Influence of Grain Size and Humidity on the Nanotribological Properties of Wear-Resistant Nanostructured ZrO2 Coatings: An Atomic Force Microscopy Study

The nanotribological properties of nanostructured thin films of tetragonal ZrO₂ on oxidized Si (100) were studied as a function of grain size and relative humidity (RH) by atomic force microscopy. The nanostructured ZrO₂ showed a 50% decrease in friction coefficient μ compared with oxidized Si (100) in dry nitrogen atmosphere and 40% RH. A maximum of μ was observed at ca. 40% RH for both samples, while there were insignificant differences in μ for ZrO₂ samples with grain sizes between 12 and 30 nm. The good tribological properties open the possibility for nanostructured zirconia to be applied as wear-resistant, low friction coatings on various materials.     

Aerodynamic load maps of bluff bodies: Measurement and diagnostics

Bluff bodies may assume arbitrary attitudes in a flow, causing aerodynamic loads that are sensitive to attitude. The Continuous rotation technique obtains 6-component loads on bluff bodies with 1-degree azimuth resolution about selected axes at a rate of 1 revolution per minute. The load coefficient variation is Fourier transformed and the resulting complex series is truncated in order to obtain rapidly computable, analytical formulae. The method is applied to bluff body shapes including cylinders, a cuboid, a flat plate and a porous box. A cylinder whose length is equal to its diameter, is used to show that rate effects, hysteresis, vortex shedding and other unsteady aerodynamic phenomena are negligible below 10 revolutions per minute. Approaches to generalize the aerodynamic loads on yawed finite cylinders of various aspect ratio are studied. The reasons for differences in aerodynamic load behavior between 2 cylinder models, are analyzed. To complement experiments, the ROTCFD unsteady Navier Stokes code is used to perform diagnostic computations. Methods to generalize the predictions are explored. Maps of the leading coefficients of the Fourier series of each load component over the aspect ratios space, are interpolated. The interpolation varies sharply for aspect ratios between 0.5 to 1. The variation is more gradual beyond aspect ratio 2. By aspect ratio 4, a ‘high aspect ratio’ limit appears to be reached.     

Erratum to: “Conversion and evaluation for two types of parametric surface constructed by NTP bases” [Comput. Math. Appl. 49(2) (2005) 321–329]

It is pointed out by Jiang and Wang (2005) [1], that the conversion formula from Bernstein into DP bases is incorrect for all even degrees and the conversion formula from DP into Bernstein bases is incorrect for every degree. Thus, in this paper we give some notes, corrections and new proofs for the relationship between these two NTP bases.     

The Role of Melatonin on Behavioral Changes and Concomitant Oxidative Stress in icvAβ1-42 Rat Model with Pinealectomy

One of the pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) associated with its progression that contributes to β-amyloid (Aβ) generation is oxidative stress (OS). Clinical data suggest that melatonin is a potent antioxidant that might be effective in the adjunctive therapy of this neurodegenerative disease. The present study aimed to explore the role of melatonin on behavioral changes and markers of OS in three rat models, namely, pinealectomy (pin) model of melatonin deficit, intracerebroventricular (icv)Aβ_1-42 model of AD, and combination of both pin and Aβ_1-42 model (pin+icvAβ_1-42). The chronic injection with vehicle/melatonin (50 mg/kg, i.p. for 40 days) started on the same day of sham/pin and icv vehicle/Aβ_1-42 infusion procedures. Anxiety in the open field and the elevated plus-maze test and cognitive responses in the object recognition test were tested between the 30th–35th day after the surgical procedures. Markers of OS in the frontal cortex (FC) and hippocampus were detected by the ELISA method. Melatonin treatment corrected the exacerbated anxiety response only in the pin+icvAβ_1-42 model while it alleviated the cognitive impairment in the three models. Pinealectomy disturbed the antioxidant system via enhanced SOD activity and decreased GSH levels both in the FC and hippocampus. The Aβ_1-42 model decreased the SOD activity in the FC and elevated the MDA level in the two brain structures. The pin+icvAβ_1-42 model impaired the antioxidant system and elevated lipid peroxidation. Melatonin supplementation restored only the elevated MDA level of icvAβ_1-42 and pin+icvAβ_1-42 model in the hippocampus. In conclusion, our study reveals that the pin+icvAβ_1-42 rat model triggers more pronounced anxiety and alterations in markers of OS that may be associated with melatonin deficit concomitant to icvAβ_1-42-induced AD pathology.     

Biology and architecture: An ongoing hybridization of scientific knowledge and design practice by six architectural offices in France

As a highly interdisciplinary field, architecture is being influenced by many subjects of natural and social sciences. Biology despite being apparently distant from architecture is currently a scientific field blending into design practices, which have evolved and shifted towards a new hybrid framework. In this article, we present an emerging design field of what we categorize as biomimetic architecture pioneering by six architectural offices in France. We observe the impact of scientific researches on design processes and practices through six case studies led by these offices, which can be seen through the actors who involved in various types of interdisciplinary collaborations, through the competencies of the architect himself, and through new sources of ideas coming from biological sciences and related fields. We propose to use a classification of theoretical uses in modeling practice to better understand the role that biological knowledge plays in architectural design practices. Finally, the result of this analysis shows that the use of biology taking place in a design space has external purposes, which transform it to produce engineering devices or urban schemes rather than architectural projects. It also shows that biology in architectural design induces other kinds of non-biological knowledge, is not strictly theoretical and could be obsolete or approximate. These findings lead to an epistemological discussion concerning the confusion between biological ‘knowledge’ and architectural design ‘know-how’.     

Methodological challenges encountered in summarizing evidence-based practice.

This paper details the challenges encountered by authors summarizing evidence from a primary study to describe a treatment's effectiveness using an effect size (ES) estimate. Dilemmas that are encountered, including how to calculate and interpret the pertinent standardized mean difference ES for results from studies of various research designs, are described. Recommendations are offered to authors of primary studies and to those conducting summaries of primary studies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Automated Deep Learning Empowered Breast Cancer Diagnosis Using Biomedical Mammogram Images

Biomedical image processing is a hot research topic which helps to majorly assist the disease diagnostic process. At the same time, breast cancer becomes the deadliest disease among women and can be detected by the use of different imaging techniques. Digital mammograms can be used for the earlier identification and diagnostic of breast cancer to minimize the death rate. But the proper identification of breast cancer has mainly relied on the mammography findings and results to increased false positives. For resolving the issues of false positives of breast cancer diagnosis, this paper presents an automated deep learning based breast cancer diagnosis (ADL-BCD) model using digital mammograms. The goal of the ADL-BCD technique is to properly detect the existence of breast lesions using digital mammograms. The proposed model involves Gaussian filter based pre-processing and Tsallis entropy based image segmentation. In addition, Deep Convolutional Neural Network based Residual Network (ResNet 34) is applied for feature extraction purposes. Specifically, a hyper parameter tuning process using chimp optimization algorithm (COA) is applied to tune the parameters involved in ResNet 34 model. The wavelet neural network (WNN) is used for the classification of digital mammograms for the detection of breast cancer. The ADL-BCD method is evaluated using a benchmark dataset and the results are analyzed under several performance measures. The simulation outcome indicated that the ADL-BCD model outperforms the state of art methods in terms of different measures.     

Reasoning about plan revision in BDI agent programs

Facilities for handling plan execution failures are essential for agents which must cope with the effects of nondeterministic actions, and some form of failure handling can be found in most mature agent programming languages and platforms. While such features simplify the development of more robust agents, they make it hard to reason about the execution of agent programs, e.g., to verify their correctness. In this paper, we present an approach to the verification of agent programs which admit exceptional executions. We consider executions of the BDI-based agent programming language 3APL in which plans containing non-executable actions can be revised using plan revision rules, and present a logic for reasoning about normal and exceptional executions of 3APL programs. We provide a complete axiomatization for the logic and, using a simple example, show how to express properties of 3APL programs as formulas of the logic.