FM Technologies (United States)

The rubber, the main material of power transmission belts, contains short fibers for reinforcement, and its mechanical behavior changes depending on the amount and distribution of the fibers. If both the short fibers and the base rubber were modeled as solid elements to predict this with FEM analysis, the total number of elements would become enormous, increasing the calculation costs. Therefore, the short fibers were modeled as a series of truss elements, and an element for embedding the short fibers in the base rubber of the solid elements was developed and implemented in FrontISTR, an open-source software, significantly reducing the total number of elements. This makes it possible to quickly analyze short fiber-mixed rubber with fewer calculation resources.

Scrub typhus is one of the causes of acute undifferentiated fever.During the study period from October 2012 to August 2014, a total of 633 cases of suspected Scrub typhus presented to our hospital. Out of these, 95 serum samples were positive for scrub typhus either by Weil Felix or by ELISA (IgM antibody to Orientia tsutsugamushi). Predominant clinical feature was fever with an average of 10 days followed by headache, vomiting, cough, myalgia, breathlessness, loose stools, reduced urine output, abdominalpain and nausea. Eschar was observed in 6 out of the 95 patients (6.3%) in our study. The percentages of patients with Scrub typhus having eschars were variable with different studies citing different results. In our study we observed an almost equal incidence of Scrub typhus in both genders. Other studies showed variable reports with some showing male predominance and others showing female predominance. Maximal incidence of Scrub typhus according to our study wasin the age group 41 – 50 yrs with decreasing incidence as one goes further from this peak to either side. Increased numbers of Scrub typhus cases were observed from September to February, which coincided with the cooler months of the year. Scrub Typhus diagnosis is made more complex by the presence of dual infections. Dual infections should be suspected when the patients present with atypical clinical features of either diseaseor when patient responds poorly to treatment. The platelet levels were low in Scrub typhus, but it was lower when the patient was infected with both Scrub typhus and Dengue infection. Main stay of Scrub typhus diagnosis remains serology. The gold standard for the diagnosis is Indirect Fluorescence Antibodyassay. Both Weil Felix and ELISA tests were done and compared withIFA in 100 samples. The sensitivity of Weil Felix OX K at a break point of 1:160 was found to be 40% and specificity 94%, Positive predictive value was 86.9% and negative predictive value 61.0%. The ELISA tests showed sensitivity to be 96% and specificity 88%, Positive predictive value was 88.8% and negative predictive value 95.6 %. All currently available serological methods have theirlimitations. There is an urgent need for newer diagnostic methods. The treatment given is Doxycycline or azithromycin. Most of our cases responded to these drugs except one case where combination therapy was attempted. Scrub typhus responds well to treatment and if not treated intime the patient can go in for complications emphasizing the need for early diagnosis and treatment. Keywords:- Doxycycline, azithromycin, Scrub Typhus, ELISA.

<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">The design of a compact composite prepreg tape dispensing device is presented. This device supplies composite prepreg plies to manual and robotic composite prepreg layup processes for producing composite laminates. It is able to de-reel a spool of prepreg tape, remove the backing paper, cut the tape into plies at specified lengths, and place the plies for pickup. It provides a compact and economic tape supplying solution to the composite manufacturing industry. A prototype device was created and tested. With an overall footprint of 20 3/8 inches (517.5 mm) by 50 5/8 inches (1285.9 mm) and a mass of 35 lb (15.9 kg), the device was compact enough and functioned well in a tabletop layup workspace. The prepreg tape dispensing process was successfully carried out. The tape cutting accuracy of the prototype device achieved 1/22 inches (1.2 mm) on average with a standard deviation of 1/13 inches (2.0 mm). The tape delivery positioning accuracy achieved 1/32 inches (0.8 mm) on average with a standard deviation of 3/68 inches (1.1 mm) in the longitudinal direction, and 1/80 inches (0.3 mm) on average with a standard deviation of 1/38 inches (0.7 mm) in the transverse direction. The test results verify the capability of the presented technique in producing prepreg plies with sufficient accuracy and consistency.</div></div>

In 2014, the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) Aviation and Spaceports Office (ASO) initiated a three-year statewide program to provide pavement classification numbers (PCN) for runway pavements at Florida public-use airports. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) requires member states to publish information on pavement strength using a standard methodology. ICAO adopted the aircraft classification number (ACN)/PCN system. This system allows the user to express the effect of an individual aircraft on different pavements with a single unique number. This number varies according to aircraft weight, gear configuration, pavement type, and subgrade strength. Under the ASO’s program, the runway PCNs were evaluated for approximately one-third of the total 90 participating airports in Florida, each of the three years, and the computations followed the FAA Advisory Circular 150/5335-5C, “Standardized Method of Reporting Airport Pavement Strength—PCN,” using COMFAA computer software. During the PCN evaluation, the structural adequacy of the runway was also evaluated in accordance with the FAA Advisory Circular 150/5320-6F, “Airport Pavement Design and Evaluation,” using the FAARFIELD computer software. This paper describes the complexity of acquiring the required input parameters to compute the PCN, the methodology to select the reasonable computed PCN to represent the runway pavement strength, the guidance to utilize the PCN, the GIS implementation of the PCN reporting, and the lessons learned in managing the success of the ASO program. The future development of ACN-PCN is also briefly discussed.

Abstract Background: Plasmodium vivax and Plamodium falciparum are co-endemic in much of the Brazilian Amazon, with P. vivax comprising greater than 80% of clinical cases, especially in low transmission settings. The molecular force of blood-stage infection of P. vivax (molFOB) can provide a detailed picture of P. vivax transmission in low transmission settings and help improve malaria measures control and elimination efforts. Methodology: Monthly samples were collected in a cohort of 1,274 individuals of all ages between April 2013 and March 2014 in three peri-urban communities in the Brazilian Amazon. Regression analyses were used to test how factors including age and community were associated with P. vivax molFOB, parasite positivity and clinical episodes. Principal Findings: Respectively, 77.8% and 97.2% of the population remained free of P. vivax and P. falciparum infection. Expected heterozygosity for P. vivax was 0.69 for MSP1_F3 and 0.86 for MS2. Multiplicity of infection in P. vivax was close to the value of 1 as determined with both markers (1.06 for MSP1_F3 and 1.04 for MS2). Season was associated with P. vivax positivity [adjusted hazard ration (aHR) 2.6 (1.9-5.7)] and clinical disease [aHR 10.6 (2.4-47.2)]. P. falciparum infection was associated with previous malarial episodes [HR 9.7 (4.5-20.9)]. Subjects who reported bednet possession [incidence rate ratio (IRR) 1.6 (1.2-2.2)] or previous malaria episodes [IRR 3.0 (2.0-4.5)] were found to have significantly higher P. vivax molFOB.Conclusions: Overall, P. vivax infection prevailed in the area and infections were mostly observed as monoclonal. High proportions of symptomatic and submicroscopic infections were found. Previous malaria episodes were associated with significantly higher P. vivax molFOB, likely indicating that effective radical cure is an important strategy to be addressed in these endemic communities.

This work was aimed to review not only variations and defenition of functional food as well as its positive impact on health but also diseases which correspond with poor diet and its correlation to certain health status, consumers’ attitude and perception on functional food and potential of food from farm-based become functional food. There are 14 groups of bioactive as ingridient of food which have strong correlation toward status and sort of helath for instance, prebiotics and probiotics. As an effort to avoid the occurence of some diseases due to low nutrient diet, community development in terms of advocation and education play pivotal role on the impotance of functional food consumption. Yet, it is need support from local government as nearest authority to community and other stakeholders. Involving all stakelholders would be maximizing functional food production and it could be maintained its sustainability.

Imaging subsalt is still a challenging task in oil and gas exploration. We have used magnetotellurics (MT) to improve the integration of seismic and gravity data to image the Wedehof salt dome, located in the Northern German Basin. High-density natural field source broadband MT data were acquired and enhanced the definition of the top and overhanging salt structures in addition to imaging the salt dome root. Salt boundaries show strong resistivity contrasts with the surrounding sediments and thus represent a good target for electromagnetic measurements, especially for top salt and salt flanks imaging. With integrated 3D gravity modeling focusing on the salt dome’s flanks at intermediate depths, an improved model was achieved. The new model provided sound input to a follow-up seismic depth migration that led to an improved imaging of the subsalt target proven by subsequent exploration drilling. The integrated interpretation of MT, gravity, and seismic combines the strengths of the different physics, thus increasing imaging reliability and reducing exploration drilling risks. Using a conservative workflow that included a feasibility study with field noise evaluation and careful acquisition parameter testing prior to survey start, a broadband array data acquisition, and advanced processing, the survey area's severe cultural noise issues could be overcome.

We present CAiRE-COVID, a real-time question answering (QA) and multi-document summarization system, which won one of the 10 tasks in the Kaggle COVID-19 Open Research Dataset Challenge, judged by medical experts. Our system aims to tackle the recent challenge of mining the numerous scientific articles being published on COVID-19 by answering high priority questions from the community and summarizing salient question-related information. It combines information extraction with state-of-the-art QA and query-focused multi-document summarization techniques, selecting and highlighting evidence snippets from existing literature given a query. We also propose query-focused abstractive and extractive multi-document summarization methods, to provide more relevant information related to the question. We further conduct quantitative experiments that show consistent improvements on various metrics for each module. We have launched our website CAiRE-COVID for broader use by the medical community, and have open-sourced the code for our system, to bootstrap further study by other researches.

We have developed a dynamic holographic interferometry (DHI) setup to measure changes in attitudes, distortions and vibrations of objects, using a holocamera. Digital algorithms have been developed to calculate above parameters from DHI images.