Atrial function in the Fontan circulation: comparison with invasively assessed systemic ventricular filling pressure

The International Journal of Cardiovascular Imaging - Abnormal atrial mechanics in biventricular circulations have been associated with elevated left heart filling pressures. Similar associations...     

Inverted vortex fluidic exfoliation and scrolling of hexagonal-boron nitride

Exfoliation or scrolling of hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) occurs in a vortex fluidic device (VFD) operating under continuous flow, with a tilt angle of −45° relative to the horizontal position. This new VFD processing strategy is effective in avoiding the build-up of material that occurs when the device is operated using the conventional tilt angle of +45°, where the h-BN precursor and scrolls are centrifugally held against the wall of the tube. At a tilt angle of −45° the downward flow aided by gravity facilitates material exiting the tube with the exfoliation of h-BN and formation of h-BN scrolls then optimized by systematically varying the other VFD operating parameters, including flow rate and rotational speed, along with concentration of h-BN and the choice of solvent. Water was the most effective solvent, which enhances the green chemistry metrics of the processing.

Exfoliation or scrolling of h-BN occurs in a vortex fluidic device under downward continuous flow.     

Repeated Drop-Weight Impact Testing of Fibrous Concrete: State-Of-The-Art Literature Review,Analysis of Results Variation and Test Improvement Suggestions

The ACI 544-2R introduced a qualitative test to compare the impact resistance of fibrous concretes under repeated falling-mass impact loads, which is considered to be a low-cost, quick solution for material-scale impact tests owing to the simplified apparatus, test setup and procedure, where none of the usual sophisticated sensors and data acquisition systems are required. However, previous studies showed that the test results are highly scattered with noticeably unacceptable variations, which encouraged researchers to try to use statistical tools to analyze the scattering of results and suggest modifications to reduce this unfavorable disadvantage. The current article introduces a state-of-the-art literature review on the previous and recent research on repeated impact testing of different types of fibrous concrete using the ACI 544-2R test, while focusing on the scattering of results and highlighting the adopted statistical distributions to analyze this scattering. The influence of different mixture parameters on the variation of the cracking and failure impact results is also investigated based on data from the literature. Finally, the article highlights and discusses the literature suggestions to modify the test specimen, apparatus and procedure to reduce the scattering of results in the ACI 544-2R repeated impact test. The conducted analyses showed that material parameters such as binder, aggregate and water contents in addition to the maximum size of aggregate have no effect on the variation of test results, while increasing the fiber content was found to have some positive influence on decreasing this variation. The survey conducted in this study also showed that the test can be modified to lower the unfavorable variations of impact and failure results.