How disorder can diminish avalanche risks: effect of size distribution

We study the behavior of disk assemblies with a variable disorder distribution. The packing is first consolidated and then continuously tilted very slowly. The amount of displaced disks for each tilted angle is recorded. Large displacements of the disks can occur due to some local or global mechanical instabilities. The definition of neighboring disks is based on radical (extension of Voronoï) tessellation rules to decompose, in a unique and perfectly defined manner, the two-dimensional space for polydisperse disks. In this way, by comparing the characteristics of stability for one disk to the neighboring ones for local ordered cluster, we can predict the global amount of displaced disks. Some tilting cycles have been performed to check the correlation between the instability of the packing structure (collective displacements) with micro and macro order parameters.     

Herstellung einer komplexen Titan‐Knochenschraube aus Metallpulverspritzguss

Complex titanium bone screw fabricated by metal injection moulding M etal I njection M oulding (MIM) is a recently developed powder metal forming technology which is ideally suited to manufacture small geometrically complex parts from alloy powders. This innovative technology was used to fabricate a complex bone screw using metal powder of the biological inert Ti Al6 Nb7 alloy. This article presents the MIM‐technical boundary conditions to produce the screw and results of mechanical and chemical screw tests which qualify this injection moulded part as an advanced implant.     

Heck–Matsuda Arylation of Olefins Through a Bicatalytic Approach: Improved Procedures and Rationalization

The scope of the palladium‐catalyzed Heck–Matsuda reaction, proceeding through the catalytic activation of anilines into the corresponding diazonium salts, has been considerably extended and is now working with deactivated electrophiles. Two different procedures, using catalytic amounts of both palladium and acid, have been optimized allowing the concept of bicatalysis to cover the complete electronic range of anilines. These environmentally friendly procedures proceed under very mild conditions, at room temperature in methanol, and only generate tert‐butyl alcohol, water and nitrogen as by‐products. Rationalization of reaction outcomes encountered in this work has been discussed with the support of computational studies.

     

Fractionation of stable zinc isotopes in the zinc hyperaccumulator Arabidopsis halleri and nonaccumulator Arabidopsis petraea

Zn isotope fractionation may provide new insights into Zn uptake, transport and storage mechanisms in plants. It was investigated here in the Zn hyperaccumulator Arabidopsis halleri and the nonaccumulator A. petraea. Plant growth on hydroponic solution allowed us to measure the isotope fractionation between source Zn (with Zn(2+) as dominant form), shoot and root. Zn isotope mass balance yields mean isotope fractionation between plant and source Zn Δ(66)Zn(in-source) of -0.19 ± 0.20‰ in the nonaccumulator and of -0.05 ± 0.12‰ in the hyperaccumulator. The isotope fractionation between shoot Zn and bulk Zn incorporated (Δ(66)Zn(shoot-in)) differs between the nonaccumulator and the hyperaccumulator and is function of root-shoot translocation (as given by mass ratio between shoot Zn and bulk plant Zn). The large isotope fractionation associated with sequestration in the root (0.37‰) points to the binding of Zn(2+) with a high affinity ligand in the root cell. We conclude that Zn stable isotopes may help to estimate underground and aerial Zn storage in plants and be useful in studying extracellular and cellular mechanisms of sequestration in the root.     

Determination of the coordination number in disordered packings of equal spheres

A computation of the coordination number in a packing of equal spheres can be performed from the information obtained along a random line through the packing. It involves the distribution of the number per unit length of separators between intercepts of spheres with the line. The number of contacts per unit volume is derived from the slope of the distribution at the origin. The method is validated by computer experiments on four kinds of simulated ordered packings which are intercepted by a set of random lines (instead of a single one) in order to compensate biased results due to the small size of these packings: the comparison is then extended to a series of disordered dense packings of equal spheres. We present some possible applications of this study to stereological and physical problems.     

Bulky superinfected tinea capitis of the scalp. Treatment by surgical resection and reconstruction by cutaneous expansion

BACKGROUND: Tinea capitis are usually cured by medical treatment. We present an unusual case which required a surgical treatment. CASE REPORT: A bulky infected kerion ignored for several weeks extended to a large part of the scalp of a 4-year-old girl. Antibiotics and antifungal agents were ineffective so that a total resection was necessary. The loss of substance was covered by a cutaneous graft; the large alopecia was secondarily repaired by a cutaneous expansion. Evolution has been followed for the past 10 years. CONCLUSION: It is exceptional that surgical treatment should be required for this condition.     

Parallel computational steering for HPC applications using HDF5 files in distributed shared memory

Interfacing a GUI driven visualization/analysis package to an HPC application enables a supercomputer to be used as an interactive instrument. We achieve this by replacing the IO layer in the HDF5 library with a custom driver which transfers data in parallel between simulation and analysis. Our implementation using ParaView as the interface, allows a flexible combination of parallel simulation, concurrent parallel analysis, and GUI client, either on the same or separate machines. Each MPI job may use different core counts or hardware configurations, allowing fine tuning of the amount of resources dedicated to each part of the workload. By making use of a distributed shared memory file, one may read data from the simulation, modify it using ParaView pipelines, write it back, to be reused by the simulation (or vice versa). This allows not only simple parameter changes, but complete remeshing of grids, or operations involving regeneration of field values over the entire domain. To avoid the problem of manually customizing the GUI for each application that is to be steered, we make use of XML templates that describe outputs from the simulation (and inputs back to it) to automatically generate GUI controls for manipulation of the simulation.