A radiomics pipeline dedicated to Breast MRI: validation on a multi-scanner phantom study

Magnetic Resonance Materials in Physics, Biology and Medicine - Quantitative analysis in MRI is challenging due to variabilities in intensity distributions across patients, acquisitions and...     

Synthesis and characterization of caprolactone based polyurethane with degradable and antifouling performance

In this work,a degradable polyurethane composed of caprolactone(CL)and L-Lactide(LLA)as soft seg-ments,and 4,4'-methylenebis(cyclohexyl isocyanate)(H12MDI)and polytetramethylene ether glycol(PTMEG)as hard segments,was prepared.Hydrolytic degradation experiment revealed that the degrad-able polyurethane(PU)could be degraded in artificial seawater.It also showed that caprolactone-co-polyurethane(CL-PU)copolymer with higher crystallinity degraded much slower in artificial seawater.However,the introduction of LLA resulted in an increase in the hydrophilicity and reduction in the crys-tallinity of degradable PU,as demonstrated by the contact angle analysis.The result of the scanning elec-tron microscope showed that the surface of degradable PU renewed under static condition.Moreover,degradable PU was able to be used as a carrier,and it controlled the release rate of 4,5-dichloro-2-octyl-isothiazolone(DCOIT).The anti-diatom(Navicula incerta)test demonstrated that the(caprolactone-co-L-lactide)-co-polyurethane 4(CL/LAx-PU4)with DCOIT contents prevented the adhe-sion of diatom Navicula incerta(88.37％reduction)due to their self-polishing and the release of antifou-lants.Therefore,the degradable PU consisted of CL,LLA,and DCOIT could be a durable resin with good antifouling activity for the application in the marine anti-biofouling field.     

Our current understanding of lake ecosystem response to climate change: What have we really learned from the north temperate deep lakes?

Climatic change is recognized as an important factor capable of influencing the structural properties of aquatic ecosystems. Lake ecosystems are particularly sensitive to climate change. Several long time-series studies have shown close coupling between climate, lake thermal properties and individual organism physiology, population abundance, community structure, and food-web structure. Understanding the complex interplay between climate, hydrological variability, and ecosystem structure and functioning is essential to inform water resources risk assessment and fisheries management. The purpose of this paper is to present the current understanding of climate-induced changes on lake ecosystem phenology. We first review the ability of climate to modulate the interactions among lake hydrodynamics, chemical factors, and food-web structure in several north temperate deep lakes (e.g., Lake Washington, Lake Tahoe, Lake Constance, Lake Geneva, Lake Baikal, and Lake Zurich). Our aim is to assess long-term trends in the physical (e.g., temperature, timing of stratification, and duration of ice cover), chemical (e.g., nutrient concentrations), and biological (e.g., timing of the spring bloom, phytoplankton composition, and zooplankton abundance) characteristics of the lakes and to examine the signature of local weather conditions (e.g., air temperature and rainfall) and large-scale climatic variability (e.g., ENSO and PDO) on the lake physics, chemistry and biology. We also conducted modeling experiments to quantify the relative effect of climate change and nutrient loading on lake phenology. These modeling experiments focused on the relative changes to the major causal associations underlying plankton dynamics during the spring bloom and the summer stratified period. To further understand the importance of climate change on lakes, we propose two complementary directions of future research. First, additional research is needed to elucidate the wide array of in-lake processes that are likely to be affected by the climate change. Second, it is essential to examine the heterogeneity in responses among different water bodies. The rationale of this approach and its significance for dealing with the uncertainty that the climate signals cascade through lake ecosystems and shape abiotic variability and/or biotic responses have been recently advocated by several other synthesis papers.     

Microstructure and hardness studies of the electron beam welded zone of Hastelloy C-276

Electron beam welding (EBW) technique is becoming popular in nuclear, chemical and aerospace industries due to its high penetration depth and fast cooling rate. Samples of Hastelloy C-276 have been welded by electron beam (EB). A scanning electron microscope (SEM) having the attachment of an energy dispersive system (EDS) has been employed to study the resulting microstructure and micro-eutectic phases. The microstructure of the molten zone (MZ) is found to be of fine lamellar type. The hardness of the MZ is found to be 35% higher compared to as-received alloy. The micro-eutectoids are rich in Mo and W. The X-ray diffraction patterns of the MZ show shifting of peaks towards higher angle compared to the diffraction pattern of the as-received alloy. Broadening of the peaks is also observed in the diffraction pattern of the MZ. Formation of the μ-phase was observed in the MZ after a tempering treatment at 950 °C.     

Experimental and Numerical Analysis of Heat Transfer in a Tall Vertical Concentric Annular Thermo-siphon at Constant Heat Flux Condition

The present work deals with the numerical and experimental analyses to study the detailed behavior of the thermally induced flow of water in an open vertical annulus, circulating through a cold leg forming a closed loop thermo-siphon. Spatio-temporal behavior of fluid flow is also studied for variety of heat fluxes. The annuli in the present study have a radius ratio of 1.184 and aspect ratio (length to annular gap) equal to 352. The objective of the present work is to quantify the effect of heating on design parameters such as liquid and wall temperatures, mass flow rate, and heat transfer coefficient. Experiments have also been conducted on a similar system with water at constant heat flux of 1 kW/m², 2.5 kW/m², 5 kW/m², 7.5 kW/m², 10 kW/m², 12.5 kW/m² and 15 kW/m². For numerical purpose, a two-dimentional solver has been developed for direct numerical simulation of the essential thermally induced flow dynamics The numerical solution was thus performed for Rayleigh numbers ranging between, 4.4 × 10³ and 6.61 × 10⁴ which correspond to the given heat flux, respectively.     

Effect of annealing temperature on microstructure and thermoelectric transport properties of Cu2.1Zn0.9SnSe4 alloys

Cu-based quaternary chalcogenide compounds have been thermoelectric topic of interest among researchers, especially in recent years, due to their intrinsically low thermal conductivity. Recently plenty of work is done on thermoelectric properties of Cu₂ZnSnSe₄-based alloys emphasizing on importance of Cu₂ZnSnSe₄-based alloys in thermoelectric power generation. In this study, we report the effect of annealing temperature on microstructure and thermoelectric properties of Cu_2.1Zn_0.9SnSe₄ alloys. Cu_2.1Zn_0.9SnSe₄ compounds were synthesized by high-temperature melting followed by annealing at four different temperatures (600 °C, 650 °C, 700 °C and 725 °C). X-ray diffraction combined with Raman spectroscopy confirmed the presence of Cu₂ZnSnSe₄ phase along with ZnSe and CuSe secondary phases. The increased annealing temperature critically affected the microstructure of Cu_2.1Zn_0.9SnSe4 alloys. Successive increase in annealing temperature subsequently increases the average grain size from 7.3 for 600 sample to 12.1 μm for 725 °C sample by shifting grain size distribution toward higher range. Increased grain size results in reduced carrier scattering and decreases the electrical resistivity eventually improving power factor and maximum power factor of about 400 μWk^?2 m^?1 is obtained for 725 °C sample. Besides, the increased annealing temperature resulted in increased thermal conductivity attributing increased grain size resulting in low phonon scattering. 725 °C sample shows highest power factor and moderate thermal conductivity among all the samples which resulted in highest value of figure of merit for 725 °C sample of about 0.1 at 673 K.

Graphical abstract

     

A DPSK demodulator for biomedical application

In this study, a differential phase-shift-keying (DPSK) demodulator, which is implemented by digital circuit, is proposed. A differential voltage clipper is used to generate narrow pulses at the extremum of the received modulated signal. Regarding the DPSK signal, the outputs of the clipper have double frequency. In order to halve the frequency, a frequency divider is applied to get synchronous clock. Two binary counters are used to detect phase variation; the data are recovered after two times sampling. This technique removes the need for voltage controlled oscillator (VCO). The proposed demodulator is postlayout simulated in a 0.18-μm CMOS process, with a power of 64 μW and active area of 68 × 70 μm². The demodulator recovers 10 Mb/s data rate at 10-MHz carrier frequency using a 1.8-V power supply.     

Analysis of malware propagation behavior in Social Internet of Things

Social Internet of Things (SIoT) is an evolution of the Internet of Things, where objects interact socially with each other in the sense that they can independently establish new relationships, offer, or discover services, in order to accomplish their tasks with minimum involvement of the user. This additional convenience comes at the expense of higher risk of speeding up malware propagation through the dynamically created relationships. Because of the undesirable effects of malware (eg, disruption of device operation), it is essential to understand their spreading behavior in order to minimize their negative impacts. In this paper, we analyze malware propagation behavior in SIoT and investigate different parameters that influence spreading of malware. Toward that end, a simulator has been developed to simulate the spreading process of malware in SIoT. Many propagation scenarios were analyzed using the proposed simulator. Simulation results show that adding more relationships in the SIoT or increasing the number of owned objects per user has increased malware spreading rate. For example, the time to infect all objects is faster by 45% when objects communicate through four relationships compared with the case when objects communicate through only two relationships in SIoT. We also investigated ways to restrict the malware spreading. Results show that preventing objects from establishing dynamic social relationship slows down the infection by 40% compared with the next best scenario (ie, blocking co‐location relationships), which means more time for vendors to patch up their products.