background: recently, botulinum neurotoxin (bont)-derived recombinant proteins have been suggested as potential botulism vaccines. here, with concentrating on bont type e (bont/e), we studied two of these binding domain-based recombinant proteins: a multivalent chimer protein, which is composed of bont serotypes a, b and e binding subdomains, and a monovalent recombinant protein, which contains...

Developing devices that can reliably and accurately demonstrate the principles of superposition and entanglement is an on-going challenge for the quantum computing community. Modeling and simulation offer attractive means of testing early device designs and establishing expectations for operational performance. However, the complex integrated material systems required by quantum device designs ...

Computational modeling is an excellent tool with which to investigate the mechanics of the aortic heart valve. The setting of the heart valve presents complex dynamics and mechanical behavior in which solid structures interact with a fluid domain. There currently exists no standard approach, a variety of strategies have been used to address the different aspects of modeling the heart valve. Dif...

BACKGROUND Ventricle material properties are difficult to obtain under in vivo conditions and are not readily available in the current literature. It is also desirable to have an initial determination if a patient had an infarction based on echo data before more expensive examinations are recommended. A noninvasive echo-based modeling approach and a predictive method were introduced to determin...

Cementitious materials are an excellent example of a composite material with complex hierarchical features and random features that range from nanometer (nm) to millimeter (mm) scale. Multi-scale modeling of complex material systems requires starting from fundamental building blocks to capture the scale relevant features through associated computational models. In this paper, molecular dynamics...

Image-based computational modeling has been introduced for vulnerable atherosclerotic plaques to identify critical mechanical conditions which may be used for better plaque assessment and rupture predictions. In vivo patient-specific coronary plaque models are lagging due to limitations on non-invasive image resolution, flow data, and vessel material properties. A framework is proposed to combi...

We present a new scheme for modeling the contour of wet material objects by employing optimal design of periodic smoothing spline surfaces. The surfaces are constructed using normalized uniform B-splines as the basis functions, namely as weighted sum of shifted bi-variable B-splines. Then a central issue is to determine an optimal matrix of the so-called control points. A concise representation...

Alloy 718 is a unique superalloy that has been in use for a number of years. It also has the distinction to be utilized throughout the aerospace and general industrial communities. The applications for this material are often very unique and require tailoring of the microstructure and subsequently the mechanical properties to meet these specific needs. To support optimization of Alloy 718 mecha...

Influenced by the need for composites with stronger magneto-electric coupling, we present a novel numerical method called “Computational Piezo-Grains” (CPGs) for modeling different types of piezoelectric/piezomagnetic composites in the microscale. The advantage of this method is that the matrix and the inclusion of a grain can be modeled using only one element in a finite element sense. The geo...