Tidal Turbine Benchmarking Exercise: Environmental Characterisation and Geometry Specification

Uncertainty in tidal turbine loading contributes significantly to conservatism in turbine design. This uncertainty originates not only from a lack of knowledge of the flow field at a particular site, but also from lack of understanding of the fundamental physics which govern the loading and performance of tidal turbines in unsteady and turbulent flow regimes. In order to reduce this conservatism and the costs associated, the mathematical and engineering models used in turbine design must be improved. To facilitate the development of these models requires scale experimental data for validation. However, few well-documented experimental data sets are available for tidal turbines, especially at scales large enough to achieve Reynolds number independence and comparability to full scale devices.This paper reports on the initial phases of a tidal turbine benchmarking project that will conduct a large laboratory scale experimental campaign on a highly instrumented 1.6m diameter tidal rotor. The turbine will be tested in well defined flow conditions, including unsteadiness created by free surface waves, as well as freestream turbulence, with instrumentation to determine edgewise and flapwise loading distributions along the blades as they rotate through the unsteady flows. As towing tanks by their nature have low levels of freestream turbulence, a carriage-mounted turbulence grid will be utilised to generate sufficient freestream turbulence in a well-defined manner.In this paper the turbine geometry and test conditions are specified, as well as providing details of the rotor’s hydrodynamic design process. Additionally, the results of a flow characterisation of the carriage-mounted turbulence grid via Acoustic Doppler Velocimetry are presented. The turbulence grid produced a mean turbulence intensity of 3:5% across the region in which the turbine will be tested, and a very uniform flow profile of 0:913 times the upstream velocity

The Extracellular Vesicle Citrullinome and Signature in a Piglet Model of Neonatal Seizures

Neonatal seizures are commonly associated with acute perinatal brain injury, while understanding regarding the downstream molecular pathways related to seizures remains unclear. Furthermore, effective treatment and reliable biomarkers are still lacking. Post-translational modifications can contribute to changes in protein function, and post-translational citrullination, which is caused by modification of arginine to citrulline via the calcium-mediated activation of the peptidylarginine deiminase (PAD) enzyme family, is being increasingly linked to neurological injury. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are lipid-bilayer structures released from cells; they can be isolated from most body fluids and act as potential liquid biomarkers for disease conditions and response to treatment. As EVs carry a range of genetic and protein cargo that can be characteristic of pathological processes, the current study assessed modified citrullinated protein cargo in EVs isolated from plasma and CSF in a piglet neonatal seizure model, also following phenobarbitone treatment. Our findings provide novel insights into roles for PAD-mediated changes on EV signatures in neonatal seizures and highlight the potential of plasma- and CSF-EVs to monitor responses to treatment

The Primordial Inflation Polarization Explorer (PIPER)

The Primordial Inflation Polarization Explorer (PIPER) is a balloon-borne cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarimeter designed to search for evidence of inflation by measuring the large-angular scale CMB polarization signal. BICEP2 recently reported a detection of B-mode power corresponding to the tensor-to-scalar ratio r = 0.2 on ~2 degree scales. If the BICEP2 signal is caused by inflationary gravitational waves (IGWs), then there should be a corresponding increase in B-mode power on angular scales larger than 18 degrees. PIPER is currently the only suborbital instrument capable of fully testing and extending the BICEP2 results by measuring the B-mode power spectrum on angular scales $\theta$ = ~0.6 deg to 90 deg, covering both the reionization bump and recombination peak, with sensitivity to measure the tensor-to-scalar ratio down to r = 0.007, and four frequency bands to distinguish foregrounds. PIPER will accomplish this by mapping 85% of the sky in four frequency bands (200, 270, 350, 600 GHz) over a series of 8 conventional balloon flights from the northern and southern hemispheres. The instrument has background-limited sensitivity provided by fully cryogenic (1.5 K) optics focusing the sky signal onto four 32x40-pixel arrays of time-domain multiplexed Transition-Edge Sensor (TES) bolometers held at 140 mK. Polarization sensitivity and systematic control are provided by front-end Variable-delay Polarization Modulators (VPMs), which rapidly modulate only the polarized sky signal at 3 Hz and allow PIPER to instantaneously measure the full Stokes vector (I, Q, U, V) for each pointing. We describe the PIPER instrument and progress towards its first flight.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures. To be published in Proceedings of SPIE Volume 9153. Presented at SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 2014, conference 915

Following a natural experiment of guideline adaptation and early implementation: a mixed-methods study of facilitation

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Facilitation is emerging as an important strategy in the uptake of evidence. However, it is not entirely clear from a practical perspective how facilitation occurs to help move research evidence into nursing practice. The Canadian Partnership Against Cancer, also known as the 'Partnership,' is a Pan-Canadian initiative supporting knowledge translation activity for improved care through guideline use. In this case-series study, five self-identified groups volunteered to use a systematic methodology to adapt existing clinical practice guidelines for Canadian use. With 'Partnership' support, local and external facilitators provided assistance for groups to begin the process by adapting the guidelines and planning for implementation.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>To gain a more comprehensive understanding of the nature of facilitation, we conducted a mixed-methods study. Specifically, we examined the role and skills of individuals actively engaged in facilitation as well as the actual facilitation activities occurring within the 'Partnership.' The study was driven by and builds upon a focused literature review published in 2010 that examined facilitation as a role and process in achieving evidence-based practice in nursing. An audit tool outlining 46 discrete facilitation activities based on results of this review was used to examine the facilitation noted in the documents (emails, meeting minutes, field notes) of three nursing-related cases participating in the 'Partnership' case-series study. To further examine the concept, six facilitators were interviewed about their practical experiences. The case-audit data were analyzed through a simple content analysis and triangulated with participant responses from the focus group interview to understand what occurred as these cases undertook guideline adaptation.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The analysis of the three cases revealed that almost all of the 46 discrete, practical facilitation activities from the literature were evidenced. Additionally, case documents exposed five other facilitation-related activities, and a combination of external and local facilitation was apparent. Individuals who were involved in the case or group adapting the guideline(s) also performed facilitation activities, both formally and informally, in conjunction with or in addition to appointed external and local facilitators.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Facilitation of evidence-based practice is a multifaceted process and a team effort. Communication and relationship-building are key components. The practical aspects of facilitation explicated in this study validate what has been previously noted in the literature and expand what is known about facilitation process and activity.</p

Deconvolution of Images from BLAST 2005: Insight into the K3-50 and IC 5146 Star-Forming Regions

We present an implementation of the iterative flux-conserving Lucy-Richardson (L-R) deconvolution method of image restoration for maps produced by the Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST). We have analyzed its performance and convergence extensively through simulations and cross-correlations of the deconvolved images with available highresolution maps. We present new science results from two BLAST surveys, in the Galactic regions K3-50 and IC 5146, further demonstrating the benefits of performing this deconvolution. We have resolved three clumps within a radius of 4.'5 inside the star-forming molecular cloud containing K3-50. Combining the well-resolved dust emission map with available multi-wavelength data, we have constrained the Spectral Energy Distributions (SEDs) of five clumps to obtain masses (M), bolometric luminosities (L), and dust temperatures (T). The L-M diagram has been used as a diagnostic tool to estimate the evolutionary stages of the clumps. There are close relationships between dust continuum emission and both 21-cm radio continuum and 12CO molecular line emission. The restored extended large scale structures in the Northern Streamer of IC 5146 have a strong spatial correlation with both SCUBA and high resolution extinction images. A dust temperature of 12 K has been obtained for the central filament. We report physical properties of ten compact sources, including six associated protostars, by fitting SEDs to multi-wavelength data. All of these compact sources are still quite cold (typical temperature below ~ 16 K) and are above the critical Bonner-Ebert mass. They have associated low-power Young Stellar Objects (YSOs). Further evidence for starless clumps has also been found in the IC 5146 region.Comment: 13 pages, 12 Figures, 3 Table

Cardiac Deletion of Smyd2 Is Dispensable for Mouse Heart Development

Chromatin modifying enzymes play a critical role in cardiac differentiation. Previously, it has been shown that the targeted deletion of the histone methyltransferase, Smyd1, the founding member of the SET and MYND domain containing (Smyd) family, interferes with cardiomyocyte maturation and proper formation of the right heart ventricle. The highly related paralogue, Smyd2 is a histone 3 lysine 4- and lysine 36-specific methyltransferase expressed in heart and brain. Here, we report that Smyd2 is differentially expressed during cardiac development with highest expression in the neonatal heart. To elucidate the functional role of Smyd2 in the heart, we generated conditional knockout (cKO) mice harboring a cardiomyocyte-specific deletion of Smyd2 and performed histological, functional and molecular analyses. Unexpectedly, cardiac deletion of Smyd2 was dispensable for proper morphological and functional development of the murine heart and had no effect on global histone 3 lysine 4 or 36 methylation. However, we provide evidence for a potential role of Smyd2 in the transcriptional regulation of genes associated with translation and reveal that Smyd2, similar to Smyd3, interacts with RNA Polymerase II as well as to the RNA helicase, HELZ

Identification of novel cancer biomarkers of prognostic value using specific gene regulatory networks (GRN): a novel role of RAD51AP1 for ovarian and lung cancers

© The Author(s) 2017. To date, microarray analyses have led to the discovery of numerous individual ‘molecular signatures’ associated with specific cancers. However, there are serious limitations for the adoption of these multi-gene signatures in the clinical environment for diagnostic or prognostic testing as studies with more power need to be carried out. This may involve larger richer cohorts and more advanced analyses. In this study, we conduct analyses—based on gene regulatory network—to reveal distinct and common biomarkers across cancer types. Using microarray data of triple-negative and medullary breast, ovarian and lung cancers applied to a combination of glasso and Bayesian networks (BNs), we derived a unique networkcontaining genes that are uniquely involved: small proline-rich protein 1A (SPRR1A), follistatin like 1 (FSTL1), collagen type XII alpha 1 (COL12A1) and RAD51 associated protein 1 (RAD51AP1). RAD51AP1 and FSTL1 are significantly overexpressed in ovarian cancer patients but only RAD51AP1 is upregulated in lung cancer patients compared with healthy controls. The upregulation of RAD51AP1 was mirrored in the bloods of both ovarian and lung cancer patients, and Kaplan–Meier (KM) plots predicted poorer overall survival (OS) in patients with high expression of RAD51AP1. Suppression of RAD51AP1 by RNA interference reduced cell proliferation in vitro in ovarian (SKOV3) and lung (A549) cancer cells. This effect appears to be modulated by a decrease in the expression of mTOR-related genes and pro-metastatic candidate genes. Our data describe how an initial in silico approach can generate novel biomarkers that could potentially support current clinical practice and improve long-term outcomes

Spectroscopic Investigation of Fluorescence Quenching Agents. Part 3: Effect of Solvent Polarity on the Selectivity of Nitromethane for Discriminating Between Alternant Versus Nonalternant Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons

Article on a spectroscopic investigation of fluorescence quenching agents and the effect of solvent polarity on the selectivity of nitromethane for discriminating between alternant versus nonalternant polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Cosmology from Galaxy Clusters Detected via the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect

We present constraints on cosmological parameters based on a sample of Sunyaev-Zel'dovich-selected galaxy clusters detected in a millimeter-wave survey by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope. The cluster sample used in this analysis consists of 9 optically-confirmed high-mass clusters comprising the high-significance end of the total cluster sample identified in 455 square degrees of sky surveyed during 2008 at 148 GHz. We focus on the most massive systems to reduce the degeneracy between unknown cluster astrophysics and cosmology derived from SZ surveys. We describe the scaling relation between cluster mass and SZ signal with a 4-parameter fit. Marginalizing over the values of the parameters in this fit with conservative priors gives sigma_8 = 0.851 +/- 0.115 and w = -1.14 +/- 0.35 for a spatially-flat wCDM cosmological model with WMAP 7-year priors on cosmological parameters. This gives a modest improvement in statistical uncertainty over WMAP 7-year constraints alone. Fixing the scaling relation between cluster mass and SZ signal to a fiducial relation obtained from numerical simulations and calibrated by X-ray observations, we find sigma_8 = 0.821 +/- 0.044 and w = -1.05 +/- 0.20. These results are consistent with constraints from WMAP 7 plus baryon acoustic oscillations plus type Ia supernoava which give sigma_8 = 0.802 +/- 0.038 and w = -0.98 +/- 0.053. A stacking analysis of the clusters in this sample compared to clusters simulated assuming the fiducial model also shows good agreement. These results suggest that, given the sample of clusters used here, both the astrophysics of massive clusters and the cosmological parameters derived from them are broadly consistent with current models.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures. Submitted to Ap