In this paper, meshfree simulations of large deformation of thin shell structures is presented. It has been shown that the window function based meshfree interpolants can be used to construct highly smoothed (high order``manifold'') shape functions for three-dimensional (3-D) meshfree discretization/interpolation, which can be used to simulate large deformation of thin shell structures while avoiding ill-conditioning as well as stiffening in numerical computations.The main advantage of such 3-D meshfree continuum approach is its simplicity in both formulation and implementation as compared to shell theory approach, or degenerated continuum approach. Moreover, it is believed that the accuracy of the computation may increase because of using 3-D exact formulation. Possible mechanism to relieve shear/volumetric locking due to the meshfree interpolation is discussed. Several examples have been computed by using a meshfree, explicit, total Lagrangian formulation. Towards to developing a self-contact algorithm, a novel meshfree contact algorithm is proposed in the end.

Insulin-like growth factor-binding protein-1 (IGFBP1) is a major secretory product of the decidualized endometrium. In the present study, we investigated the role of two transcription factors, progesterone receptor (PGR) and a member of the forkhead box class O family of transcription factors (FOXO1A), in the regulation of the IGFBP1 gene in endometrial cells. Human endometrial fibroblasts (HuF) expressed FOXO1A, progesterone receptor A (PGRA), and progesterone receptor B (PGRB) proteins, whereas the endometrial adenocarcinoma cell line, HEC-1B cells, expressed only FOXO1A and no detectable PGR proteins. When FOXO1A expression was silenced using small interference RNA, IGFBP1 expression decreased in both HuF and HEC-1B cells. Using the chromatin immunoprecipitation technique, we demonstrated that liganded PGR was recruited to the IGFBP1 promoter region (-358 to -49). In addition, immunoprecipitation of HuF nuclear proteins with a PGR antibody followed by immunoblotting with anti-FOXO1A revealed that these two proteins interact in these cells. Reporter studies demonstrated that whereas liganded PGRA or PGRB increased a progesterone response element-linked reporter construct, pPRE/ GRE.E1b.Luc, coexpression of FOXO1A inhibited the PGRB response in HuF and synergistically increased PGRA and PGRB response in HEC-1B cells. Furthermore, in HEC-1B cells, FOXO1A increased IGFBP1 promoter activity, and coexpression of PGRA or PGRB further increased the promoter activity in a cooperative manner. In HuF, the response to FOXO1A and PGR was not additive; in fact, it was lower than the sum of the individual responses. Thus, FOXO1A and PGR associate with one another, and each influences the transactivating potential of the other. The cell type-dependent responses strongly implicate the involvement of other cofactors.

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In this paper, a new partition of unity ± the synchronized reproducing kernel (SRK) interpolant ± is derived. It is a class of meshless shape functions that exhibit synchronized convergence phenomenon: the convergence rate of the interpolation error of the higher order derivatives of the shape function can be tuned to be that of the shape function itself. This newly designed synchronized reproducing kernel interpolant is constructed as an series expansion of a scaling function kernel and the associated wavelet functions. These wavelet functions are constructed in a reproducing procedure, simultaneously with the scaling function kernel, by directly enforcing certain orders of vanishing moment conditions. To the authors knowledge, this unique interpolant is the ®rst of its kind to be constructed, and to be used in numerical computations, both in concept and in practice. The new interpolants are in fact a group of special hierarchial meshless bases, and similar counterparts may exist in spline interpolation method, other meshless methods, Galerkin-wavelet method, as well as the ®nite element method.A detailed account of the subject is presented, and the mathematical principle behind the construction procedure is further elaborated. Another important discovery of this study is that the 1st order wavelet together with the scaling function kernel can be used as a weighting function in Petrov-Galerkin procedures to provide a stable numerical computation in some pathological problems. Benchmark problems in advection-diffusion problems, and Stokes ow problem are solved by using the synchronized reproducing kernel interpolant as the weighting function. Reasonably good results have been obtained. This may open the door for designing well behaved Galerkin procedures for numerical computations in various constrained media.

Magnetic nanoparticles have emerged as an important class of functional nanostructures with potential applications of magnetic resonance imaging, drug targeting, and bio-conjugation. We have developed a modified sol-gel approach to synthesize stable and well-dispersed magnetic Co@SiO 2 nanoparticles with improved control over shell thickness and larger core diameters. These well-defined Co@SiO 2 core-shell nanoparticles exhibit useful magnetic properties, and the protective silica shell allows them to be surface modified for bioconjugation for various biomedical applications. The core-shell nanoparticles were characterized by transmission electron microscopy, energy-dispersive spectroscopy, elemental mapping, and the line compositional analyses to demonstrate that uniform individually isolated coreshell nanoparticles are obtained through the improved synthetic route. J ournalJ. Am. Ceram. Soc., 90 [3] 950-956 (2007)