Personal navigation via high-resolution gait-corrected inertial measurement units

In this paper, a personal micronavigation system that uses high-resolution gait-corrected inertial measurement units is presented. The goal of this paper is to develop a navigation system that uses secondary inertial variables, such as velocity, to enable long-term precise navigation in the absence of Global Positioning System (GPS) and beacon signals. In this scheme, measured zero-velocity duration from the ground reaction sensors is used to reset the accumulated integration errors from accelerometers and gyroscopes in position calculation. With the described system, an average position error of 4 m is achieved at the end of half-hour walks. © 2010 IEEE

Microalgal biomass for bioethanol fermentation: Implications for hypersaline systems with an industrial focus

The potential of microalgae biomass as a feedstock for bioethanol fermentation has been widely considered in recent years. Yet, to date, only a modest level of research has been reported in this area. In all likelihood, the generation of a sustainable, sufficient level of biomass for biofuel production will need to be undertaken in saline water, and potentially under hypersaline conditions, to circumvent reliance on fresh water. However, the processing challenges associated with the fermentation of hypersaline biomass have yet to be adequately addressed. This review examines developments thus far for producing bioethanol from microalgae, indicating alternative means by which hypersaline microalgal biomass may be utilised, and provides a framework in which the industrial potential for sourcing such biomass should be considered

Part I. Bcl-2 and Bcl-X(L) limit apoptosis upon infection with alphavirus vectors

Viral expression systems offer the ability to generate high levels of a particular protein within a relatively short period of time. In particular, alphavirus constructs based on Sindbis virus (SV) and Semliki Forest virus (SFV) are promising vehicles as they are cytoplasmic vectors with the potential for high expression levels. Two such alphavirus vectors were utilized during the current study to infect two commercially relevant cell lines, baby hamster kidney (BHK) and Chinese hamster ovary (CHO); the first was a fully competent SV derivative carrying the gene for chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (dsSV-CAT), while the second was a replication deficient SFV construct containing the human interleukin-12 (IL-12) p35 and p40 genes (SFV-IL-12). Since infection with these vectors induced apoptosis in both cell lines, the present effort was dedicated to determining the ability of anti-apoptosis genes to limit the cell death associated with these virus constructs. Infection with the dsSV-CAT vector resulted in the rapid death of BHK and CHO cells within 4 days, a phenomenon which was considerably delayed by stably overexpressing bcl-2 or bcl-x(L). In fact, cellular lifespans were doubled in both BHK-bcl2 and CHO-bclx(L) cells relative to the parental cell lines. Furthermore, the presence of these gene products provided increases of up to 2-fold in recombinant CAT production. Overexpression of bcl-2 and bcl- x(L) also altered the response of these cells upon infection with SFV-IL-12. While the parental cell lines were completely nonviable within 1 week, the BHK-bcl2, BHK-bclx(L), and CHO-bclx(L) cells each recovered from the infection, resuming exponential growth and regaining viabilities of over 90% by 9 days post-infection. Total IL-12 productivities were nearly doubled by Bcl-2 and Bcl-x(L) in the CHO cells, although this effect was apparently cell-line specific, as the native BHK cells were able to secrete more IL-12 than either of its transfected derivatives. Regardless, the presence of the anti-apoptosis genes allowed the production of IL-12 to be maintained, albeit at low levels, from each of the cell lines for the duration of the culture process. Therefore, overexpression of bcl-2 family members can have a significant impact on culture viabilities and recombinant protein production during alphavirus infections of mammalian cells. (C) 2000 John Wiley and Sons, Inc.SCOPUS: ar.jFLWINinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe