Capacity strengthening in malaria research: the Gates Malaria Partnership.

The Gates Malaria Partnership (GMP) includes five African and four European partner institutions. Its research programme has five priority areas involving an extensive range of field-based studies. GMP research has contributed significantly to the development of new research consortia investigating strategies for improving means of malaria control, and has already had an impact on policy and practice. A substantial investment in innovative training activities in malaria has enhanced knowledge and practice of malaria control at all levels from policy making to local community involvement. Capacity development, notably through a PhD programme, has been an underlying feature of all aspects of the programme

Analysis of Microstrip Lines with Alternative Implementation of Conductors and Superconductors

An analysis of microstrip line structures in which either the strip or the ground plane or both are made of a high Tc superconductor is presented. The effect of implementation of a superconductor to the strip and the ground plane is explained with the calculation of a conductor loss of the structure by the Phenomenological Loss Equivalence Method (PEM). The theoretical values are compared with the experimental results from a ring resonator which is made of a gold ground plane and a high Tc superconductor, YBa2Cu3O(7-x), strip

Determination of surface resistance and magnetic penetration depth of superconducting YBa2Cu3O(7-delta) thin films by microwave power transmission measurements

A novel waveguide power transmission measurement technique was developed to extract the complex conductivity of superconducting thin films at microwave frequencies. The microwave conductivity was taken of two laser ablated YBa2Cu3O(7-delta) thin films on LaAlO3 with transition temperatures of approx. 86.3 and 82 K, respectively, in the temperature range 25 to 300 K. From the conductivity values, the penetration depth was found to be approx. 0.54 and 0.43 micron, and the surface resistance (R sub s) to be approx. 24 and 36 micro-Ohms at 36 GHz and 76 K for the two films under consideration. The R sub s values were compared with those obtained from the change in the Q-factor of a 36 GHz Te sub 011-mode (OFHC) copper cavity by replacing one of its end walls with the superconducting sample. This technique allows noninvasive characterization of high transition temperature superconducting thin films at microwave frequencies

Design Criteria for Fracture Assessment of Pressurized Nuclear Components

This paper presents the design criteria adopted for fracture assessment of pressurized components of nuclear power plants. Although there are wide variety of components in a typical nuclear power plant, the thrust in this paper is on components which are part of the primary heat transport system. The paper presents an overview of design rules, practices adopted and experimental verification needed for ensuring the structural integrity of nuclear pressure vessels and piping

Validation of Constructs for Buyer Supplier Relationship Development Strategies: Indian Manufacturing Context

Focus of buyer is to satisfy the end user with improved quality and diversified range. As it is not possible to manufacture all components in house, supplier base of buyer should be self-efficient and developed one. This development of supplier can be achieved by applying different supplier development practices as per the requirement, For being competitive in market, supplier base of buyer should be self-efficient and this can be achieved through implementing supplier development practices Excellence in supplier development and relationship improvement results in betterment of supply chain performance. In this article, a new measurement scale to assess the supplier development practices, relationship between the buyer and the supplier with competitive advantages and profitability is developed and validated. To examine the impact of supplier development practices in the context of buyer–supplier performance, a survey was conducted on 512 manufacturing companies. The multi-item scale shows strong evidence of reliability as well as convergent, discriminant validity in a sample. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Reliability Analysis is applied on data for validation of instrument. Exploratory factor analysis yielded nineteen factors, which were further confirmed by confirmatory factor analysis. Suggestions for applying the measure in future research are presented. Keywords: Supplier Development, Buyer Supplier Relationship Developmen

On the hierarchical classification of G Protein-Coupled Receptors

Motivation: G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) play an important role in many physiological systems by transducing an extracellular signal into an intracellular response. Over 50% of all marketed drugs are targeted towards a GPCR. There is considerable interest in developing an algorithm that could effectively predict the function of a GPCR from its primary sequence. Such an algorithm is useful not only in identifying novel GPCR sequences but in characterizing the interrelationships between known GPCRs. Results: An alignment-free approach to GPCR classification has been developed using techniques drawn from data mining and proteochemometrics. A dataset of over 8000 sequences was constructed to train the algorithm. This represents one of the largest GPCR datasets currently available. A predictive algorithm was developed based upon the simplest reasonable numerical representation of the protein's physicochemical properties. A selective top-down approach was developed, which used a hierarchical classifier to assign sequences to subdivisions within the GPCR hierarchy. The predictive performance of the algorithm was assessed against several standard data mining classifiers and further validated against Support Vector Machine-based GPCR prediction servers. The selective top-down approach achieves significantly higher accuracy than standard data mining methods in almost all cases

Efimov states and their Fano resonances in a neutron-rich nucleus

Asymmetric resonances in elastic n+$^{19}$C scattering are attributed to Efimov states of such neutron-rich nuclei, that is, three-body bound states of the n+n+$^{18}$C system when none of the pairs is bound or some of them only weakly bound. By fitting to the general resonance shape described by Fano, we extract resonance position, width, and the "Fano profile index". While Efimov states have been discussed extensively in many areas of physics, there is only one very recent experimental observation in trimers of cesium atoms. The conjunction that we present of the Efimov and Fano phenomena may lead to experimental realization in nuclei.Comment: 4 double-column pages, 3 figure

Solar Light Induced Photo Catalytic Properties of α-Fe2O3 Nanoparticles for Degradation of Methylene Blue Dye

The present work describes α-Fe2O3 nanoparticles are prepared by chemical displacement method using CTAB as a stabilizing agent. Glutaric acid as fuel and metal salt like ferrous sulphate was used in synthesis. The structural, morphological, metal percentage and optical properties of as synthesized nanoparticles are investigated by using x-ray diffraction (XRD), UV-Visible Spectra; field emission gun Scanning electron microscopy (FEG-SEM) with EDS, Fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), High-resolution Transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM) and Photoluminescence Spectroscopy (PL). The photocatalytic degradation of Methylene Blue dye was measured by visible absorption spectroscopy. To obtain the most favorable conditions for degradation of MB dye, the effect of various experimental parameters, i.e., pH, amount of nanoparticles, concentration of dye and light intensity on the rate of reaction was studied. A tentative mechanism for the photocatalytic degradation of Methylene Blue was proposed. Photocatalytic degradation of Methylene Blue dye followed pseudo first-order kinetics. It was found that the dye degradation gave the best results at a pH of 6.0, and using a 70 mW•cm–2 light intensity with 0.3 g of α-Fe2O3 nanoparticles. At room temperature, the photocatalytic degradation of Methylene Blue dye was observed about 92.3%

Performance and modeling of superconducting ring resonators at millimeter-wave frequencies

Microstrip ring resonators operating at 35 GHz were fabricated from laser ablated YBCO thin films deposited on lanthanum aluminate substrates. They were measured over a range of temperatures and their performance compared to identical resonators made of evaporated gold. Below 60 Kelvin the superconducting strip performed better than the gold, reaching an unloaded Q approximately 1.5 times that of gold at 25 K. A shift in the resonant frequency follows the form predicted by the London equations. The Phenomenological Loss Equivalence Method is applied to the ring resonator and the theoretically calculated Q values are compared to the experimental results

Characterization of Hybrid Ferroelectric/HTS Thin Films for Tunable Microwave Components

Since the discovery of High-Temperature-Superconductors (HTS) in 1986, a diversity of HTS-based microwave components has been demonstrated. Because of their low conductor losses, HTS-based components are very attractive for integration into microwave circuits for space communication systems. Recent advancements have made deposition of ferroelectric thin films onto HTS thin films possible. Due to the sensitivity of the ferroelectric's dielectric constant (epsilon(sub r)) to an externally applied electric field (E), ferroelectric/superconducting structures could be used in the fabrication of low loss, tunable microwave components. In this paper, we report on our study of Ba(0.5)Sr(0.5)TiO3/YBa2Cu3O(7-delta) and Ba(0.08)Sr(0.92)TiO3/YBa2Cu3O(7-delta) ferroelectric/superconducting thin films on lanthanum aluminate (LaAlO3) substrates. For the (Ba:Sr, 0.50:0.50) epitaxial sample, a epsilon(sub r) of 425 and a loss tangent (tan delta) of 0.040 were measured at 298 K, 1.0 MHz, and zero applied E. For the same sample, a epsilon(sub r) of 360 and tan delta of 0.036 were obtained at 77 K, 1.0 MHz, and zero applied E. Variations in epsilon(sub r) from 180 to 360 were observed over an applied E range of 0V/cm less than or equal to E less than or equal to 5.62 x 10(exp 4) V/cm with little change in tan delta. However, the range of epsilon(sub r) variation for the polycrystalline (Ba:Sr, 0.08:0.92) sample over 0V/cm less than or equal to E less than or equal to 4.00 x 10(exp 4) V/cm was only 3.6 percent while tan delta increased markedly. These results indicate that a lack of epitaxy between the ferroelectric and superconducting layers decreases tuning and increases microwave losses