New Releases by Gerard Doyle

In this classic fantasy novel, Bastian Balthazar Bux embarks on a wild adventure when he enters the magical world of Fantastica, a doomed land filled with dragons, giants, and monsters, and risks his life to save Fantastica by going on a very dangerous quest.

The heart is a complex organ and much is still unknown about its mechanical function. In order to use simulations to study heart mechanics, fluid and solid components and their interaction should be incorporated into any numerical model. Many previous studies have focused on myocardium motion or blood flow separately, while neglecting their interaction. Previous fluid-structure interaction (FSI) simulations of heart mechanics have made simplifying assumptions about their solid models, which prevented them from accurately predicting the stress-stain behaviour of the myocardium. In this work, a numerical model of the canine left ventricle (LV) is presented, which serves to address the limitations of previous studies. A canine LV myocardium material model was developed for use in conjunction with a commercial finite element code. The material model was modified from its original form to make it suitable for use in simulations. Further, numerical constraints were imposed when calculating the material parameter values, to ensure that the model would be strictly convex. An initial geometry and non-zero stress state are required to start cardiac cycle simulations. These were generated by the static inflation of a passive LV model to an end-diastolic pressure. Comparisons with previous measurements verified that the calculated geometry was representative of end diastole. Stresses calculated at the specified end diastolic pressure showed complex spatial variations, illustrating the superiority of the present approach over a specification of an arbitrary stress distribution to an end-diastolic geometry. In the third part of this study, FSI simulations of the mechanics of the LV were performed over the cardiac cycle. Calculated LV cavity pressures agreed well with previous measurements during most of the cardiac cycle, but deviated from them during rapid filling, which resulted in non-physiological backflow. This study is the first one to present a detailed analysis of the temporal and spatial variations of the properties of both the solid and the fluid components of the canine LV. The observed development of non-uniform pressure distributions in the LV cavity confirms the advantage of performing FSI simulations rather than imposing a uniform fluid pressure on the inner surface of the myocardium during solid-only simulations.

It all began one morning in the smoking room of the Department of Health and Welfare. That was where happily married Jack met the lovely Grace. At first smoking was all they had in common. But soon they were sharing a lot more. Love, as well as cigarette smoke, was in the air. But when Miriam, Jack''s wife, began to suspect that his feelings had changed, everything became a lot more dangerous. Because Miriam was a woman who liked to get her own way, and this time she was playing to win...

There is nothing remarkable about Joe Brown. He is of average height. His average looks are hidden behind a beard. He wears average clothes. But Joe Brown has a secret, and a past, that he wants to forget. He might have managed it too. He might have moved on to a new life if he hadn''t answered an ad for a room to rent. His chances would have been better still if the beautiful Julia Ryan hadn''t taken him in as a lodger. But she did, and in no time at all Joe Brown''s past has caught up with him. This time there will be no forgetting...