Melt viscosity behavior of some engineering thermoplastics

Frequently, the enhanced elevated-temperature rigidity of engineering thermoplastics (ETPs) is a consequence of high glass-transition temperature, and many ETPs contain aromatic ring structures in the backbone chain. These factors can lead to difficulty in melt processing, or fabrication, of parts. Thus, the definition of the melt rheology of such systems is of considerable technological, as well as scientific importance. The investigation reported here first defines the viscosity-temperature dependence of five ETPs over a relatively narrow range of temperatures appropriate to melt processing in terms of superposition methodology. The five ETPs studied were bisphenol A polycarbonate, polysulfone, the condensation polymer of bisphenol A and mixed iso- and terephthalic acids, and two experimental condensation polymers: bisphenol A/isophthalic acid and 1,2 bis(4,4′-hydroxy phenyl) ethane/isophthalic acid. Viscous flow energies of activation are examined in terms of polymer chain structure. In the second portion of the investigation it is shown that, for the latter two condensation polymers, the molecular weight, temperature, and shear rate dependence of the viscosity may be expressed in terms of a modified Carreau model. The Newtonian limiting low-shear viscosity dependence on molecular weight and that of the shear rate shift factor (relaxation time) are found to be somewhat greater than that normally observed.     

Development of self-body-esteem in overweight youngsters.

97 children in 3 age groups (8.5–11.4, 11.5–14.4, and 14.5–17.4 yrs) were used to examine the development of self-body-esteem in overweight and normal-weight Ss. There were 47 females and 50 males; 48 Ss were overweight (112% or more of their ideal body weight). Ss were administered the Self-Esteem Inventory and a measure of body-esteem. Results show that at the youngest age, overweight and normal-weight Ss had similar self-esteem. At the middle-age, self-esteem was adversely affected in overweight males, but not in overweight females. At the oldest age, self-esteem was affected in overweight females but not in overweight males. At all ages, overweight Ss had lower body-esteem than did normal-weight Ss. Although self-esteem and body-esteem were correlated, relative weight was the best predictor of body-esteem. Independent of relative weight, Ss in the 2 older groups who had low self-esteem tended to have low body-esteem. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of meal dilution on the postprandial glycemic response. Implications for glycemic testing

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effect of varying the volume of sugar meals on the post-prandial glycemic response (PGR). RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: On six separate occasions, after an overnight fast, blood glucose concentrations were measured in eight healthy subjects (34 +/- 4 years of age, BMI 22.9 +/- 0.9 kg/m2) after the consumption of 25 g glucose, sucrose, or fructose dissolved in either 200 or 600 ml of water. Blood was obtained at fasting and then at times 15, 30, 45, 60, and 90 min after the start of the test meal. RESULTS: PGR was found to be influenced by carbohydrate type (P < 0.001). Mean response areas (min.mmol.l-1) to the three sugars were statistically different (P < 0.05). Glucose had the highest response area (90.0 +/- 8.1), followed by sucrose (61.3 +/- 5.0) and then fructose (14.7 +/- 2.8). Independent of this effect, PGR was also found to be influenced by volume dose (P < 0.01). By tripling meal volume from 200 to 600 ml, PGR areas were significantly increased for all three sugars, glucose (79.3 +/- 10.3 vs. 100.8 +/- 12.0, P = 0.035), sucrose (52.6 +/- 5.5 vs. 70 +/- 7.4, P = 0.0094), and fructose (11.0 +/- 3.8 vs. 18.4 +/- 3.9, P = 0.012). Where the effects of time (P < 0.05) and dose (P < 0.05) were determined to be independent (interaction nonsignificant) for all three sugars, this increase in volume also significantly increased glycemic concentrations at 15 min, for glucose (P = 0.033) and sucrose (P = 0.026), suggesting that changes in gastric emptying time may be a mechanism of action. CONCLUSIONS: Varying the volume of liquid sugar meals alters PGR. Understanding this concept may help to reduce variability both in the glycemic testing of foods and oral glucose tolerance testing.     

Concurrent pharmacokinetic analysis of plasma cocaine and adrenocorticotropic hormone in men

The purpose of this study was to determine the covariance between plasma cocaine and ACTH pharmacokinetics. Twelve healthy male occasional cocaine users participated in a double blind study. Intravenous cocaine (0.2 mg/kg) or placebo was infused over 1 min, and samples for cocaine, ACTH and cortisol analysis were collected at 2, 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 30, 40, 60, 80, 120, 180, and 240 min. Peak cocaine plasma levels averaged 101.2 +/- 14.6 ng/mL. ACTH increases were significantly correlated (P < 0.0001) with increases in plasma cocaine levels (r = 0.67; r2 = 0.44). Pharmacokinetic analysis showed that the t(max) (observed time to maximum concentration) values for cocaine (6.0 +/- 1.4 min) and ACTH (7.3 +/- 1.2 min) were almost identical. The area under the curve was calculated using the trapezoidal rule. The area under the curve for plasma cocaine was 6463 +/- 1070 ng/min x mL, and the area under the curve for ACTH was 1873 +/- 188 pmol/min x L. The mean half-life for plasma cocaine was 46.7 +/- 4.0 min, and that for ACTH was 35.8 +/- 5.1 min. Cardiovascular and subjective effect measures were correlated with concurrent increases in plasma cocaine and ACTH levels.     

Quasi-one-dimensional model of pretransitional soft mode behavior

Pretransitional effects at displacive phase transitions are temperature dependent responses to fluctuations of the order parameter; these give rise to 1-D correlations in martensitic transformations when lattice dynamical constraints divide the “hard mode” 3-D correlation of the Bain distortion in order to maintain the mean field on a macroscopic scale. The quasi-one-dimensional (QOD) soft mode model of the latttice-variant-shear-theory (LVST) is described and its relevance to pretransitional nucleation and soft mode behavior, discussed. The 1-D correlations give rise to localized soft modes aboveT _m , which nucleate microdomains of an intermediate phase at dissociated dislocations; these grow with second order kinetics and maintain the mean field when microdomains of opposite displacement vector cancel each other. Pretransitional behavior, predicted by LVST, are compared with experimental data in a wide range of materials and show why materials with different order parameters show similar transformation behavior. This paper is based on a presentation made in the symposium “Pretransformation Behavior Related to Displacive Transformations in Alloys,” presented at the 1986 annual AIME meeting in New Orleans, March 2–6, 1986, under the auspices of the ASM-MSD Structures Committee.     

Placental transfer of maternal poliovirus antibodies in full-term and pre-term infants

This study was designed to investigate the placental transfer of maternal poliovirus antibodies in full-term and pre-term infants. Two hundred healthy, Israeli born mothers and their infants, were enrolled immediately after birth. The study population comprised two groups: a full-term group of 150 mothers and their infants, and a pre-term group of 50 mothers and their infants (gestational age < 35 weeks). Maternal and umbilical cord blood samples were taken in all cases. Antibody titers against the three poliovirus serotypes and a polio virus type 1 strain that caused an outbreak in 1988 (epidemic strain 1) were measured by a microneutralization system. The proportion of individuals with protective titers against each of the poliovirus types tested was slightly lower in the infants compared with their mothers. When protection to all strains combined was tested, the difference between mothers and infants was significant (P < 0.05). Transplacental transfer to epidemic strain 1 was less effective--12% of the premature infants were not protected against it at birth. The geometric mean titers against poliovirus types 1, 3 and epidemic type 1 strain were significantly lower in the pre-term group than in the full-term group. In both the full-term and pre-term groups there were significant linear correlations between the maternal and neonatal antibody titers for each of the polio viruses tested. For all poliovirus types, the transfer of maternal antibodies to the full-term infant was significantly higher than the transfer of maternal antibodies to the pre-term infant (P < 0.001). Owing to diminished transfer of maternal antibodies, pre-term infants are at greater risk of poliovirus infection.     

Using Underutilized CPU Resources to Enhance Its Reliability

Soft errors (or Transient faults) are temporary faults that arise in a circuit due to a variety of internal noise and external sources such as cosmic particle hits. Though soft errors still occur infrequently, they are rapidly becoming a major impediment to processor reliability. This is due primarily to processor scaling characteristics. In the past, systems designed to tolerate such faults utilized costly customized solutions, entailing the use of replicated hardware components to detect and recover from microprocessor faults. As the feature size keeps shrinking and with the proliferation of multiprocessor on die in all segments of computer-based systems, the capability to detect and recover from faults is also desired for commodity hardware. For such systems, however, performance and power constitute the main drivers, so the traditional solutions prove inadequate and new approaches are required. We introduce two independent and complementary microarchitecture-level techniques: Double Execution and Double Decoding. Both exploit the typically low average processor resource utilization of modern processors to enhance processor reliability. Double Execution protects the Out-Of-Order part of the CPU by executing each instruction twice. Double Decoding uses a second, low-performance low-power instruction decoder to detect soft errors in the decoder logic. These simple-to-implement techniques are shown to improve the processor's reliability with relatively low performance, power, and hardware overheads. Finally, the resulting “excessive” reliability can even be traded back for performance by increasing clock rate and/or reducing voltage, thereby improving upon single execution approaches.     

Direct position determination of cyclostationary signals

Direct position determination (DPD) was recently proposed as a new method for passive localization of narrowband radio transmitters. Its superior performance, especially in the low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime, is ascribed to both the joint optimization it performs over all base stations that participate in the estimation process and the direct determination of the emitter position as opposed to conventional methods which typically process the information from the individual base stations separately and determine the location using two estimation steps.In this paper, we introduce the cyclic direct position determination (CDPD) algorithm, a novel method which is the cyclostationary counterpart of the DPD. Despite its name, the CDPD is not a simple extension of the DPD but a unique algorithm which deviates substantially from its ancestor. Yet, the CDPD enjoys both the benefits of the DPD algorithm and the great performance robustness in the presence of narrowband interferences thanks to its cyclostationarity exploitation.     

Recurrence methods in the analysis of learning processes

The goal of most learning processes is to bring a machine into a set of "correct" states. In practice, however, it may be difficult to show that the process enters this target set. We present a condition that ensures that the process visits the target set infinitely often almost surely. This condition is easy to verify and is true for many well-known learning rules. To demonstrate the utility of this method, we apply it to four types of learning processes: the perceptron, learning rules governed by continuous energy functions, the Kohonen rule, and the committee machine.