Prediction of swirling confined diffusion flame with a Monte Carlo and a presumed-PDF-model

This work aims to compare numerical results obtained by using the Monte Carlo composition-PDF method and a presumed-β-PDF in order to reveal their effects on the prediction of flow and scalar fields in swirling confined methane diffusion flame. Using the intrinsic low dimensional manifolds method for modelling the chemistry and a second moment closure for the turbulence, it is shown that both PDF-methods provide a similar accuracy level of the prediction of mean quantities. While the presumed-β-PDF performs using reasonable computational efforts, the Monte Carlo-PDF allows to capture well the turbulence-chemistry interaction and strong finite-chemistry effects such as local extinction.     

Potential tissue implants from the networks based on 1,5-dioxepan-2-one and ε-caprolactone

The synthesis and characterization of degradable polymeric networks for biomedical applications was performed. Cross-linked films of poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) and poly(1,5-dioxepan-2-one) (PDXO) having various mole fractions of monomers and different cross-link densities were successfully prepared using 2,2′-bis-(ε-caprolactone-4-yl) propane (BCP) as cross-linking agent. Reaction parameters were carefully examined to optimise the film-forming conditions. Networks obtained were elastomeric materials, easy to cast and remove from the mould. Effect of CL content and cross-link density on the final properties of the polymer network was evaluated. High CL content or degree of cross-linking led to increase in Young's modulus and decrease in elongation at break. An increase in crystalline domains in films having a higher CL content was observed by optical microscopy. A greater thermal stability was observed in films having a high CL content. The hydrophilicity of the materials could be tailored by changing the CL content. The surface of the films became rougher with higher CL content.     

Sensitivity analysis of the scattering parameters of microwave filters using the adjoint network method

A novel approach is presented to calculate the sensitivities of the scattering parameters of microwave filters obtained with the full‐wave mode‐matching (MM) technique. Using only the MM simulation of the original network, the sensitivities of the scattering parameters with respect to all designable parameters are obtained. The adjoint network method (ANM) is applied to the generalized scattering matrices of the different filter components. This guarantees good accuracy of the calculated sensitivities. The implementation details are discussed for N‐resonator ridge waveguide filters. Excellent agreement is obtained between the sensitivities calculated using ANM and those obtained using the expensive central differences. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2006.     

Lipid damage in farmed rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) after slaughtering and chilled storage

The flow ice system including ozone (OFI condition) was tested for slaughtering and storage (up to 16 days) of farmed rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss). Lipid damage analyses were carried out and compared to sensory acceptance and instrumental colour changes. Comparison to individuals processed with the flow ice system in the absence of ozone (FI condition) was undertaken. Rainbow trout slaughtered and chilled under FI and OFI conditions showed a low lipid damage development, according to lipid oxidation and hydrolysis events and lipid composition (polyunsaturated fatty acids, phospholipids and endogenous antioxidants) changes. Additionally, both icing conditions led to largely good quality and shelf life times and to the absence of changes in colour properties. It is concluded that flow ice as such, or including the presence of ozone, can be considered as ideal strategy to be employed as slaughtering and storage system during the commercialisation of the actual farmed species. The ozone presence has shown some profitable effects as leading to an extended shelf life time by quality retention of several sensory parameters; in contrast, some negligible negative effects could be observed on the secondary and tertiary lipid oxidation development. However, the oxidation values reached by individuals kept under OFI conditions cannot be considered as particularly high.     

Successful pregnancy outcome in a patient with acute renal failure superimposed on chronic renal failure treated with repeated hemodialysis

A case is presented of successful pregnancy in a patient with acute renal failure superimposed on chronic controlled renal failure. The cause which led to development of acute renal failure were severe water-electrolyte equilibrium disturbances due to diarrhoea. Appropriately conducted conservative treatment in the period of oliguria, and early institution of treatment with repeated haemodialysis (taking into account the minimal fluctuations of body fluids, and adequate heparinization) were decisive for successful outcome of pregnancy in this patient.     

A performance- and energy-oriented extended tuning process for time-step-based scientific applications

The Journal of Supercomputing - Scientific application codes are often long-running time- and energy-consuming parallel codes, and the tuning of these methods towards the characteristics of a...     

Annotation of sentence structure

The focus of this article is on the creation of a collection of sentences manually annotated with respect to their sentence structure. We show that the concept of linear segments—linguistically motivated units, which may be easily detected automatically—serves as a good basis for the identification of clauses in Czech. The segment annotation captures such relationships as subordination, coordination, apposition and parenthesis; based on segmentation charts, individual clauses forming a complex sentence are identified. The annotation of a sentence structure enriches a dependency-based framework with explicit syntactic information on relations among complex units like clauses. We have gathered a collection of 3,444 sentences from the Prague Dependency Treebank, which were annotated with respect to their sentence structure (these sentences comprise 10,746 segments forming 6,341 clauses). The main purpose of the project is to gain a development data—promising results for Czech NLP tools (as a dependency parser or a machine translation system for related languages) that adopt an idea of clause segmentation have been already reported. The collection of sentences with annotated sentence structure provides the possibility of further improvement of such tools.     

The Role of Innate and Adaptive Immune Cells in Skeletal Muscle Regeneration

Skeletal muscle regeneration is highly dependent on the inflammatory response. A wide variety of innate and adaptive immune cells orchestrate the complex process of muscle repair. This review provides information about the various types of immune cells and biomolecules that have been shown to mediate muscle regeneration following injury and degenerative diseases. Recently developed cell and drug-based immunomodulatory strategies are highlighted. An improved understanding of the immune response to injured and diseased skeletal muscle will be essential for the development of therapeutic strategies.