Filament-wound composite soft tissue prostheses:controlling compliance and strength by water absorption and degradation

This paper deals with the effect of water absorption on the mechanical performance of selectively biodegradable filament-wound composite soft tissue prostheses. It shows how the water absorption phenomenon can be utilized as a new concept of material design, in contrast to the current view that associates moisture absorption by composite materials exclusively with damage. Harnessing water absorption to property design of vascular grafts has two advantages. The first is the controlled increase of the compliance of the graft during healing, aiming to reach a final stage of isocompliance with the host artery. The second is the water-induced biodegradation which enables regulation of the mural porosity during healing of an initially impervious graft. Filament-wound composite vascular prostheses comprising partially biodegradable matrices, different compositions and various winding angles are studied. Water absorption and material degradation are expressed in terms of relative weight gain/loss, which in turn is correlated with changes in the compliance and in the ultimate strength of the grafts.     

Life stressors and social resources affect posttreatment outcomes among depressed patients.

Examined pre- and posttreatment changes in life stressors and social resources and their association with treatment outcomes in a 12-mo follow-up of 424 Ss (aged 18–83 yrs) with unipolar depression. Assessment measures included the Family Environment Scale, Work Environment Scale, and Health and Daily Living Form. As expected, Ss reported significant, multidimensional improvements in their functioning at follow-up. There were modest increases in Ss' social resources but, suprisingly, no overall decrease in stressors. Life stress and resource factors were significantly related to Ss' functioning at follow-up, even after considering the severity of their dysfunction at treatment intake and their length of treatment. Implications for developing a general body of knowledge about the process of recovery and relapse in behavioral disorders are discussed. (38 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Automatic conversion of triangular finite element meshes to quadrilateral elements

A method is presented for the fully automatic conversion of a general finite element mesh containing triangular elements into a mesh composed of exclusively quadrilateral elements. The initial mesh may be constructed of entirely triangular elements or may consist of a mixture of triangular and quadrilateral elements. The technique used employs heuristic procedures and criteria to selectively combine adjacent triangular elements into quadrilaterals based on preestablished criteria for element quality. Additional procedures are included to eliminate isolated triangles. The methods operates completely without user intervention once the nodal co-ordinates and element connectivity of the original mesh are supplied.     

Re-examination of residual arousal as an explanation of aftereffects: Frustration tolerance versus response speed.

Three experiments, with 98 undergraduates, investigated the effects of increasing task difficulty and noise intensity on postnoise persistence on the Feather tolerance for frustration puzzles. In Exp I, greater persistence occurred both after exposure to moderate noise levels (55 db [A]) and an easy perceptual-motor task and after high noise levels (90 db [A]) and a more difficult task. The same pattern of persistence was obtained in Exp II, with more attempts to solve the Feather puzzles occurring after moderate noise and an easy cognitive task and after loud noise and a more difficult cognitive task. In Exp III, a modified Feather task was presented with instructions to determine solvability. A similar U-shaped relationship was obtained, with longer correct response times to unsolvable puzzles following low noise and high noise. Such aftereffect patterns are more easily explained as the result of residual arousal than of frustration tolerance. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Analytical investigation of factors influencing power systemstabilizers performance

Results of simulations, designed to illustrate the influence of power system stabilizers (PSS) on inter-area and local oscillations in interconnected power systems, are reported. It is shown that the PSS location and the voltage characteristics of the system loads are significant factors in the ability of a PSS to increase the damping of interarea oscillations. It is also shown that an interaction between modes in two distinct parts of a power system is possible, due to resonance, and that this might cause distortions in mode shape and participation factors     

Effect of temperature and salt on the maturation of white-salted cheese

White-salted cheeses were prepared from ultrafiltered (UF) cows' milk and salted to give final salt-in-moisture (SM) levels of 2.5, 3.2 and 4.0%. The cheeses were stored at 5°C and 10°C for up to 15 weeks. The microflora was dominated by lactic acid bacteria (LAB) but some mould growth was evident within 15 weeks at all SM levels and both temperatures. Levels of water-soluble nitrogen (WSN), attributed to chymosin activity, increased significantly with time, the rate being inversely proportional to the SM level and increasing with storage temperature. Similar effects were noted for trichloroacetic acid-soluble nitrogen (TCA-SN) and free amino acid (FAA) levels, both of which would also be affected by bacterial protease activity. The proteolytic activity was reflected by changes in the hardness and fracturability of the cheeses.     

Theoretical Investigation of Metal Cladding for Nanowire and Cylindrical Micropost Lasers

We investigate the transverse modal properties of cylindrical subwavelength metal-clad nanowire and micropost lasers via rigorous theoretical waveguide analysis, including the effects of finite thickness metal cladding and gain in the core. The results of this analysis show that air-metal surface guided TM₀₁ and some hybrid surface guided modes suffer less loss but are less confined to the core, while core-metal surface guided modes are better confined to the core but suffer greater loss. An increase in the thickness of the metal cladding reduces the loss of the core-metal surface guided modes. The modal gain and confinement of the metal-clad cavity are compared to an unclad cavity.     

Gaze cueing of attention: Visual attention, social cognition, and individual differences.

During social interactions, people's eyes convey a wealth of information about their direction of attention and their emotional and mental states. This review aims to provide a comprehensive overview of past and current research into the perception of gaze behavior and its effect on the observer. This encompasses the perception of gaze direction and its influence on perception of the other person, as well as gaze-following behavior such as joint attention, in infant, adult, and clinical populations. Particular focus is given to the gaze-cueing paradigm that has been used to investigate the mechanisms of joint attention. The contribution of this paradigm has been significant and will likely continue to advance knowledge across diverse fields within psychology and neuroscience. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recent Advances in Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning

Reinforcement learning is bedeviled by the curse of dimensionality: the number of parameters to be learned grows exponentially with the size of any compact encoding of a state. Recent attempts to combat the curse of dimensionality have turned to principled ways of exploiting temporal abstraction, where decisions are not required at each step, but rather invoke the execution of temporally-extended activities which follow their own policies until termination. This leads naturally to hierarchical control architectures and associated learning algorithms. We review several approaches to temporal abstraction and hierarchical organization that machine learning researchers have recently developed. Common to these approaches is a reliance on the theory of semi-Markov decision processes, which we emphasize in our review. We then discuss extensions of these ideas to concurrent activities, multiagent coordination, and hierarchical memory for addressing partial observability. Concluding remarks address open challenges facing the further development of reinforcement learning in a hierarchical setting.