Relation between number of siblings and adult mortality and stroke risk: 25 year follow up of men in the Collaborative study

<b>Study objective</b>: To investigate the relation between number of siblings, mortality risk, and stroke risk. <b>Design</b>: Prospective cohort study. <b>Setting</b>: 27 workplaces in Scotland. <b>Participants</b>: 5765 employed men aged 35–64 from a variety of different workplaces, screened between 1970 and 1973. <b>Main results</b>: There were strong relationships between number of siblings and socioeconomic variables and also with adult behavioural measures. Men with greater numbers of siblings had an increased risk of dying of all causes, coronary heart disease, lung cancer, stomach cancer, and respiratory disease over a 25 year follow up period. Adjustment for risk factors could explain these associations, excepting stomach cancer mortality. With the definition of stroke as either a hospital admission for stroke or death from stroke, there was a strong relation between number of siblings and haemorrhagic stroke, but not ischaemic stroke. <b>Conclusions</b>: Number of siblings is strongly related to mortality risk, but as it is also related to many risk factors, adjustment for these can generally explain the relation with mortality. The exceptions are stomach cancer mortality and haemorrhagic stroke, which are known to be related to deprivation in childhood, and, in the case of stomach cancer to childhood infection

NASTRAN flutter analysis of advanced turbopropellers

An existing capability developed to conduct modal flutter analysis of tuned bladed-shrouded discs in NASTRAN was modified and applied to investigate the subsonic unstalled flutter characteristics of advanced turbopropellers. The modifications pertain to the inclusion of oscillatory modal aerodynamic loads of blades with large (backward and forward) variable sweep. The two dimensional subsonic cascade unsteady aerodynamic theory was applied in a strip theory manner with appropriate modifications for the sweep effects. Each strip is associated with a chord selected normal to any spanwise reference curve such as the blade leading edge. The stability of three operating conditions of a 10-bladed propeller is analyzed. Each of these operating conditions is iterated once to determine the flutter boundary. A 5-bladed propeller is also analyzed at one operating condition to investigate stability. Analytical results obtained are in very good agreement with those from wind tunnel tests

Carrier transport coefficients across GaAs-GaAIAs (100) interfaces

We present calculations of reflection and transmission coefficients for electrons and holes at (100) interfaces for the GaAs–Ga_(1–x)Al_xAs system. We consider semi‐infinite crystals of the two semiconductors joined at an abrupt or compositionally graded interface. The calculations are performed using the empirical tight binding approximation. The transport coefficients were computed as a function of the components of the incident carrier wavevector normal and parallel to the interface. We have investigated the transport coefficients for incident states near various band minima into different final state channels. The transmission into states with qualitatively similar character to the incident state is found to be much greater than transmission into states of different character. For example, an electron near the X minimum normal to the interface in Ga_(1–xAl_xAs transmits into the X valley of GaAs with much greater probability than it transmits into the Γ minimum of GaAs. We have investigated the dependence of the transport coefficients on alloy composition. The effect of compositional grading of the interface on the transport coefficients has also been investigated

Automatically linking MEDLINE abstracts to the Gene Ontology

Much has been written recently about the need for effective tools and methods for mining the wealth of information present in biomedical literature (Mack and Hehenberger, 2002; Blagosklonny and Pardee, 2001; Rindflesch et al., 2002)—the activity of conceptual biology. Keyword search engines operating over large electronic document stores (such as PubMed and the PNAS) offer some help, but there are fundamental obstacles that limit their effectiveness. In the first instance, there is no general consensus among scientists about the vernacular to be used when describing research about genes, proteins, drugs, diseases, tissues and therapies, making it very difficult to formulate a search query that retrieves the right documents. Secondly, finding relevant articles is just one aspect of the investigative process. A more fundamental goal is to establish links and relationships between facts existing in published literature in order to “validate current hypotheses or to generate new ones” (Barnes and Robertson, 2002)—something keyword search engines do little to support

Debris control design achievements of the booster separation motors

The stringent debris control requirements imposed on the design of the Space Shuttle booster separation motor are described along with the verification program implemented to ensure compliance with debris control objectives. The principal areas emphasized in the design and development of the Booster Separation Motor (BSM) relative to debris control were the propellant formulation and nozzle closures which protect the motors from aerodynamic heating and moisture. A description of the motor design requirements, the propellant formulation and verification program, and the nozzle closures design and verification are presented

Environmental and High-Strain Rate effects on composites for engine applications

The Lewis Research Center is conducting a series of programs intended to investigate and develop the application of composite materials to structural components for turbojet engines. A significant part of that effort is directed to establishing resistance, defect growth, and strain rate characteristics of composite materials over the wide range of environmental and load conditions found in commercial turbojet engine operations. Both analytical and experimental efforts are involved

CODSTRAN: Composite durability structural analysis

CODSTRAN (COmposite Durability STRuctural ANalysis) is an integrated computer program being developed for the prediction of defect growth and fracture of composite structures subjected to service loads and environments. CODSTRAN is briefly described with respect to organization, capabilities and present status. Application of CODSTRAN current capability to a flat composite laminate with a center slit which was subjected to axial tension loading predicted defect growth which is in good agreement with C-scan ultrasonic test records

Finite element forced vibration analysis of rotating cyclic structures

A capability was added to the general purpose finite element program NASTRAN Level 17.7 to conduct forced vibration analysis of tuned cyclic structures rotating about their axes of symmetry. The effects of Coriolis and centripetal accelerations together with those due to linear acceleration of the axis of rotation were included. The theoretical development of this capability is presented