Anelastic reorganisation of fibre-reinforced biological tissues

In this work, we contribute to the study of the structural reorganisation of biological tissues in response to mechanical stimuli. We specialise our investigation to a class of hydrated soft tissues, whose internal structure features reinforcing fibres. These are oriented statistically within the tissue, and their pattern of orientation is such that, at each material point, the tissue is anisotropic. From its natural, stress-free state, the tissue can be distorted anelastically into a global reference configuration, and then deformed under the action of external mechanical loads. The anelastic distortions are responsible for changing irreversibly the internal structure of the tissue, which, in the present context, occurs through both the rearrangement of the bonds among the tissue cells and the deformation-driven reorientation of the fibres. The anelastic strains, in addition, are assumed to model the onset and evolution of microcracks in the tissue, which may be triggered by the mechanical loads applied to the tissue in the case of traumatic events, or diseases. For our purposes, we formulate an anisotropic model of remodelling and we consider a fully isotropic model of structural reorganisation for comparison, with the aim to study if, how, and to what extent the evolution of anelastic distortions is influenced by the tissue’s anisotropy.

     

Reproductive preferences and fertility trends in post-transition Thailand

Two large national surveys in 1988 and 1933 provide new evidence on trends in family-size preferences in Thailand at a time when the Thai fertility transition is reaching its conclusion. Although the average preferred number of children has continued to decline, a resistant lower bound of two children is found for the vast majority of respondents, stemming, apparently, from a pervasive, although not inflexible, desire to have one child of each sex. Moreover, new evidence from birth-registration data indicates that the decline in the total fertility rate appears to have leveled off at about replacement level. These findings challenge the view that fertility in Thailand will continue to fall well below replacement level, and contradict recently expressed alarmist predictions of population decline in the foreseeable future.     

The impact of breast feeding patterns on the biometric analysis of infant mortality

A major assumption of the biometric analysis of infant mortality as developed by Bourgeois-Pichat is that the age structure of infant deaths after the first month of life is virtually constant across time and cultures. Reanalysis of results from studies which compare the mortality of infants according to the type of feeding indicated that the relationship between mortality and age within the first year of life followed different patterns for breast fed and artificially fed infants. Historical data for populations with different breast feeding customs reveal similar differences in the age pattern of infant mortality. In populations where breast feeding was uncommon or of very short duration, infant mortality rises particularly steeply during the early months of the first year of life. The age structure of infant mortality in less developed countries where breast feeding is decreasing rapidly may bsimilarly affected. When substantial deviations from the linear relationship are evident, particular caution is required in applying the biometric technique, since in such situations the estimated endogenous mortality is very much affected by the particular set of data points within the first year of life which are chosen for the basis of the estimates.     

An experiment on the role of graphical elements in architecture visualization

The evolution and maintenance of large-scale software systems requires first an understanding of its architecture before delving into lower-level details. Tools facilitating the architecture comprehension tasks by visualization provide different sets of configurable, graphical elements to present information to their users. We conducted a controlled experiment that exemplifies the critical role of such graphical elements when aiming at understanding the architecture. In our setting, a different configuration of graphical elements had significant influence on program comprehension tasks. In particular, a 63% gain in effectiveness in architectural analysis tasks was achieved simply by changing the configuration of the graphical elements of the same tool. Based on the results, we claim that significant effort should be spent on the configuration of architecture visualization tools and that configurability should be a requirement for such tools.

An Efficient Migration to Model-driven Development (MDD)

Model-driven development envisions raising the abstraction level of software development. To fully realize this vision, technology-specific aspects must be completely hidden from developers. They produce only platform-independent models (PIM), which are automatically transformed into executable systems. To enable an efficient migration to MDD, we recommend taking advantage of concepts from software architectures, product line engineering and reverse engineering.     

Response reliability in a longitudinal survey in Thailand

The two rounds of the National Longitudinal Study in Thailand provide a useful opportunity to explore response reliability in a large-scale social and demographic survey in a developing country. The results indicate that nonrandom reliability at the individual level ranged from quite high (for several straightforward, facual questions) to quite low (for most attitudinal questions). There was considerable distributional stability, however, even for many of the variables with low individual-level reliability. In terms of its response reliability, the Thai study compares reasonably well with several leading US fertility surveys. However, in both countries response reliability at the individual level for attitudinal questions is distressingly low. This clearly should be a matter of major concern for social scientists using survey results.     

Multigrid analysis of spatially resolved hepatitis C virus protein simulations

Viruses are a major challenge to human health and prosperity. This holds true for various viruses which are either threatening Europe (like Dengue and Yellow fever) or which are currently causing big health problems like the hepatitis C virus (HCV). HCV causes chronic liver diseases like cirrhosis and cancer and is the main reason for liver transplantations. Exploring biophysical properties of virus-encoded components and viral life cycle is an exciting new area of current virological research. In this context, spatial resolution is an aspect that has not yet been received much attention despite strong biological evidence suggesting that intracellular spatial dependence is a crucial factor in the viral replication process. We are developing first spatio-temporal resolved models which mimic the behavior of the important components of virus replication within single liver cells. HCV replication is strongly associated to the intracellular Endoplasmatic Reticulum (ER) network. Here, we present the computational basis for the estimation of the diffusion constant of a central component of HCV genome (viral RNA) replication, namely the NS5a protein, on the surface of realistic reconstructed ER geometries. The basic surface partial differential equation (sPDE) evaluations are performed with UG4 using fast massively parallel multigrid solvers. The numerics of the simulations are studied in detail. Integrated concentrations within special subdomains correspond to experimental FRAP time series. In particular, we analyze the refinement stability in time and space for these integrated concentrations based on diffusion sPDEs upon large unstructured surface grids using heuristic values for the NS5a diffusion constant. This builds up a solid basis for future research not included in this presentation. e.g. the presented refinement stability analysis of the single sPDEs allows for parameter estimations for the NS5a diffusion constant. Our advanced Finite Volume/multigrid techniques also could be applied for studying life cycles of other viruses.