Comparative in Vivo Assessment of Some Adverse Bioeffects of Equidimensional Gold and Silver Nanoparticles and the Attenuation of Nanosilver’s Effects with a Complex of Innocuous Bioprotectors

Stable suspensions of nanogold (NG) and nanosilver (NS) with mean particle diameter 50 and 49 nm, respectively, were prepared by laser ablation of metals in water. To assess rat’s pulmonary phagocytosis response to a single intratracheal instillation of these suspensions, we used optical, transmission electron, and semi-contact atomic force microscopy. NG and NS were also repeatedly injected intraperitoneally into rats at a dose of 10 mg/kg (0.5 mg per mL of deionized water) three times a week, up to 20 injections. A group of rats was thus injected with NS after oral administration of a “bioprotective complex” (BPC) comprised of pectin, multivitamins, some amino acids, calcium, selenium, and omega-3 PUFA. After the termination of the injections, many functional and biochemical indices and histopathological features of the spleen, kidneys and liver were evaluated for signs of toxicity, and accumulation of NG or NS in these organs was measured. From the same rats, we obtained cell suspensions of different tissues for performing the RAPD test. It was demonstrated that, although both nanometals were adversely bioactive in all respects considered in this study, NS was more noxious as compared with NG, and that the BPC tested by us attenuated both the toxicity and genotoxicity of NS.     

Enhanced densification of white cast iron powders by cyclic phase transformations under stress

It is shown that densification of white cast iron powders under stress can be enhanced by multiple phase transformations through thermal cycling. This enhancement occurs by accelerated creep flow during phase changes (transformation superplasticity). The approximate stress range where transformation-assisted densification can occur is shown to be between 1.7 MPa (250 psi) and 34.5 MPa (5000 psi). Below 1.7 MPa insufficient strain occurs during phase transformation to cause significant densification even after many transformation cycles. Above 34.5 MPa, densification occurs principally by normal slip creep. Transformation warm pressing of white cast iron powders leads to dense compacts at low pressures and short times. In addition, because the transformation temperature is low, the ultrafine structures existing in the original powders are retained in the densified compacts. formerly with the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University,     

Toward efficient execution of data-intensive workflows

The Journal of Supercomputing - Workflows that consume and produce large amounts of data are being widely used in modern scientific computing and data processing pipelines. Scheduling of...     

Gaze controlled games

The quality and availability of eye tracking equipment has been increasing while costs have been decreasing. These trends increase the possibility of using eye trackers for entertainment purposes. Games that can be controlled solely through movement of the eyes would be accessible to persons with decreased limb mobility or control. On the other hand, use of eye tracking can change the gaming experience for all players, by offering richer input and enabling attention-aware games. Eye tracking is not currently widely supported in gaming, and games specifically developed for use with an eye tracker are rare. This paper reviews past work on eye tracker gaming and charts future development possibilities in different sub-domains within. It argues that based on the user input requirements and gaming contexts, conventional computer games can be classified into groups that offer fundamentally different opportunities for eye tracker input. In addition to the inherent design issues, there are challenges and varying levels of support for eye tracker use in the technical implementations of the games.     

Undecidability in the Homomorphic Quasiorder of Finite Labelled Forests

We prove that the homomorphic quasiorder of finite k-labelledforests has a hereditary undecidable first-order theory fork 3, in contrast to the known decidability result for k = 2.We establish also hereditary undecidability (again for everyk 3) of first-order theories of two other relevant structures:the homomorphic quasiorder of finite k-labelled trees, and offinite k-labelled trees with a fixed label of the root element.Finally, all three first-order theories are shown to be computablyisomorphic to the first-order arithmetic.     

Plasma‐beam alignment technique for ferroelectric liquid crystals

Abstract— The plasma‐beam alignment procedure earlier developed for the alignment of nematic liquid crystals is successfully extended to ferroelectric liquid crystals (FLC). The highly uniform alignment of the “chevron” structure (before electrical treatment of FLC cells) and “quasi bookshelf” structure (after the electrical treatment) are realized. The contrast of bistable switching larger than 350:1 is achieved. This makes the non‐contact plasma‐beam alignment procedure especially attractive for high‐contrast bistable LCDs on an LCOS base, particularly used in PDA and e‐books. Fast switching and realization of gray scale in the plasma‐beam aligned FLC cells makes this technique also promising for full‐color displays including color LCD TV.     

Hydrophobically associating polyacrylamides and their partially hydrolyzed derivatives prepared by post-modification. 2. Properties of non-hydrolyzed polymers in pure water and brine

Dilute and semi-dilute solution properties of polyacrylamide (PAM) and its hydrophobically modified analogues (HAPAMs) in both pure water and brine were compared by means of viscometry, light scattering and fluorescence spectrometry. In dilute solution, large differences in reduced viscosity and apparent molecular weight of HAPAMs were found between pure water and 0.1 M NaCl solutions, while no significant differences were observed for PAM. In addition, in pure water, intrinsic viscosity and of HAPAMs are higher than those of PAM. In semi dilute regime, with increasing salinity, the reduced viscosity of PAM remains almost unchanged, whereas enhanced viscosity was observed for the HAPAM polymers in both monovalent and divalent cation aqueous environment. HAPAM solutions behave as classical shear-thinning fluid in pure water, whereas addition of NaCl induces shear-thickening response for these polymers. The experimental results are interpreted in terms of the hydrophobe distribution and its influence on the formation of intra- and intermolecular associations. The differences between the behaviors described in this paper and those usually obtained with HAPAMs characterized by a blocky hydrophobe distribution are discussed.     

Convolution Filtering of Continuous Signed Distance Fields for Polygonal Meshes

Signed distance fields obtained from polygonal meshes are commonly used in various applications. However, they can have C¹ discontinuities causing creases to appear when applying operations such as blending or metamorphosis. The focus of this work is to efficiently evaluate the signed distance function and to apply a smoothing filter to it while preserving the shape of the initial mesh. The resulting function is smooth almost everywhere, while preserving the exact shape of the polygonal mesh. Due to its low complexity, the proposed filtering technique remains fast compared to its main alternatives providing C¹‐continuous distance field approximation. Several applications are presented such as blending, metamorphosis and heterogeneous modelling with polygonal meshes.     

Quasi-biennial oscillation of the total ozone and ozone concentrations at separate altitude levels over Arctic and Tomsk according to TOMS,OMI, and MLS observations

We analysed the quasi-biennial oscillation of the total ozone (TO) and ozone concentrations at separate altitudinal levels in the stratosphere over Arctic territory and Tomsk according to data from the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS), the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI), and the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS), flown on different satellite platforms. The correlation coefficient between TO and equatorial zonal wind for the period of 1996–2013 is statistically insignificant. The spring (March–April) average ozone concentrations and zonal wind mostly show the correlation in the interval from ?0.23 to ?0.26. The mixing ratio time series, composed for separate altitudinal levels over the period of 2005–2013, exhibit quasi-biennial oscillation, which is weakly manifested at lowest heights, takes shape at heights of ~30 km, and weakens in overlying regions. The correlation between the ozone mixing ratio and the equatorial zonal wind index is most distinct at Western Hemisphere sites and more complex in the Eastern Hemisphere.