OBJECTIVES The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of thermal oxidation on the corrosion behavior of Ti-5Ag alloy. METHODS The microstructure of Ti-5Ag alloy without and with thermal oxidization treatment were characterized, with commercial pure (CP) Ti as control, by means of X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and scanning electron microscopy (...

Event structures are a promi nent noni nterl eavi ng model for con-currency. Real-ti me event structures associ ate a set of ti me i nstants to events, model l i ng absol ute ti me constrai nts, and to causal dependenci es,model l i ng rel a-ti ve del ays betweencausal l y dependentevents. We i ntroduce thi s novel temporal model and show how i t can be used to provi de a denotati onal semanti ...

Asubstantial body of research in management and related public policy fields concludes that recent decades saw greater dynamic competition throughout technology-intensive (TI) industries, with widespread steady increase in TI industry and business performance instability as key implications. We set this conclusion within a broader framework of purportedly increasing dynamic competition among TI...

OBJECTIVES To evaluate the safety of treatment interruption (TI) guided by CD4+ count in HIV-infected patients followed-up prospectively. METHODS Patients on HAART with a CD4+ cell count >500 cells/mm3 discontinued therapy with instructions to start therapy again before their CD4+ count dropped below 200 cells/mm3. RESULTS We report data on 112 HIV-infected patients. The median follow-up af...

The aim of this study is to evaluate the utility of UGFNA (ultrasound guided fine needle aspiration biopsy) after evaluating solid thyroid nodules with the risk stratification diagnostic tool, the Thyroid Imaging Reporting and Data System (TI-RADS) classification system. Real time elastography results will be used as one of the six criteria as suspicion for malignancy. The study group comprised...

Al, Au, Ti/Al and Ti/Au contacts were prepared on n-GaN and annealed up to 900 8C. The structure, phase and morphology were studied by cross-sectional transmission and scanning electron microscopy as well as by X-ray diffraction (XRD), the electrical behaviour by current–voltage measurements. It was obtained that annealing resulted in interdiffusion, lateral diffusion along the surface, alloyin...

Ti-based alloys are finding ever-increasing applications in biomaterials due to their excellent mechanical, physical and biological performance. Nowdays, low modulus β-type Ti-based alloys are still being developed. Meanwhile, porous Ti-based alloys are being developed as an alternative orthopedic implant material, as they can provide good biological fixation through bone tissue ingrowth into t...

Pulmonary alveolar type I cells (TI cell) are very large (approximately 5400 microm(2) in surface area) squamous cells that cover more than 98% of the internal surface area of rodent lungs. In the past, TI cells were believed to serve only passive barrier functions, with no active functional properties in the lung. The fairly recent development of methods to isolate TI cells has permitted inves...

Reaction of WF6 with air-exposed 27and 250-nm-thick Ti films has been studied using Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy, scanning and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, electron and x-ray diffraction, and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. We show that W nucleates and grows rapidly at localized sites on Ti during short WF6 exposures ~'6 s! at 445 °C at low partial pressures pWF...