Mechanical properties of silk: interplay of deformation on macroscopic and molecular length scales

Using an in situ combination of tensile tests and x-ray diffraction, we have determined the mechanical properties of both the crystalline and the disordered phase of the biological nanocomposite silk by adapting a model from linear viscoelastic theory to the semicrystalline morphology of silk. We observe a strong interplay between morphology and mechanical properties. Silk's high extensibility results principally from the disordered phase; however, the crystals are also elastically deformed.     

The Si-Si effect on ionization of beta-disilanyl sulfides and selenides

The ionization energies of conformationally constrained, newly synthesized beta-disilanyl sulfides and selenides were determined by photoelectron spectroscopy. These ionization energies reflect substantial (0.53-0.75 eV) orbital destabilizations. The basis for these destabilizations was investigated by theoretical calculations, which reveal geometry-dependent interaction between sulfur or selenium lone pair orbitals and sigma-orbitals, especially Si-Si sigma-orbitals. These results presage facile redox chemistry for these compounds and significantly extend the concept of sigma-stabilization of electron-deficient centers.     

Abstract Hardy-Sobolev spaces and interpolation

The purpose of this work is to describe an abstract theory of Hardy-Sobolev spaces on doubling Riemannian manifolds via an atomic decomposition. We study the real interpolation of these spaces with Sobolev spaces and finally give applications to Riesz inequalities.     

Adaptive policies for time-varying stochastic systems under discounted criterion

We consider a class of time-varying stochastic control systems, with Borel state and action spaces, and possibly unbounded costs. The processes evolve according to a discrete-time equation x _{n + 1}=G _n (x _n , a _n , ξ_n), n=0, 1, … , where the ξ_n are i.i.d. ℜ^k-valued random vectors whose common density is unknown, and the G _n are given functions converging, in a restricted way, to some function G _∞ as n→∞. Assuming observability of ξ_n, we construct an adaptive policy which is asymptotically discounted cost optimal for the limiting control system x _n+1=G _∞ (x _n , a _n , ξ_n).     

Clustering of Patients’ Trajectories with an Auto-Stopped Bisecting K-Medoids Algorithm

Nowadays, long wait, cancellations and resource overload frequently occur in healthcare, especially in those sectors related to the patients passing through the operating theatre in both United States and the European Union. Since more and more hospitals seek to develop the overall patient pathways instead of the effectiveness of “isolated” departments, the most important work has been defining suitable patient groups for employing process management and simulation tools developed in the recent decades. In this study, we proposed a data mining method, an auto-stopped Bisecting K-Medoids clustering algorithm, to classify patients into groups with homogenous trajectories. This method classifies the patient trajectories with two stages. At the first stage, patients are classified by the complexity of outpatient visits; afterwards, the groups obtained at the first stage are further classified by the original information of the trajectories where all medical appointments including outpatient ones are taken into account. By using a real data set collected from a medium-size Belgian hospital, we demonstrate how the proposed approach works and examine which kinds of trajectories are grouped into the same clusters. According to the experimental results, the proposed method can be used to classify patients into manageable groups with homogenous trajectories, which can be used as a base for the process modelling techniques and simulation tools.     

Real Interpolation of Sobolev Spaces Associated to a Weight

We hereby study the interpolation property of Sobolev spaces of order 1 denoted by \(W^{1}_{p,V}\), arising from Schrödinger operators with positive potential. We show that for 1?≤?p ₁?p?p ₂?q ₀ with p?>?s ₀, \(W^{1}_{p,V}\) is a real interpolation space between \(W_{p_1,V}^{1}\) and \(W_{p_2,V}^{1}\) on some classes of manifolds and Lie groups. The constants s ₀, q ₀ depend on our hypotheses.