LOAD-DEFLECTION BEHAVIOR OF RATTAN CHAIR SEATS

The static and fatigue performances of seat foundations of natural rattan chairs subjected to vertical loads were investigated.  Static performance evaluation results indicate that rattan strip weaving patterns have significant effects on the vertical load carrying capacity and stiffness performance of chair seat foundations.  Herringbone and grid pattern woven seat foundations had significantly higher vertical load carrying capacity than those made with a square-corner pattern.  Square-corner pattern seat foundations yielded a softer sitting surface than herringbone and grid patterns.  Herringbone and grid pattern seat foundations can provide firmer sitting feel and good deep down support for heavier sitters.  The Burger model could be used to describe the force-deformation-time behavior of a rattan woven seat foundation subjected to vertical cyclic loading

Tensile and Bending Moment Resistances of T-Shaped Joints in Rattan Chairs

Effects of inner fastener type, wrapping pattern and material type, and member material type on ultimate tensile and bending moment resistances of T-shaped joints in rattan chair construction were investigated based on the L9 (34) orthogonal array experimental design. The range analyses indicated that the order of impact on ultimate tensile loads of four factors was inner fastener type > wrapping pattern > member material type > wrapping material type, whereas the order of impact on ultimate bending moment was inner fastener type > wrapping material type > wrapping pattern > member material type. Analysis of variance indicated that inner fastener type affected ultimate tensile and bending moment the most among the four factors with percentages of contribution of 51.19 and 47.06 to tensile and bending moment, respectively. Optimal combinations of factors and their levels that yielded the highest ultimate tensile and bending moment resistances were identified for T-shaped, end-to-side joints in rattan materials

The Effectiveness of Listing Strategies in the Housing Market

Abstract This thesis examines the impact of asking price on the final sale price based on a unique dataset of more than 30,000 transactions of single-family houses in Montreal from 2011 to 2016. We construct different proxies for reference points, including predicted selling price, regional average (and median) asking price, regional average (and median) selling price, and assessment value, used by sellers in setting their asking prices. We explore the effectiveness of high-price strategy and low-price strategy based on these reference points. We find that higher asking prices are associated with higher selling pricing, suggesting buyers anchor to the asking price. Our results support the high-price strategy and reject the low-price strategy in both cold and hot markets, even controlling for unobserved quality. In addition, the anchor effect of the asking price on the final sale price does not differ between the two markets

Serving the cause when my organization does not: a self‐affirmation model of employees’ compensatory responses to ideological contract breach

Transactional and relational contract breach occur when organizations fail to deliver on promised personal benefits for employees and are associated with negative behaviors reciprocating such mistreatment. However, recent research suggests that ideological contract breach, a unique form of contract breach, may yield constructive behaviors because it is not organizations’ direct personal mistreatment of employees, but organizations’ abandonment of a valued cause to benefit a third party. Such an interesting prediction goes beyond the dominant social-exchange framework, which mainly forecasts destructive responses to breach. In this research, we develop a novel self-affirmation model to explain how ideological contract breach results in counterintuitive positive outcomes. In a hospital field study among medical professionals (N = 362) and their supervisors (N = 129), we found that ideological contract breach induces employees’ rumination about the breach, which in turn prompts them to self-affirm core values at work. This self-affirmation eventually spurs proactive serving behavior and self-improvement behavior to compensate for the breached ideology. Professional identification enhances this self-affirmation process

Phase Coupled Firing of Prefrontal Parvalbumin Interneuron With High Frequency Oscillations

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) plays a central role in executive functions and inhibitory control over many cognitive behaviors. Dynamic changes in local field potentials (LFPs), such as gamma oscillation, have been hypothesized to be important for attentive behaviors and modulated by local interneurons such as parvalbumin (PV) cells. However, the precise relationships between the firing patterns of PV interneurons and temporal dynamics of PFC activities remains elusive. In this study, by combining in vivo electrophysiological recordings with optogenetics, we investigated the activities of prefrontal PV interneurons and categorized them into three subtypes based on their distinct firing rates under different behavioral states. Interestingly, all the three subtypes of interneurons showed strong phase-locked firing to cortical high frequency oscillations (HFOs), but not to theta or gamma oscillations, despite of behavior states. Moreover, we showed that sustained optogenetic stimulation (over a period of 10 s) of PV interneurons can consequently modulate the activities of local pyramidal neurons. Interestingly, such optogenetic manipulations only showed moderate effects on LFPs in the PFC. We conclude that prefrontal PV interneurons are consist of several subclasses of cells with distinct state-dependent modulation of firing rates, selectively coupled to HFOs

CELLULASE6 and MANNANASE7 affect cell differentiation and silique dehiscence in Arabidopsis

Cellulases, hemicellulases and pectinases play important roles in fruit development and maturation, but mutants with defects in the fruit have not been reported for cellulase or hemicellulase genes. Here we report the functional characterization of cellulase gene CEL6 and hemicellulase gene MAN7 in silique development and dehiscence in Arabidopsis. These genes were found to be expressed in vegetative and reproductive organs, and their expression in the silique partially depended on the IND and ALC transcriptional factors. Mutant alleles of cel6 and man7 exhibited delayed secondary cell wall thickening and altered cell morphology in the valve margin and impaired silique dehiscence. Cells in the separation layer in nearly mature siliques of the single mutants and the cel6-1 man7-3 double mutant remained intact whereas they degenerated in the wild-type control. Phenotypic studies of single, double, triple and quadruple mutants revealed that the higher-order mutant combinations of the cel6-1, man7-3, and pectinase adpg1-1 and adpg2- 1 mutations produced more severe silique indehiscent phenotypes than the corresponding lower-order mutant combinations, except for some combinations involving cel6-1, man7-3, and adpg2-1. Our results demonstrate that the ability of the silique to dehisce can be manipulated to different degrees by altering the activities of proteins of different types.Plant Biology, Ecology and Evolutio

The potential of the Medical Digital Twin in diabetes management: a review

Diabetes is a chronic prevalent disease that must be managed to improve the patient's quality of life. However, the limited healthcare management resources compared to the large diabetes mellitus (DM) population are an obstacle that needs modern information technology to improve. Digital twin (DT) is a relatively new approach that has emerged as a viable tool in several sectors of healthcare, and there have been some publications on DT in disease management. The systematic summary of the use of DTs and its potential applications in DM is less reported. In this review, we summarized the key techniques of DTs, proposed the potentials of DTs in DM management from different aspects, and discussed the concerns of this novel technique in DM management