Melt conditioning by advanced shear technology (MCAST) for refining solidification microstructures

MCAST (melt conditioning by advanced shear technology) is a novel processing technology developed recently by BCAST at Brunel University for conditioning liquid metal prior to solidification processing. The MCAST process uses a twin screw mechanism to impose a high shear rate and a high intensity of turbulence to the liquid metal, so that the conditioned liquid metal has uniform temperature, uniform chemical composition and well-dispersed and completely wetted oxide particles with a fine size and a narrow size distribution. The microstructural refinement is achieved through an enhanced heterogeneous nucleation rate and an increased nuclei survival rate during the subsequent solidification processing. In this paper we present the MCAST process and its applications for microstructural refinement in both shape casting and continuous casting of light alloys

A comparison of the local spiral structure from Gaia DR2 and VLBI maser parallaxes

Context. The Gaia mission has released the second data set (Gaia DR2), which contains parallaxes and proper motions for a large number of massive, young stars. Aims. We investigate the spiral structure in the solar neighborhood revealed by Gaia DR2 and compare it with that depicted by VLBI maser parallaxes. Methods. We examined three samples with different constraints on parallax uncertainty and distance errors and stellar spectral types: (1) all OB stars with parallax errors of less than 10%; (2) only O-type stars with 0.1 mas errors imposed and with parallax distance errors of less than 0.2 kpc; and (3) only O-type stars with 0.05 mas errors imposed and with parallax distance errors of less than 0.3 kpc. Results. In spite of the significant distance uncertainties for stars in DR2 beyond 1.4 kpc, the spiral structure in the solar neighborhood demonstrated by Gaia agrees well with that illustrated by VLBI maser results. The O-type stars available from DR2 extend the spiral arm models determined from VLBI maser parallaxes into the fourth Galactic quadrant, and suggest the existence of a new spur between the Local and Sagittarius arms.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in A&

Isolation and drought-tolerant function analysis of ZmPti1-1, a homologue to Pti1, from maize (Zea mays L.)

Pto-interacting 1(Pti1) has been well established to play important roles in plant disease and salt response, but its potential roles in the response to drought stress is unknown. In this study, the Pti1- like gene named as ZmPti1-1 was cloned from maize, sequence analysis showed that ZmPti1-1 encodes a polypeptide of 363 amino acids with predicted molecular mass of 39.0 kDa and an isoelectric point of 8.14. ZmPt1-1 is dramatically induced by abscisic acid (ABA) and mannitol (data not shown). In order to analyze the further drought tolerant functions, ZmPti1-1 was over-expressed in Arabidopsis. Under drought stress, compared with wild type, survival rate of the three transgenic lines, which was 70, 76 and 87%, respectively, was significantly higher than that of wild type which was 29%; there were lower water loss, lower cell membrane damage, higher relative water content, higher total soluble sugars, higher proline content and higher yield for transgenic plants. Based on the present knowledge, this is the first report that over-expression of Pti1-like gene improved drought tolerance in plants.Key words: ZmPti1-1, transgenic Arabidopsis, drought tolerance

The cumulative effects of known susceptibility variants to predict primary biliary cirrhosis risk.

Multiple genetic variants influence the risk for development of primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC). To explore the cumulative effects of known susceptibility loci on risk, we utilized a weighted genetic risk score (wGRS) to evaluate whether genetic information can predict susceptibility. The wGRS was created using 26 known susceptibility loci and investigated in 1840 UK PBC and 5164 controls. Our data indicate that the wGRS was significantly different between PBC and controls (P=1.61E-142). Moreover, we assessed predictive performance of wGRS on disease status by calculating the area under the receiver operator characteristic curve. The area under curve for the purely genetic model was 0.72 and for gender plus genetic model was 0.82, with confidence limits substantially above random predictions. The risk of PBC using logistic regression was estimated after dividing individuals into quartiles. Individuals in the highest disclosed risk group demonstrated a substantially increased risk for PBC compared with the lowest risk group (odds ratio: 9.3, P=1.91E-084). Finally, we validated our findings in an analysis of an Italian PBC cohort. Our data suggested that the wGRS, utilizing genetic variants, was significantly associated with increased risk for PBC with consistent discriminant ability. Our study is a first step toward risk prediction for PBC

GAP: From sound design to practical implementation in clinical trials for traditional chinese medicine

The past few years have witnessed encouraging progress in improving the methodological quality of clinical research of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). This improvement has contributed to wider academic acceptance of the findings of TCM clinical studies, which were previously deemed dubious. As a proof of this statement, one clinical study testing the effects of a Chinese patent drug Qili Qiangxin Capsules on chronic heart failure has just published a research article on the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, a medical journal of international prestige. However, a sound and scientific design does not always see to its practicality in the conduct of the study, and in fact we observed a widening gap between the two elements. In this special issue, we called for papers discussing efforts to bridge the gap between scientific design and practical implementation of clinical research with TCM

Revisiting old combinatorial beasts in the quantum age: quantum annealing versus maximal matching

This paper experimentally investigates the behavior of analog quantum computers such as commercialized by D-Wave when confronted to instances of the maximum cardinality matching problem specifically designed to be hard to solve by means of simulated annealing. We benchmark a D-Wave "Washington" (2X) with 1098 operational qubits on various sizes of such instances and observe that for all but the most trivially small of these it fails to obtain an optimal solution. Thus, our results suggests that quantum annealing, at least as implemented in a D-Wave device, falls in the same pitfalls as simulated annealing and therefore suggest that there exist polynomial-time problems that such a machine cannot solve efficiently to optimality

Oscillatory surface dichroism of an insulating topological insulator Bi2Te2Se

Using circular dichroism-angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy (CD-ARPES), we report a study of the effect of angular momentum transfer between polarized photons and topological surface states on the surface of highly bulk insulating topological insulator Bi2Te2Se. The photoelectron dichroism is found to be strongly modulated by the frequency of the helical photons including a dramatic sign-flip. Our results suggest that the observed dichroism and its sign-flip are consequences of strong coupling between the photon field and the spin-orbit nature of the Dirac modes on the surface. Our studies reveal the intrinsic dichroic behavior of topological surface states and point toward the potential utility of bulk insulating topological insulators in device applications.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Energy Platform for Directed Charge Transfer in the Cascade Z-Scheme Heterojunction: CO2 Photoreduction without a Cocatalyst

A universal strategy is developed to construct a cascade Z-scheme system, in which an effective energy platform is a core to direct charge transfer and separation, blocking the unexpected type-II charge transfer pathway. The dimension-matched (001)TiO 2 -g-C 3 N 4 /BiVO 4 nanosheet heterojunction (T-CN/BVNS) is the first such model. The optimized cascade Z-scheme exhibits ~19-fold photoactivity improvement for CO 2 reduction to CO in the absence of cocatalysts and costly sacrificial agents under visible-light irradiation, compared with BVNS, which is also superior to other reported Z-scheme systems even with noble metals as mediators. The experimental results and DFT calculations based on Van der Waals structural models on the ultrafast timescale reveal the introduced T as the platform could not only prolong the lifetimes of spatially separated electrons and holes but also did not compromise their reduction and oxidation potentials

Insights into the enzymatic synthesis of alcoholic flavor esters with molecular docking analysis

\ua9 2024The enzymatic synthesis is essential for the flavor esters in the food and fragrance industries. This paper introduces a novel preparation method for lipase microarrays (CALB@PMHOS-TEOS) with loadings up to 229 \ub1 1.4 mg/g. Using surfactant-free hydrophobic silica-hybridized mesoporous materials and Candida antarctica lipase, this resulted in the effective synthesis of flavor esters. Using CALB@PMHOS-TEOS a Pickering emulsion system was formed at the oil-water interface for the sustainable synthesis of flavor esters. This resulted in a 93.5 \ub1 0.5 % conversion of hexanoic acid within 2 h at an optimal temperature of 35 \ub0C, which is the highest level recorded in the literature to date. Furthermore, the conversion of hexanoic acid was maintained at 63.9 \ub1 1.2 % after 9 cycles of CALB@PMHOS-TEOS reuse. The application of the enzyme to the synthesis in a variety of flavor esters achieved a new benchmark in the existing literature. A molecular docking model was evaluated to understand the molecular mechanism underpinning the immobilized lipase. This work introduces a novel method for the eco-friendly and efficient synthesis of flavor esters for applications across various fields including food and cosmetics