Search for Gravitational Waves from Intermediate Mass Binary Black Holes

We present the results of a weakly modeled burst search for gravitational waves from mergers of non-spinning intermediate mass black holes (IMBH) in the total mass range 100--450 solar masses and with the component mass ratios between 1:1 and 4:1. The search was conducted on data collected by the LIGO and Virgo detectors between November of 2005 and October of 2007. No plausible signals were observed by the search which constrains the astrophysical rates of the IMBH mergers as a function of the component masses. In the most efficiently detected bin centered on 88+88 solar masses, for non-spinning sources, the rate density upper limit is 0.13 per Mpc^3 per Myr at the 90% confidence level.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures: data for plots and archived public version at https://dcc.ligo.org/cgi-bin/DocDB/ShowDocument?docid=62326, see also the public announcement at http://www.ligo.org/science/Publication-S5IMBH

Biotransformation of Benzaldehyde to L-Phenylacetylcarbinol (L-PAC) by Free Cells of Torulaspora delbrueckii in presence of Beta-Cyclodextrin

Studies were carried out to explore the possibility of decreasing the toxic and inhibitory effects of the substrate benzaldehyde during its biotransformation to L-PAC by free cells of Torulaspora delbrueckii using beta -cyclodextrin (beta -CD). Use of various levels of benzaldehyde and acetaldehyde in presence of 2% of beta -CD showed that, in presence of beta -CD, the organism could tolerate higher levels of benzaldehyde and acetaldehyde. Semi-continuous feeding of benzaldehyde and acetaldehyde was found to increase the yield of L-PAC in comparison with one time feeding