Search results for "PLASTICITY"
showing 10 items of 765 documents
A thermodynamically consistent nonlocal formulation for damaging materials
2002
A thermodynamically consistent nonlocal formulation for damaging materials is presented. The second principle of thermodynamics is enforced in a nonlocal form over the volume where the dissipative mechanism takes place. The nonlocal forces thermodynamically conjugated are obtained consistently from the free energy. The paper indeed extends to elastic damaging materials a formulation originally proposed by Polizzotto et al. for nonlocal plasticity. Constitutive and computational aspects of the model are discussed. The damage consistency conditions turn out to be formulated as an integral complementarity problem and, consequently, after discretization, as a linear complementarity problem. A n…
On the FE·Meshless computational homogenization for the analysis of two-dimensional heterogeneous periodic materials
2017
Over the last few years, substantial progresses have been made in the two-scales com- putational homogenization. This method is essentially based on the assessment of the macroscopic constitutive behavior of heterogeneous materials through the boundary value problem (BVP) of a statistically representative volume element, named as unit cell (UC). In this framework, the first-order method has now matured to a standard tool and several extensions have been addressed in the literature [1, 2]. In the present study, a first-order homogenization scheme based on a discontinuous- continuous approach is presented. At the mesoscopic level the formation and propagation of fracture is modeled employing …
Transcranial direct current stimulation preconditioning modulates the effect of high-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation in the hu…
2012
Experimental studies emphasize the importance of homeostatic plasticity as a mean of stabilizing the properties of neural circuits. In the present work we combined two techniques able to produce short-term (5-Hz repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, rTMS) and long-term (transcranial direct current stimulation, tDCS) effects on corticospinal excitability to evaluate whether and how the effects of 5-Hz rTMS can be tuned by tDCS preconditioning. Twelve healthy subjects participated in the study. Brief trains of 5-Hz rTMS were applied to the primary motor cortex at an intensity of 120% of the resting motor threshold, with recording of the electromyograph traces evoked by each stimulus o…
Voxel-based morphometry depicts central compensation after vestibular neuritis.
2010
Objective Patients who have had vestibular neuritis (VN) show a remarkable clinical improvement especially in gait and posture >6 months after disease onset. Methods Voxel-based morphometry was used to detect the VN-induced changes in gray and white matter by means of structural magnetic resonance imaging. Twenty-two patients were compared an average 2.5 years after onset of VN to a healthy sex-and age-matched control group. Results Our analysis revealed that all patients had signal intensity increases for gray matter in the medial vestibular nuclei and the right gracile nucleus and for white matter in the area of the pontine commissural vestibular fibers. A relative atrophy was observed in…
Post-weaning social isolation rearing influences the expression of molecules related to inhibitory neurotransmission and structural plasticity in the…
2012
Several lines of evidence indicate that alterations in the structure of neural circuits and inhibitory neurotransmission underlie the physiopathogenesis of schizophrenia. Most of the studies on these parameters have been focused on cortical regions and, despite the crucial role of the amygdala in this psychiatric disorder, there is less information on this region. In order to expand this knowledge, we have studied the expression of molecules related to inhibitory neurotransmission and structural plasticity in rats subjected to post-weaning isolation rearing, an animal model that reproduces several core symptoms of schizophrenia. We have analyzed, using qRT-PCR and immunohistochemistry, the …
Expression properties exhibit correlated patterns with the fate of duplicated genes, their divergence, and transcriptional plasticity in Saccharomyco…
2017
Gene duplication is an important source of novelties and genome complexity. What genes are preserved as duplicated through long evolutionary times can shape the evolution of innovations. Identifying factors that influence gene duplicability is therefore an important aim in evolutionary biology. Here, we show that in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae the levels of gene expression correlate with gene duplicability, its divergence, and transcriptional plasticity. Genes that were highly expressed before duplication are more likely to be preserved as duplicates for longer evolutionary times and wider phylogenetic ranges than genes that were lowly expressed. Duplicates with higher expression lev…
Interleukin 10 restores lipopolysaccharide-induced alterations in synaptic plasticity probed by repetitive magnetic stimulation
2020
Systemic inflammation is associated with alterations in complex brain functions such as learning and memory. However, diagnostic approaches to functionally assess and quantify inflammation-associated alterations in synaptic plasticity are not well-established. In previous work, we demonstrated that bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced systemic inflammation alters the ability of hippocampal neurons to express synaptic plasticity, i.e., the long-term potentiation (LTP) of excitatory neurotransmission. Here, we tested whether synaptic plasticity induced by repetitive magnetic stimulation (rMS), a non-invasive brain stimulation technique used in clinical practice, is affected by LPS-induc…
Erratum to: Letter to the Editor [Engineering Fracture Mechanics 2003 (70) 1219-21]
2004
Erratum and Corrections
The build-up and relaxation of stresses in a glass-forming soft-sphere mixture under shear: A computer simulation study
2009
Molecular-dynamics computer simulations in conjunction with Lees-Edwards boundary conditions are used to investigate a glass-forming binary Yukawa fluid under shear. The transition from the elastic response to plastic flow is elucidated by studying the stress relaxation after switching off the shear. We find a slow stress relaxation starting from states in the elastic regime and a fast one starting from states in the plastic-flow regime. We show that these relaxation patterns are related to a different distribution of local microscopic stresses in both cases.
A thermodynamic approach to nonlocal plasticity and related variational principles
1999
Elastic-plastic rate-independent materials with isotropic hardening/softening of nonlocal nature are considered in the context of small displacements and strains. A suitable thermodynamic framework is envisaged as a basis of a nonlocal associative plasticity theory in which the plastic yielding laws comply with a (nonlocal) maximum intrinsic dissipation theorem. Additionally, the rate response problem for a (continuous) set of (macroscopic) material particles, subjected to a given total strain rate field, is discussed and shown to be characterized by a minimum principle in terms of plastic coefficient. This coefficient and the relevant continuum tangent stiffness matrix are shown to admit, …