Steam injection has had a profound impact on the production of heavy crude oil. Steam, however, is inviscid compared to a viscous oil and is not the ideal displacement agent. Field studies and laboratory tests have shown that foaming the steam phase through the aid of a suitable surfactant in aqueous solution can achieve mobility control of injected gases and mitigate the effects of gravity ove...

Stainless steel square honeycomb core sandwich and solid monolithic beams have been subjected to high-pressure, short-duration impulses using a shock simulation technique involving high-speed impact of Al foam projectiles. The experiments have been designed to achieve two objectives: (i) to demonstrate the benefits of sandwich construction, and (ii) to assess the fidelity of dynamic finite elem...

OBJECTIVE The mechanisms by which apolipoprotein E (apoE) can promote the regression of atherosclerosis are not well understood. This study examined whether apoE can promote atherosclerosis regression independently of lowering plasma cholesterol levels. METHODS AND RESULTS We studied hypomorphic apoE mice (Apoe(h/h)), which express an apoE4-like form of mouse apoE at approximately 2% to 5% of...

Semantic alignment between ontologies is a necessary precondition to establish interoperability between agents or services using different individual ontologies. This cannot be done manually beyond a certain complexity and size of ontologies. The core contribution in this article is the Framework for Ontology Alignment and Mapping (FOAM). With FOAM we address requirements from an application-ba...

Materials with negative Poisson?s ratio are called auxetics and they present enhanced properties (e.g. damping, indentation resistance, fracture toughness impact resistance) under external loadings. The auxetic derived from peculiar-shaped microstructures, such as starshaped frames. In the investigation, several applications studied using microstructures. Finite element models developed for dyn...

Vulnerable plaques, which are responsible for most acute ischemic events, are presently invisible to x-ray angiography. Their primary morphological features include a thin or ulcerated fibrous cap, a large necrotic core, superficial foam cells, and intraplaque hemorrhage. We present evidence that multimodal spectroscopy (MMS), a novel method that combines diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS),...

A novel multi-functional plate-like lamination that combines a thermal energy storage capability with a structural capability is described. The lamination consists of a paraffin impregnated porous graphitic core (the energy storage volume) encapsulated between rigid graphite/epoxy composite skins. Heat storage is via solid-liquid phase transition of the paraffin. Stacked laminations form a sand...

Liquid foams have important practical applications in mineral separation and oil recovery. However, the details of the foam mechanics in these applications are poorly understood. Foam scientists have used 2D foam simulations to model foam behavior and 2D visualization solutions have helped them explore and analyze their data. Three-dimensional foam simulations remove some of the simplifying ass...