369 research outputs found
Following red blood cells in a pulmonary capillary
The red blood cells or erythrocytes are biconcave shaped cells and consist
mostly in a membrane delimiting a cytosol with a high concentration in
hemoglobin. This membrane is highly deformable and allows the cells to go
through narrow passages like the capillaries which diameters can be much
smaller than red blood cells one. They carry oxygen thanks to hemoglobin, a
complex molecule that have very high affinity for oxygen. The capacity of
erythrocytes to load and unload oxygen is thus a determinant factor in their
efficacy. In this paper, we will focus on the pulmonary capillary where red
blood cells capture oxygen. We propose a camera method in order to numerically
study the behavior of the red blood cell along a whole capillary. Our goal is
to understand how erythrocytes geometrical changes along the capillary can
affect its capacity to capture oxygen. The first part of this document presents
the model chosen for the red blood cells along with the numerical method used
to determine and follow their shapes along the capillary. The membrane of the
red blood cell is complex and has been modelled by an hyper-elastic approach
coming from Mills et al (2004). This camera method is then validated and
confronted with a standard ALE method. Some geometrical properties of the red
blood cells observed in our simulations are then studied and discussed. The
second part of this paper deals with the modeling of oxygen and hemoglobin
chemistry in the geometries obtained in the first part. We have implemented a
full complex hemoglobin behavior with allosteric states inspired from
Czerlinski et al (1999).Comment: 17 page
Відділення інформатики Національної академії наук України
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The adsorption and desorption of ethanol ices from a model grain surface
Reflection absorption infrared spectroscopy (RAIRS) and temperature programed desorption (TPD) have been used to probe the adsorption and desorption of ethanol on highly ordered pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) at 98 K. RAIR spectra for ethanol show that it forms physisorbed multilayers on the surface at 98 K. Annealing multilayer ethanol ices (exposures > 50 L) beyond 120 K gives rise to a change in morphology before crystallization within the ice occurs. TPD shows that ethanol adsorbs and desorbs molecularly on the HOPG surface and shows four different species in desorption. At low coverage, desorption of monolayer ethanol is observed and is described by first-order kinetics. With increasing coverage, a second TPD peak is observed at a lower temperature, which is assigned to an ethanol bilayer. When the coverage is further increased, a second multilayer, less strongly bound to the underlying ethanol ice film, is observed. This peak dominates the TPD spectra with increasing coverage and is characterized by fractional-order kinetics and a desorption energy of 56.3 +/- 1.7 kJ mol(-1). At exposures exceeding 50 L, formation of crystalline ethanol is also observed as a high temperature shoulder on the TPD spectrum at 160 K. (c) 2008 American Institute of Physics
RADIOCARBON DATING CREMATED BONE:A CASE STUDY COMPARING LABORATORY METHODS
Radiocarbon (C-14) results on cremated bone are frequently published in high-ranking journals, but C-14 laboratories employ different pretreatment methods as they have divergent perceptions of what sources of contaminants might be present. We found pretreatment protocols to vary significantly between three laboratories (Brussels [RICH], Kid [KIA], and Groningen [CIO]), which all have a long history of dating cremated bone. We present a case study of 6 sets of replicate dates, to compare laboratory pretreatment protocols, and a further 16 sets of inter-laboratory replicate measurements, which compare specific steps of the conversion and measuring process. The C-14 results showed dates to be reproducible between the laboratories and consistent with the expected archaeological chronology. We found that differences in pretreatment, conversion to CO2 and accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) measurement to have no measurable influence on the majority of obtained results, suggesting that any possible diagenesis was probably restricted to the most soluble</p
Compactness of linearized kinetic operators
International audienceThis article reviews various results on the compactness of the linearized Boltzmann operator and of its generalization to mixtures of non-reactive monatomic gases
Formation and Propagation of Discontinuity for Boltzmann Equation in Non-Convex Domains
The formation and propagation of singularities for Boltzmann equation in
bounded domains has been an important question in numerical studies as well as
in theoretical studies. Consider the nonlinear Boltzmann solution near
Maxwellians under in-flow, diffuse, or bounce-back boundary conditions. We
demonstrate that discontinuity is created at the non-convex part of the grazing
boundary, then propagates only along the forward characteristics inside the
domain before it hits on the boundary again.Comment: 39 pages, 5 Figure
The Navier-Stokes-Vlasov-Fokker-Planck system near equilibrium
This paper is concerned with a system that couples the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations to the Vlasov-Fokker-Planck equation. Such a system arises in the modeling of sprays, where a dense phase interacts with a disperse phase. The coupling arises from the Stokes drag force exerted by a phase on the other. We study the global-in-time existence of classical solutions for data close to an equilibrium. We investigate further regularity properties of the solutions as well as their long time behavior. The proofs use energy estimates and the hypoelliptic structure of the system
Protein crystals in adenovirus type 5-infected cells: requirements for intranuclear crystallogenesis, structural and functional analysis
Intranuclear crystalline inclusions have been observed in the nucleus of epithelial cells infected with Adenovirus serotype 5 (Ad5) at late steps of the virus life cycle. Using immuno-electron microscopy and confocal microscopy of cells infected with various Ad5 recombinants modified in their penton base or fiber domains, we found that these inclusions represented crystals of penton capsomers, the heteromeric capsid protein formed of penton base and fiber subunits. The occurrence of protein crystals within the nucleus of infected cells required the integrity of the fiber knob and part of the shaft domain. In the knob domain, the region overlapping residues 489–492 in the FG loop was found to be essential for crystal formation. In the shaft, a large deletion of repeats 4 to 16 had no detrimental effect on crystal inclusions, whereas deletion of repeats 8 to 21 abolished crystal formation without altering the level of fiber protein expression. This suggested a crucial role of the five penultimate repeats in the crystallisation process. Chimeric pentons made of Ad5 penton base and fiber domains from different serotypes were analyzed with respect to crystal formation. No crystal was found when fiber consisted of shaft (S) from Ad5 and knob (K) from Ad3 (heterotypic S5-K3 fiber), but occurred with homotypic S3K3 fiber. However, less regular crystals were observed with homotypic S35-K35 fiber. TB5, a monoclonal antibody directed against the Ad5 fiber knob was found by immunofluorescence microscopy to react with high efficiency with the intranuclear protein crystals in situ. Data obtained with Ad fiber mutants indicated that the absence of crystalline inclusions correlated with a lower infectivity and/or lower yields of virus progeny, suggesting that the protein crystals might be involved in virion assembly. Thus, we propose that TB5 staining of Ad-infected 293 cells can be used as a prognostic assay for the viability and productivity of fiber-modified Ad5 vectors
Distributional and classical solutions to the Cauchy Boltzmann problem for soft potentials with integrable angular cross section
This paper focuses on the study of existence and uniqueness of distributional
and classical solutions to the Cauchy Boltzmann problem for the soft potential
case assuming integrability of the angular part of the collision
kernel (Grad cut-off assumption). For this purpose we revisit the
Kaniel--Shinbrot iteration technique to present an elementary proof of
existence and uniqueness results that includes large data near a local
Maxwellian regime with possibly infinite initial mass. We study the propagation
of regularity using a recent estimate for the positive collision operator given
in [3], by E. Carneiro and the authors, that permits to study such propagation
without additional conditions on the collision kernel. Finally, an
-stability result (with ) is presented assuming the
aforementioned condition.Comment: 19 page
Global existence and full regularity of the Boltzmann equation without angular cutoff
We prove the global existence and uniqueness of classical solutions around an
equilibrium to the Boltzmann equation without angular cutoff in some Sobolev
spaces. In addition, the solutions thus obtained are shown to be non-negative
and in all variables for any positive time. In this paper, we study
the Maxwellian molecule type collision operator with mild singularity. One of
the key observations is the introduction of a new important norm related to the
singular behavior of the cross section in the collision operator. This norm
captures the essential properties of the singularity and yields precisely the
dissipation of the linearized collision operator through the celebrated
H-theorem
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