The effect of interfacial phenomena on gas solubility measurements in molten salts

The behavior of fission gases in molten fuel salt reactors governs activity transport from the reactor and can also affect the performance of the reactor itself. The gas solubility can be described thermodynamically by Henry’s law. However, the coupling of the condensed and gas phases depends on the interfacial area, which is difficult to measure or even to estimate. Surfaces of materials in the reactor will include disperse phases in the salt and porosity within the structural materials, covering a range of compositions and sizes. These attributes can affect measurements of fundamental properties such as gas solubility. Methods to obtain gas solubility, surface tension, interfacial energies, and bubble gas transport are reviewed. Recent data from manometric experiments are interpreted based on xenon sorption onto salt-wetted quartz

Exhaustion of racing sperm in nature-mimicking microfluidic channels during sorting

Fertilization is central to the survival and propagation of a species, however, the precise mechanisms that regulate the sperm's journey to the egg are not well understood. In nature, the sperm has to swim through the cervical mucus, akin to a microfluidic channel. Inspired by this, a simple, cost-effective microfluidic channel is designed on the same scale. The experimental results are supported by a computational model incorporating the exhaustion time of sperm.Fil: Tasoglu, Savas. Harvard Medical School. Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Department of Medicine. Laboratory Center for Bioengineering. Bio-Acoustic-MEMS in Medicine; Estados UnidosFil: Safaee, Hooman. Harvard Medical School. Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Department of Medicine. Laboratory Center for Bioengineering. Bio-Acoustic-MEMS in Medicine; Estados UnidosFil: Zhang, Xiaohui. Harvard Medical School. Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Department of Medicine. Laboratory Center for Bioengineering. Bio-Acoustic-MEMS in Medicine; Estados UnidosFil: Kingsley, James L.. Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Department of Physics; Estados UnidosFil: Catalano, Paolo Nicolás. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Area de Investigación y Aplicaciones No Nucleares. Gerencia de Desarrollo Tecnológico y Proyectos Especiales. Departamento de Micro y Nanotecnología; Argentina. Harvard Medical School. Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Department of Medicine. Laboratory Center for Bioengineering. Bio-Acoustic-MEMS in Medicine; Estados Unidos. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Gurkan, Umut Atakan. Harvard Medical School. Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Department of Medicine. Laboratory Center for Bioengineering. Bio-Acoustic-MEMS in Medicine; Estados UnidosFil: Nureddin, Aida. Harvard Medical School. Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Department of Medicine. Laboratory Center for Bioengineering. Bio-Acoustic-MEMS in Medicine; Estados UnidosFil: Kayaalp, Emre. Jamaica Hospital Medical Center. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology; Estados UnidosFil: Anchan, Raymond M.. Harvard Medical School. Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Obstetrics Gynecology and Reproductive Biology. Center for Infertility and Reproductive Surgery ; Estados UnidosFil: Maas, Richard L.. Harvard Medical School. Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Department of Medicine. Division of Genetics; Estados UnidosFil: Tüzel, Erkan. Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Biomedical Engineering and Computer Science. Department of Physics; Estados UnidosFil: Demirci, Utkan. Harvard Medical School. Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Department of Medicine. Laboratory Center for Bioengineering. Bio-Acoustic-MEMS in Medicine; Estados Unidos. Harvard-Massachusetts Institute of Technology Health Sciences and Technology; Estados Unido

Defining Natural History: Assessment of the Ability of College Students to Aid in Characterizing Clinical Progression of Niemann-Pick Disease, Type C

Niemann-Pick Disease, type C (NPC) is a fatal, neurodegenerative, lysosomal storage disorder. It is a rare disease with broad phenotypic spectrum and variable age of onset. These issues make it difficult to develop a universally accepted clinical outcome measure to assess urgently needed therapies. To this end, clinical investigators have defined emerging, disease severity scales. The average time from initial symptom to diagnosis is approximately 4 years. Further, some patients may not travel to specialized clinical centers even after diagnosis. We were therefore interested in investigating whether appropriately trained, community-based assessment of patient records could assist in defining disease progression using clinical severity scores. In this study we evolved a secure, step wise process to show that pre-existing medical records may be correctly assessed by non-clinical practitioners trained to quantify disease progression. Sixty-four undergraduate students at the University of Notre Dame were expertly trained in clinical disease assessment and recognition of major and minor symptoms of NPC. Seven clinical records, randomly selected from a total of thirty seven used to establish a leading clinical severity scale, were correctly assessed to show expected characteristics of linear disease progression. Student assessment of two new records donated by NPC families to our study also revealed linear progression of disease, but both showed accelerated disease progression, relative to the current severity scale, especially at the later stages. Together, these data suggest that college students may be trained in assessment of patient records, and thus provide insight into the natural history of a disease

Density Measurements of Various Molten Sodium, Magnesium, Potassium, and Uranium Chloride Salt Compositions Using Neutron Imaging

With an increased interest in the use of molten salts for energy generation, obtaining thermophysical properties of salt mixtures becomes critical for the understanding of salt performance and behavior. Density is one of the significant thermophysical properties of salt systems. This work presents the density measurement of molten chloride salt mixtures using neutron imaging. This work was performed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory High-Flux Isotope Reactor. Resulting densities as a function of temperature for different molten chloride salts from this work were compared with calculated values using Redlich–Kister modeling. Agreement between the calculated and measured values was within 1–10%, with the exception of the ternary UCl3–NaCl–KCl salt that showed a 32% discrepancy between several literature reports; however, the results did align well with another neutron radiography article. Analysis of the radiographs suggests that microbubbles in the ternary mixture might have biased the density measurements