FDM® Technology Process Improvements

Since the introduction ofrapid prototyping technology as a tool for time compression and concurrent engineering in the design and manufacturing process, many enhancements and refinements have been made based on the experience of users and manufacturers of rapid prototyping equipment. These improvements contribute significantly to faster production of quality output from rapid prototyping systems. There are diverse control and material selection parameters that affect prototype models built using the Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM®) process. This paper reviews the role of several of these parameters in the process. Data will be presented to help the user choose the appropriate material for specific applications including density, tensile modulus, flexural modulus, tensile strength, flexural strength, impact strength, and hardness. The integration of material, hardware, and software in the FDM technology begins with the understanding of the basic requirements ofthe machine and ends with an operating procedure to choose the parameters for optimal model output and efficiency. Some of the variables include: part geometry, deposition geometry, deposition speed, liquefier temperature, material, flow control parameters, etc. Designed experiments are used in material formulation through modeling parameter defmition activitiesMechanical Engineerin

An Overview of Algorithmic Music Composition in the Noteworks Software Platform

Presented at the 16th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD2010) on June 9-15, 2010 in Washington, DC.Noteworks is music composition software that re-imagines the way music is created, played, and shared. Users create musical compositions by building networks and interacting with them in real time. Noteworks reduces the learning curve for algorithmic-music composition, such that most individuals with a basic knowledge of computer interaction can create original compositions with limited instruction. Dynamic networks have the potential to play back for hours without repeating. This document will provide a brief summary overview of the GUI

Love is always a cigar: Gatsby and Fight Club with recourse to freud AND Britney, Lolita, and the American morality fetish

This study seeks to trace the trajectory of American sexuality and gender identity as they relate to late capitalism. Meditating on the intertextuality of The Great Gatsby and Fight Club and on the cultural trajectory depicted in the novels, I will argue that the American myth of exceptionalism comes at the expense of the female body. Inasmuch as the grounding principle of the American dream is the freedom to garner capital and to consume and inasmuch as the female body symbolically figures the American landscape, the American identity is traumatized. Examining the text of Lolita and the commodification of the image of Lolita vis-à-vis a "reading" of the pop-stardom and social controversy of Britney Spears, I will argue that the trauma issues in a morality fetish - a condemnation of the overt sexuality of the young girl that represses the guilt of complicity in the very culture and economy that collude to exploit her in the first place

SSGAC Polygenic Scores (PGSs) in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health)

This document describes the construction of polygenic scores (PGSs) associated with various phenotypes for respondents participating in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) by the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium (SSGAC). Research has shown that many outcomes of interest in the health, behavioral, and social sciences are influenced by genetics (Domingue et al. 20161; Plomin et al. 20162; Turkheimer 20003). For most human traits/behaviors, commonly referred to as phenotypes, it appears that the genetic influence on the phenotype is highly polygenic; i.e., there is no single gene that can account for the association between genetic variance and variance in the outcome. Instead, the influence of genetics on most phenotypes appears to be due to many small associations across thousands, and possibly millions, of individual single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs, pronounced snips) (Chabris et al. 20154). Polygenic Scores allow researchers to avoid the methodological complexities of including thousands, or millions, of covariates in their analyses by condensing, into a single measure, the associations between individual SNPs and the phenotype of interest (Plomin, Haworth, and Davis 20095)

Polygenic Index Inventories Documentation

This guide documents the key information regarding the construction and use of polygenic indexes (PGIs) for the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) as part of the Resource Profile and User Guide of the Polygenic Index Repository. Summary Information About PGIs Polygenic indexes (PGIs) are constructed using the same general approach (described below) and have the same substantive meaning as polygenic scores (PGSs, used more prominently in social science genomics contexts) and genetic risk scores (GRSs, used more prominently in the medical contexts). Here, we provide a brief summary of how the PGIs were constructed (please see the Methods section of Becker et al. for a more detailed description). We refer the reader to the relevant tables of Becker et al. where more information can be found

Leveraging functional genomic annotations and genome coverage to improve polygenic prediction of complex traits within and between ancestries

We develop a method, SBayesRC, that integrates genome-wide association study (GWAS) summary statistics with functional genomic annotations to improve polygenic prediction of complex traits. Our method is scalable to whole-genome variant analysis and refines signals from functional annotations by allowing them to affect both causal variant probability and causal effect distribution. We analyze 50 complex traits and diseases using ∼7 million common single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and 96 annotations. SBayesRC improves prediction accuracy by 14% in European ancestry and up to 34% in cross-ancestry prediction compared to the baseline method SBayesR, which does not use annotations, and outperforms other methods, including LDpred2, LDpred-funct, MegaPRS, PolyPred-S and PRS-CSx. Investigation of factors affecting prediction accuracy identifies a significant interaction between SNP density and annotation information, suggesting whole-genome sequence variants with annotations may further improve prediction. Functional partitioning analysis highlights a major contribution of evolutionary constrained regions to prediction accuracy and the largest per-SNP contribution from nonsynonymous SNPs

Dietary Plant Sterol Esters Must Be Hydrolyzed to Reduce Intestinal Cholesterol Absorption in Hamsters

Background: Elevated concentrations of LDL cholesterol are associated with the development of atherosclerosis and therefore are considered an important target for intervention to prevent cardiovascular diseases. The inhibition of cholesterol absorption in the small intestine is an attractive approach to lowering plasma cholesterol, one that is addressed by drug therapy as well as dietary supplementation with plant sterols and plant sterol esters (PSEs). Objective: This study was conducted to test the hypothesis that the cholesterol-lowering effects of PSE require hydrolysis to free sterols (FSs). Methods: Male Syrian hamsters were fed atherogenic diets (AIN-93M purified diet containing 0.12% cholesterol and 8% coconut oil) to which one of the following was added: no PSEs or ethers (control), 5% sterol stearate esters, 5% sterol palmitate esters (PEs), 5% sterol oleate esters (OEs), 5% sterol stearate ethers (STs; to mimic nonhydrolyzable PSE), or 3% FSs plus 2% sunflower oil. The treatments effectively created a spectrum of PSE hydrolysis across which cholesterol metabolism could be compared. Metabolic measurements included cholesterol absorption, plasma and liver lipid concentration, and fecal neutral sterol and bile acid excretion. Results: The STs and the PEs and SEs were poorly hydrolyzed (1.69–4.12%). In contrast,OEs were 88.3% hydrolyzed. The percent hydrolysis was negatively correlated with cholesterol absorption (r=20.85; P \u3c 0.0001) and positively correlated with fecal cholesterol excretion (r = 0.92; P \u3c 0.0001), suggesting that PSE hydrolysis plays a central role in the cholesterol-lowering properties of PSE. Conclusions: Our data on hamsters suggest that PSE hydrolysis and the presence of FSs is necessary to induce an optimum cholesterol-lowering effect and that poorly hydrolyzed PSEs may lower cholesterol through an alternative mechanism than that of competition with cholesterol for micelle incorporation