OBJECTIVE To assess volumes and microstructural integrity of deep gray matter structures in a homogeneous cohort of patients with neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder (NMOSD). METHODS This was a cross-sectional study including 36 aquaporin-4 antibody-positive (AQP4 Ab-positive) Caucasian patients with NMOSD and healthy controls matched for age, sex, and education. Volumetry of deep gray mat...

Introduction: Poly(methyl methacrylate), or PMMA bone cement has been a critical material in total joint replacement for over four decades. Modifications used to improve the standard polymer powder/methacrylate monomer system have included the addition of fiber reinforcing phases, bioactive ceramics, antibiotic agents, etc. The microstructural phases in PMMA bone cement can affect its fracture ...

The long-lifetime fatigue regime is suggested to be a probabilistic realization of sequentially occurring mechanisms. We associate these mechanisms with the development of a ranking of heterogeneity scales in the material, with decreasing probability of occurrence in the order of increasing scale, at any given loading condition. The underlying drivers for these heterogeneity levels are an array...

This work presents a three dimensional microstructural analysis of medium carbon steels, based on serial sectioning using optical microscopy. The microstructural phases considered here are ferrite and pearlite. Typically conventional 2D microscopy is used to analyze these phases, with eddy current or ultrasonic methods as alternatives. Medium carbon steel samples were heat treated in a furnace ...

We report the combined effects of phospholipase C (PLC), a pronucleating factor, and apolipoprotein A-I (apo A-I), an antinucleating factor, in solutions of model bile. Results indicate that apo A-I inhibits cholesterol nucleation from unilamellar lecithin vesicles by two mechanisms. Initially, inhibition is achieved by apo A-I shielding of hydrophobic diacylglycerol (DAG) moieties so as to pre...

Properties of ion exchange membranes (IEMs) both cationic and anionic were widely analysed before after chemical. The modification aims to reduce the crossover phenomena typically observed in RFBs by incorporating polypyrrole (PPy) at inner commercial IEMs. In this work, we have explored insight structural generalized conductivity considerations its implications terms physicochemical characteri...

A systematic set of stress-temperature measurements using the laser-scanning wafer curvature technique is performed to examine the effect of passivation thickness and passivation material on stress evolution and yield properties of passivated Al films during thermal cycling for twenty cycles. A modification of Stoney's equation for multiple films on a substrate is utilized to separate the indiv...