Christine M. Riley¹, Christopher W. Mastropietro², Peter Sassalos³, Jason R. Buckley⁴, John M. Costello⁴, Ilias Iliopoulos⁵, Aimee Jennings⁶, Katherine Cashen⁷, Sukumar Suguna Narasimhulu⁸, Keshava M. N. Gowda⁹, Arthur J. Smerling¹⁰, Michael Wilhelm¹¹, Aditya Badheka¹², Adnan Bakar^13,14, Elizabeth A. S. Moser¹⁵, Venu Amula¹⁶

Congenital Heart Disease, Vol.14, No.6, pp. 1078-1086, 2019, DOI:10.1111/chd.12849

Abstract Background: Elevated pulmonary vascular resistance (PVR) is common following repair of truncus arteriosus. Inhaled nitric oxide (iNO) is an effective yet costly therapy that is frequently implemented postoperatively to manage elevated PVR.
Objectives: We aimed to describe practice patterns of iNO use in a multicenter cohort of patients who underwent repair of truncus arteriosus, a lesion in which recovery is often complicated by elevated PVR. We also sought to identify patient and center factors that were more commonly associated with the use of iNO in the postoperative period.
Design: Retrospective cohort study.
Setting: 15 tertiary care pediatric referral centers.
Patients:… More >

Tianyi Li¹, Xin Gu¹, Qing Zhang^1,*, Dong Lei¹

CMES-Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences, Vol.121, No.2, pp. 425-444, 2019, DOI:10.32604/cmes.2019.06700

Abstract Digital image correlation (DIC) measurement technique and peridynamics (PD) method have been applied in specific fields extensively owing to their respective advantages in obtaining full-field deformation and local failure of loaded materials and structures. This study provides a simple way to couple DIC measurements with PD simulations, which can circumvent the difficulties of DIC in dealing with discontinuous deformations. Taking the failure analysis of a compact tension specimen of aluminum alloy and a static three-point bending concrete beam as examples, the DIC experimental system firstly measures the full-field displacements, and then the PD simulation is More >

Lubna Alhenak¹, Manar Hosny^1,*

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.61, No.3, pp. 1045-1074, 2019, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2019.08355

Abstract In recent years, the volume of information in digital form has increased tremendously owing to the increased popularity of the World Wide Web. As a result, the use of techniques for extracting useful information from large collections of data, and particularly documents, has become more necessary and challenging. Text clustering is such a technique; it consists in dividing a set of text documents into clusters (groups), so that documents within the same cluster are closely related, whereas documents in different clusters are as different as possible. Clustering depends on measuring the content (i.e., words) of… More >

Viviane Timmermann¹, Kevin Vincent², Joakim Sundnes¹, Andrew D. McCulloch^2,*

Molecular & Cellular Biomechanics, Vol.16, Suppl.2, pp. 133-133, 2019, DOI:10.32604/mcb.2019.07311

Abstract Heterogeneous mechanical dyskinesis has been implicated in arrhythmogenic phenotypes. Strain-induced perturbations to cardiomyocyte electrophysiology (EP) may trigger arrhythmias via a variety of mechano-electric feedback (MEF) mechanisms. While the role of stretch-activated ionic currents (SACs) has been investigated intensively using computational models, experimental studies have shown that mechanical strain can also trigger intra- and inter-cellular calcium waves. To investigate whether the inherent strain dependence of myofilament calcium affinity may promote arrhythmogenic intra- and inter-cellular calcium waves under conditions of pathologic mechanical heterogeneity, we coupled a mathematical model of excitation-contraction coupling (ECC) in rabbit ventricular myocytes to… More >

Wei Sun^1,*

Molecular & Cellular Biomechanics, Vol.16, Suppl.2, pp. 64-64, 2019, DOI:10.32604/mcb.2019.08533

Abstract Fluid–structure interaction (FSI) is a common phenomenon in biological systems. FSI problems of practical interest, such as fish/mammalian swimming, insect/bird flight, and human cardiac blood flow and respiration often involve multiple 3D immersed bodies with complex geometries undergoing very large structural displacements, and inducing very complex flow phenomena. Simulation of heart valve FSI is a technically challenging problem due to the large deformation of the valve leaflets through the cardiac fluid domain in the atrium and ventricular chambers.
Recently, we developed a FSI computational framework [1] for modeling patient-specific left heart (LH) dynamics using smoothed… More >

Minato Onishi¹, Daisuke Ishihara^1,*

CMES-Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences, Vol.121, No.1, pp. 145-175, 2019, DOI:10.32604/cmes.2019.06781

Abstract This study proposed a partitioned method to analyze maneuvering of insects during flapping flight. This method decomposed the insect flapping flight into wing and body subsystems and then coupled them via boundary conditions imposed on the wing’s base using one-way coupling. In the wing subsystem, the strong coupling of the flexible wings and surrounding fluid was accurately analyzed using the finite element method to obtain the thrust forces acting on the insect’s body. The resulting thrust forces were passed from the wing subsystem to the body subsystem, and then rigid body motion was analyzed in… More >

Donghong He¹, Hang Ma^{2, *}

CMES-Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences, Vol.118, No.1, pp. 15-40, 2019, DOI:10.31614/cmes.2019.04327

Abstract To deal with the problems encountered in the large scale numerical simulation of three dimensional (3D) elastic solids with fluid-filled pores, a novel computational model with the corresponding iterative solution procedure is developed, by introducing Eshelby’s idea of eigenstrain and equivalent inclusion into the boundary integral equations (BIE). Moreover, by partitioning all the fluid-filled pores in the computing domain into the near- and the far-field groups according to the distances to the current pore and constructing the local Eshelby matrix over the near-field group, the convergence of iterative procedure is guaranteed so that the problem… More >

Qingfang Lv^1,*, Weiyang Wang¹, Ye Liu¹

Journal of Renewable Materials, Vol.7, No.11, pp. 1231-1250, 2019, DOI:10.32604/jrm.2019.08345

Abstract In recent years, bamboo, as a green building material, has attracted more and more attention worldwide. Inspired by the investigation of cross-laminated timber in structural systems, a new engineered cross-laminated bamboo (CLB) consisting of the cross lamination of bamboo scrimber plates is proposed in this paper. To evaluate its potential in structural applications, the thermal insulation performances of the CLB walls and CLB walls with the EPS foam plate were studied and evaluated by the temperature-controlled box-heat flow meter method. Test results indicated that the thermal insulation performance improved with the increase of thickness, but More >

Selma B. Jaconis^1,*, Augusto T. Morita², Paulo L. A. Coutinho³, Suzana Borschiver¹

Journal of Renewable Materials, Vol.7, No.11, pp. 1221-1230, 2019, DOI:10.32604/jrm.2019.00025 - 14 July 2021

Abstract In recent years environmental and sustainability concerns have impacted the global chemical industry and instituted a rush to produce products from renewable raw materials. This dynamic, complex and turbulent organizational scenario, around themes touching on the issue of sustainable development model, was created involving a large number of different actors: chemical/petrochemical industries, agroindustry companies, oil/gas companies, brand owners and end users, biotechnology startups, governments, universities and society. This paper proposed the application of a structured and dynamic method of technological prediction for biopolymers in three levels: systematic monitoring process, relational database and the “alive” Technology More >

Nadezda Stevulova^1,*, Viola Hospodarova¹, Adriana Estokova¹, Eva Singovszka¹, Marian Holub¹, Stefan Demcak¹, Jaroslav Briancin², Anton Geffert³, Frantisek Kacik³, Vojtech Vaclavik⁴, Tomas Dvorsky⁴

Journal of Renewable Materials, Vol.7, No.11, pp. 1121-1145, 2019, DOI:10.32604/jrm.2019.07556

Abstract The aim of this study was to characterize two types of cellulosic fibers obtained from bleached wood pulp and unbleached recycled waste paper with different cellulose content (from 47.4 percent up to 82 percent), to compare and to analyze the potential use of the recycled fibers for building application, such as plastering mortar. Changes in the chemical composition, cellulose crystallinity and degree of polymerization of the fibers were found. The recycled fibers of lower quality showed heterogeneity in the fiber sizes (width and length), and they had greater surface roughness in comparison to high purity… More >