Growth of part-through thickness fatigue cracks in sheet polymethylmethacrylate

Fatigue growth data has been obtained for part-through thickness cracks in sheet specimens of polymethylmethacrylate subjected to cyclic tension. Statistical techniques are used to examine the usefulness of linear elastic fracture mechanics for correlating this part-through thickness crack growth data with throughthickness data published previously.     

Home use of a functional electrical stimulation system for standing and mobility in adolescents with spinal cord injury

OBJECTIVE: Functional electrical stimulation (FES) is a technology that may allow some patients with spinal cord injury (SCI) to integrate standing and upright mobility with wheelchair mobility. The purpose of this study was to document the patterns of home and community use of a FES system for standing and mobility. DESIGN: A telephone questionnaire was administered every 1 to 4 weeks for a minimum of 1 year. An interview was given at the end of the study to probe the motivators and barriers to home use. SETTING: Training for use of the FES system was performed in an inpatient pediatric rehabilitation setting. Data collection began after the subjects were discharged to home. PARTICIPANTS: Five adolescents with complete, thoracic-level SCI. INTERVENTION: Subjects participated in a program of FES exercise followed by training in basic mobility skills such as standing transfers, maneuvering, level ambulation, one-handed and reaching activities, and stair ascent/descent. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: The frequency with which the FES system was used at home and the activities for which it was utilized were documented. Motivators and barriers to FES home use were examined. RESULTS: Subjects donned the FES system on the average once every 3 to 4 days. Between 51% and 84% of the times donned, the system was used for exercise. The remaining times it was used for standing activities, most commonly reaching, one-handed tasks, and standing for exercise. "Motivators" included being able to do things that would otherwise be difficult, perceiving a healthful benefit or a sense of well-being from standing and exercise, and feeling an obligation to stand as a participant in a research study. "Barriers" to FES use included not finding time to use the system, having difficulty seeing opportunities to stand, and being reluctant to wear the FES system all day.     

WCET Analysis of Superscalar Processors Using Simulation With Coloured Petri Nets

Determining a tight WCET of a block of code to be executed on a modern superscalar processor architecture is becoming ever more difficult due to the dynamic behaviour exhibited by current processors, which include dynamic scheduling features such as speculative and out-of-order execution in the context of multiple execution units with deep pipelines. We describe the use of Coloured Petri Nets (CP-nets) in a simulation based approach to this problem. A complex model of a generic processor architecture is described, with emphasis on the modelling strategy for obtaining the WCET and an analysis of the results.     

NFS-CD: Write-Enabled Cooperative Caching in NFS

We present the network file system with cluster delegation (NFS-CD), an enhancement to the NFSv4 that reduces server load and increases the scalability of distributed file systems in computing clusters. The cluster delegation feature of NFS-CD allows data sharing among clients by extending the NFSv4 delegation model so that multiple clients manage a single file without interacting with the server. Based on cluster delegation, we implement a fast-commit primitive, cooperative caching, and the ability to recover the uncommitted updates of a failed computer. NFS-CD supports both read and write operations in the cooperative cache without degrading the consistency model of NFSv4. We have implemented NFS-CD by modifying the Linux NFSv4 client only. Because the server remains unchanged, NFS-CD preserves the simple administration model of NFSv4 and interoperates with standard NFS clients. NFS-CD offers improved performance when compared to NFSv4 at the expense of slightly weaker reliability guarantees. An experimental evaluation of our implementation, using industry standard benchmarks and application workloads, reveals that NFS-CD reduces server load by more than half. It also demonstrates that under most workloads, file systems must support writes to the cooperative cache to achieve scale.     

Virtual rheoscopic fluids for flow visualization

Physics-based flow visualization techniques seek to mimic laboratory flow visualization methods with virtual analogues. In this work we describe the rendering of a virtual rheoscopic fluid to produce images with results strikingly similar to laboratory experiments with real-world rheoscopic fluids using products such as Kalliroscope. These fluid additives consist of microscopic, anisotropic particles which, when suspended in the flow, align with both the flow velocity and the local shear to produce high-quality depictions of complex flow structures. Our virtual rheoscopic fluid is produced by defining a closed-form formula for the orientation of shear layers in the flow and using this orientation to volume render the flow as a material with anisotropic reflectance and transparency. Examples are presented for natural convection, thermocapillary convection, and Taylor-Couette flow simulations. The latter agree well with photographs of experimental results of Taylor-Couette flows from the literature.     

Euclidean controllable realizations of linear hereditary systems

A realization problem for a class of linear hereditary systems is formulated and state space representations are constructed from inputoutput relations. The resulting hereditary models are shown to be Euclidean controllable, and comparisons are made between these hereditary realizations and other recently developed theories.This research was supported in part by the Air Force Flight Dynamics Laboratory under grant AFOSR-77-3221.     

A DSP-based mixed-signal waveform generator

As it currently stands, waveform generators are being employed in many diverse areas, such as radar applications, communication systems, simulation, and testing. There is considerable interest in exploring the beacon of opportunity posed by using digital signal processor (DSP)-based systems to replace costly and inadequate conventional waveform generators. The availability of high performance DSPs allows for the design of highly flexible equipment capable of real-time processing. The arbitrary waveform generator introduced in this paper consists of a DSP, a FIFO memory, a video palette, and a PC interface. A program running on the PC creates a digital representation of a waveform according to user parameters and sends it to the DSP's RAM. The DSP algorithmically converts the digital representation to a point-by-point representation of the desired analog signal. The data points are sent to the FIFO buffer, which latches the data to a video palette that serves a three-channel digital-to-analog converter. The system employs a high-speed serial port interface to communicate with a PC, to allow for readily programmed signals. In addition to the production of traditional signals, such as sinusoids and squarewaves, a mathematical tool known as splines is employed to aid in the development of customized arbitrary waveforms. Finally, a picture of our new device is presented in the paper.     

Hybridization Networks of mRNA and Branched RNA Hybrids

Messenger RNA (mRNA) is emerging as an attractive biopolymer for therapy and vaccination. To become suitable for vaccination, mRNA is usually converted to a biomaterial, using cationic peptides, polymers or lipids. An alternative form of converting mRNA into a material is demonstrated that uses branched oligoribonucleotide hybrids with the ability to hybridize with one or more regions of the mRNA sequence. Two such hybrids with hexamer arms and adamantane tetraol as branching element were prepared by solution-phase synthesis. When a rabies mRNA was treated with the branched hybrids at 1 M NaCl concentration, biomaterials formed that contained both of the nucleic acids. These results show that branched oligoribonucleotides are an alternative to the often toxic reagents commonly used to formulate mRNA for medical applications.