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Nineteen PD patients who received deep brain stimulation (DBS), 10 non-surgical (control) PD patients, and 11 non-pathologic age- and gender-matched subjects performed sustained vowel phonations. The following acoustic measures were obtained on the sustained vowel phonations: correlation dimension (D[subscript 2]), percent jitter, percent shimmer, SNR, F[subscript 0], vF[subscript 0], and vAm. The results indicated the following: The mean D[subscript 2] of control PD patients was significantly higher than the mean D[subscript 2] of non-pathologic subjects and patients who received deep brain stimulation. These results suggest an improvement in PD voice in treated patients. Many PD vocal samples in this study have type 2 signals containing subharmonics that may not be suitable for perturbation analysis but are suitable for nonlinear dynamic analysis, making the D[subscript 2] results more reliable. These findings show that DBS may provide measurable improvement in patients with severe vocal impairment. Learning outcomes: Readers will be able to: (1) identify the advantages of nonlinear dynamic analysis as a clinical tool to evaluate the aperiodic voice commonly found in patients with Parkinson's disease, (2) describe in general the method of obtaining a correlation dimension measure from a voice sample and the significance of this measure in terms of specific voice signal properties, (3) consider the preliminary implications from nonlinear dynamic analysis of a positive DBS effect on Parkinsonian voice and the potential for further investigations using nonlinear dynamic analysis on the influence of gender, severity of disease, and combined treatments on Parkinsonian voice improvement. (Contains 3 figures and 5 tables.)

Boron-doped BaTiO3 precurors (BaTi1−xB2xO3+X) were prepared via the glycol-glycerol complexes of boron, titanium (IV), and barium. With optimum composition, ceramics with dielectric properties comparable to those of pristine BaTiO3 ceramic sintered at 1300°C can be obtained after sintered at temperature less than 900°C (room-temperature dielectric constant ∼4000, dielectric strength ∼7.0 kV/mm). The appreciable decrease in sintering temperature is attributable to (a) addition of boron dopant as substitute of titamium rather than to stochiometric BaTiO3, and (b) application of glycol-glycerol solvents/ligands in the synthesis of precursors, which guarantees the compositional homogenization of the final ceramics.

Post‐synthetic modification (PSM) is an effective approach for the tailored functionalization of metal‐organic architectures, but its generalizability remains challenging. Herein we report a general covalent PSM strategy to functionalize PdnL2n metal‐organic cages (MOCs, n=2, 12) through an efficient Diels–Alder cycloaddition between peripheral anthracene substituents and various functional motifs bearing a maleimide group. As expected, the solubility of functionalized Pd12L24 in common solvents can be greatly improved. Interestingly, concentration‐dependent circular dichroism and aggregation‐induced emission are achieved with chiral binaphthol (BINOL)‐ and tetraphenylethylene‐modified Pd12L24, respectively. Furthermore, Pd12L24 can be introduced with two different functional groups (e.g. chiral BINOL and achiral pyrene) through a step‐by‐step PSM route to obtain chirality‐induced circularly polarized luminescence. Moreover, similar results are readily observed with a smaller Pd2L4 system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A novel kinematic-constraint-inspired bond-associated non-ordinary state-based peridynamics is proposed. • The linear and angular momentum conservation is firstly and rigorously proved. • The ability of the proposed model to prevent unphysical deformation is analytically characterized. • Bond-associated stress state-based failure criteria are proposed for fracture analysis. • The advantage of the proposed model over other existing control methods is discussed. The non-ordinary state-based peridynamics (NOSBPD) is attractive because of its ability to incorporate available constitutive models. However, conventional NOSBPD suffers from numerical oscillation induced by zero-energy mode. Although the recently proposed bond-associated deformation gradient performs well with controlling the issues, the size of the bond-associated horizon is undetermined. The work is aimed to introduce kinematic constraints to redefine the classical bond-associated deformation gradient. Based on the kinematic constraints imposed by the symmetry of the bond-associated deformation gradient and non-local kinematic measures, a well-defined bond-associated horizon is derived for 1D, 2D, and 3D structures. In this way, a novel kinematic-constraint-inspired non-ordinary state-based peridynamics (KC-NOSBPD) is proposed, which completely differs from the previous continuum-kinematics-inspired peridynamics (CPD) extended from classical bond-based peridynamics (BBPD). The linear and angular momentum conservation is firstly and rigorously proved. The novel proposed model is proved capable of avoiding unphysical deformation modes that typically beset conventional formulation through several analytical examples. In addition, bond-associated stress-state-based failure criteria are proposed for fracture analysis. Several benchmarking tests verify the effectiveness of the proposed formulation in eliminating spurious oscillation of numerical solution and highlight the significance of kinematic constraints. The final crack pattern of sandstone specimens coincides with experimental observation, illustrating its suitability for solving crack propagation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]