Stiffness of trabecular bone of the tibial plateau in patients with rheumatoid arthritis of the knee

Stiffness of subchondral proximal tibial trabecular bone is a factor in the stability of prostheses implanted into that bone. The stiffness of trabecular bone in osteoarthritis (OA) has been documented. Trabecular bone in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is osteopenic in numerous sites and morphologically abnormal in the proximal tibia. Reliable data on proximal tibial bone in RA are lacking, although 1 study failed to identify abnormalities. The purposes of this study were (1) to document the stiffness of the proximal tibial cancellous bone in patients with RA, (2) to determine the effect of angular deformity on bone stiffness in rheumatoid patients, and (3) to compare RA stiffness values with those in published reports for OA. Fifteen tibial plateau were obtained from patients with RA during surgery. Each plateau was horizontally seated in a mold and covered with cement. The plateau was divided into 6 regions, which were used to facilitate comparison between specimens and the existing literature. Indentation tests were conducted with a 4-mm-diameter cylindrical indentor controlled by an MTS machine. The indentor descended at a rate of 2 mm/min to a maximum depth of 1.0 mm; load and displacement data were digitally recorded. Stiffness was calculated from the slope of the linear region of the curve using best-fit linear regression. Where varus deformity was present, stiffness in the medial plateau was higher overall than for the other compartment; whereas in the case of valgus deformity, stiffness of the lateral side was significantly higher (P < .05 for each observation). In comparison to older normal specimens, both the medial compartment of the varus RA specimens (P < .01) and the posterolateral compartment of the valgus RA specimens (P < .01) had significantly lower stiffness. Comparison with OA specimens showed that in varus RA, the posteromedial region had significantly lower stiffness than in varus OA at the same site (P < .01). In valgus RA, the lateral region had significantly lower stiffness than in valgus OA at the same site (P < .01). The mean stiffness ratio of the valgus RA was significantly (P < .01) altered from normal, and for the varus RA, it was significantly (P < .01) different from normal posteriorly. The stiffness ratios for the varus RA were significantly (P < .01) different from those for varus OA; there was no difference between valgus RA and valgus OA. It is concluded that RA affected bone has significantly lower stiffness than normal and osteoarthritic bone. The loaded plateau is stiffer than the unloaded plateau in angular deformity, but is still less stiff than normal bone and osteoarthritic plateaus with corresponding deformities.     

Hybrid integrator backstepping control of robotic manipulators driven by brushless DC motors

In this paper, a hybrid integrator backstepping controller is proposed for robotic manipulators actuated with brushless DC motors in the presence of arbitrary uncertain inertia parameters of the manipulator and the electrical parameters of the actuators. The main features are: 1) the design, requiring at most the joint velocities and stator currents feedback; 2) the semiglobal asymptotic stability of the controller being established in the Lyapunov sense; and 3) suitability of the scheme for multijoint robots. Simulation results are included to demonstrate the tracking performance.     

浅谈混凝土重力坝上游止水铜片断裂修复技术

以月潭水库上游面止水铜片修复为例,具体介绍了混凝土重力坝止水铜片缺陷产生的原因、修复方案、质量控制等,修复后达到了良好的效果,其方案可行,质量可靠,可以为其他类似工程提供借鉴。     

Instability of diatomic deuterium in fcc palladium

To clarify some of the solid-state aspects of cold fusion in deuterated transition metal electrodes, we have carried out first-principles self-consistent total energy calculations for various configurations of atomic and diatomic deuterium inside fcc palladium. We find that the stability of the Pd+D system is controlled by the relative position of the deuterium-inducedantibonding level with respect to the Fermi energy. The equilibrium D-D distance in dense PdD up to =3 is found to be much larger than the free space value. The calculated Born-Oppenheimer energy surface of diatomic D₂ in crystalline palladiuim is shown to have but metastable local minima whose internuclear separation is at least 0.2 Ålarger than that of the isolated D₂ molecule. We conclude that D₂ incrystalline Pd will have a substantially lower tunneling probability than hitherto thought and that explanation for fusion mechanisms should be sought elsewhere.     

Granular multiple kernel learning for identifying RNA-binding protein residues via integrating sequence and structure information

Neural Computing and Applications - RNA-binding proteins play an important role in the biological process. However, the traditional experiment technology to predict RNA-binding residues is...     

Adaptive synchronization of master-slave large-scale systems against bias actuators and network attenuations

This paper utilizes the adaptive technique to design a class of active synchronizing masterslave large scale systems against imperfect actuators and networked interconnections with bias faults and signal attenuations, respectively. Without the requirement of knowledge of eventual faulty factors of bias-actuators on systems, and attenuation factors of connected networks, an adaptive mechanism is designed to estimate each unknown faulty factor on-line for constructing a class of distributed adaptive controllers. Then based on the adaptive adjustment parameters and Lyapunov stability theory, Lyapunov functions are addressed to prove that the proposed adaptive master-slave large-scale system can be guaranteed to be asymptotic synchronization with the improper actuator and faulty transmitted signals. Finally, a multiple vehicle large-scale system is used to verify the efficiency of the method.     

高等教育服务承诺与政府规制改革

高等教育服务是一个具有时代特征的历史现象 ,在当前显露出全球化背景下经济行为与文化行为互动性特征 ,站在综合国力提升和国际竞争力增强的战略高度审视高等教育服务贸易的长远影响至关重要。通过政府规制改革 ,建立起本国能够负责任地采纳并被其他成员国创造性地适应的高等教育及其服务贸易发展模式是各国政府的重要责任     

铸造用CO2硬化冷芯盒材料及工艺的发展

铸造用CO2硬化粘结剂系统具有气硬冷芯盒的优点,同时又具有环保方面的优势。主要介绍了水玻璃-CO2法、聚丙烯酸钠-CO2法、酚醛树脂-CO2法三种工艺。这些工艺方法近年来国内外研究较多,并且取得了很大进展。