Meeting Clean Energy Goals Will Require the Grid of the Future

The transmission grid is the critical superhighway that connects energy supply and demand. But our grid was designed for the power plants of the past—not for the diverse range of resources and technologies of our clean energy future. Over 70 percent of the nation’s transmission infrastructure is more than 25 years old, and in many areas of the country constraints have already been an impediment to renewable power. To meet greenhouse gas reduction goals, we will need to expand electric transmission systems by 60 percent by 2030 and possibly triple the capacity of these systems by 2050. The Infl ation Reduction Act has large loan guarantees to spur grid investment, but hundreds of billions more will be eventually needed

Character, Incidence, and Predictors of Knee Pain and Activity after Infrapatellar Intramedullary Nailing of an Isolated Tibia Fracture

© Copyright 2015 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved. Objective: To study the activity and incidence of knee pain after sustaining an isolated tibia fracture treated with an infrapatellar intramedullary nail at 1 year. Design: Retrospective review of prospective cohort. Setting: Multicenter Academic and Community hospitals. Patients: Four hundred thirty-seven patients with an isolated tibia fracture completed a 12-month assessment on pain and self-reported activity. Intervention: Infrapatellar intramedullary nail. Outcomes: Demographic information, comorbid conditions, injury characteristics, and surgical technique were recorded. Knee pain was defined on a 1-7 scale with 1 being no pain and 7 being a very great deal of pain. Knee pain \u3e4 was considered clinically significant. Patients reported if they were able, able with difficulty, or unable to perform the following activities: kneel, run, climb stairs, and walk prolonged. Variables were tested in multilevel multivariable regression analyses. Results: In knee pain, 11% of patients reported a good deal to a very great deal of pain (\u3e4), and 52% of patients reported no or very little pain at 12 months. In activity at 12 months, 26% and 29% of patients were unable to kneel or run, respectively, and 31% and 35% of patients, respectively, stated they were able with difficulty or unable to use stairs or walk. Conclusions: Clinically significant knee pain (\u3e4/7) was present in 11% of patients 1 year after a tibia fracture. Of note, 31%-71% of patients had difficulty performing or were unable to perform routine daily activities of kneeling, running, and stair climbing, or walking prolonged distances

Whole Genome Deep Sequencing of HIV-1 Reveals the Impact of Early Minor Variants Upon Immune Recognition During Acute Infection

Deep sequencing technologies have the potential to transform the study of highly variable viral pathogens by providing a rapid and cost-effective approach to sensitively characterize rapidly evolving viral quasispecies. Here, we report on a high-throughput whole HIV-1 genome deep sequencing platform that combines 454 pyrosequencing with novel assembly and variant detection algorithms. In one subject we combined these genetic data with detailed immunological analyses to comprehensively evaluate viral evolution and immune escape during the acute phase of HIV-1 infection. The majority of early, low frequency mutations represented viral adaptation to host CD8+ T cell responses, evidence of strong immune selection pressure occurring during the early decline from peak viremia. CD8+ T cell responses capable of recognizing these low frequency escape variants coincided with the selection and evolution of more effective secondary HLA-anchor escape mutations. Frequent, and in some cases rapid, reversion of transmitted mutations was also observed across the viral genome. When located within restricted CD8 epitopes these low frequency reverting mutations were sufficient to prime de novo responses to these epitopes, again illustrating the capacity of the immune response to recognize and respond to low frequency variants. More importantly, rapid viral escape from the most immunodominant CD8+ T cell responses coincided with plateauing of the initial viral load decline in this subject, suggestive of a potential link between maintenance of effective, dominant CD8 responses and the degree of early viremia reduction. We conclude that the early control of HIV-1 replication by immunodominant CD8+ T cell responses may be substantially influenced by rapid, low frequency viral adaptations not detected by conventional sequencing approaches, which warrants further investigation. These data support the critical need for vaccine-induced CD8+ T cell responses to target more highly constrained regions of the virus in order to ensure the maintenance of immunodominant CD8 responses and the sustained decline of early viremia

LASER PHYSICS LETTERS

Abstract: Raman spectroscopy offers a powerful alternative analytical method for the detection and identification of lipids/oil in biological samples, such as algae and fish. Recent research in the authors' groups, and experimental data only very recently published by us and a few other groups suggest that Raman spectroscopy can be exploited in instances where fast and accurate determination of the iodine value (associated with the degree of lipid unsaturation) is required. Here the current status of Raman spectroscopy applications on algae is reviewed, and particular attention is given to the efforts of identifying and selecting oil-rich algal strains for the potential mass production of commercial biofuels and for utilization in the food industry. Normalized intensity, a.u

PACS: 32.30.-r, 32.60.+i, 32.70

Abstract: We have measured light shifts, also known as AC Stark shifts, as a function of laser intensity in cold Rubidium atoms by observing sub-natural linewidth gain and loss features in the transmission spectrum of a weak probe beam passing through the atomic sample. The observed energy-level shifts for atoms in a magneto-optical trap (MOT) are found to be consistently higher than that obtained in optical molasses (i.e., when the magnetic field gradient in the MOT is turned off). Using a simple model of a multilevel Rubidium atom interacting with pump and probe beams, we have calculated the theoretical light shift as a function of intensity. A comparison of these calculated values with the light shift data obtained for molasses reveals good agreement between experiment and theory. Further, our model elucidates the role of the Zeeman shifts arising from the magnetic field gradient in the observed probe transmission spectrum for the MOT. A qualitative plot of the transmission spectrum of a probe beam through a fictitious sample of cold J = 1 → J = 2 atoms showing probe absorption at the sum of the pump frequency ω pump and δ , where δ is the difference of the light shifts between the |J = 1,mJ = 0 and the |J = 1,mJ = ± 1 ground state Zeeman sublevels. Probe gain is depicted at ω pump -δ . Se

The forward physics facility at the high-luminosity LHC

High energy collisions at the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (LHC) produce a large number of particles along the beam collision axis, outside of the acceptance of existing LHC experiments. The proposed Forward Physics Facility (FPF), to be located several hundred meters from the ATLAS interaction point and shielded by concrete and rock, will host a suite of experiments to probe standard model (SM) processes and search for physics beyond the standard model (BSM). In this report, we review the status of the civil engineering plans and the experiments to explore the diverse physics signals that can be uniquely probed in the forward region. FPF experiments will be sensitive to a broad range of BSM physics through searches for new particle scattering or decay signatures and deviations from SM expectations in high statistics analyses with TeV neutrinos in this low-background environment. High statistics neutrino detection will also provide valuable data for fundamental topics in perturbative and non-perturbative QCD and in weak interactions. Experiments at the FPF will enable synergies between forward particle production at the LHC and astroparticle physics to be exploited. We report here on these physics topics, on infrastructure, detector, and simulation studies, and on future directions to realize the FPF's physics potential

Meeting Clean Energy Goals Will Require the Grid of the Future

The transmission grid is the critical superhighway that connects energy supply and demand. But our grid was designed for the power plants of the past—not for the diverse range of resources and technologies of our clean energy future. Over 70 percent of the nation’s transmission infrastructure is more than 25 years old, and in many areas of the country constraints have already been an impediment to renewable power. To meet greenhouse gas reduction goals, we will need to expand electric transmission systems by 60 percent by 2030 and possibly triple the capacity of these systems by 2050. The Infl ation Reduction Act has large loan guarantees to spur grid investment, but hundreds of billions more will be eventually needed