Existence and multiplicity for positive solutions of a system of higher-order multi-point boundary value problems

We investigate the existence and multiplicity of positive solutions of multi-point boundary value problems for systems of nonlinear higher-order ordinary differential equations.     

Free energy and states of fractional-order hereditariness

Complex materials, often encountered in recent engineering and material sciences applications, show no complete separations between solid and fluid phases. This aspect is reflected in the continuous relaxation time spectra recorded in cyclic load tests. As a consequence the material free energy cannot be defined in a unique manner yielding a significative lack of knowledge of the maximum recoverable work that can extracted from the material. The non-uniqueness of the free energy function is removed in the paper for power-laws relaxation/creep function by using a recently proposed mechanical analogue to fractional-order hereditariness.     

Determination of elements in kidney,serum and urine of Wistar rats with Acute Renal Insufficiency using NAA

In this investigation ions in serum, urine and kidney of Wistar rats (control group) and Wistar with Acute Renal Insufficiency (ARI) were quantified using instrumental neutron activation analysis. The measurements in serum and urine were performed before, during and after ischemia-induced ARI. The measurements in kidney were performed for the control and ARI groups. Also, a comparative analysis between the concentration ratios before, during and after ARI was performed in urine and serum samples for both groups. The variations results for Cu in serum and I in urine, before and after ischemia-induced ARI, suggest that these elements must be also investigated in renal dysfunction.     

Ca and Mg determination from inhabitants of Brazil using neutron activation analysis

In this study the neutron activation analysis (NAA) technique was applied to determine Ca and Mg in whole blood from inhabitants of Brazil for the purpose of establishing concentration ranges indicative of sex and age. The initiative to perform these measurements is related to the increase in heart disease. According to recent statistics from WHO, the average is one death due to heart attack in Brazil, every five minutes. The measures were performed considering lifestyle factors (non-smokers, non-drinkers and no history of toxicological exposure) of Brazilian inhabitants. A healthy group constituted of male (n = 94) and female (n = 84) blood donors, ages between 18 and 70 years and above 50 kg, was selected from the blood banks and hematological laboratories of Brazil. The influence of sex was also investigated considering several age ranges (18–29, 30–40, 41–50, >50 years). The results show significant differences when a comparison is made by sex and age and may be useful to identify or prevent clinical diseases. These results emphasize the need to perform periodic evaluation of Ca and Mg in blood.     

Computing high precision Matrix Padé approximants

We describe a new method of computing matrix Padé approximants of series with integer data in an efficient and fraction-free way, by controlling the growth of the size of intermediate coefficients. This algorithm is applied to compute high precision Padé approximants of matrix-valued generating functions of time series. As an illustration we show that we can successfully recover from noisy equidistant sampling data a joint damped signal of four antenna, even in the presence of background signals.