1,483 research outputs found
A Study of the Microscopic Characteristics of Fracture Surface of MDI-Bonded Wood Fiber/Recycled Tire Rubber Composites Using Scanning Electron Microscopy
Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was utilized to observe the microstructure and fracture surfaces of tensile, bending, and internal bonding specimens of diphenylmethane diisocyanate (MDI) bonded wood fiber/recycled tire rubber composites. Microscopic characteristics of the composites, such as interface bonding between fibers and between fiber and rubber, geometry changes of wood fibers and rubber crumbs, and density profile along the thickness direction of composites, were examined. Four fracture types were classified by the observation of micrographs of various samples: fiber pull-out, fiber breakage, fiber partial pull-out and then breakage, and fiber split. The effects of two important factors, fiber to rubber ratio and MDI level, on bonding quality and fracture type were studied. The results illustrated that excellent bonding was formed between fibers, and good bonding was also observed between fiber and rubber in the micrographs. The degree of wood fiber densification varies along the thickness direction of the composites, forming a density profile. Fiber-slippage and density profile formed during the hot-press process give the composite a layerlike structure. Fiber breakage often occurs in high-densified layers or the layers with high resin content. Fiber pull-out often occurs in low-densified layers or the layers with low resin content
Decision making in kidney paired donation programs with altruistic donors
In recent years, kidney paired donation has been extended to include living non-directed or altruistic donors, in which an altruistic donor donates to the candidate of an incompatible donor candidate pair with the understanding that the donor in that pair will further donate to the candidate of a second pair, and so on; such a process continues and thus forms an altruistic donor-initiated chain. In this paper, we propose a novel strategy to sequentially allocate the altruistic donor (or bridge donor) so as to maximize the expected utility; analogous to the way a computer plays chess, the idea is to evaluate different allocations for each altruistic donor (or bridge donor) by looking several moves ahead in a derived look-ahead search tree. Simulation studies are provided to illustrate and evaluate our proposed method
Dispersive Manipulation of Paired Superconducting Qubits
We combine the ideas of qubit encoding and dispersive dynamics to enable
robust and easy quantum information processing (QIP) on paired superconducting
charge boxes sharing a common bias lead. We establish a decoherence free
subspace on these and introduce universal gates by dispersive interaction with
a LC resonator and inductive couplings between the encoded qubits. These gates
preserve the code space and only require the established local symmetry and the
control of the voltage bias.Comment: 5 pages, incl. 1 figur
Valence Quark Spin Distribution Functions
The hyperfine interactions of the constituent quark model provide a natural
explanation for many nucleon properties, including the Delta-N splitting, the
charge radius of the neutron, and the observation that the proton's quark
distribution function ratio d(x)/u(x)->0 as x->1. The hyperfine-perturbed quark
model also makes predictions for the nucleon spin-dependent distribution
functions. Precision measurements of the resulting asymmetries A_1^p(x) and
A_1^n(x) in the valence region can test this model and thereby the hypothesis
that the valence quark spin distributions are "normal".Comment: 16 pages, 2 Postscript figure
New directions in cellular therapy of cancer: a summary of the summit on cellular therapy for cancer
A summit on cellular therapy for cancer discussed and presented advances related to the use of adoptive cellular therapy for melanoma and other cancers. The summit revealed that this field is advancing rapidly. Conventional cellular therapies, such as tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL), are becoming more effective and more available. Gene therapy is becoming an important tool in adoptive cell therapy. Lymphocytes are being engineered to express high affinity T cell receptors (TCRs), chimeric antibody-T cell receptors (CARs) and cytokines. T cell subsets with more naĂŻve and stem cell-like characteristics have been shown in pre-clinical models to be more effective than unselected populations and it is now possible to reprogram T cells and to produce T cells with stem cell characteristics. In the future, combinations of adoptive transfer of T cells and specific vaccination against the cognate antigen can be envisaged to further enhance the effectiveness of these therapies
A Survey of Air-to-Ground Propagation Channel Modeling for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in the use of unmanned
aerial vehicles (UAVs), particularly for small UAVs, due to their affordable
prices, ease of availability, and ease of operability. Existing and future
applications of UAVs include remote surveillance and monitoring, relief
operations, package delivery, and communication backhaul infrastructure.
Additionally, UAVs are envisioned as an important component of 5G wireless
technology and beyond. The unique application scenarios for UAVs necessitate
accurate air-to-ground (AG) propagation channel models for designing and
evaluating UAV communication links for control/non-payload as well as payload
data transmissions. These AG propagation models have not been investigated in
detail when compared to terrestrial propagation models. In this paper, a
comprehensive survey is provided on available AG channel measurement campaigns,
large and small scale fading channel models, their limitations, and future
research directions for UAV communication scenarios
Cosmological parameters from SDSS and WMAP
We measure cosmological parameters using the three-dimensional power spectrum
P(k) from over 200,000 galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) in
combination with WMAP and other data. Our results are consistent with a
``vanilla'' flat adiabatic Lambda-CDM model without tilt (n=1), running tilt,
tensor modes or massive neutrinos. Adding SDSS information more than halves the
WMAP-only error bars on some parameters, tightening 1 sigma constraints on the
Hubble parameter from h~0.74+0.18-0.07 to h~0.70+0.04-0.03, on the matter
density from Omega_m~0.25+/-0.10 to Omega_m~0.30+/-0.04 (1 sigma) and on
neutrino masses from <11 eV to <0.6 eV (95%). SDSS helps even more when
dropping prior assumptions about curvature, neutrinos, tensor modes and the
equation of state. Our results are in substantial agreement with the joint
analysis of WMAP and the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey, which is an impressive
consistency check with independent redshift survey data and analysis
techniques. In this paper, we place particular emphasis on clarifying the
physical origin of the constraints, i.e., what we do and do not know when using
different data sets and prior assumptions. For instance, dropping the
assumption that space is perfectly flat, the WMAP-only constraint on the
measured age of the Universe tightens from t0~16.3+2.3-1.8 Gyr to
t0~14.1+1.0-0.9 Gyr by adding SDSS and SN Ia data. Including tensors, running
tilt, neutrino mass and equation of state in the list of free parameters, many
constraints are still quite weak, but future cosmological measurements from
SDSS and other sources should allow these to be substantially tightened.Comment: Minor revisions to match accepted PRD version. SDSS data and ppt
figures available at http://www.hep.upenn.edu/~max/sdsspars.htm
Evolutionary relationships among barley and <i>Arabidopsis</i> core circadian clock and clock-associated genes
The circadian clock regulates a multitude of plant developmental and metabolic processes. In crop species, it contributes significantly to plant performance and productivity and to the adaptation and geographical range over which crops can be grown. To understand the clock in barley and how it relates to the components in the Arabidopsis thaliana clock, we have performed a systematic analysis of core circadian clock and clock-associated genes in barley, Arabidopsis and another eight species including tomato, potato, a range of monocotyledonous species and the moss, Physcomitrella patens. We have identified orthologues and paralogues of Arabidopsis genes which are conserved in all species, monocot/dicot differences, species-specific differences and variation in gene copy number (e.g. gene duplications among the various species). We propose that the common ancestor of barley and Arabidopsis had two-thirds of the key clock components identified in Arabidopsis prior to the separation of the monocot/dicot groups. After this separation, multiple independent gene duplication events took place in both monocot and dicot ancestors. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00239-015-9665-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users
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