Body MRI artifacts in clinical practice: a physicist\u27s and radiologist\u27s perspective.

The high information content of MRI exams brings with it unintended effects, which we call artifacts. The purpose of this review is to promote understanding of these artifacts, so they can be prevented or properly interpreted to optimize diagnostic effectiveness. We begin by addressing static magnetic field uniformity, which is essential for many techniques, such as fat saturation. Eddy currents, resulting from imperfect gradient pulses, are especially problematic for new techniques that depend on high performance gradient switching. Nonuniformity of the transmit radiofrequency system constitutes another source of artifacts, which are increasingly important as magnetic field strength increases. Defects in the receive portion of the radiofrequency system have become a more complex source of problems as the number of radiofrequency coils, and the sophistication of the analysis of their received signals, has increased. Unwanted signals and noise spikes have many causes, often manifesting as zipper or banding artifacts. These image alterations become particularly severe and complex when they are combined with aliasing effects. Aliasing is one of several phenomena addressed in our final section, on artifacts that derive from encoding the MR signals to produce images, also including those related to parallel imaging, chemical shift, motion, and image subtraction

Glass-bead peen plating

Peen plating of aluminum, copper, and nickel powders was investigated. Only aluminum was plated successfully within the range of peen plating conditions studied. Optimum plating conditions for aluminum were found to be: (1) bead/powder mixture containing 25 to 35% powder by weight, (2) peening intensity of 0.007A as measured by Almen strip, and (3) glass impact bead diameter of at least 297 microns (0.0117 inches) for depositing-100 mesh aluminum powder. No extensive cleaning or substrate preparation is required beyond removing loose dirt or heavy oil

Research and Regions. a KWIC Indexed Bibliography

Computerized techniques applied to economics to produce bibliography of related materia

Artificial intelligence techniques for modeling database user behavior

The design and development of the adaptive modeling system is described. This system models how a user accesses a relational database management system in order to improve its performance by discovering use access patterns. In the current system, these patterns are used to improve the user interface and may be used to speed data retrieval, support query optimization and support a more flexible data representation. The system models both syntactic and semantic information about the user's access and employs both procedural and rule-based logic to manipulate the model

Oscillation Frequency Dependence of Non-Classical Rotation Inertia of Solid 4^4He

The non-classical rotational inertia fraction of the identical cylindrical solid $^4$He below 300 mK is studied at 496 and 1173 Hz by a double resonance torsional oscillator. Below 35 mK, the fraction is the same at sufficiently low rim velocities. Above 35 mK, the fraction is greater for the higher than the lower mode. The dissipation peak of the lower mode occurs at a temperature $\sim$ 4 mK lower than that of the higher mode. The drive dependence of the two modes shows that the reduction of the fraction is characterized by critical velocity, \textit{not} amplitude nor acceleration.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Marsupials and monotremes sort genome treasures from junk

A recent landmark paper demonstrates the unique contribution of marsupials and monotremes to comparative genome analysis, filling an evolutionary gap between the eutherian mammals (including humans) and more distant vertebrate species

Design and fabrication of the Mini-Brayton Recuperator (MBR)

Development of a recuperator for a 2.0 kW closed Brayton space power system is described. The plate-fin heat exchanger is fabricated entirely from Hastelloy X and is designed for 10 years continuous operation at 1000 K (1300 F) with a Xenon-helium working fluid. Special design provisions assure uniform flow distribution, crucial for meeting 0.975 temperature effectiveness. Low-cycle fatigue, resulting from repeated startup and shutdown cycles, was identified as the most critical structural design problem. It is predicted that the unit has a minimum fatigue life of 220 cycles. This is in excess of the BIPS requirement of 100 cycles. Heat transfer performance and thermal cycle testing with air, using a prototype unit, verified that all design objectives can be met