Guidance, Navigation and Control for Autonomous Cooperative Docking of CubeSats

Is it possible to dock CubeSats in Low Earth Orbit? The challenges are mainly associated with the level of miniaturisation. A docking mechanism was designed, built and tested in the laboratory. Results show that a relative precision better than 1 cm and 2 degrees is required for the docking. The docking mechanism and metrology system, composed of a monocular camera and sets of light- emitting diodes, are contained within 0.5U volume and can thus be used on nano-satellites. The chaser and target satellites have a complete 3-axis attitude pointing capability and are equipped with available CubeSats attitude sensors and actuators. The chaser is further equipped with a 6 degrees of freedom low-thrust cold gas propulsion system. Different robust control schemes have been investigated and their stability and performance assessed. Non-linear Monte Carlo simulations have been performed to assess the Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) performance and fuel consumption. Results show that the proposed GNC is robust to the various sources of uncertainties and that a lateral accuracy better than 5 mm is obtained at docking. Furthermore, it is not affected by the loss of the star trackers or by illumination conditions and can thus take place on a variety of orbits

Simultaneous determination of enthalpy of mixing and reaction using milli-scale continuous flow calorimetry

A simultaneous determination of the enthalpy of mixing and reaction in a scalable continuous milli-scale flow calorimeter is investigated. As obtained calorimetric data is pivotal for the safety assessment of chemical reactions and processes. The acid-catalysed selective, homogeneous hydrolysis of acetic anhydride with half-lives from a few seconds to a few minutes is investigated as a model reaction. For the enthalpy of mixing 7.2 ± 2.8 kJ/mol and for the enthalpy of reaction −60.8 ± 2.5 kJ/mol were determined. For reactions that show complete conversion in the continuous reactor, a technique is introduced to further improve the accuracy of the reaction enthalpy determination. Thereby, the resolution of the observed temperature profile is increased by measuring the profile at different flow rates. Applying this procedure, the reaction enthalpy of −62.5 kJ/mol was determined which is in good agreement with literature values for this model reaction

Functional characterization of SlscADH1, a fruit-ripening associated short-chain alcohol dehydrogenase of tomato

A tomato short-chain dehydrogenase-reductase (SlscADH1) is preferentially expressed in fruit with a maximum expression at the breaker stage while expression in roots, stems, leaves and flowers is very weak. It represents a potential candidate for the formation of aroma volatiles by interconverting alcohols and aldehydes. The SlscADH1 recombinant protein produced in Escherichia coli exhibited dehydrogenase-reductase activity towards several volatile compounds present in tomato flavour with a strong preference for the NAD/NADH co-factors. The strongest activity was observed for the reduction of hexanal (Km = 0.175 mM) and phenylacetaldehyde (Km = 0.375 mM) in the presence of NADH. The oxidation process of hexanol and 1-phenylethanol was much less efficient (Kms of 2.9 and 23.0 mM, respectively), indicating that the enzyme preferentially acts as a reductase. However activity was observed only for hexanal, phenylacetaldehyde, (E)-2-hexenal and acetaldehyde and the corresponding alcohols. No activity could be detected for other aroma volatiles important for tomato flavour, such as methyl-butanol/methyl-butanal, 5-methyl-6-hepten-2-one/5-methyl-6-hepten-2-ol, citronellal/citronellol, neral/nerol, geraniol. In order to assess the function of the SlscADH1 gene, transgenic plants have been generated using the technique of RNA interference (RNAi). Constitutive down-regulation using the 35S promoter resulted in the generation of dwarf plants, indicating that the SlscADH1 gene, although weakly expressed in vegetative tissues, had a function in regulating plant development. Fruitspecific down-regulation using the 2A11 promoter had no morphogenetic effect and did not alter the aldehyde/alcohol balance of the volatiles compounds produced by the fruit. Nevertheless, SlscADH1-inhibited fruit unexpectedly accumulated higher concentrations of C5 and C6 volatile compounds of the lipoxygenase pathway, possibly as an indirect effect of the suppression of SlscADH1 on the catabolism of phospholipids and/or integrity of membranes

Multifunctional proteins revealed by overlapping clustering in protein interaction network

Motivation: Multifunctional proteins perform several functions. They are expected to interact specifically with distinct sets of partners, simultaneously or not, depending on the function performed. Current graph clustering methods usually allow a protein to belong to only one cluster, therefore impeding a realistic assignment of multifunctional proteins to clusters

Root traits vary as much as leaf traits and have consistent phenotypic plasticity among 14 populations of a globally widespread herb

Our understanding of plant functional trait variation among populations and how this relates to local adaptation to environmental conditions is largely shaped by above-ground traits. However, we might expect below-ground traits linked to resource acquisition and conservation to vary among populations that experience different environmental conditions. Alternatively, below-ground traits might be highly plastic in response to growing conditions, such as availability of soil resources and association with symbiont arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). We assessed (i) the strength of among-population variation in above- and below-ground traits, (ii) the effects of growing conditions on among-population variation and (iii) whether variation among populations is linked to source environment conditions, in a globally distributed perennial Plantago lanceolata. Using seeds from 14 populations across three continents, we grew plants in a common garden experiment and measured leaf and root traits linked to resource acquisition and water conservation. We included two sets of experimental treatments (high or low water availability; with and without AMF inoculation), which enabled us to assess trait responses to growing conditions. Across treatments, the percentage of root trait variation explained by populations and continents was 9%–26%, compared to 7%–20% for leaf trait variation. From principal component analysis (PCA), the first PC axis for both root and leaf traits largely reflected plant size, while the second PC broadly captured mass allocation. Root mass allocation (PC 2) was related to mean annual temperature and mean moisture index, indicating that populations from cooler, wetter environments had longer, thinner roots. However, we found little support for a relationship between source environment and leaf trait PCs, root system size (PC1) or individual traits. Water availability and AMF inoculation effects on size were consistent among populations, with larger plants under AMF inoculation, and less mass allocation to leaves under lower water availability. Plantago lanceolata shows substantial population-level variation in a suite of root traits, but that variation is only partially linked to the source environmental variables studied. Despite considerable differences in source abiotic environments, geographically separated populations have retained a strong and similar capacity for phenotypic plasticity both above and below-ground. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.</p

Analysis of the Peptidoglycan Hydrolase Complement of Lactobacillus casei and Characterization of the Major γ-D-Glutamyl-L-Lysyl-Endopeptidase

Peptidoglycan (PG) is the major component of Gram positive bacteria cell wall and is essential for bacterial integrity and shape. Bacteria synthesize PG hydrolases (PGHs) which are able to cleave bonds in their own PG and play major roles in PG remodelling required for bacterial growth and division. Our aim was to identify the main PGHs in Lactobacillus casei BL23, a lactic acid bacterium with probiotic properties

Impure Public Goods and Technological Interdependencies

Impure public goods represent an important group of goods. Almost every public good exerts not only effects which are public to all but also effects which are private to the producer of this good. What is often omitted in the analysis of impure public goods is the fact that – regularly – these private effects can also be generated independently of the public good. In our analysis we focus on the effects alternative technologies – independently generating the private effects of the public good – may have on the provision of impure public goods. After the investigation in an analytical impure public good model, we numerically simulate the effects of alternative technologies in a parameterized model for climate policy in Germany