The Bio-Persistence of Reversible Inflammatory, Histological Changes and Metabolic Profile Alterations in Rat Livers after Silver/Gold Nanorod Administration

As a widely applied nanomaterial, silver nanomaterials (AgNMs) have increased public concern about their potential adverse biological effects. However, there are few related researches on the long-term toxicity, especially on the reversibility of AgNMs in vivo. In the current study, this issue was tackled by exploring liver damage after an intravenous injection of silver nanorods with golden cores (Au@AgNRs) and its potential recovery in a relatively long term (8 w). After the administration of Au@AgNRs into rats, Ag was found to be rapidly cleared from blood within 10 min and mainly accumulated in liver as well as spleen until 8 w. All detected parameters almost displayed a two-stage response to Au@AgNRs administration, including biological markers, histological changes and metabolic variations. For the short-term (2 w) responses, some toxicological parameters (hematological changes, cytokines, liver damages etc.) significantly changed compared to control and AuNRs group. However, after a 6-week recovery, all abovementioned changes mostly returned to the normal levels in the Au@AgNRs group. These indicated that after a lengthy period, acute bioeffects elicited by AgNMs could be followed by the adaptive recovery, which will provide a novel and valuable toxicity mechanism of AgNMs for potential biomedical applications of AgNMs.

Automatic Adaptive Recovery Stress ES-FEM for Lower-Bound Limit Load Analysis of Structures

The paper proposes a novel automatic adaptive recovery stress edge-smoothed finite element method (ES-FEM) that determines the maximum load capacity of inelastic structures at plastic collapse. This approach performs solely a series of elastic ES-FEM analyses with systematic modulus variations (considering the influences of stress singularity) to converge the collapse load solutions. The smoothed [Formula: see text]-continuous recovery stress field ensures the satisfaction of static admissible stress and yield conformity conditions underpinning lower-bound limit analysis theorems. A modified modulus error function within the newest node bisection algorithm enables automatic mesh refining and coarsening constructions, and fast convergence to the lower-bound collapse limit.

Secured Data Transmission with Integrated Fault Reduction Scheduling in Cloud Computing

Cloud computing offers end users a scalable and cost-effective way to access multi-platform data. While the Cloud Storage features endorse it, resource loss is also likely. A fault-tolerant mechanism is therefore required to achieve uninterrupted cloud service performances. The two widely used defect-tolerant mechanisms are task relocation and replication. But the replication approach leads to enormous overhead storage and computing as the number of tasks gradually increases. When a large number of defects occur, it creates more overhead storage and time complexity depending on task criticalities. An Integrated Fault Reduction Scheduling (IFRS) cloud computing model is used to resolve these problems. The probability of failure of a VM is calculated by finding the previous failures and active executions in this model. Then a fault-related adaptive recovery timer is retained, modified depending on the fault type. Experimental findings showed that IFRS reached 67% lower storage costs and 24% less response time when comparing with the current technique for sensitive tasks.

Resilience in social housing developments through post-occupancy evaluation and co-production

The poor initial resilience of the ground-breaking Brazilian urban social housing programme ‘Minha Casa, Minha Vida’(MCMV) affects millions of people, who have tried to adapt their homes, survived the unexpected and have to reinvent themselves constantly. This study delimits the elements that compose the concept of resilience, namely: the impacts, vulnerabilities and adaptive capacities that characterize the resilience of the built environment in the case study selected. To achieve these aims, advanced Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) and Co-production techniques have been applied in the case study of a typical Brazilian MCMV development in Uberlandia (Brazil). The results highlighted factors going beyond the typical vulnerabilities already seen in most of these developments. They pointed out the adaptive recovery capacities as key factors for resilience. This case study provides the means to investigate resilience and its variables in depth within the specific context of MCMV’s social housing, subsidising designers and public policies makers in the elaboration of more resilient projects for these social housing communities.

Enhancement of Socioeconomic Criteria for the Assessment of the Vulnerability to Flood Events with the Use of Multicriteria Analysis

The aim of the research is the re-assessment of the flood risk when the sensitivity criteria used to evaluate the vulnerability are enhanced with adaptive-recovery capacity criteria and the exposure. Hence, in the proposed methodology, the vulnerability to flooding is addressed as a synthesis between the adaptive-recovery capacity, the exposure, and the sensitivity. To do so, a multicriteria ranking is proposed. The multicriteria ranking is based on the fuzziness in order to interpret the multicriteria synthesis of the widely-used multicriteria technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) method. The case study areas are the Greek parts of the Nestos and Strymonas transboundary river basins.