Weight function method for transient thermomechanical fracture analysis of a functionally graded hollow cylinder possessing a circumferential crack

This article introduces a weight function method for fracture analysis of a circumferentially cracked functionally graded hollow cylinder subjected to transient thermomechanical loading. Analytical solutions for transient temperature and stress distributions in the uncracked cylinder are derived by applying finite Hankel transformation. These solutions are utilized to determine stress acting on the faces of the circumferential crack in the local perturbation problem. Thermomechanical material properties are assumed to be power functions of the radial coordinate in the derivations. Coefficients of the weight function are found using reference stress intensity factors computed through the finite element method. Domain form of the J-integral is used in the finite element calculations. Comparisons of the numerical results calculated by the proposed weight function method to those generated by finite element analysis demonstrate the high level of accuracy attained by the application of the developed procedures. Further parametric analyses are presented to illustrate the influences of dimensionless time, crack depth to thickness ratio, power law index, and convection coefficient upon transient mode I thermomechanical stress intensity factors.     

A convergence of key‐value storage systems from clouds to supercomputers

This paper presents a convergence of distributed key‐value storage systems in clouds and supercomputers. It specifically presents ZHT, a zero‐hop distributed key‐value store system, which has been tuned for the requirements of high‐end computing systems. ZHT aims to be a building block for future distributed systems, such as parallel and distributed file systems, distributed job management systems, and parallel programming systems. ZHT has some important properties, such as being lightweight, dynamically allowing nodes join and leave, fault tolerant through replication, persistent, scalable, and supporting unconventional operations such as append, compare and swap, callback in addition to the traditional insert/lookup/remove. We have evaluated ZHT's performance under a variety of systems, ranging from a Linux cluster with 64 nodes, an Amazon EC2 virtual cluster up to 96 nodes, to an IBM Blue Gene/P supercomputer with 8K nodes. We compared ZHT against other key‐value stores and found it offers superior performance for the features and portability it supports. This paper also presents several real systems that have adopted ZHT, namely, FusionFS (a distributed file system), IStore (a storage system with erasure coding), MATRIX (distributed scheduling), Slurm++ (distributed HPC job launch), Fabriq (distributed message queue management); all of these real systems have been simplified because of key‐value storage systems and have been shown to outperform other leading systems by orders of magnitude in some cases. It is important to highlight that some of these systems are rooted in HPC systems from supercomputers, while others are rooted in clouds and ad hoc distributed systems; through our work, we have shown how versatile key‐value storage systems can be in such a variety of environments. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Synthesis of novel pyridazine derivatives as potential antimicrobial agents

A series of novel pyridazine derivatives incorporated with triazole, thiazolidine, imidazolidine, oxazine, and quinazoline moieties was synthesized by the reaction of [6-(4-phenoxyphenyl)pyridazin-3-yloxy]acetyl isothiocyanate with variety of nucleophilic reagents. The structures of all products were confirmed and characterized by the elemental analysis and spectroscopic studies (IR, MS, ¹H NMR). Also, the products were investigated for their antibacterial and antifungal activities and were compared with the standard drugs. Most of the synthesized compounds demonstrated potent to weak antimicrobial activity.     

A Bayesian hierarchical model for DCE-MRI to evaluate treatment response in a phase II study in advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck

Object

Pharmacokinetic parameters from dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) were used to assess the perfusion effects due to treatment response using a tyrosine kinase inhibitor. A Bayesian hierarchical model (BHM) is proposed, as an alternative to voxel-wise estimation procedures, to test for a treatment effect while explicitly modeling known sources of variability.

Materials and methods

Nine subjects from a randomized, blinded, placebo-controlled, multicenter, phase II study of lapatinib were examined before and after treatment. Kinetic parameters were estimated, with an extended compartmental model and subject-specific arterial input function, on a voxel-by-voxel basis.

Results

The group treated with lapatinib had a decrease in median K ^trans of 0.17min^??, when averaged across all voxels in the tumor ROIs, compared with no change in the placebo group based on nonlinear regression. A hypothesis test of equality between pre- and posttreatment K ^trans could not be rejected against a one-sided alternative (P = 0.09). Equality between median K ^trans in placebo and lapatinib groups posttreatment could also not be rejected using the BHM (P = 0.32). Across all scans acquired in the study, estimates of K ^trans at one site were greater on average than those at the other site by including a site effect in the BHM. The inter-voxel variability is of similar order (within 15%) when compared to the inter-patient variability.

Conclusion

Though the study contained a small number of subjects and no significant difference was found, the Bayesian hierarchical model provided estimates of variability from known sources in the study and confidence intervals for all estimated parameters. We believe the BHM provides a straightforward and thorough interrogation of the imaging data at the level of voxels, patients or sites in this multicenter clinical study.     

Nondestructive Characterization of Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of Heat Treated H13 Tool Steel Using Magnetic Hysteresis Loop Methodology

ABSTRACT

The aim in this article is to evaluate microstructural changes, hardness variations, and wear behavior of H13 hot work tool steel as a function of austenitizing and tempering temperature using nondestructive magnetic hysteresis loop method. To obtain different microstructural characteristics in the H13 specimens, austenitizing and tempering temperatures were varied in the range of 1,050–1,100°C and 200–650°C, respectively. The microstructural features, hardness, and wear loss were characterized using X-ray diffraction/metallographic examinations, hardness measurements, and a pin-on-disk wear tester, respectively. The relations between features obtained from the conventional methods and parameters extracted from the magnetic hysteresis loops were established. Results demonstrate that the proposed nondestructive method is able to assess the wear behavior of the heat treated H13 tool steels. Besides, a standard Generalized Regression Neural Network (GRNN) was trained with a training dataset and then used to estimate the hardness of a given sample with its measured values of magnetic parameters. Experimental results indicate that, if the training dataset has sufficient samples, the proposed method will have a very high accuracy to estimate hardness of the sample, nondestructively.     

The Effect of Microcosm Biofilm Decontamination on Surface Topography,Chemistry, and Biocompatibility Dynamics of Implant Titanium Surfaces

Since the inception of dental implants, a steadily increasing prevalence of peri-implantitis has been documented. Irrespective of the treatment protocol applied for the management of peri-implantitis, this biofilm-associated pathology, continues to be a clinical challenge yielding unpredictable and variable levels of resolution, and in some cases resulting in implant loss. This paper investigated the effect of microcosm biofilm in vitro decontamination on surface topography, wettability, chemistry, and biocompatibility, following decontamination protocols applied to previously infected implant titanium (Ti) surfaces, both micro-rough -Sandblasted, Large-grit, Acid-etched (SLA)-and smooth surfaces -Machined (M). Microcosm biofilms were grown on SLA and M Ti discs. These were treated with TiBrushes (TiB), combination of TiB and photodynamic therapy (PDT), combination of TiB and 0.2%CHX/1%NaClO, plus or minus Ultraviolet-C (UV-C) radiation. Surface topography was evaluated by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Laser Surface Profilometry. Surface function was analysed through wettability analysis. Surface chemistry evaluation of the discs was performed under SEM/Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Biocompatibility was tested with the cytocompatibility assay using human osteoblast-like osteosarcoma cell line (MG-63) cells. Elemental analysis of the discs disclosed chemical surface alterations resulting from the different treatment modalities. Titanium, carbon, oxygen, sodium, aluminium, silver, were identified by EDX as the main components of all the discs. Based on the data drawn from this study, we have shown that following the decontamination of Ti surfaces the biomaterial surface chemistry and topography was altered. The type of treatment and Ti surface had a significant effect on cytocompatibility (p = 0.0001). Although, no treatment modality hindered the titanium surface biocompatibility, parameters such as the use of chemical agents and micro-rough surfaces had a higher cytotoxic effect in MG-63 cells. The use of smooth surfaces, and photofunctionalisation of the TiO₂ layer had a beneficial effect on cytocompatibility following decontamination.     

New approach to gas network modeling in unit commitment

Expansion of gas fired units installation in power network results in more interdependency between gas and electric infrastructures. Thus new research has paid attention to the impact of gas network in power system studies. One such issue is the impact of gas network in a unit commitment problem. Many linear and nonlinear models are proposed to demonstrate this impact. However, the dynamics of these two infrastructures are different. In contrary to an electric network, the dynamic of a gas network lasts over a long period. In large scale networks, the impact of gas volume variations may remain for some hours or even for a whole day. Earlier research considered a gas network static model by which its dynamic behavior was not observed. In this paper, the quasi dynamic model is proposed for a gas network by which gas velocity and distances between gas areas may be considered. This model is assessed for a unit commitment problem on a test network and its capabilities are appreciated.     

A time‐domain approach for wideband modeling of electronic packages

This article presents a technique for wideband modeling and characterization of electronic packages. The modeling approach presented is based on time‐domain reflectometry techniques (TDRs). The time‐domain approach is capable of directly identifying the various contributions (reflections) from different discontinuities of the structure with a relatively high spatial resolution. Consequently, this makes it possible to isolate the effect of different discontinuities over the bandwidth of the package. This technique has been successfully applied to several packages, two of which are demonstrated in this article. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2005.     

A novel method for transmission electron microscopy study of cytoplasmic fragments from preimplantation human embryos

Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is the main tool for exploring the intracellular damage and organelle distribution. The cause of producing embryo cytoplsamic fragmentation is not completely understood. Since the fragments have detrimental effects on embryo development, the ultrastructural analysis of fragments may play an important role in fragmentation etiology and in embryo development as well. There are no studies regarding the ultrastructure of fragments in transferable embryos, because the preparation for TEM is not vital and embryos are discarded inevitably. This study aims to introduce a new method for ultrastructural evaluation of fragments without damaging the human cleaving embryos. Microsc. Res. Tech. 79:459–462, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

RBF neural network based PI pitch controller for a class of 5-MW wind turbines using particle swarm optimization algorithm

In order to control the pitch angle of blades in wind turbines, commonly the proportional and integral (PI) controller due to its simplicity and industrial usability is employed. The neural networks and evolutionary algorithms are tools that provide a suitable ground to determine the optimal PI gains. In this paper, a radial basis function (RBF) neural network based PI controller is proposed for collective pitch control (CPC) of a 5-MW wind turbine. In order to provide an optimal dataset to train the RBF neural network, particle swarm optimization (PSO) evolutionary algorithm is used. The proposed method does not need the complexities, nonlinearities and uncertainties of the system under control. The simulation results show that the proposed controller has satisfactory performance.