On the elastic modulus degradation in continuum damage mechanics

To measure accurately the elastic modulus of a metal, E, can be a difficult task when a specimen undergoes plastic strains. Moreover, some failure criteria, such as those associated with Continuum Damage Mechanics, require the change of elastic modulus with strain to define a measure of damage, D, in a material or structure. Thus, it is important to assess the possible geometrical influence of a specimen on the measurement of the elastic modulus at different deformation levels. It is shown in this article, with the aid of a numerical simulation, that any plastic strains induce important geometrical effects in the evaluation of E, which have a significant influence on the evaluation of the scalar damage parameter, D.     

Simulations of extensional flow in microrheometric devices

We present a detailed numerical study of the flow of a Newtonian fluid through microrheometric devices featuring a sudden contraction–expansion. This flow configuration is typically used to generate extensional deformations and high strain rates. The excess pressure drop resulting from the converging and diverging flow is an important dynamic measure to quantify if the device is intended to be used as a microfluidic extensional rheometer. To explore this idea, we examine the effect of the contraction length, aspect ratio and Reynolds number on the flow kinematics and resulting pressure field. Analysis of the computed velocity and pressure fields show that, for typical experimental conditions used in microfluidic devices, the steady flow is highly three-dimensional with open spiraling vortical structures in the stagnant corner regions. The numerical simulations of the local kinematics and global pressure drop are in good agreement with experimental results. The device aspect ratio is shown to have a strong impact on the flow and consequently on the excess pressure drop, which is quantified in terms of the dimensionless Couette and Bagley correction factors. We suggest an approach for calculating the Bagley correction which may be especially appropriate for planar microchannels. Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

Exploring the other side of biologically relevant chemical space: insights into carboxylic, sulfonic and phosphonic acid bioisosteric relationships

Bioisosteric replacements have been widely and successfully applied to develop bioisosteric series of biologically active compounds in medicinal chemistry. In this work, the concept of bioisosterism is revisited using a novel approach based on charting the "other side" of biologically relevant chemical space. This space is composed by the ensemble of binding sites of protein structures. Explorations into the "other side" of biologically relevant chemical space are exploited to gain insight into the principles that rules molecular recognition and bioisosteric relationships of molecular fragments. We focused, in particular, on the construction of the "other side" of chemical space covered by binding sites of small molecules containing carboxylic, sulfonic, and phosphonic acidic groups. The analysis of differences in the occupation of that space by distinct types of binding sites unveils how evolution has worked in assessing principles that rule the selectivity of molecular recognition, and improves our knowledge on the molecular basis of bioisosteric relationships among carboxylic, sulfonic, and phosphonic acidic groups.     

Gas-phase ion chemistry in organometallic systems

This review essentially deals with positive ion/molecule reactions occurring in gas-phase organometallic systems, and encompasses a period of time of approximately 7 years, going from 1997 to early 2004. Following the example of the excellent review by Eller & Schwarz (1991; Chem Rev 91:1121-1177), in the first part, results of reaction of naked ions are presented by grouping them according to the neutral substrate, while in the second part, ligated ions are grouped according to the different ligands. Whenever possible, comparison among similar studies is attempted, and general trends of reactivities are evidenced.     

A strategy for blood vessels segmentation based on the threshold which combines statistical and scale space filter. Application to the study of angiogenesis

This paper presents a strategy for segmenting blood vessels based on the threshold, which combines statistics and scale space filter. By incorporating statistical information, the strategy is capable of reducing over-segmentation. We propose a two-stage strategy which involves: (1) optimal selection of window size and (2) optimal selection of scale. We compared our strategy to two commonly used thresholding techniques. Experimental results showed that our method is much more robust and accurate. Our strategy suggested a modification to Otsu's method. In this application the important information to be extracted from images is only the number of blood vessels present in the images. The proposed segmentation technique is tested on manual segmentation, where segmentation errors less than 3% were observed. The work presented in this paper is a part of a global image analysis process. Therefore, these images will be subject to a further morphometrical analysis in order to diagnose and predict automatically malign tumors.     

Self-adaptation in next-generation Internet networks: how to react to traffic changes while respecting QoS?

Next-generation network infrastructure should support different services and several levels of quality of service (QoS) and resilience. The main requirements for such multiservice networks are flexibility, effective utilization of network resources, and ability to react to traffic demand changes with time. These requisites lead to the fact that next-generation networks should, to some extend, be "self-adapting," to cope with the need of promptly reacting to traffic demand changes, in an effective way, while taking into account the different requirements in terms of QoS. This paper sketches the reference network scenario and discusses the subject of self-adapting networks, attempting to focus on the key issues that need to be solved to realize future infrastructures. As a relevant example, this paper briefly reports a system developed by the authors' laboratory that implements a traffic engineering solution able to fulfill the mentioned requirements. This system could be regarded as a first concrete step toward the realization of self-adapting networks. In addition, some relevant results that were obtained either by simulation or by experiments on a real test bed are reported to discuss the main characteristics of such a system and assess the feasibility of the concept. Finally, the paper reviews the main hot issues that need to be addressed, in the authors' opinion, by the international research community.     

Model for small superconducting variable-thickness bridge constrictions

We present a simple model to simulate small three-dimensional superconducting constrictions of variable thickness (VTBs) for which the cross-sectional dimensions are of the same order as the length, and both are less than (T). We study the behavior of the modulus of the order parameterf and the supercurrent densityJ _s as a function of the various dimensions. We find that the extent to whichf is depressed in the banks depends on the ratio of width to length of the constriction. We show that even for very abrupt geometries,J _s is not zero andf does not reach its equilibrium value immediately outside the constriction. On the basis of our results, we propose a more general expression for the effective length valid also when all dimensions are of the same order. The calculated values ofdI _c /dT are consistent with experimental data from well-characterized VTBs. We suggest that the discrepancy between the calculated and experimental values ofI _c R _n may be due to the nonuniformity of the normal current density in the constriction.     

Histology, histochemistry and stereology of the adipose fin of Prochilodus lineatus

The adipose fin is small, nonpared, and usually located medially between the dorsal and caudal fin. Its taxonomic occurrence is very restrict; thus, it represents an important trace for taxon distinction. As it does not play a known vital physiological roll and it is easily removed, it is commonly used in marking and recapture studies. The present study characterizes the adipose fin of Prochilodus lineatus, as it is poorly explored by the literature. The adipose fin consists basically of a loose connective core, covered by a stratified epithelium supported by collagen fibers. At the epithelium, pigmented cells and alarm substance cells are found. Despite the name, adipocytes or lipid droplets are not observed on the structure of the fin.     

Expression of high-molecular-mass neurofilament protein in horse (Equus caballus) spinal ganglion neurons

Spinal ganglion (SG) neurons are subdivided, on the basis of their cytoplasmic aspect at light and electron microscopy, into dark (D) and light (L) neurons. Numerous efforts have been made to find specific markers able to identify D and L neuronal cytotypes. The isolectin B4 (IB4), utilized to identify nonpeptidergic D neurons in mice, unfortunately, has not proved as effective in other species. The 200-kDa neurofilament protein (NF200) is considered as a typical marker of L neurons in the rat, cat, and chick. The aim of this study was to analyze the histological, morphometric, and neurochemical characteristic of NF200-immunoreactive (IR) horse SG neurons, to better characterize them morphologically and functionally. NF200-IR neurons showed two levels (strong and weak) of staining intensity. Most (84%) strongly stained NF200-IR neurons corresponded to L neurons, and showed similar bimodality as in the size distribution study, which seems to indicate a third population of neurons, in addition to the two populations (small and large) previously identified. In triple-staining experiments where NF200 was colocalized with IB4, substance P (SP), and neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) neuronal markers, most NF200-IR neurons were single stained. On the contrary, most IB4-, SP-, and nNOS-stained neurons were triple labeled and almost equally subdivided between strong and weak NF200-IR with the latter being always smaller in size than strong NF200-IR neurons. In conclusion, horse SG neurons display significant morphometric and neurochemical differences compared with those of rodents.     

A Low‐Memory,Straightforward and Fast Bilateral Filter Through Subsampling in Spatial Domain

In this work we present a new algorithm for accelerating the colour bilateral filter based on a subsampling strategy working in the spatial domain. The base idea is to use a suitable subset of samples of the entire kernel in order to obtain a good estimation of the exact filter values. The main advantages of the proposed approach are that it has an excellent trade‐off between visual quality and speed‐up, a very low memory overhead is required and it is straightforward to implement on the GPU allowing real‐time filtering. We show different applications of the proposed filter, in particular efficient cross‐bilateral filtering, real‐time edge‐aware image editing and fast video denoising. We compare our method against the state of the art in terms of image quality, time performance and memory usage.