MECHANICAL TESTING OF FUSED FILAMENT 3-D PRINTED COMPONENTS FOR DISTRIBUTED MANUFACTURING

Fused filament fabrication (FFF)-based open-source 3-D printers offer the potential of decentralized manufacturing both in developing and developed countries. Unfortunately, a severe lack of data and standards relating to material properties and printed components limit this potential. This thesis first investigates the mechanical properties of a wide-range of FFF materials and provides a database of mechanical strength of the materials tested. The results demonstrate that the tensile strength of a 3-D printed specimen depends largely on the mass of the specimen, which provides a means to estimate the strength of 3-D printed components. Then this information is used to evaluate a bicycled pedal, which was 3-D printed and tested following the CEN (European Committee for Standardization) standards for racing bicycles. The results show the pedals meet the CEN standards and can be used on bicycles at lower costs than standard pedals. This investigation indicates the viability of distributed manufacturing

Updating Physical and Chemical Characteristics of Fly Ash for Use in Concrete

When incorporated in concrete mixtures, fly ashes are known to influence both its fresh and hardened properties. An accurate and quick technique to predict the extent of this influence based on the characteristics of fly ash would be highly beneficial in terms of field applications. The current study was an attempt to quantify the effects of fly ashes on the properties of pastes as a function of: (a) the mean particle size of the fly ash particles, (b) their fineness and (c) their chemical composition. In addition, since the type and the amount of glass present in the fly ash significantly affect its reactivity, this property was also included in the investigation. Twenty different fly ashes (both, ASTM Class C and Class F), obtained from power plants in and around Indiana, were characterized during the Phase 1 of the study. The information collected included: physical characteristics, chemical composition and the amount and type of glass present. Phase 2 of the study consisted of evaluation of various properties of binary paste systems (portland cement with 20% of cement of fly replacement). The evaluated properties included: the set time, the heat of hydration, the strength activity index, the non-evaporable water content and the amount of calcium hydroxide formed at different ages. These results obtained from both phases of the study were used to build statistical models for prediction of previously evaluated properties for any hypothetical fly ash with similar characteristics. The models included only the most significant variables, i.e., those which were found to most strongly affect any specific property. The variables to be included in the model were selected based on the adjusted R2 values. As a result of the modeling process, it was found that the sets of statistically significant variables affecting the properties consisted of both physical and chemical characteristics of the fly ash and that the combination of these variables was unique for each property evaluated. When applied to a set of results from two additional (not previously used) fly ashes, the models provided the following residuals of predicted properties: (a) Initial set time – 100 minutes for Class F ashes and over 300 minutes for Class C ashes (b) Peak heat of hydration – 0.7 W/kg (c) Time of peak heat – 375 minutes (d) Total heat of hydration – 96 J/kg (e) Calcium hydroxide content at various ages – 0.25% for early ages (1 and 3 days) and 0.5% for later ages (7 and 28 days) (f) Non-evaporable water content – 0.7% for early ages (1 and 3 days) and 5% for later ages (28 days) (g) Strength activity index – range of 1% in Class C ashes and 1% to 2% in Class F ashes (from 7 days to 28 days) Phase 3 of the study consisted of evaluating the same set of properties but using ternary paste systems (cement and two different fly ashes). The goal for this study was to ascertain the applicability of the weighted sum of the models chosen for the binary paste systems to predict the properties of ternary binder systems. In addition, the analysis as to which of the chosen variables has the maximum effect on the properties was performed. It was found that the properties of the ternary binder systems were not additive in nature, except for strength activity index at 28 days. Lastly, the percent influence of each of the chosen independent variables, which affect the mentioned properties, was calculated along with the unexplained variation (error percentage). The error percentages varied for each of the properties, with set time having the maximum error (almost 50%)

Viability of Distributed Manufacturing of Bicycle Components with 3-D Printing: CEN Standardized Polylactic Acid Pedal Testing

International audienc

Numerical model for simulating surface roughness in honing process

In this first part of the project, state-of-art regarding modelling of machining processes with abrasive stones was studied. In the second part of the project, a numerical model was developed o simalte the surface topography to be obtained in a honinh process, as a function of honing parameters like grain, size, linear speed, tangential speed, etc. In the present model, only one grain having a simple shape was considered. The analytical trajectory of the grain was determined as a result of both constant rotating and reciprocating movement of the honing head. Then, numerical calulations were performed or determine the material that is removed by the abrasive grain form a block of material corresponding to workpiece. From these calculations, surface topography of the block material was obtained and main roughness parameters, both in 2 and 3 dimensions, were calculated.Incomin

U-CREAT: Unsupervised Case Retrieval using Events extrAcTion

The task of Prior Case Retrieval (PCR) in the legal domain is about automatically citing relevant (based on facts and precedence) prior legal cases in a given query case. To further promote research in PCR, in this paper, we propose a new large benchmark (in English) for the PCR task: IL-PCR (Indian Legal Prior Case Retrieval) corpus. Given the complex nature of case relevance and the long size of legal documents, BM25 remains a strong baseline for ranking the cited prior documents. In this work, we explore the role of events in legal case retrieval and propose an unsupervised retrieval method-based pipeline U-CREAT (Unsupervised Case Retrieval using Events Extraction). We find that the proposed unsupervised retrieval method significantly increases performance compared to BM25 and makes retrieval faster by a considerable margin, making it applicable to real-time case retrieval systems. Our proposed system is generic, we show that it generalizes across two different legal systems (Indian and Canadian), and it shows state-of-the-art performance on the benchmarks for both the legal systems (IL-PCR and COLIEE corpora).Comment: Accepted at ACL 2023, 15 pages (12 main + 3 Appendix

RepRapable automated open source bag valve mask-based ventilator

This study describes the development of an automated bag valve mask (BVM) compression system, which, during acute shortages and supply chain disruptions can serve as a temporary emergency ventilator. The resuscitation system is based on the Arduino controller with a real-time operating system installed on a largely RepRap 3-D printable parametric component-based structure. The cost of the system is under $170, which makes it affordable for replication by makers around the world. The device provides a controlled breathing mode with tidal volumes from 100 to 800 milliliters, breathing rates from 5 to 40 breaths/minute, and inspiratory-to-expiratory ratio from 1:1 to 1:4. The system is designed for reliability and scalability of measurement circuits through the use of the serial peripheral interface and has the ability to connect additional hardware due to the object-oriented algorithmic approach. Experimental results demonstrate repeatability and accuracy exceeding human capabilities in BVM-based manual ventilation. Future work is necessary to further develop and test the system to make it acceptable for deployment outside of emergencies in clinical environments, however, the nature of the design is such that desired features are relatively easy to add with the test using protocols and parametric design files provided

Emerging Gene-Editing Modalities for Osteoarthritis

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a pathological degenerative condition of the joints that is widely prevalent worldwide, resulting in significant pain, disability, and impaired quality of life. The diverse etiology and pathogenesis of OA can explain the paucity of viable preventive and disease-modifying strategies to counter it. Advances in genome-editing techniques may improve disease-modifying solutions by addressing inherited predisposing risk factors and the activity of inflammatory modulators. Recent progress on technologies such as CRISPR/Cas9 and cell-based genome-editing therapies targeting the genetic and epigenetic alternations in OA offer promising avenues for early diagnosis and the development of personalized therapies. The purpose of this literature review was to concisely summarize the genome-editing options against chronic degenerative joint conditions such as OA with a focus on the more recently emerging modalities, especially CRISPR/Cas9. Future advancements in novel genome-editing therapies may improve the efficacy of such targeted treatments

SemEval 2023 Task 6: LegalEval -- Understanding Legal Texts

In populous countries, pending legal cases have been growing exponentially. There is a need for developing NLP-based techniques for processing and automatically understanding legal documents. To promote research in the area of Legal NLP we organized the shared task LegalEval - Understanding Legal Texts at SemEval 2023. LegalEval task has three sub-tasks: Task-A (Rhetorical Roles Labeling) is about automatically structuring legal documents into semantically coherent units, Task-B (Legal Named Entity Recognition) deals with identifying relevant entities in a legal document and Task-C (Court Judgement Prediction with Explanation) explores the possibility of automatically predicting the outcome of a legal case along with providing an explanation for the prediction. In total 26 teams (approx. 100 participants spread across the world) submitted systems paper. In each of the sub-tasks, the proposed systems outperformed the baselines; however, there is a lot of scope for improvement. This paper describes the tasks, and analyzes techniques proposed by various teams.Comment: 13 Pages (9 Pages + References), Accepted at SemEval 202

Health-related quality of life and survival in liver transplant candidates.

Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) is an important measure of the effects of chronic liver disease in affected patients that helps guide interventions to improve well-being. However, the relationship between HRQOL and survival in liver transplant candidates remains unclear. We examined whether the Physical Component Summary (PCS) and Mental Component Summary (MCS) scores from the Short Form 36 (SF-36) Health Survey were associated with survival in liver transplant candidates. We administered the SF-36 questionnaire (version 2.0) to patients in the Pulmonary Vascular Complications of Liver Disease study, a multicenter prospective cohort of patients evaluated for liver transplantation in 7 academic centers in the United States between 2003 and 2006. Cox proportional hazards models were used with death as the primary outcome and adjustment for liver transplantation as a time-varying covariate. The mean age of the 252 participants was 54 +/- 10 years, 64% were male, and 94% were white. During the 422 person years of follow-up, 147 patients (58%) were listed, 75 patients (30%) underwent transplantation, 49 patients (19%) died, and 3 patients were lost to follow-up. Lower baseline PCS scores were associated with an increased mortality rate despite adjustments for age, gender, Model for End-Stage Liver Disease score, and liver transplantation (P for the trend = 0.0001). The MCS score was not associated with mortality (P for the trend = 0.53). In conclusion, PCS significantly predicts survival in liver transplant candidates, and interventions directed toward improving the physical status may be helpful in improving outcomes in liver transplant candidates

Search for flavor-changing neutral currents and lepton-family-number violation in two-body D0 decays

Results of a search for the three neutral charm decays, D0 -> mu e, D0 -> mu mu, and D0 -> e e, are presented. This study was based on data collected in Experiment 789 at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory using 800 GeV/c proton-Au and proton-Be interactions. No evidence is found for any of the decays. Upper limits on the branching ratios, at the 90% confidence level, are obtained.Comment: 28 pages, 18 figures. Submitted to Physical Review