Measurement and modelling of wall friction in the ram extrusion of stiff microcrystalline cellulose-based pastes

Simulation of paste extrusion requires knowledge of the material–wall interactions and bulk deformation behaviour. A systematic approach to decoupling these is presented for a stiff paste, comprising microcrystalline cellulose/calcium carbonate/water, employing three different experimental configurations to separate paste-wall friction from bulk rheology. The bulk yielding behaviour was identified from ram extrusion testing with orifice dies, while wall friction was characterised using the twin-die extrusion apparatus reported by (Bryan et al., 2018). Further extrusion tests with square and conical entry dies featuring various die land lengths provided data for comparison with simulations. The wall friction exhibited non-linear Navier slip with negligible pressure dependency: this relationship was included within a solid mechanics-based simulation of ram extrusion with ABAQUS. The estimate of the plastic yield stress from orifice die testing was refined using simulations of flow through square-entry dies and predicted the extrusion pressure for conical-entry dies with reasonable accuracy.Ceratizit Austria Gmb

Examining a staging model for anorexia nervosa: empirical exploration of a four stage model of severity.

Background: An illness staging model for anorexia nervosa (AN) has received increasing attention, but assessing the merits of this concept is dependent on empirically examining a model in clinical samples. Building on preliminary findings regarding the reliability and validity of the Clinician Administered Staging Instrument for Anorexia Nervosa (CASIAN), the current study explores operationalising CASIAN severity scores into stages and assesses their relationship with other clinical features. Method: In women with DSM-IV-R AN and sub-threshold AN (all met AN criteria using DSM 5), receiver operating curve (ROC) analysis (n = 67) assessed the relationship between the sensitivity and specificity of each stage of the CASIAN. Thereafter chi-square and post-hoc adjusted residual analysis provided a preliminary assessment of the validity of the stages comparing the relationship between stage and treatment intensity and AN sub-types, and explored movement between stages after six months (Time 3) in a larger cohort (n = 171). Results: The CASIAN significantly distinguished between milder stages of illness (Stage 1 and 2) versus more severe stages of illness (Stages 3 and 4), and approached statistical significance in distinguishing each of the four stages from one other. CASIAN Stages were significantly associated with treatment modality and primary diagnosis, and CASIAN Stage at Time 1 was significantly associated with Stage at 6 month follow-up. Conclusions: Provisional support is provided for a staging model in AN. Larger studies with longer follow-up of cases are now needed to replicate and extend these findings and evaluate the overall utility of staging as well as optimal staging models

Hot Streaks in Artistic, Cultural, and Scientific Careers

The hot streak, loosely defined as winning begets more winnings, highlights a specific period during which an individual's performance is substantially higher than her typical performance. While widely debated in sports, gambling, and financial markets over the past several decades, little is known if hot streaks apply to individual careers. Here, building on rich literature on lifecycle of creativity, we collected large-scale career histories of individual artists, movie directors and scientists, tracing the artworks, movies, and scientific publications they produced. We find that, across all three domains, hit works within a career show a high degree of temporal regularity, each career being characterized by bursts of high-impact works occurring in sequence. We demonstrate that these observations can be explained by a simple hot-streak model we developed, allowing us to probe quantitatively the hot streak phenomenon governing individual careers, which we find to be remarkably universal across diverse domains we analyzed: The hot streaks are ubiquitous yet unique across different careers. While the vast majority of individuals have at least one hot streak, hot streaks are most likely to occur only once. The hot streak emerges randomly within an individual's sequence of works, is temporally localized, and is unassociated with any detectable change in productivity. We show that, since works produced during hot streaks garner significantly more impact, the uncovered hot streaks fundamentally drives the collective impact of an individual, ignoring which leads us to systematically over- or under-estimate the future impact of a career. These results not only deepen our quantitative understanding of patterns governing individual ingenuity and success, they may also have implications for decisions and policies involving predicting and nurturing individuals with lasting impact

Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (4th edition)1.

In 2008, we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, this topic has received increasing attention, and many scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Thus, it is important to formulate on a regular basis updated guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Despite numerous reviews, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to evaluate autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. Here, we present a set of guidelines for investigators to select and interpret methods to examine autophagy and related processes, and for reviewers to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of reports that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a dogmatic set of rules, because the appropriateness of any assay largely depends on the question being asked and the system being used. Moreover, no individual assay is perfect for every situation, calling for the use of multiple techniques to properly monitor autophagy in each experimental setting. Finally, several core components of the autophagy machinery have been implicated in distinct autophagic processes (canonical and noncanonical autophagy), implying that genetic approaches to block autophagy should rely on targeting two or more autophagy-related genes that ideally participate in distinct steps of the pathway. Along similar lines, because multiple proteins involved in autophagy also regulate other cellular pathways including apoptosis, not all of them can be used as a specific marker for bona fide autophagic responses. Here, we critically discuss current methods of assessing autophagy and the information they can, or cannot, provide. Our ultimate goal is to encourage intellectual and technical innovation in the field

Measurement and modelling of wall friction in the ram extrusion of stiff microcrystalline cellulose-based pastes

Simulation of paste extrusion requires knowledge of the material–wall interactions and bulk deformation behaviour. A systematic approach to decoupling these is presented for a stiff paste, comprising microcrystalline cellulose/calcium carbonate/water, employing three different experimental configurations to separate paste-wall friction from bulk rheology. The bulk yielding behaviour was identified from ram extrusion testing with orifice dies, while wall friction was characterised using the twin-die extrusion apparatus reported by Bryan et al. [1]. Further extrusion tests with square and conical entry dies featuring various die land lengths provided data for comparison with simulations. The wall friction exhibited non-linear Navier slip with negligible pressure dependency: this relationship was included within a solid mechanics-based simulation of ram extrusion with ABAQUS. The estimate of the plastic yield stress from orifice die testing was refined using simulations of flow through square-entry dies and predicted the extrusion pressure for conical-entry dies with reasonable accuracy

A biomimetic eye with a hemispherical perovskite nanowire array retina.

Human eyes possess exceptional image-sensing characteristics such as an extremely wide field of view, high resolution and sensitivity with low aberration1. Biomimetic eyes with such characteristics are highly desirable, especially in robotics and visual prostheses. However, the spherical shape and the retina of the biological eye pose an enormous fabrication challenge for biomimetic devices2,3. Here we present an electrochemical eye with a hemispherical retina made of a high-density array of nanowires mimicking the photoreceptors on a human retina. The device design has a high degree of structural similarity to a human eye with the potential to achieve high imaging resolution when individual nanowires are electrically addressed. Additionally, we demonstrate the image-sensing function of our biomimetic device by reconstructing the optical patterns projected onto the device. This work may lead to biomimetic photosensing devices that could find use in a wide spectrum of technological applications

Simulations of Transport in Hard Particle Systems

We thank G. Gallavotti, J.L. Lebowitz and J. del Pozo for illuminating discussions. Financial support from Spanish Ministry MINECO Project FIS2017-84256-P is also acknowledged. We are also grateful for the computational resources and assistance provided by PROTEUS, the supercomputing center of the Institute Carlos I for Theoretical and Computational Physics at the University of Granada, Spain