellitic acid dianhydride (PMDA) was studied by calorimetric and dynamic mechanical analysis. Cure kinetics and the influence of varying stoichiometric anhydride to epoxy ratios were evaluated and the apparent activation energy was calculated according to Barrett’s method. High extents of conversion from DSC studies of the MY721-resin were reached after a room temperature cure, without an added catalyst, for 24 hours followed by a post-curing step of 1 hour at 90°C. Ultimate glass transition temperatures for the molar anhydride/epoxy ratio, r=0.8 were close to the decomposition temperature and indications were obtained that the network structure consists of two independent sub-networks. It is suggested that two separate mechanisms contribute to the curing reaction at room temperature. First the tertiary amine structure, intrinsic to aminoglycidyl-resins, may act as an internal catalyst for the anhydride ring opening, and secondly, the unsaturated bond of MA participates in the curing reaction by nucleophilic attack, such as from tertiary amines or carboxylate or alkoxide anions. From a study of a range of different amino-glycidyl resins, this low-temperature curing behaviour is found to be a general phenomenon

Oxytocin decreases sweet taste sensitivity in mice

Oxytocin (OXT) suppresses food intake and lack of OXT leads to overconsumption of sucrose. Taste bud cells were recently discovered to express OXT-receptor. In the present study we tested whether administering OXT to wild-type mice affects their licking behavior for tastants in a paradigm designed to be sensitive to taste perception. We injected C57BL/6J mice intraperitoneally (i.p.) with 10mg/kg OXT and assayed their brief-access lick responses, motivated by water deprivation, to NaCl (300mM), citric acid (20mM), quinine (0.3mM), saccharin (10mM), and a mix of MSG and IMP (100mM and 0.5mM respectively). OXT had no effect on licking for NaCl, citric acid, or quinine. A possible effect of OXT on saccharin and MSG+IMP was difficult to interpret due to unexpectedly low lick rates to water (the vehicle for all taste solutions), likely caused by the use of a high OXT dose that suppressed licking and other behaviors. A subsequent experiment focused on another preferred tastant, sucrose, and employed a much lower OXT dose (0.1mg/kg). This modification, based on our measurements of plasma OXT following i.p. injection, permitted us to elevate plasma [OXT] sufficiently to preferentially activate taste bud cells. OXT at this low dose significantly reduced licking responses to 0.3M sucrose, and overall shifted the sucrose concentration - behavioral response curves rightward (mean EC50saline=0.362M vs. EC50OXT=0.466M). Males did not differ from females under any condition in this study. We propose that circulating oxytocin is another factor that modulates taste-based behavior

Multi-Environment Speaker Verification

Here we investigate an instance of the abstract problem of pattern recognition under mismatch conditions: Models of phenomena are built with data collected in the training environment but must be used to recognize the same phenomena in another environment. The specific problem is speaker verification, where the training and testing data for each speaker can come from one of many different microphones. We use data, unlabeled with respect to channel or environment, to build, unsupervised, an easily extensible, hierarchical structure that at the finest level consists of individual speaker models, but at the coarsest level is a collection of all of the models. We then have the ability to automatically generate evolving background models from any layer of our hierarchical model when we wish to perform a verification. We give results to show that the richer our hierarchical structure, the better we do in terms of verification. 1. INTRODUCTION We consider the problem of speaker verification u..

IBM Model-Based and Frame-by-Frame Speaker-Recognition

Amidst the recent crazes for emerging technologies like speech recognition and biometrics, speaker recognition is slowly reaching the maturity to be deemed practical in many different applications. This paper presents new approaches for text-independent speaker recognition. The performances of the model-based algorithm presented concurrently at the ICASSP'98 conference and the frame-based algorithm presented in this paper are compared here. The engine, described here, provides multiple functionalities including those of identification, verification and classification. The modes of operation and design choices allow for tight integration of the speech recognition and speaker recognition engines in a broad sense. This new architecture as well as the results obtained for very specific tasks undoubtedly announce myriads of new applications where both technologies complement each other and can no longer be clearly distinguished as illustrated by the concept of speech biometrics. Hands-free..