BACKGROUND Heliox is a mixture of oxygen and helium which reduces airway resistance in patients with airway obstruction. In clinical practice, patients breathing spontaneously receive heliox via an open circuit. Recently, a semi-closed circuit for heliox administration has been proposed which minimizes consumption of heliox and therefore cost of the heliox therapy; although, the semi-closed cir...

The effects of using a wind acceleration device (wind lens) with vertical-axis wind turbines in wind tunnel experiments were examined. A wind lens consists of a diffuser and flanges, and this study investigated the optimum parameters of their configuration with regard to the power augmentation of the turbines. The wind lens with a flat-panel-type diffuser demonstrated power augmentation by a fa...

Semi-solid feedstock of AZ80 magnesium alloy modified by [trace] rare-earth Y element 10 (0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.8 wt.%) were fabricated by [strain-induced melting activation] (SIMA) in the form of 11 extrusion and partial remelting. The effect of Y addition on the microstructure evolution of [the] 12 extruded and [isothermally heat] treated alloy was observed by [using an] optical microscope (OM), 13 ...

A critical step in developing type-II superlattice (T2SL) based LWIR focal plane array (FPA) technology is to achieve high performance levels in FPA pixel-sized devices having 20-40 μm pitch. At this scale, device performance tends to be limited by surface effects along mesa sidewalls which are etched to provide pixel isolation. While control of surface leakage has been achieved for MWIR T2SLs,...

Recently, many novel and exotic phases have been proposed by considering the role of topology in non-Hermitian systems, their emergent properties are wide current interest. In this work we propose generalization semi-Dirac semimetals, which feature a linear dispersion along one momentum direction quadratic other. We study topological phase transitions such two-dimensional semimetals presence pa...

Two papers in the Journal this week focus on the potential impact of cannabis use on mental health outcomes. Di Forti et al (pp. 488–491) examined the risk of psychosis associated with use of high-potency cannabis. They found that individuals presenting with a first episode of psychosis were no more likely than local population controls to have ever taken cannabis but the former were more likel...