Individual Threads Research Articles

Perspectives in childhood-onset disabilities: integrating 21st-Century concepts to expand our horizons

Purpose A powerful aphorism states: “If I hadn’t believed it, I wouldn’t have seen it!” This challenging notion reminds us how strongly we are influenced by prevailing ideas, and how we interpret things according to current fashions and teachings. Materials and methods In this paper we present and discuss contemporary perspectives concerning childhood-onset disability and the evolving nature of how people are thinking and acting. We illustrate these ideas by reminding readers of how we have all traditionally been trained and acculturated to think about many dimensions of neurodevelopmental disability (“What?”); reflect on the impact of these ways of thinking in terms of what we have conventionally “seen” and done (“So What?”); and contrast those traditions with contemporary concepts that we believe or know impact the field (“Now What?”). Results Many of the concepts discussed here will be familiar to readers. In taking this analytically critical perspective we aim to illustrate that by weaving these individual threads together we are able to create a coherent fabric that can serve children with childhood-onset NDD, their families, service providers, the community, and policy-makers. We do not purport to offer a comprehensive view of the whole field. Conclusions We encourage readers to consider the integration of these new ways of thinking and acting in our still-evolving field of “childhood-onset disability”.

Designing and prototyping extensions to the Message Passing Interface in MPICH

As HPC system architectures and the applications running on them continue to evolve, the MPI standard itself must evolve. The trend in current and future HPC systems toward powerful nodes with multiple CPU cores and multiple GPU accelerators makes efficient support for hybrid programming critical for applications to achieve high performance. However, the support for hybrid programming in the MPI standard has not kept up with recent trends. The MPICH implementation of MPI provides a platform for implementing and experimenting with new proposals and extensions to fill this gap and to gain valuable experience and feedback before the MPI Forum can consider them for standardization. In this work, we detail six extensions implemented in MPICH to increase MPI interoperability with other runtimes, with a specific focus on heterogeneous architectures. First, the extension to MPI generalized requests lets applications integrate asynchronous tasks into MPI’s progress engine. Second, the iovec extension to datatypes lets applications use MPI datatypes as a general-purpose data layout API beyond just MPI communications. Third, a new MPI object, MPIX_Stream, can be used by applications to identify execution contexts beyond MPI processes, including threads and GPU streams. MPIX stream communicators can be created to make existing MPI functions thread-aware and GPU-aware, thus providing applications with explicit ways to achieve higher performance. Fourth, MPIX Streams are extended to support the enqueue semantics for offloading MPI communications onto a GPU stream context. Fifth, thread communicators allow MPI communicators to be constructed with individual threads, thus providing a new level of interoperability between MPI and on-node runtimes such as OpenMP. Lastly, we present an extension to invoke MPI progress, which lets users spawn progress threads with fine-grained control to adapt the communication performance to their application designs. We describe the design and implementation of these extensions, provide usage examples, and highlight their expected benefits with performance results.

Prediction of a Novel Electromechanical Response in Polar Polymers with Rigid Backbones: Contrasting Furan-Derived Nanothreads to Poly(Vinylidene Fluoride).

Syn furan nanothreads have all oxygen atoms arranged on one side of the thread backbone; these polar threads present intriguing opportunities in electromechanical response owing to their rigid ladder-like backbone. We retrained a C/H/O reactive force field to simulate their response to external electric field for both end-anchored individual threads and bulk nanothread crystals, contrasting the results to those for poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) polymer. Whereas the field induces a length-independent torque in PVDF through backbone rotation about σ bonds, furan-derived nanothreads generate a length-dependent torque by progressively twisting their rigid backbone. This mode of response couples the rotational history of the electric field to axial tension in the anchored thread. In simulations of densely packed syn furan nanothread crystals without anchors, the crystals pole in a field (∼3 GV/m at 300 K) similar to that seen in simulations of PVDF, suggesting that crystals of polar nanothreads can be ferroelectric.

Coarser Equivalences for Causal Concurrency

Trace theory (formulated by Mazurkiewicz in 1987) is a principled framework for defining equivalence relations for concurrent program runs based on a commutativity relation over the set of atomic steps taken by individual program threads. Its simplicity, elegance, and algorithmic efficiency makes it useful in many different contexts including program verification and testing. It is well-understood that the larger the equivalence classes are, the more benefits they would bring to the algorithms and applications that use them. In this paper, we study relaxations of trace equivalence with the goal of maintaining its algorithmic advantages. We first prove that the largest appropriate relaxation of trace equivalence, an equivalence relation that preserves the order of steps taken by each thread and what write operation each read operation observes, does not yield efficient algorithms. Specifically, we prove a linear space lower bound for the problem of checking, in a streaming setting, if two arbitrary steps of a concurrent program run are causally concurrent (i.e. they can be reordered in an equivalent run) or causally ordered (i.e. they always appear in the same order in all equivalent runs). The same problem can be decided in constant space for trace equivalence. Next, we propose a new commutativity-based notion of equivalence called grain equivalence that is strictly more relaxed than trace equivalence, and yet yields a constant space algorithm for the same problem. This notion of equivalence uses commutativity of grains , which are sequences of atomic steps, in addition to the standard commutativity from trace theory. We study the two distinct cases when the grains are contiguous subwords of the input program run and when they are not, formulate the precise definition of causal concurrency in each case, and show that they can be decided in constant space , despite being strict relaxations of the notion of causal concurrency based on trace equivalence.

Digitalisation of a National Metrology System

Purpose: This paper deals with the method of digitalisation of the authorisation process for verification of legally controlled measuring instruments, which is under the responsibility of the Slovak Office for Standards, Metrology and Testing, presents the legislative definition of the process and a description of the individual authorisation threads. Furthermore, the work deals with the method of process digitalisation, which can be applied analogously to other processes within the office. Methodology/Approach: We have analysed the law on metrology and identified 26 processes suitable for digitalisation. These processes were analysed in more detail by flowcharts and process maps. Findings: We have found that the most complex process in the national metrology system is the authorisation process, and therefore, we concluded that it will be the most appropriate process for the scope of digitalisation. Research Limitation/implication: Our research is limited by the currently valid legal metrology regulations in the Slovak Republic. Originality/Value of paper: Creating a universal methodology to define a strategy and implementing the digitalisation of the selected industry in specific national facts. The article can serve as a detailed and qualified background in the processes of specific implementation of national metrology system digital services in Slovakia.

A chat about actinic keratosis: Examining capabilities and user experience of ChatGPT as a digital health technology in dermato‐oncology

AbstractBackgroundThe potential applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in dermatology are evolving rapidly. Chatbots are an emerging trend in healthcare that rely on large language models (LLMs) to generate answers to prompts from users. However, the factuality and user experience (UX) of such chatbots remain to be evaluated in the context of dermato‐oncology.ObjectivesTo examine the potential of Chat Generative Pretrained Transformer (ChatGPT) as a reliable source of information in the context of actinic keratosis (AK) and to evaluate clinicians' attitudes and UX with regard to the chatbot.MethodsA set of 38 clinical questions were compiled and entered as natural language queries in separate, individual conversation threads in ChatGPT (OpenAI, default GPT 3.5). Questions pertain to patient education, diagnosis, and treatment. ChatGPT's responses were presented to a panel of 7 dermatologists for rating of factual accuracy, currency of information, and completeness of the response. Attitudes towards ChatGTP were explored qualitatively and quantitatively using a validated user experience questionnaire (UEQ).ResultsChatGPT answered 12 questions (31.6%) with an accurate, current, and complete response. ChatGPT performed best for questions on patient education, including pathogenesis of AK and potential risk factors, but struggled with diagnosis and treatment. Major deficits were seen in grading AK, providing up‐to‐date treatment guidance, and asserting incorrect information with unwarranted confidence. Further, responses were considered verbose with an average word count of 198 (SD 55) and overly alarming of the risk of malignant transformation. Based on UEQ responses, the expert panel considered ChatGPT an attractive and efficient tool, scoring highest for speed of information retrieval, but deemed the chatbot inaccurate and verbose, scoring lowest for clarity.ConclusionsWhile dermatologists rated ChatGPT high in UX, the underlying LLMs that enable such chatbots require further development to guarantee accuracy and concision required in a clinical setting.

Parallelising Control Flow in Dynamic-scheduling High-level Synthesis

Recently, there is a trend to use high-level synthesis (HLS) tools to generate dynamically scheduled hardware. The generated hardware is made up of components connected using handshake signals. These handshake signals schedule the components at runtime when inputs become available. Such approaches promise superior performance on “irregular” source programs, such as those whose control flow depends on input data. This is at the cost of additional area. Current dynamic scheduling techniques are well able to exploit parallelism among instructions within each basic block (BB) of the source program, but parallelism between BBs is under-explored, due to the complexity in runtime control flows and memory dependencies. Existing tools allow some of the operations of different BBs to overlap, but to simplify the analysis required at compile time they require the BBs to start in strict program order, thus limiting the achievable parallelism and overall performance. We formulate a general dependency model suitable for comparing the ability of different dynamic scheduling approaches to extract maximal parallelism at runtime. Using this model, we explore a variety of mechanisms for runtime scheduling, incorporating and generalising existing approaches. In particular, we precisely identify the restrictions in existing scheduling implementation and define possible optimisation solutions. We identify two particularly promising examples where the compile-time overhead is small and the area overhead is minimal and yet we are able to significantly speed up execution time: (1) parallelising consecutive independent loops; and (2) parallelising independent inner-loop instances in a nested loop as individual threads. Using benchmark sets from related works, we compare our proposed toolflow against a state-of-the-art dynamic-scheduling HLS tool called Dynamatic. Our results show that, on average, our toolflow yields a 4× speedup from (1) and a 2.9× speedup from (2), with a negligible area overhead. This increases to a 14.3× average speedup when combining (1) and (2).

The structural analysis of secretion in the freshwater mite Limnesia maculata (Acariformes, Limnesiidae) supports the idea of a new form of arthropod silk.

The structural characteristics of silk secretion of the freshwater mite Limnesia maculata (O.F. Müller) (Acariformes, Limnesiidae) are described and analyzed for the first time based on light, atomic force and electron-microscopical approaches. The common dermal glands (14 pairs scattered over the body) produce silk mostly during the warm summer season. The process of silk secretion lasts from several hours to several days. The silk may appear like barely recognized clouds of a fine whitish substance. An individual silk thread is an indefinitely long uniform unbranched and non-stretchable tube, hollow or with a vesicular electron-dense residual content. In the silk bundle, threads may be freely interlaced, bent, curved or occasionally broken. The diameter of the tubes is in the range of 0.9-1.5 µm. The width of the tube walls varies greatly from 60 to 300 nm. Chaotically interlaced fine fibrils build the tube walls. On the external surface of the tube wall, these fibrils are loosely organized and frequently rising vertically, whereas on the internal side they are packed more tightly sometimes showing a mesh. The walls may reveal a layered structure or, contrary, are quite thin with through foramens. The revealed organization of silk in the freshwater mites is found to be the simplest among that of other arthropods. We propose a role of the silk in the capture of potential prey in the summer season. Silk in water mites significantly widens the wholesome area for themites' life and gives them better chances in competition for potential resources.

Introduction

American public benefit provision bears little resemblance to a safety net capable of preventing people from experiencing economic devastation. It is not a carefully planned machinery of complementary programs but individual threads of support, some of which connect, many of which do not. The increased need for public benefit provision during the COVID-19 pandemic has renewed national and state policy debates on the importance of a comprehensive system of public investment in children. This volume draws on perspectives from various academic disciplines, both to identify the public supports that children need to thrive and to analyze existing models of complementary public support provision that do benefit children. The persistence of individual program-based support provisions and administrative burdens make it difficult for the current system to operate as a comprehensive safety net, but recent innovations offer hope: these include the expansion of the Child Tax Credit and collaborations between public agencies and organizations that help integrate aspects of service delivery. Missing, however, is the political will at all levels of government to invest in an infrastructure of support.

Celebrating Calabria: Writing Heritage and Memory

This impressive volume resulted from a program, launched primarily by the Italian Diaspora Studies Association in collaboration with the Department of Humanities of the University of Calabria, that focused on investigating the Italian diaspora from a transnational perspective. In May 2019, professional and amateur writers from diverse backgrounds (not just Italian Americans) gathered in Morano Calabro and then later in Albidona, Cosenza to participate in a writing seminar focused on a topic that engaged all participants: “Heritage and Memory.” The poems, reflections, and short stories they wrote under the guidance of Maria Mazziotti Gillan constitute the main body of this volume, enriched by the marvelous photographs by Mark Hillringhouse. Yet Celebrating Calabria is much more than a collection, and the volume does not simply aim at glorifying the beauties of Calabria and its cultural heritage: unquestionably, its scope is much wider and more profound. This wonderfully invigorating anthology is a polyphonic book structured around two interlaced concepts: the broadening of (often stereotypical) ideas and conceptions regarding identity and self-definition, and the construction of an imaginary community beyond borders. In the process of working out these concepts, the book is a celebration of life.The reasons that prompted each of the participants to join the workshop were multiple: some longed to rediscover their roots; others were curious; still others came to experience Italy and its beauties; and a few were attracted by the very presence of Maria Mazziotti Gillan, an extraordinarily gifted human being who acts as a source of inspiration to those who approach her and her empowering poems. To all participants, Calabria became a mirror (a recurrent theme), which enabled them finally to perceive and accept their own image as a whole and as beyond partialities, ingrained stereotypes regarding ethnic background, and self-imposed emotional restrictions. The landscape featured in Celebrating Calabria may be equated to a cradle, to an ancestral womb from which to be reborn. Reading the verses and narratives included in the collection means undertaking a journey of self-discovery. But it also means facing one's inner monsters—striving to piece together the various facets of a fragmented identity, while excavating the past, and allowing traumas to surface and be worked through.Celebrating Calabria contributes strongly toward fostering a renewed sense of community: different voices stemming from diverse contexts echo one another; unexpected consonances emerge; personal stories intersect and illumine one another. In their dual capacity as inspirers and healers, Margherita Ganeri and Maria Mazziotti Gillan have succeeded in encouraging the workshop participants to spin individual threads that, woven together, form beautiful patterns. Lastly, a few words should be spared to commend Hillringhouse's insightful photographs; instead of offering the usual picturesque, prepackaged version of Italy to which we have grown accustomed, he lingers on dark corners, on beautiful secluded spaces off the beaten track, on the relationships among men, women, and their pets and animals. There is music and poetry in every photo.At a time when social distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic (and its memory) still undermines our deepest sense of a shared humanity, Celebrating Calabria functions as a powerful balm on open wounds, thus reminding us that we—human beings, animals, nature—are all interconnected.

Fabrication of Tunable Mechanical Gradients by Mussels via Bottom-Up Self-Assembly of Collagenous Precursors.

Functionally graded interfaces are prominent in biological tissues and are used to mitigate stress concentrations at junctions between mechanically dissimilar components. Biological mechanical gradients serve as important role models for bioinspired design in technically and biomedically relevant applications. However, this necessitates elucidating exactly how natural gradients mitigate mechanical mismatch and how such gradients are fabricated. Here, we applied a cross-disciplinary experimental approach to understand structure, function, and formation of mechanical gradients in byssal threads─collagen-based fibers used by marine mussels to anchor on hard surfaces. The proximal end of threads is approximately 50-fold less stiff and twice as extensible as the distal end. However, the hierarchical structure of the distal-proximal junction is still not fully elucidated, and it is unclear how it is formed. Using tensile testing coupled with video extensometry, confocal Raman spectroscopy, and transmission electron microscopy on native threads, we identified a continuous graded transition in mechanics, composition, and nanofibrillar morphology, which extends several hundreds of microns and which can vary significantly between individual threads. Furthermore, we performed in vitro fiber assembly experiments using purified secretory vesicles from the proximal and distal regions of the secretory glands (which contain different precursor proteins), revealing spontaneous self-assembly of distinctive distal- and proximal-like fiber morphologies. Aside from providing fundamental insights into the byssus structure, function, and fabrication, our findings reveal key design principles for bioinspired design of functionally graded polymeric materials.

Statistical assessment of the comparative breaking strength of yarns with different fiber composition

This article studied the factors affecting the quality of cotton yarn. The properties of cotton fiber and their changes in technological processes play an important role in product production. Therefore, cotton fibers with different staple lengths of 28.5, 29.0, and 29.5 mm were used in the test work. Because it is advisable to use long fiber cotton fiber to get single yarn spun for sewing threads, for each option, different twists on the thread, i.e. the number of twists in 1 meter of thread were 850, 900, 950 b/m. The strength of individual threads ensures the quality of the product obtained from it, so we use the above number of twists. In order to determine the relative breaking strength of a single thread for sewing threads, experimental tests were conducted. According to the conducted experimental tests, 2 incoming factors were selected. As an output parameter, the relative tensile strength of the yarn, sN/tex (U) as input parameters, the effect of fiber staple length in mm, and the number of twists on the b/m indicator were studied based on the experiment. As a result of theoretical studies, the optimal value of the relative breaking strength of the thread from 16.25 sN/tex to 17.54 sN/tex, the staple length of the fiber should be more than 29.5 mm, and the number of twists should be 900 twist/meter It was determined that it should be. Based on the obtained conclusions, scientific and research work was carried out in the control enterprise. Based on the results of this research, the preliminary results of choosing the direction of further research were obtained. For this, LOTs were organized in the enterprise in various options. LOT-1 consists of Porloq-4, LOT-2 Bukhara-102, LOT-3 Sultan varieties. Based on the research results, the coefficient of variation in the linear density of yarns with different fiber content, the coefficient of variation in the number of twists, breaking strength, the variation coefficient in breaking strength, elongation at break, the coefficient of variation in elongation at break, comparison of the coefficients of variation for breaking strength and specific breaking strength were studied. When analyzing the effect of the composition of the fiber mixture on the physical-mechanical properties of the yarns for 3 LOTs, it was seen that the quality indicators of the yarns obtained from the LOT-1 mixture are higher than the indicators of the yarns obtained from other mixtures.

Simulation and prediction of seam puckering in the layers of woven fabrics using a yarn-level model

PurposeSimulating the behavior of clothing has always been of interest in the apparel, fashion and computer game industries. With the development of these industries, there is a need to increase the accuracy of clothing simulation techniques. A garment contains many seams whose behavior affects its final appearance. In this study, a numerical model is presented to simulate seam puckers in single- and double-layer fabrics.Design/methodology/approachA yarn-level simulation technique has been used for this purpose. Based on this technique, the individual threads in the fabric structure and the sewing threads are modeled separately. Then, their behavior and interaction with each other are considered in the seam pucker model.FindingsThe model is used to simulate the real samples. The results show that the proposed model is able to simulate the degree of seam puckering for a single-layer fabric with an average error of 7.9% and for a double-layer fabric with an average error of 8.5%.Originality/valueThe behavior of the seam is affected by the properties, behavior and interaction of the sewing threads and yarns in the fabric structure. In previous studies, the parameters related to seams and fabrics were not fully considered. In this study, a new yarn-level model is presented to simulate seam puckering in woven fabrics. The most important advantage of this type of simulation is the ability to examine the interaction of fabric threads as well as the interaction of sewing threads with each other and with the threads of the fabric structure.

Differential Bank Migration Limits the Lifespan and Width of Braided Channel Threads

AbstractSuccessful management of flooding and erosion hazards on floodplains depends on our ability to predict a river channel's shape and the lifespan during which it will continue to flow. Recent progress has improved our understanding of what sets the lifespan and width of single‐thread channels; the next challenge is to extend this knowledge to braided channels and their interwoven sub‐channels (threads). In this study, we investigate the lifespan and width of braided channel threads in a large experimental data set, coupled with particle‐image velocimetry‐derived measurements of riverbank erosion and accretion. We find that, unlike single‐thread channels, braided channels in the experiment do not exhibit an equilibrium between bank erosion and accretion. Instead, bank erosion outpaces lateral accretion, causing individual threads to widen and infill until they are abandoned. Thread lifespan is limited to the time it takes for threads to triple their width: tripling of the width yields enough bank material to aggrade more than half the channel depth, at which point flow is rerouted to a narrower thread. In consequence the width of active threads is limited to three times their initial width. Threshold channel theory accurately predicts the median thread width, which is roughly double the initial width and two‐thirds the limiting width. The results are consistent with existing field data and suggest that differential bank migration is sufficient to explain why braided channels show greater width variability and higher width‐to‐depth ratios than their single‐thread counterparts.

Dragos Calma, Reading Proclus and the Book of Causes

There is no doubt that in recent decades there has been an astonishing development in the study of Proclus’ (ad 412–485) philosophy and its reception in the Arabic, Hebrew, and Byzantine worlds. Conferences, monographs, and collective volumes [e.g., d’Hoine and Martijn 2016] dedicated to the broad scope of his thought, numerous PhD dissertations taking up individual threads of the latter, and postdoctoral research initiatives testify to current scholarship’s everincreasing interest in the philosophical heritage of one of the greatest Neoplatonists. The collective volume under review testifies to this expansion and explores aspects of the influence of the Book of Causes in the Latin West and the reception of Proclus’ highly influential work, the Elements of Theology, mainly in the Latin West but also in Byzantine thought. Reviewed by: Sokratis-Athanasios Kiosoglou, Published Online (2022-07-31)Copyright © 2022 by Sokratis-Athanasios KiosoglouArticle PDF Link: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/aestimatio/article/view/39095/29782 Corresponding Author: Sokratis-Athanasios Kiosoglou,KU LeuvenE-Mail: sokratisathanasios.kiosoglou@kuleuven.be

Stencil Calculations with Algorithmic Skeletons for Heterogeneous Computing Environments

The development of parallel applications is a difficult and error-prone task, especially for inexperienced programmers. Stencil operations are exceptionally complex for parallelization as synchronization and communication between the individual processes and threads are necessary. It gets even more difficult to efficiently distribute the computations and efficiently implement communication when heterogeneous computing environments are used. For using multiple nodes, each having multiple cores and accelerators such as GPUs, skills in combining frameworks such as MPI, OpenMP, and CUDA are required. The complexity of parallelizing the stencil operation increases the need for abstracting from the platform-specific details and simplify parallel programming. One way to abstract from details of parallel programming is to use algorithmic skeletons. This work introduces an implementation of the MapStencil skeleton that is able to generate parallel code for distributed memory environments, using multiple nodes with multicore CPUs and GPUs. Examples of practical applications of the MapStencil skeleton are the Jacobi Solver or the Canny Edge Detector. The main contribution of this paper is a discussion of the difficulties when implementing a universal Skeleton for MapStencil for heterogeneous computing environments and an outline of the identified best practices for communication intense skeletons.

Effective methods for email classification: Is it a business or personal email?

With the steady increase in the number of Internet users, email remains the most popular and extensively used communication means. Therefore, email management is an important and growing problem for individuals and organizations. In this paper, we deal with the classification of emails into two main categories, Business and Personal. To find the best performing solution for this problem, a comprehensive set of experiments has been conducted with the deep learning algorithms: Bidirectional Long-Short Term Memory (BiLSTM) and Attention-based BiLSTM (BiLSTM+Att), together with traditional Machine Learning (ML) algorithms: Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) optimization applied on Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Extremely Randomized Trees (ERT) ensemble method. The variations of individual email and conversational email thread arc representations have been explored to reach the best classification generalization on the selected task. A special contribution of this paper is the extraction of a large number of additional lexical, conversational, expressional, emotional, and moral features, which proved very useful for differentiation between personal and official written conversations. The experiments were performed on the publicly available Enron email benchmark corpora on which we obtained the State-Of-the-Art (SOA) results. As part of the submission, we have made our work publicly available to the scientific community for research purposes.

Nanovoid formation induces property variation within and across individual silkworm silk threads.

Silk is a unique fiber, having a strength and toughness that exceeds other natural fibers. While inroads have been made in our understanding of silkworm silk structure and function, few studies have measured structure and function at nanoscales. As a consequence, the sources of variation in mechanical properties along single silk fibers remain unresolved at multiple scales. Here we utilized state of the art spectroscopic and microscopic methodologies to show that the silks of species of wild and domesticated silkworms vary in mechanical properties along a single fiber and, what is more, this variation correlates with nanoscale void formations. These results can also explain the strain hardening behaviours observed in the silks where structural features of the proteins could not. We thereupon devised a predictive thermal model and showed that the voids contribute to temperature regulation within the silkworm cocoons.

TRIKOTAJ MATOLARIGA YUMSHOQLIK BERISH TEXNOLOGIYASI

Perforation of a fabric during sewing of garments made from knitted fabrics is one of the problematic issues. This defect occurs when threads on the knitted fabric break. In textile materials, thread breakage is characterized by complete or partial breakage of individual threads in the fabric during sewing. The porosity of fabrics can be divided into visible and invisible types, which can be eliminated by processing using different compositions. This paper explores application of soft cationic surfactants, amino modified silicone oil – 350, amino modified silicone oil – 200, DMC amino modified silicone oil – 350 and silicone-based softeners to knitted fabrics. Based on findings from experiments on the effects of variable process factors on perforation of knitted fabrics in sewing processes, it has been recommended to use imported silicone-based softener and local amino-modified silicone oil-350. The experiment findings helped to develop a technological sequence and composition of the final finishing process of «softening» of knitted fabrics using selected softeners. The experiment showed that it is expedient to heat-treat a fabric soaked in a softener solution for 5 minutes at a temperature of 140 0 C.

Can Multi-threaded Flux Tubes in Coronal Arcades Support a Magnetohydrodynamic Avalanche?

Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instabilities allow energy to be released from stressed magnetic fields, commonly modelled in cylindrical flux tubes linking parallel planes, but, more recently, also in curved arcades containing flux tubes with both footpoints in the same photospheric plane. Uncurved cylindrical flux tubes containing multiple individual threads have been shown to be capable of sustaining an MHD avalanche, whereby a single unstable thread can destabilise many. We examine the properties of multi-threaded coronal loops, wherein each thread is created by photospheric driving in a realistic, curved coronal arcade structure (with both footpoints of each thread in the same plane). We use three-dimensional MHD simulations to study the evolution of single- and multi-threaded coronal loops, which become unstable and reconnect, while varying the driving velocity of individual threads. Experiments containing a single thread destabilise in a manner indicative of an ideal MHD instability and consistent with previous examples in the literature. The introduction of additional threads modifies this picture, with aspects of the model geometry and relative driving speeds of individual threads affecting the ability of any thread to destabilise others. In both single- and multi-threaded cases, continuous driving of the remnants of disrupted threads produces secondary, aperiodic bursts of energetic release.