Regenerative cooling design and analysis computer program

Program evaluates influences of heat transfer, stress, and cycle life. Coolant passages may be tubes or channels, with or without gas-side wall coating. Program options include two-dimensional thermal analysis model of tube or channel cross-section using relaxation technique with variable number of nodes

An evolutionary perspective on the kinome of malaria parasites

Malaria parasites belong to an ancient lineage that diverged very early from the main branch of eukaryotes. The approximately 90-member plasmodial kinome includes a majority of eukaryotic protein kinases that clearly cluster within the AGC, CMGC, TKL, CaMK and CK1 groups found in yeast, plants and mammals, testifying to the ancient ancestry of these families. However, several hundred millions years of independent evolution, and the specific pressures brought about by first a photosynthetic and then a parasitic lifestyle, led to the emergence of unique features in the plasmodial kinome. These include taxon-restricted kinase families, and unique peculiarities of individual enzymes even when they have homologues in other eukaryotes. Here, we merge essential aspects of all three malaria-related communications that were presented at the Evolution of Protein Phosphorylation meeting, and propose an integrated discussion of the specific features of the parasite's kinome and phosphoproteome

Strengthening public health systems: Assessing the attributes of the NSW influenza surveillance system

© 2016 Dawson et al. Objective: In New South Wales (NSW), influenza surveillance is informed by a number of discrete data sources, including laboratories, emergency departments, death registrations and community surveillance programs. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the NSW influenza surveillance system using the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines for evaluating public health surveillance systems. Importance of study: Having a strong influenza surveillance system is important for both seasonal and pandemic influenza preparedness. The findings will inform recommendations for strengthening surveillance in NSW. Methods: The scope was limited to all sources included in the NSW Health Influenza Report in 2012-13. To assess the performance of the system, in-depth interviews (N = 21) were conducted with key stakeholders and thematically analysed. Respiratory testing data gathered through the sentinel laboratories in 2012 were used to estimate sensitivity, and laboratory notifications were analysed to assess timeliness and representativeness. Key documents - including reports, guidelines, correspondence and meeting minutes - were also reviewed, providing a method of triangulation. Results: The NSW influenza surveillance system integrates multiple sources of surveillance of influenza and influenza-like illness to provide a comprehensive picture of influenza in the community. Despite its structural complexity, the system delivers quality, timely and relevant data to inform a range of public health activities, and the NSW Health Influenza Report is well regarded by stakeholders. Challenges include managing system complexity, key person risk and cross-jurisdictional issues. Stakeholders commented that system flexibility would depend on additional resourcing. Although the sensitivity of sentinel laboratory surveillance was estimated as 1-25%, depending on the time of year, understanding sensitivity remains a challenge in influenza surveillance where the true incidence of infection is unknown. Conclusion: Influenza surveillance is critical for monitoring virological changes, understanding disease epidemiology and informing public health responses. The system was found to deliver timely and good-quality surveillance information. Additional value could be achieved by increasing flexibility and stability, automating systems (where possible) and formalising processes of data acquisition. The system continues to negotiate a number of constraints, including complexity and cross-jurisdictional issues, which are ongoing obstacles to realising some potential system improvements

Symplectic No-core Shell-model Approach to Intermediate-mass Nuclei

We present a microscopic description of nuclei in an intermediate-mass region, including the proximity to the proton drip line, based on a no-core shell model with a schematic many-nucleon long-range interaction with no parameter adjustments. The outcome confirms the essential role played by the symplectic symmetry to inform the interaction and the winnowing of shell-model spaces. We show that it is imperative that model spaces be expanded well beyond the current limits up through fifteen major shells to accommodate particle excitations that appear critical to highly-deformed spatial structures and the convergence of associated observables.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure

Letter to Russia

Below is the referee report. It is not as bad as it seems at first. The manuscript has not been rejected. Instead, the referee is 'not recommending publication.' On the APS website, the status is 'with authors,' instead of 'not under consideration.' Thus, this manuscript is still alive, but we will need to work on it. Please take a look at what the referee says below and let me know how you would respond. I will do the same. Hopefully, we will be able to respond well and find a way for this manuscript to get into PRB. According to the introduction of their manuscript, the authors intend to study the electronic structure of clusters of Pu atoms and, among other things, to illustrate how the properties of the cluster's central region approach those of the bulk Pu metal as the cluster size increases. It is then somewhat surprising to find out that all the 'cluster' calculations discussed in the paper are in fact set up in such a way that they model the bulk properties - the clusters are embedded in a kind of mean field that is designed to approximate the rest of an infinite lattice (the authors call it the extended cluster scheme). Consequently, all the observed finite-size effects are essentially artificial since they represent the inaccuracies of the embedding procedure. The results for the finite clusters themselves do not carry a direct physical meaning (which contradicts authors statements from the introduction), only the extrapolation to the infinite cluster would, if done properly. The authors propose that the number of 5f electrons n{_}5f is a linear function of the cubic root of N, where N is the number of atoms in the cluster. This function fits the calculated data well (Fig. 8), but, as the authors indeed note, it cannot hold for very large N where n{_}5f must saturate at a finite value. The calculated data show no sign of such saturation (Fig. 8), which indicates that the considered clusters are too small to draw conclusions about the bulk properties. I find it puzzling that the authors nonetheless claim in their conclusions that 'An evaluation of state occupations supports the proposal that the occupation of the 5f levels in bulk Pu must be near 5'. Apart from the aforementioned conceptual inconsistencies, there are a number of more technical aspects that are not discussed in sufficient detail. Among these are: (1) The authors use LDA to approximate the electron correlations. A lively debate takes place in the literature whether this approximation can adequately describe the electronic structure of Pu metal or not, yet the authors do not discuss the choice of the approximation at all, which they should, in my opinion. They should also specify if their solutions are spin polarized or whether they use spin-restricted LDA. (2) The quality of the employed basis set is not clear. Are the results converged with respect to the basis size? What is the estimated magnitude of the residual errors? (3) There are statements in the manuscript indicating that the cluster calculations depend somehow on the calculations of the diatomic molecule. Namely: 'Underpinning these calculations, there is a geometry optimization of diatomic molecules...' and 'Underlying the Pu cluster simulations is the calculation of the electronic structure of a Pu2 dimer with the bond length 3.28 {angstrom} corresponding to the inter-atomic distances in delta-Pu.' What does this underpinning/underlying mean in more technical terms? What role does the geometry optimization play when the cluster calculations seem to be performed at a fixed geometry corresponding to the delta-Pu? Lastly, the manuscript contains a lot of material that was previously (and often multiple times) published elsewhere, including the Physical Review journals. For instance, the experimental part of Fig. 2 was shown already in Refs. 26, 27 and 28 in essentially the same graphical form; the top part of Fig. 9 appeared in Refs. 19, 4 and in PRL 90, 196404 (2003). I think that reprinting these results is not necessary and just referencing the earlier papers would be sufficient

X-Ray Absorption Spectroscopy of Uranium Dioxide

After the CMMD Seminar by Sung Woo Yu on the subject of the x-ray spectroscopy of UO2, there arose some questions concerning the XAS of UO2. These questions can be distilled down to these three issues: (1) The validity of the data; (2) The monchromator energy calibration; and (3) The validity of XAS component of the figure shown. The following will be shown: (1) The data is valid; (2) It is possible to calibrate the monchromator; and (3) The XAS component of the above picture is correct. The remainder of this document is in three sections, corresponding to these three issues