Search results for "interface"
showing 10 items of 2139 documents
Onset of cohesion in cement paste
2004
It is generally agreed that the cohesion of cement paste occurs through the formation of a network of nanoparticles of a calcium-silicate-hydrate ("C-S-H"). However, the mechanism by which these particles develop this cohesion has not been established. Here we propose a dielectric continuum model which includes all ionic interactions within a dispersion of C-S-H particles. It takes into account all co-ions and counterions explicitly (with pure Coulomb interactions between ions and between ions and the surfaces) and makes no further assumptions concerning their hydration or their interactions with the surface sites. At high surface charge densities, the model shows that the surface charge of…
Modelling load-transmission mechanisms in axially loaded RC columns retrofitted with steel jackets
2018
The use of steel jacketing technique is a common practice for retrofitting existing reinforced concrete (RC) columns, as it allows increasing load-carrying capacity and ductility of the member. When the external jacket has no-end connections – i.e. the jacket is indirectly loaded- the load sustained by the column is transferred from the inner RC core to the external jacket through shear stresses along the contact surface. The assessment of this mechanism is quite complex, due to the marked non-linear behaviour of constituent materials and to the calibration of a proper shear stress-relative slip constitutive law of the concrete-to-steel interface. In this paper, a step-by-step analytical ap…
On Detection of Network-Based Co-residence Verification Attacks in SDN-Driven Clouds
2017
Modern cloud environments allow users to consume computational and storage resources in the form of virtual machines. Even though machines running on the same cloud server are logically isolated from each other, a malicious customer can create various side channels to obtain sensitive information from co-located machines. In this study, we concentrate on timely detection of intentional co-residence attempts in cloud environments that utilize software-defined networking. SDN enables global visibility of the network state which allows the cloud provider to monitor and extract necessary information from each flow in every virtual network in online mode. We analyze the extracted statistics on d…
Visualization of Simulated Arrhythmias due to Gap Junctions
2018
New computational models are able to simulate details of cardiac cell networks. Their results allow a better understanding of the functionality of the heart and suggest possible actions to reduce non-fatal premature beats that can give rise to serious diseases. We developed a user-friendly interface to organize Neuron simulations and to present in real-time a three-dimensional representation of the electrical activity due to the gap junctions which interconnect the cells inside cardiac tissues. All physiological parameters were set according to real experimental observations and compared against different types of arrhythmias, retrieved from the Physionet Data Base.
Implant Abutment Cleaning by Plasma of Argon: 5-Year Follow-Up of a Randomized Controlled Trial.
2015
Contamination of implant abutments could potentially influence the peri-implant tissue inflammatory response. The aim of the present study is to assess the radiographic bone changes around customized, platform-switched abutments placed according to the "one-abutment-one-time" protocol, with and without plasma of argon cleaning treatment.Thirty healthy patients with thin gingival biotype (1 mm) and history of periodontal disease received one maxillary implant each. Immediately before abutment connection, patients were randomly assigned to control group (cleaning protocol by steaming) or test group (plasma of argon treatment). Outcome measures were: 1) success rate of implants and prostheses;…
A novel ultradeformable liposomes of Naringin for anti-inflammatory therapy
2018
[EN] Ultradeformable liposomes were formulated using naringin (NA), a flavanone glycoside, at different concentrations (3, 6 and 9 mg/mL). Nanovesicles were small size (similar to 100 nm), regardless of the NA concentration used, and monodisperse (PI<0.30). All formulations showed a high entrapment efficiency (similar to 88%) and a highly negative zeta potential (around -30 mV). The selected formulations were highly biocompatible as confirmed by in vitro studies using 3T3 fibroblasts. In vitro assay showed that the amounts (%) of NA accumulated in the epidermis (similar to 10%) could explain the anti-inflammatory properties of ultradeformable liposomes. In vivo studies confirmed the higher …
iSEE: Interactive SummarizedExperiment Explorer
2018
Data exploration is critical to the comprehension of large biological data sets generated by high-throughput assays such as sequencing. However, most existing tools for interactive visualisation are limited to specific assays or analyses. Here, we present the iSEE (Interactive SummarizedExperiment Explorer) software package, which provides a general visual interface for exploring data in a SummarizedExperiment object. iSEE is directly compatible with many existing R/Bioconductor packages for analysing high-throughput biological data, and provides useful features such as simultaneous examination of (meta)data and analysis results, dynamic linking between plots and code tracking for reproduci…
Cohesive Model for the Simulation of Crack Initiation and Propagation in Mixed-Mode I/II in Composite Materials
2019
A cohesive element able to connect and simulate crack growth between independently modeled finite element subdomains with non-matching meshes is proposed and validated. The approach is based on penalty constraints and has several advantages over conventional FE techniques in disconnecting two regions of a model during crack growth. The most important is the ability to release portion of the interface that are smaller than the local finite element length. Thus, the growth of delamination is not limited to advancing by releasing nodes of the FE model, which is a limitation common to the methods found in the literature. Furthermore, it is possible to vary the penalty parameter within the cohes…
Reactome pathway analysis: a high-performance in-memory approach
2016
Reactome aims to provide bioinformatics tools for visualisation, interpretation and analysis of pathway knowledge to support basic research, genome analysis, modelling, systems biology and education. Pathway analysis methods have a broad range of applications in physiological and biomedical research; one of the main problems, from the analysis methods performance point of view, is the constantly increasing size of the data samples. Here, we present a new high-performance in-memory implementation of the well-established over-representation analysis method. To achieve the target, the over-representation analysis method is divided in four different steps and, for each of them, specific data st…
Reactome graph database: Efficient access to complex pathway data
2018
Reactome is a free, open-source, open-data, curated and peer-reviewed knowledgebase of biomolecular pathways. One of its main priorities is to provide easy and efficient access to its high quality curated data. At present, biological pathway databases typically store their contents in relational databases. This limits access efficiency because there are performance issues associated with queries traversing highly interconnected data. The same data in a graph database can be queried more efficiently. Here we present the rationale behind the adoption of a graph database (Neo4j) as well as the new ContentService (REST API) that provides access to these data. The Neo4j graph database and its qu…