Using Superconducting Magnet to Reproduce Quick Variations of Gravity in Liquid Oxygen

A ground based facility (OLGA), providing magnetic compensation of gravity in oxygen, has been developed. A 2-T superconducting magnetic solenoid is used to create the required magnetic field. A novel electrical supply permits to quickly vary the magnetic field, leading to rapid variation of the acceleration forces applied to oxygen. These variations can be made from overcompensation of gravity (−0.5g) to zero gravity or from zero gravity to reduced gravity (0.4g) with a time constant of 340 ms. This time is typical of the cutoff or reignition of spacecraft engines. Preliminary results on the transient flows induced by these acceleration variations in a reservoir filled with liquid and gaseous oxygen are presented.     

Individual and area socioeconomic inequalities in cause-specific unintentional injury mortality: 11-Year follow-up study of 2.7 million Canadians

This study investigated the association between individual and area socioeconomic status (SES) and leading causes of unintentional injury mortality in Canadian adults. Using the 1991–2001 Canadian Census Mortality Follow-up Study cohort (N = 2,735,152), Cox proportional hazard regression was used to calculate hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals for all-cause unintentional injury, motor vehicle collision (MVC), fall, poisoning, suffocation, fire/burn, and drowning deaths. Results indicated that associations with SES differed by cause of injury, and were generally more pronounced for males. Low education was associated with an elevated risk of mortality from all-cause unintentional injury and MVC (males only) and poisoning and drowning (both sexes). Low income was strongly associated with most causes of injury mortality, particularly fire/burn and poisoning. Having no occupation or low occupational status was associated with higher risks of all-cause injury, fall, poisoning and suffocation (both sexes) and MVC deaths among men. Associations with area deprivation were weak, and only areas with high deprivation had elevated risk of all-cause injury, MVC (males only), poisoning and drowning (both sexes). This study reveals the importance of examining SES differentials by cause of death from a multilevel perspective. Future research is needed to clarify the mechanisms underlying these differences to implement equity-oriented approaches for reducing differential exposures, vulnerability or consequences of injury mortality.     

Implicit Contact Handling for Deformable Objects

We present an algorithm for robust and efficient contact handling of deformable objects. By being aware of the internal dynamics of the colliding objects, our algorithm provides smooth rolling and sliding, stable stacking, robust impact handling, and seamless coupling of heterogeneous objects, all in a unified manner. We achieve dynamicsawareness through a constrained dynamics formulation with implicit complementarity constraints, and we present two major contributions that enable an efficient solution of the constrained dynamics problem: a time stepping algorithm that robustly ensures non-penetration and progressively refines the formulation of constrained dynamics, and a new solver for large mixed linear complementarity problems, based on iterative constraint anticipation. We show the application of our algorithm in challenging scenarios such as multi-layered cloth moving at high velocities, or colliding deformable solids simulated with large time steps.     

Microstructure Variation and Hardness Diminution During Low Cycle Fatigue of 55NiCrMoV7 Steel

 The influence of temperature and hardness level on the cyclic behavior of 55NiCrMoV7 steel, and the microstructure variation and hardness diminution during low cycle fatigue behavior were investigated. By means of SEM and XRD, the modality of carbides and the full width half maximum (FWHM) of martensite (211) [M(211)] of X ray diffraction spectrum in fatigue specimen were studied. The results showed that the cyclic stress response behavior generally showed an initial exponential softening for the first few cycles, followed by a gradual softening without cyclic softening saturation. The fatigue behavior of the steel is closely related to the hardness level. The hardness diminution and the variation of half width M(211) are remarkably influenced by the interaction between the cyclic plastic deformation and the thermal loading when the fatigue temperature exceeds the tempering temperature of the steel.     

Foveation-based content adaptive root mean squared error for video quality assessment

Multimedia Tools and Applications - When the video is compressed and transmitted over heterogeneous networks, it is necessary to ensure the satisfying quality for the end user. Since human...     

Combined effects of Diospyros lotus leaf and grape stalk extract in high-fat-diet-induced obesity in mice

Food Science and Biotechnology - The aim of this study was to investigate the combined effects of Diospyros lotus leaves extracts (DLE) and Muscat Bailey A grape stalk extracts (MGSE) in obesity...     

Simulation of pellet-cladding thermomechanical interaction and fission gas release

This paper summarizes the present status of a computer code that describes some of the main phenomena occurring in a nuclear fuel rod throughout its life. Temperature distribution, thermal expansion, elastic and plastic strains, creep, mechanical interaction between pellet and cladding, fission gas release, gas mixing, swelling, and densification are modeled. The modular structure of the code allows for the incorporation of models to simulate different phenomena and material properties. Collapsible rods can be also simulated.The code is bidimensional, assumes cylindrical symmetry for the rod and uses the finite element method to integrate the differential equations. The stress–strain and heat conduction problems are nonlinear due to plasticity and to the temperature dependence of the thermal conductivity. The fission gas inventory is calculated with a diffusion model, assuming spherical grains and using a one-dimensional finite element scheme. Pressure increase, swelling and densification are coupled with the stress field.Good results are obtained for the simulation of the irradiation tests of the first argentine prototypes of MOX fuels, where the bamboo effect is clearly observed, and of the FUMEX series for the fuel centerline temperature, the inside rod pressure and the fractional gas release.     

Chaos-Based transmitted-reference ultra-wideband communications

Transmitted-reference (TR) ultra-wideband (UWB) communication systems have gained increasing popularity for the usage in the low data rate application, due to its non-coherent receiver structure. In conventional TR system, non-coherency at the receiver is achieved by sending reference pulses prior to the data-bearing pulses. Then, at the receiver side, reference pulses are used as template signals for correlation with data-bearing pulses. Therefore, the orthogonality between reference and data pulses is obtained in time division multiple access (TDMA) fashion. However, the implementation of a wideband delay line is very difficult in the current low power integrated circuits. In this paper, a TR method called Chaos-Based TR (CB-TR) is proposed. In the proposed method, chaotic sequences are used to separate the reference and data pulses. Such approach exploits the benefits of chaotic signals, such as non-periodicity, easy-to-generate, impulse-like autocorrelation value and low cross-correlation value. Furthermore, in order to decrease the influence of some negative properties of conventional chaotic maps, a modified chaotic generator (MCS) is proposed. Simulation results over the IEEE 802.15.4a channel model show comparable bit error rate performance to other TR methods.