Search results for "Statistical"
showing 10 items of 4960 documents
Effect of plasma treatment on the properties of Arundo Donax L. leaf fibres and its bio-based epoxy composites: A preliminary study
2016
Abstract A preliminary investigation about the effect of plasma treatment on the properties of natural fibres extracted from the leaf of the giant reed Arundo Donax L. and their compatibility with a bio-based epoxy resin is performed. To this aim, the influence of plasma treatment on the functional groups and on the thermal behaviour of fibre were investigated using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and thermogravimetric analysis. Moreover, the mechanical characterization of fibres was performed through fibre tensile tests. Short randomly oriented fibres/bio-based epoxy composites were manufactured by hand lay-up method followed by compression moulding, varying both fibres weight cont…
A new eco-friendly chemical treatment of natural fibres: Effect of sodium bicarbonate on properties of sisal fibre and its epoxy composites
2016
Abstract Several researchers have shown how sisal fibres possess remarkable tensile properties that yield them good candidates as reinforcement in biocomposite materials. This work aims to evaluate the effect of an eco-friendly and cost effective surface treatment method based on the use of commercial sodium bicarbonate (i.e. baking soda) on properties of sisal fibre and its epoxy composites. In particular, raw sisal fibres were treated with a 10%w/w of sodium bicarbonate solution for different periods (24, 120 and 240 h), at room temperature. Changes occurring in sisal fibres were characterized through scanning electron microscope, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric…
487 The Influence of Inhaled Corticotherapy on the Growth and Development in Asthmatic Children
2012
Background Inhaled corticotherapy is the main anti-inflammatory controller type therapy in asthmatic children. Impaired growth as a result of long-term corticotherapy remains a disputed issue of topical interest for both endocrinologists, pneumologists and pediatricians. Objective The study evaluates the influence of long term small dose inhaled corticotherapy on growth and somatic development in asthmatic children. Methods Observational analytical study on 2 samples of subjects. The study group: 100 asthmatic children with small dose inhaled corticotherapy (beclomethasone dipropionate Becotide 200–400 µg/day or fluticasone propionate Flixotide 100–300 µg/day), for 24 months therapy. The co…
Critical behavior of a tumor growth model: directed percolation with a mean-field flavor.
2012
We examine the critical behaviour of a lattice model of tumor growth where supplied nutrients are correlated with the distribution of tumor cells. Our results support the previous report (Ferreira et al., Phys. Rev. E 85, 010901 (2012)), which suggested that the critical behaviour of the model differs from the expected Directed Percolation (DP) universality class. Surprisingly, only some of the critical exponents (beta, alpha, nu_perp, and z) take non-DP values while some others (beta', nu_||, and spreading-dynamics exponents Theta, delta, z') remain very close to their DP counterparts. The obtained exponents satisfy the scaling relations beta=alpha*nu_||, beta'=delta*nu_||, and the general…
Growth patterns at distal radius and tibial shaft in pubertal girls: a 2-year longitudinal study.
2005
Bone changes, in terms of both size and BMD, were assessed longitudinally in pubertal girls. Before puberty, BMD at the distal radius declined, whereas bone size increased, suggesting that normal growing girls experience a transient period of increased bone fragility. This could explain the elevated low-trauma forearm fracture rates reported in earlier studies. Introduction: Longitudinal data on bone growth during puberty are sparse. Such information is needed to understand the sequence of biological changes, the physical and mechanical consequences for the growing skeleton, and the implications for later life. Materials and Methods: The geometric properties and volumetric BMD (vBMD) of the…
A method for the time-varying nonlinear prediction of complex nonstationary biomedical signals
2009
A method to perform time-varying (TV) nonlinear prediction of biomedical signals in the presence of nonstationarity is presented in this paper. The method is based on identification of TV autoregressive models through expansion of the TV coefficients onto a set of basis functions and on k -nearest neighbor local linear approximation to perform nonlinear prediction. The approach provides reasonable nonlinear prediction even for TV deterministic chaotic signals, which has been a daunting task to date. Moreover, the method is used in conjunction with a TV surrogate method to provide statistical validation that the presence of nonlinearity is not due to nonstationarity itself. The approach is t…
The effect of long-chain bases on polysialic acid-mediated membrane interactions
2011
AbstractNegatively-charged polysialic acid (polySia) chains are usually membrane-bound and are often expressed on the surface of neuroinvasive bacterial cells, neural cells, and tumor cells. PolySia can mediate both repulsive and attractive cis interactions between membrane components, and trans interactions between membranes. Positively-charged long-chain bases are widely present in cells, are often localized in membranes and can function as bioactive lipids. Here we use Langmuir monolayer technique, fluorescence spectroscopy and electron microscopy of lipid vesicles to study the role of a simple long-chain base, octadecylamine (ODA), in both cis and trans interactions mediated by polySia …
Mobility determination of lead isotopes in glass for retrospective radon measurements
2008
In retrospective radon measurements, the 22-y half life of (210)Pb is used as an advantage. (210)Pb is often considered to be relatively immobile in glass after alpha recoil implanted by (222)Rn progenies. The diffusion of (210)Pb could, however, lead to uncertain wrong retrospective radon exposure estimations if (210)Pb is mobile and can escape from glass, or lost as a result of cleaning-induced surface modification. This diffusion was studied by a radiotracer technique, where (209)Pb was used as a tracer in a glass matrix for which the elemental composition is known. Using the ion guide isotope separator on-line technique, the (209)Pb atoms were implanted into the glass with an energy of …
First-principles simulations of hydrogen peroxide formation catalyzed by small neutral gold clusters.
2009
Energetics and dynamical pathways for hydrogen peroxide formation from H(2) and O(2) bound to neutral gold dimers and tetramers have been investigated by applying several strategies: T = 0 K geometry optimizations, constrained Car-Parrinello molecular dynamics simulations at T = 300 K and metadynamics at T = 300 K. The competing reaction channels for water and hydrogen peroxide formation have been found and characterized. In each case, the reaction barriers for Au cluster catalyzed proton transfer are less than 1 eV. Water formation is a competitive reaction channel, and the relative weight of H(2)O and H(2)O(2) products may depend on the chosen Au cluster size. Dynamic simulations demonstr…
Comparison of basis functions for 3D PET reconstruction using a Monte Carlo system matrix.
2012
In emission tomography, iterative statistical methods are accepted as the reconstruction algorithms that achieve the best image quality. The accuracy of these methods relies partly on the quality of the system response matrix (SRM) that characterizes the scanner. The more physical phenomena included in the SRM, the higher the SRM quality, and therefore higher image quality is obtained from the reconstruction process. High-resolution small animal scanners contain as many as 103?104 small crystal pairs, while the field of view (FOV) is divided into hundreds of thousands of small voxels. These two characteristics have a significant impact on the number of elements to be calculated in the SRM. …