Cardiovascular reactivity and central adiposity in older African Americans.

This study examined central adiposity, as measured by waist circumference (WC), in relation to mental-stress induced systolic (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) and heart rate (HR) responses, body composition, the metabolic syndrome, and health practices in 22 older, African American men and women (ages 52–79 years). The high WC (>100 cm) group showed significantly greater SBP, DBP, and HR reactivity, greater fasting insulin levels, lower high density lipoprotein cholesterol levels, greater fat mass in both truncal and peripheral regions, and greater body mass index as compared to the low WC (     

An Optimizing Compiler for Automatic Shader Bounding

Programmable shading provides artistic control over materials and geometry, but the black box nature of shaders makes some rendering optimizations difficult to apply. In many cases, it is desirable to compute bounds of shaders in order to speed up rendering. A bounding shader can be automatically derived from the original shader by a compiler using interval analysis, but creating optimized interval arithmetic code is non‐trivial. A key insight in this paper is that shaders contain metadata that can be automatically extracted by the compiler using data flow analysis. We present a number of domain‐specific optimizations that make the generated code faster, while computing the same bounds as before. This enables a wider use and opens up possibilities for more efficient rendering. Our results show that on average 42–44% of the shader instructions can be eliminated for a common use case: single‐sided bounding shaders used in lightcuts and importance sampling.     

Considerations of Microstructural Influences for Diffusion Welding of Metals in Microsystem Technology

Diffusion welding is a special high‐tech solid joining technique. Most research was done and publications were written in the years between 1970 and 1980. The aim of this paper is to take a closer look at the fundamental processes inside the material during diffusion welding and to discuss the relation between the materials microstructure for diffusion processes from a material science point of view. For this, it is necessary to discuss the impact of different lattice defects and to observe the intrinsic energetically conditions of a metal originating from its delivery state and manufacturing history, as well as its surface condition. In particular, emphasis is paid to the special requirements for joining of micro process devices.     

A fecal test for assessing phosphorus overfeeding on dairy farms: Evaluation using extensive farm data

Managing P on dairy farms requires the assessment and monitoring of P status of the animals so that potential overfeeding may be minimized. Numerous published studies have demonstrated that for lactating dairy cows, increasing P concentrations in diets led to greater P excretion in feces. More recent work reported that inorganic P (P_i) in 0.1% HCl extracts of feces (fecal extract P_i, g/kg) closely reflects dietary P changes. This has led to the proposal that 0.1% HCl fecal extract P_i may serve as an indicator of the animal's P status (adequate or excessive) when compared with a benchmark value. Here, we present the results of an extensive evaluation of the proposed fecal P indicator test. With samples (n = 575) from >90 farms, fecal total P (TP, g/kg) and fecal extract P were positively correlated with dietary P (X, g/kg): TP = 1.92X - 0.17 (R² = 0.36); fecal extract P = 1.82X - 2.54 (R² = 0.46). Fecal extract P was responsive to dietary P changes, whereas the remaining P, calculated as TP minus fecal extract P, was not. A provisional benchmark value of fecal extract P representing near-adequate P status was set at 4.75 g/kg. Assessment of the farm data using the benchmark indicated that 316 out of 575 data points were associated with possible P overfeeding. Advantages of the fecal-based test over feed-based analysis to assess P status are discussed. The fecal extract P method is a simple and practical test that can be used as an assessment tool for helping dairy producers improve P management and reduce their environmental footprint.     

Moderate anisotropy in the electrical conductivity of bulk MWCNT/epoxy composites

Bulk aligned multi-walled carbon nanotube films and their epoxy composites were prepared and their DC and AC conductivity studied. Nanotube films of up to 2 mm thickness were grown by catalytic chemical vapor deposition. Composites of nanotubes were made by infiltrating the films with a commercial epoxy. DC electrical resistivities in the axial direction of as-grown and purified films were found to be ∼1.2 Ωmm and ∼3.4 Ωmm, respectively. For the transverse direction the resistivity values were higher only with a factor of ∼2. In the case of composites, anisotropy is more pronounced showing more than an order of magnitude higher resistivity in the transverse direction (∼71.4 Ωmm) as compared to the axial value (∼4.2 Ωmm). AC behavior of the films investigated between 1 MHz and 3 GHz shows the presence of inductive and capacitive components at frequencies above ∼100 MHz. The moderate anisotropy for both DC and AC electrical properties are explained on the basis of the films’ structure combined with percolation theory and equivalent circuit models.     

Severe plastic deformation processes for thin samples

Among the known severe plastic deformation (SPD) techniques, one particular group can be defined as SPD processing of thin samples. Their distinctive feature is that one of the sample dimensions, namely the thickness, is much smaller than the other two dimensions. Examples include High Pressure Torsion and two recently developed techniques: the Cone–Cone Method and the High Pressure Tube Twisting. The mentioned group of SPD processes involve frictional forces acting on the large surfaces and a high hydrostatic pressure within the deformation zone. These techniques are particularly suited for microforming of metals. In this article, we outline the commonalities between these three techniques. The microstructure of copper samples deformed by all the three processes is presented and compared with those obtained by equal-channel angular pressing as a reference bulk forming SPD technique.     

Analysis of Line Positions and Strengths of H216O Ground and Hot Bands Connecting to Interacting Upper States: (020), (100), and (001)

High-resolution spectra of H216O were recorded with a Fourier-transform spectrometer covering transitions in the (020)-(010), (100)-(010), and (001)-(010) bands from 1100 to over 2300 cm-1. Also included in the study were previously reported measurements of these bands and measurements of the (020)-(000), (100)-(000), and (001)-(000) bands from 2620 cm-1 to 4500 cm-1. The linestrengths were fitted to a model which takes into account the interactions between the vibrational states (020), (100), and (001). The model included dipole moment matrix elements (also referred to as transition elements) represented by 19 expansion coefficients for B-type transitions and 14 expansion coefficients for A-type band transitions. The most satisfactory results were obtained when the relative signs and values of the leading dipole moment terms of each of the three "hot" bands were as follows: u(020-010) = 1.936(97) x 10(-1) D, u(100-010) = 3.876(19) x 10(-2) D, and u(001-010) = 2.523(75) x 10(-2) D. Hot water emission experimental frequencies from other studies were included in an analysis to obtain rotational energies for levels up to high J and/or Ka of the (020), (100), and (001) vibrational states. The results from this study provide a more accurate representation of the parameters than those available at present for the six bands. Copyright 1999 Academic Press.