The lack of sanitation facilitates the spread of diarrheal diseases-a leading cause of child deaths worldwide. As of 2012, an estimated 1 billion people still practiced open defecation (OD). To address this issue, one behavioral change approach used is community-led total sanitation (CLTS). It is now applied in an estimated 66 countries worldwide, and many countries have adopted this approach a...

In earlier works, a mathematical procedure for invertible microstructure-property linkages was developed using computationally efficient spectral methods polycrystalline cubic and hexagonal metals. This paper formulates such microstructure–property orthorhombic metals relying on the generalized spherical harmonics (GSH) basis. The is used to compute property closures of polycrystals. represent ...

Spherical deconvolution models the diffusion MRI signal as the convolution of a fiber orientation density function (fODF) with a single fiber response. We propose a novel calibration procedure that automatically determines this fiber response. This has three advantages: First, the user no longer needs to provide an estimate of the response. Second, we estimate a per-voxel fiber response, which ...

Structural investigations of the de Vries smectic-A (SmA) and smectic-C (SmC) phases of four mesogens containing a trisiloxane end segment reveal a linear molecular conformation in the SmA phase and a bent conformation resembling a hockey stick in the SmC phase. The siloxane and the hydrocarbon parts of the molecule tilt at different angles relative to the smectic layer normal and are oriented ...

PURPOSE Diffusion spectrum imaging (DSI) provides us non-invasively and robustly with anatomical details of brain microstructure. To achieve sufficient angular resolution, DSI requires a large number of q-space samples, leading to long acquisition times. This need is mitigated here by combining the beneficial properties of Radial q-space sampling for DSI with a Multi-Echo Stimulated Echo Sequen...

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) accurately delineates white matter pathways when the Gaussian model of diffusion is valid. However, DTI yields erroneous results when diffusion takes on a more complex distribution, as is the case in the brain when fiber tracts cross. High angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI) overcomes this limitation of DTI by more fully characterizing the angular depende...

Sperm are motile cells. Thus, a significant component of the spermatogenic cycle is devoted to the formation of flagellum, a process that must be coordinated to insure proper construction. To document the temporal pattern of flagellar gene expression, we employed real-time PCR to assess changes in accumulation of a cohort of genes encoding axoneme, outer dense fibre (ODF) and fibrous sheath (FS...

Bone resorption is necessary for many skeletal processes. It is an obligatory event during bone growth, tooth eruption and fracture healing, and is also necessary for the maintenance of an appropriate level of blood calcium. In the adult human skeleton, continuous physiological remodelling of bone is exclusively dependent on bone resorption. In several human diseases (e.g. malignant hypercalcem...

Target audience Scientists and clinicians interested in acquiring Diffusion Spectrum MRI at lower b-values. Purpose To demonstrate that radial q-space sampling for Diffusion Spectrum MRI improves ODF sampling and angular resolution at lower b-values as demonstrated by computer simulations and in a clinical scanner in vivo. Diffusion Spectrum MRI (DSI) [1] has been shown to non-invasively image ...

In this work, large-scale atomistic modeling is conducted to explore a relatively cold consolidation process: nanoparticles compressed by a stress wave from a sacrificial layer that is ablated by a picosecond laser. The temperature, stress, atomic configuration, and crystallinity are studied in detail to understand the structural behaviors under extreme compression. Study of the temperature and...