16,409 research outputs found
Life assessment of combustor liner using unified constitutive models
Hot section components of gas turbine engines are subject to severe thermomechanical loads during each mission cycle. Inelastic deformation can be induced in localized regions leading to eventual fatigue cracking. Assessment of durability requires reasonably accurate calculation of the structural response at the critical location for crack initiation. In recent years nonlinear finite element computer codes have become available for calculating inelastic structural response under cyclic loading. NASA-Lewis sponsored the development of unified constitutive material models and their implementation in nonlinear finite element computer codes for the structural analysis of hot section components. These unified models were evaluated with regard to their effect on the life prediction of a hot section component. The component considered was a gas turbine engine combustor liner. A typical engine mission cycle was used for the thermal and structural analyses. The analyses were performed on a CRAY computer using the MARC finite element code. The results were compared with laboratory test results, in terms of crack initiation lives
Structural assessment of a space station solar dynamic heat receiver thermal energy storage canister
The structural performance of a space station thermal energy storage (TES) canister subject to orbital solar flux variation and engine cold start up operating conditions was assessed. The impact of working fluid temperature and salt-void distribution on the canister structure are assessed. Both analytical and experimental studies were conducted to determine the temperature distribution of the canister. Subsequent finite element structural analyses of the canister were performed using both analytically and experimentally obtained temperatures. The Arrhenius creep law was incorporated into the procedure, using secondary creep data for the canister material, Haynes 188 alloy. The predicted cyclic creep strain accumulations at the hot spot were used to assess the structural performance of the canister. In addition, the structural performance of the canister based on the analytically determined temperature was compared with that based on the experimentally measured temperature data
A state-level study of opioid use disorder treatment access and neonatal abstinence syndrome
Background Adult opioid use and neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) are growing public health problems in the United States (U.S.). Our objective was to determine how opioid use disorder treatment access impacts the relationship between adult opioid use and NAS.
Methods We conducted a cross-sectional state-level ecologic study using 36 states with available Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project State Inpatient Databases in 2014. Opioid use disorder treatment access was determined by the: 1) proportion of people needing but not receiving substance use treatment, 2) density of buprenorphine-waivered physicians, and 3) proportion of individuals in outpatient treatment programs (OTPs). The incidence of NAS was defined as ICD-9 code 779.5 (drug withdrawal syndrome in newborn) from any discharge diagnosis field per 1000 live births in that state.
Results Unmet need for substance use disorder treatment correlated with NAS (r = 0.54, 95% CI: 0.26–0.73). The correlation between adult illicit drug use/dependence and NAS was higher in states with a lower density of buprenorphine-waivered physicians and individuals in OTPs.
Conclusions Measures of opioid use disorder treatment access dampened the correlation between illicit drug use/dependence and NAS. Future studies using community- or individual-level data may be better poised to answer the question of whether or not opioid use disorder treatment access improves NAS relative to adult opioid use
SGXIO: Generic Trusted I/O Path for Intel SGX
Application security traditionally strongly relies upon security of the
underlying operating system. However, operating systems often fall victim to
software attacks, compromising security of applications as well. To overcome
this dependency, Intel introduced SGX, which allows to protect application code
against a subverted or malicious OS by running it in a hardware-protected
enclave. However, SGX lacks support for generic trusted I/O paths to protect
user input and output between enclaves and I/O devices.
This work presents SGXIO, a generic trusted path architecture for SGX,
allowing user applications to run securely on top of an untrusted OS, while at
the same time supporting trusted paths to generic I/O devices. To achieve this,
SGXIO combines the benefits of SGX's easy programming model with traditional
hypervisor-based trusted path architectures. Moreover, SGXIO can tweak insecure
debug enclaves to behave like secure production enclaves. SGXIO surpasses
traditional use cases in cloud computing and makes SGX technology usable for
protecting user-centric, local applications against kernel-level keyloggers and
likewise. It is compatible to unmodified operating systems and works on a
modern commodity notebook out of the box. Hence, SGXIO is particularly
promising for the broad x86 community to which SGX is readily available.Comment: To appear in CODASPY'1
Age-Related Gene Expression Differences in Monocytes from Human Neonates, Young Adults, and Older Adults.
A variety of age-related differences in the innate and adaptive immune systems have been proposed to contribute to the increased susceptibility to infection of human neonates and older adults. The emergence of RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) provides an opportunity to obtain an unbiased, comprehensive, and quantitative view of gene expression differences in defined cell types from different age groups. An examination of ex vivo human monocyte responses to lipopolysaccharide stimulation or Listeria monocytogenes infection by RNA-seq revealed extensive similarities between neonates, young adults, and older adults, with an unexpectedly small number of genes exhibiting statistically significant age-dependent differences. By examining the differentially induced genes in the context of transcription factor binding motifs and RNA-seq data sets from mutant mouse strains, a previously described deficiency in interferon response factor-3 activity could be implicated in most of the differences between newborns and young adults. Contrary to these observations, older adults exhibited elevated expression of inflammatory genes at baseline, yet the responses following stimulation correlated more closely with those observed in younger adults. Notably, major differences in the expression of constitutively expressed genes were not observed, suggesting that the age-related differences are driven by environmental influences rather than cell-autonomous differences in monocyte development
The Submillimeter Array
The Submillimeter Array (SMA), a collaborative project of the Smithsonian
Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) and the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy
and Astrophysics (ASIAA), has begun operation on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. A total
of eight 6-m telescopes comprise the array, which will cover the frequency
range of 180-900 GHz. All eight telescopes have been deployed and are
operational. First scientific results utilizing the three receiver bands at
230, 345, and 690 GHz have been obtained and are presented in the accompanying
papers.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure
Spectral Graph Convolutions for Population-based Disease Prediction
Exploiting the wealth of imaging and non-imaging information for disease
prediction tasks requires models capable of representing, at the same time,
individual features as well as data associations between subjects from
potentially large populations. Graphs provide a natural framework for such
tasks, yet previous graph-based approaches focus on pairwise similarities
without modelling the subjects' individual characteristics and features. On the
other hand, relying solely on subject-specific imaging feature vectors fails to
model the interaction and similarity between subjects, which can reduce
performance. In this paper, we introduce the novel concept of Graph
Convolutional Networks (GCN) for brain analysis in populations, combining
imaging and non-imaging data. We represent populations as a sparse graph where
its vertices are associated with image-based feature vectors and the edges
encode phenotypic information. This structure was used to train a GCN model on
partially labelled graphs, aiming to infer the classes of unlabelled nodes from
the node features and pairwise associations between subjects. We demonstrate
the potential of the method on the challenging ADNI and ABIDE databases, as a
proof of concept of the benefit from integrating contextual information in
classification tasks. This has a clear impact on the quality of the
predictions, leading to 69.5% accuracy for ABIDE (outperforming the current
state of the art of 66.8%) and 77% for ADNI for prediction of MCI conversion,
significantly outperforming standard linear classifiers where only individual
features are considered.Comment: International Conference on Medical Image Computing and
Computer-Assisted Interventions (MICCAI) 201
Excited states in bilayer graphene quantum dots
We report on ground- and excited state transport through an electrostatically
defined few-hole quantum dot in bilayer graphene in both parallel and
perpendicular applied magnetic fields. A remarkably clear level scheme for the
two-particle spectra is found by analyzing finite bias spectroscopy data within
a two-particle model including spin and valley degrees of freedom. We identify
the two-hole ground-state to be a spin-triplet and valley-singlet state. This
spin alignment can be seen as Hund's rule for a valley-degenerate system, which
is fundamentally different to quantum dots in carbon nano tubes and GaAs-based
quantum dots. The spin-singlet excited states are found to be valley-triplet
states by tilting the magnetic field with respect to the sample plane. We
quantify the exchange energy to be 0.35meV and measure a valley and spin
g-factor of 36 and 2, respectively
Using High Resolution Images from UAV and Satellite Remote Sensing for Best Management Practice Analyses
Best Management Practices (BMPs) are commonly adopted to ameliorate the quality of runoff and reduce the frequency and intensity of flash floods in urban areas. To date, many of the BMP studies are conducted using coarse resolution data. However, the accuracy of such studies may be compromised due to the shortcomings inherent in the input data; as such, the evaluation of the BMP cost-effectiveness may not be accurate. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate the improvements of higher resolution images over coarse resolution data in BMP analyses. An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was used to collect a more detailed and accurate picture of the digital surface model and digital elevation model. Landsat 8 multi-spectral imagery was classified by object-oriented classification to generate a land use/land cover map. The method used in this study provided more detailed and accurate information of the physical conditions of the study area, an improved subwatershed delineation, a more comprehensive list of the suitable locations for BMPs, and a more reliable estimate of the cost-effectiveness of the BMP ensembles than that generated using coarse resolution data. Using the fine resolution data, this study further determined the utility of the selected BMP ensembles under a changed future climate regime and identified the best BMP and BMP ensemble in reducing urban surface runoff. This method can be especially useful in areas without quality topography and land use data
- …