High Injection Effects on Solar Cell Performances

Experiments are performed on solar cells under concentrated sunlight in order to explore fundamental physical processes with high injection conditions. Saturation effects are observed on the cell open circuit voltage and on the extracted values of the recombination current. A large decrease of the initial decay of the transient voltage have been measured. High injection effects are shown to be correlated with the increase of recombination current in the space charge region together with an increase of the emitterbase coupling

Monoclonal antibodies against sporangia and spores of Marteilla sp. (Protozoa: Ascetospora)

6 pages, 4 figures.Digestive glands of mussels Mytilus edulis from Brittany, France, infected with Marteilia sp. (Ascetospora) were used to purify the parasite. A modification of a previously used punfication protocol increased purification efficiency, permitting sporangial primordia and sporangia of Marteilia sp. to be obtained. Mouse (Balb/c) monoclonal antibodies were generated against this parasite. From the fusion, 26 monoclonal antibodies against Marteilia sp. were obtained. Antibodies from 6 clones reacted only with Marteilia sp. cells and not with normal host tissues. Four of these antibodies (1/1-3, 3/1-1, 4/1-1 and 6/2-3) reacted with the sporangia wall and two with the spore cytoplasm (9/1-1 and 12/5-1), Antibodies cross-reacted with Marteilia refringens from Mytilus galloprovincialis obtained in the Ría de Vigo, Spain.J.A.F.R. acknowledges Xunta de Galicia, Spain, for his with research fellowship at the IIM-CSIC and Caixa Galicia for his research fellowship at IFREMER - La Tremblade.Peer reviewe

Custom Made Candy Plug for Distal False Lumen Occlusion in Aortic Dissection: International Experience

Objective: To evaluate early and midterm outcomes of the Candy Plug (CP) technique for distal false lumen (FL) occlusion in thoracic endovascular aortic repair for aortic dissection (AD) in a more real world cohort of patients from an international multicentre registry. Methods: A multicentre retrospective study was conducted of all consecutive patients from the contributing centres with subacute and chronic AD treated with the CP technique from October 2013 to April 2020 at 18 centres. Results: A custom made CP was used in 155 patients (92 males, mean age 62 ± 11 years). Fourteen (9%) presented with ruptured false lumen aneurysms. Technical success was achieved in all patients (100%). Clinical success was achieved in 138 patients (89%). The median hospital stay was 7 days (1 – 77). The 30 day mortality rate was 3% (n = 5). Stroke occurred in four patients (3%). Spinal cord ischaemia occurred in three patients (2%). The 30 day computed tomography angiogram (CTA) confirmed successful CP placement at the intended level in all patients. Early complete FL occlusion was achieved in 120 patients (77%). Early (30 day) CP related re-intervention was required in four patients (3%). The early (30 day) stent graft related re-intervention rate was 8% (n = 12). Follow up CTA was available in 142 patients (92%), with a median follow up of 23 months (6 – 87). Aneurysmal regression was achieved in 68 of 142 patients (47%); the aneurysm diameter remained stable in 69 of 142 patients (49%) and increased in five of 142 patients (4%). A higher rate of early FL occlusion was detected in the largest volume centre patients (50 [88%] vs. 70 [71%] from other centres; p = .019). No other differences in outcome were identified regarding volume of cases or learning curve. Conclusion: This international CP technique experience confirmed its feasibility and low mortality and morbidity rates. Aortic remodelling and false lumen thrombosis rates were high and support the concept of distal FL occlusion in AD using the CP technique

SEIS: Insight's Seismic Experiment for Internal Structure of Mars.

By the end of 2018, 42 years after the landing of the two Viking seismometers on Mars, InSight will deploy onto Mars' surface the SEIS (Seismic Experiment for Internal Structure) instrument; a six-axes seismometer equipped with both a long-period three-axes Very Broad Band (VBB) instrument and a three-axes short-period (SP) instrument. These six sensors will cover a broad range of the seismic bandwidth, from 0.01 Hz to 50 Hz, with possible extension to longer periods. Data will be transmitted in the form of three continuous VBB components at 2 sample per second (sps), an estimation of the short period energy content from the SP at 1 sps and a continuous compound VBB/SP vertical axis at 10 sps. The continuous streams will be augmented by requested event data with sample rates from 20 to 100 sps. SEIS will improve upon the existing resolution of Viking's Mars seismic monitoring by a factor of ∼ 2500 at 1 Hz and ∼ 200 000 at 0.1 Hz. An additional major improvement is that, contrary to Viking, the seismometers will be deployed via a robotic arm directly onto Mars' surface and will be protected against temperature and wind by highly efficient thermal and wind shielding. Based on existing knowledge of Mars, it is reasonable to infer a moment magnitude detection threshold of M w ∼ 3 at 40 ∘ epicentral distance and a potential to detect several tens of quakes and about five impacts per year. In this paper, we first describe the science goals of the experiment and the rationale used to define its requirements. We then provide a detailed description of the hardware, from the sensors to the deployment system and associated performance, including transfer functions of the seismic sensors and temperature sensors. We conclude by describing the experiment ground segment, including data processing services, outreach and education networks and provide a description of the format to be used for future data distribution.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s11214-018-0574-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Transcriptome characterization of the South African abalone Haliotis midae using sequencing-by-synthesis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Worldwide, the genus <it>Haliotis </it>is represented by 56 extant species and several of these are commercially cultured. Among the six abalone species found in South Africa, <it>Haliotis midae </it>is the only aquacultured species. Despite its economic importance, genomic sequence resources for <it>H. midae</it>, and for abalone in general, are still scarce. Next generation sequencing technologies provide a fast and efficient tool to generate large sequence collections that can be used to characterize the transcriptome and identify expressed genes associated with economically important traits like growth and disease resistance.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>More than 25 million short reads generated by the Illumina Genome Analyzer were <it>de novo </it>assembled in 22,761 contigs with an average size of 260 bp. With a stringent <it>E</it>-value threshold of 10^-10, 3,841 contigs (16.8%) had a BLAST homologous match against the Genbank non-redundant (NR) protein database. Most of these sequences were annotated using the gene ontology (GO) and eukaryotic orthologous groups of proteins (KOG) databases and assigned to various functional categories. According to annotation results, many gene families involved in immune response were identified. Thousands of simple sequence repeats (SSR) and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) were detected. Setting stringent parameters to ensure a high probability of amplification, 420 primer pairs in 181 contigs containing SSR loci were designed.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This data represents the most comprehensive genomic resource for the South African abalone <it>H. midae </it>to date. The amount of assembled sequences demonstrated the utility of the Illumina sequencing technology in the transcriptome characterization of a non-model species. It allowed the development of several markers and the identification of promising candidate genes for future studies on population and functional genomics in <it>H. midae </it>and in other abalone species.</p