BACKGROUND A variant (rs1495741) in the gene for the N-acetyltransferase 2 (NAT2) protein is associated with skin intrinsic fluorescence (SIF), a noninvasive measure of advanced glycation end products and other fluorophores in the skin. Because NAT2 is involved in caffeine metabolism, we aimed to determine whether caffeine consumption is associated with SIF and whether rs1495741 is associated w...

In various settings, drug market policing strategies have been found to have unintended negative effects on health service use among injection drug users (IDU). This has prompted calls for more effective coordination of policing and public health efforts. In Vancouver, Canada, a supervised injection facility (SIF) was established in 2003. We sought to determine if local police impacted utilizat...

This article studies the retardation effect in plasticity-induced fatigue crack growth rate for a low-medium strength steel, due to appearance of microdeflections path. To this end, finite element method was used model with its kinked tip under several stress intensity factor (SIF) ranges. The results allowed calculation (after small number cycles) propagation multiaxial and uniaxial configurat...

Injection drug users (IDUs) are vulnerable to serious health complications resulting from unsafe injection practices. We examined whether the use of a supervised safer injection facility (SIF) promoted change in injecting practices among a representative sample of 760 IDUs who use a SIF in Vancouver, Canada. Consistent SIF use was compared with inconsistent use on a number of self-reported chan...

In this paper, we propose a novel search interval forecasting (SIF) optimization algorithm for global numerical optimization. In the SIF algorithm, the information accumulated in the previous iteration of the evolution is utilized to forecast area where better optimization value can be located with the highest probability for the next searching operation. Five types of searching strategies are ...

The slower is faster (SIF) effect occurs when a system performs worse as its components try to do better. Thus, a moderate individual efficiency actually leads to a better systemic performance. The SIF effect takes place in a variety of phenomena. We review studies and examples of the SIF effect in pedestrian dynamics, vehicle traffic, traffic light control, logistics, public transport, social ...

This work deals with the interaction of P-waves between a moving central crack and a pair of outer cracks situated at the interface of an orthotropic layer and an elastic half-space. Initially, we considered a two-dimensional elastic wave equation in orthotropic medium. The Fourier transform has been applied to convert the basic problem to solve the set of four integral equations. These set of ...

AerMet 100 exhibits excellent mechanical properties, proven in previous studies; however, defects may greatly influence the behavior during service of material, which serves as one major challenges wider application material. To quantify crack evolution process, in-plane type I propagation is comprehensively investigated based on extended finite element method (XFEM). The growth characterized t...