The motion of a deformable drop in a second-order fluid

The cross-stream migration of a deformable drop in a unidirectional shear flow of a second-order fluid is considered. Expressions for the particle velocity due to the separate effects of deformation and viscoelastic rheology are obtained. The direction and magnitude of migration are calculated for the particular cases of Poiseuille flow and simple shear flow and compared with experimental data

Time delays and energy transport velocities in three dimensional ideal cloaking

We obtained the energy transport velocity distribution for a three dimensional ideal cloak explicitly. Near the operation frequency, the energy transport velocity has rather peculiar distribution. The velocity along a line joining the origin of the cloak is a constant, while the velocity approaches zero at the inner boundary of the cloak. A ray pointing right into the origin of the cloak will experience abrupt changes of velocities when it impinges on the inner surface of the cloak. This peculiar distribution causes infinite time delays for the ideal cloak within a geometric optics description.Comment: A scaling factor is added to convert the parameter \tau into the physical tim

Wireless Biosensing Network for Drivers' Health Monitoring

Biosensors integrated into the vehicle controller area network are used for detecting symptoms such as anxiety, pain, and fatigue that may affect driving safety. The proposed system provides a flexible option for implementation in a diverse range of mass-produced automotive accessories without affecting the driver's movement

Roles of the Bloom's syndrome helicase in the maintenance of genome stability

The RecQ family of DNA helicases is highly conserved in evolution from bacteria to humans. Of the five known human RecQ family members, three (BLM, WRN and RECQ4, which cause Bloom's syndrome, Werner's syndrome and Rothmund-Thomson syndrome respectively) are mutated in distinct clinical disorders associated with cancer predisposition and/or premature aging. BLM forms part of a multienzyme complex including topoisomerase IIIalpha, replication protein A and a newly identified factor called BLAP75. Together, these proteins play a role in the resolution of DNA structures that arise during the process of homologous recombination repair. In the absence of BLM, cells show genomic instability and a high incidence of sister-chromatid exchanges. In addition to a DNA structure-specific helicase activity, BLM also catalyses Holliday-junction branch migration and the annealing of complementary single-stranded DNA molecules

Activation barrier scaling and crossover for noise-induced switching in a micromechanical parametric oscillator

We explore fluctuation-induced switching in a parametrically-driven micromechanical torsional oscillator. The oscillator possesses one, two or three stable attractors depending on the modulation frequency. Noise induces transitions between the coexisting attractors. Near the bifurcation points, the activation barriers are found to have a power law dependence on frequency detuning with critical exponents that are in agreement with predicted universal scaling relationships. At large detuning, we observe a crossover to a different power law dependence with an exponent that is device specific.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Piezoelectric copolymer hydrophones for ultrasonic field characterization

Hydrophones to be used in the characterization of medical ultrasonic transducers have been fabricated using a new polyvinylidene fluoride/trifluoroethylene (VF2/VF3) copolymer. The copolymer has an advantage over VF2 in that it does not require prestretching before poling. Thin copolymer films can be cast from solution and then poled using the corona discharge method. As there is a need for small‐diameter hydrophones to provide good spatial resolution in measuring highly focused ultrasonic beams, hydrophones with diameter as small as 0.1 mm have been made. Both needle‐type and line hydrophones have been tested and their performance reported. In the case of line hydrophones, the output signal is proportional to the line integral of the acoustic pressure and a computer tomographic technique has been used to reconstruct the beam profiles