objective (s):rheumatoid arthritis (ra) is a chronic systemic inflammatory disorder, primarily targeting the synovium and articular cartilage that leads to joint damage. recent reports have suggested the role of adipocytokines in mediating joint damage; however it still is a matter of debate. the purpose of this study was to evaluate the association between serum values of adiopocytokines (lept...

root-knot nemaode which causes extensive damage to legumes and cerealshas beenreported in many countries. the nematods has been observed on legumes, roots in manyregions of the world, causing swollen root and yield reduction. in order to evaluate the effect ofirrigation interval on reproductive traits of root-knot nematode, and the damage inflicteduponnavy bean, a study was conducted in 2011 in...

In this work, a multi-level decision fusion strategy is proposed which weighs the Value of Information (VoI) against the intended functions of a Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) system. This paper presents a multi-level approach for three different maintenance strategies in which the performance of the SHM systems is evaluated against its intended functions. Level 1 diagnosis results in damag...

A nonlinear approach for the life-cycle cost (LCC) analysis is proposed. Computational procedure for the analysis of LCC for seismically isolated bridges in a region of low to moderate seismicity is established. To compute the failure probability of critical structural components, most probable failure modes for the structure-isolator system are defined as unseating failure of a superstructure,...

mechanical damage due to harvesting, handling, and other processes is an important factor that affects the seeds quality. seed damage results in lower grain value and more storability problem and reduces seed germination and seedling vigor and subsequent yield of crops. tests were conducted to determine the percentage of physical damage (ppd) and percentage of loss in germination (plg) of wheat...

introduction: an attack of acute myocardial infarction (mi) poses the threat of great damage to cardiac tissue. operative therapeutic modalities such as coronary artery bypass grafting (cabg) may enhance myocardial perfusion in high-grade coronary vasculature occlusions. it has been shown previously that low-level laser therapy (lllt) significantly reduces infarct size following induction of my...

Title of Document: A NON-LINEAR DAMAGE MODEL WITH LOAD DEPENDENT EXPONENTS FOR SOLDERS UNDER SEQUENTIAL CYCLIC SHEAR LOADS Elviz George, Ph.D., 2015 Directed By: Professor Michael G. Pecht, Department of Mechanical Engineering The damage state of a material subject to cyclic loads is often characterized by the cycle ratio of applied cycles to the number of survivable cycles. The damage in a mat...