Creep of HfB2-based UHTCs up to 2000oC

Ultra-high temperature ceramics (UHTCs) are promising candidates for hypersonic applications as a consequence of their high melting points, in excess of 3000 ºC for ZrB2 and HfB2 UHTCs. The UHTCs community has traditionally focused on development of more oxidation-resistant UHTC composites as a consequence of poor oxidation resistance of monolithic UHTCs, which has led to the choice of SiC-reinforced MeB2 (where Me is Zr or Hf) as the baseline material for extreme environments. An overview of current understanding of high temperature creep of MeB2–based UHTCs will be described, discussing the following points: • Poor creep resistance of SiC-reinforced HfB2 and their structural instabilities. • Plastic behavior of HfB2 which deforms like an hcp-metal. • Plastic behavior of HfB2/2 wt.% La2O3 or how to maintain the creep resistance while improving the oxidation resistance. • New approaches to increase the creep resistance of HfB

FXYD3: A Promising Biomarker for Urothelial Carcinoma

Objective Urothelial carcinoma (UC) of the kidney is a relatively rare but aggressive form of kidney cancer. Differential diagnosis of renal UC from renal cell carcinoma (RCC) can be difficult, but is critical for correct patient management. We aimed to use global gene expression profiling to identify genes specifically expressed in urothelial carcinoma (UC) of the kidney, with purpose of finding new biomarkers for differential diagnosis of UC of both upper and lower tract from normal tissues. Materials and Methods Microarray gene expression profiling was performed on a variety of human kidney tumor samples, including clear cell, papillary, chromophobe, oncocytoma, renal UC and normal kidney controls. Differentially expressed mRNAs in various kidney tumor subtypes were thus identified. Protein expression in human UC tumor samples from both upper and lower urinary tract was evaluated by immunohistochemistry. Results FXYD3 (MAT-8) mRNA was specifically expressed in UC of the kidney and not in normal kidney tissue or in any RCC tumor subtypes. FXYD3 mRNA levels displayed equal or better prediction rate for the detection of renal UC than the mRNA levels of selected known UC markers as p63, vimentin, S100P, KRT20 and KRT7. Finally, immunohistochemical staining of clinical UC samples showed that FXYD3 protein is overexpressed in majority of UC of the upper genitourinary tract (encompassing the kidney, ~90%) and in majority of high grade bladder UC (~84%, it's < 40% in low grade tumors, P < 0.001) compared to normal kidney and bladder tissues. Conclusion FXYD3 may be a promising novel biomarker for the differential diagnosis of renal UC and a promising prognosis marker of UC from bladder. Because it was identified genome-widely, FXYD3 may have important biological ramifications for the genetic study of UC

"Allowing it to speak out of him": The Heterobiographies of David Malouf, Antonio Tabucchi and Marguerite Yourcenar

Under true pretences We know very little about the life of Ovid, and it is this absence of fact that has made him useful as the central figure of my narrative and allowed me the liberty of free invention, since what I wanted to write was neither historical novel nor biography, but a fiction with its roots in possible event. Thus starts the Afterword of David Malouf’s An Imaginary Life, a novel in which the poet Ovid, exiled from Rome, narrates his experience in the border outpost of Tomis, near the delta of the Danube on the Black Sea. ‘Relegated’ among the Getae at the edges of the Empire and ‘expelled form the confines of [the] Latin tongue’ (IL 26), this glittering and cynical poet undergoes a series of changes or metamorphoses. Initially pining for Rome and its sophisticated, complex language, he learns to overcome his hostility towards the barbarous people and their language, but when he discovers a wild Child that had been raised by the wolves in the forest and captures him with the intention of teaching him to speak and to be human, he soon realises that he himself has to learn from the Child another language, based not on symbolization and arbitrary convention but on an intuitive identity with things, on becoming the things signified in silence. After the death of the village’s elderly chief, which the villagers blame on the child’s demonic powers, the poet and the Child escape north across the frozen river. Ovid’s death is the poet’s final transformation, perhaps a literal metamorphosis like the ones described in Ovid’s great poem. Malouf’s Afterword concludes: My purpose was to make this glib fabulist of ‘the changes’ live out in reality what had been, in his previous existence, merely the occasion for dazzling literary display. (IL 154) Is Malouf’s novel then a fantasy inspired by ‘mere’ literary dazzle or, as ‘a fiction with its roots in possible event’, is it a work that, while not claiming to the factual accuracy of biography or the broad reliability of the historical background of a historical novel, can however still claim to be rooted in verisimilitude, in events that, although not documented, are nevertheless possible, as would be the case with a realist novel, or in Aristotelian poetics? The Afterword thematizes a tension between the desire to anchor the novel to history and the desire to free Ovid from historical necessity. How can Ovid live out ‘in reality’ the metamorphoses to which he is subjected, if metamorphoses are but the occasion for ‘literary display’? This tension also defines, more widely, the large number of novels written as if they were the autobiographies of historical personages, novels that gesture towards historical factuality and literary fictionality, towards ‘truth’ and invention, and exist under the sign of an essential structural displacement (the ‘autobiography’ is written by another) that brings to the foreground structural, narrative, and ethical issues also central to autobiography itself. (First paragraphs of submitted version

Aquilegia, Vol. 13 No. 1, January-February 1989: Newsletter of the Colorado Native Plant Society

https://epublications.regis.edu/aquilegia/1044/thumbnail.jp

Stellar Stalling:the view from asteroseismology

Asteroseismology, the study of intrinsic oscillations in stars, can reveal fundamental properties of cool stars critical in our understanding of stellar rotational evolution. Through space missions such as Kepler and TESS, asteroseismology has seen a surge of new data and research in the past decade. These data have contributed to important results in the field of stellar braking particularly for F, G and K stars, thanks to estimates of stellar age for rotating field stars, and the measurement of stellar rotation through oscillation spectra as important comparisons for estimates from star-spots. In this talk, I will provide an introduction to asteroseismology how it can provide important results for your research. This will be followed by a breakdown of how asteroseismologists have used these techniques to establish the presence of weakened magnetic braking on the main sequence using asteroseismic data, and what we should be looking forward to from these techniques with the TESS mission

Poster CS20.5 - Weakened magnetic braking supported by asteroseismic rotation

Studies using asteroseismic ages and rotation rates from star-spot rotation have indicated that standard age-rotation relations may break down roughly half-way through the main sequence lifetime, a phenomenon referred to as weakened magnetic braking. While rotation rates from spots can be difficult to determine for older, less active stars, rotational splitting of asteroseismic oscillation frequencies can provide rotation rates for both active and quiescent stars, and so can confirm whether this effect really takes place on the main sequence. In this talk, I’ll show how we obtained asteroseismic rotation rates of 91 main sequence stars showing high signal-to-noise modes of oscillation. Using these new rotation rates, along with effective temperatures, metallicities and seismic masses and ages, we built a hierarchical Bayesian mixture model that showed that our new ensemble more closely agreed with weakened magnetic braking, over a standard rotational evolution scenario