Pressure Measurements in a Wire-Wrapped 61-Pin Hexagonal Fuel Bundle

The sodium fast reactor is a type of liquid metal fast breeder nuclear reactor. Fast reactors offer a number of benefits over conventional thermal reactors such as, a more abundant source of fuel, and are inherent increases in safety. Fast reactor technology was actively pursued in the 60’s and 70’s but interest in the nuclear industry slowed shortly thereafter as did interest in fast reactor technology. The increase in demand for cleaner safer energy has resulted in an increase in research into liquid metal fast reactors. In the interest of safety and improved efficiency, significant research efforts, both in the past and the present, have investigated coolant flow properties in LWR fuel bundles. These bundles pack the fuel pins in a square array and utilize spacer grids at various points along the bundle’s length. Contrast to SFR fuel bundles that arrange the fuel pins in a triangular array that are spaced evenly with a wire spacer that is wrapped helically around the fuel rod. There exists extensive literature and experimental data which characterize the flow in this complex geometrical configuration, but not all combinations of parameters have been investigated, and more modern instrumentation could lead to more accurate data. This work has produced pressure measurements at two axial locations for a wide range of Reynolds number. High accuracy instrumentation was used and the uncertainty in the measurements has been quantified. Azimuthal differential measurements have also been produced at two axial locations

Pressure Measurements in a Wire-Wrapped 61-Pin Hexagonal Fuel Bundle

The sodium fast reactor is a type of liquid metal fast breeder nuclear reactor. Fast reactors offer a number of benefits over conventional thermal reactors such as, a more abundant source of fuel, and are inherent increases in safety. Fast reactor technology was actively pursued in the 60’s and 70’s but interest in the nuclear industry slowed shortly thereafter as did interest in fast reactor technology. The increase in demand for cleaner safer energy has resulted in an increase in research into liquid metal fast reactors. In the interest of safety and improved efficiency, significant research efforts, both in the past and the present, have investigated coolant flow properties in LWR fuel bundles. These bundles pack the fuel pins in a square array and utilize spacer grids at various points along the bundle’s length. Contrast to SFR fuel bundles that arrange the fuel pins in a triangular array that are spaced evenly with a wire spacer that is wrapped helically around the fuel rod. There exists extensive literature and experimental data which characterize the flow in this complex geometrical configuration, but not all combinations of parameters have been investigated, and more modern instrumentation could lead to more accurate data. This work has produced pressure measurements at two axial locations for a wide range of Reynolds number. High accuracy instrumentation was used and the uncertainty in the measurements has been quantified. Azimuthal differential measurements have also been produced at two axial locations

The Ontology Lookup Service, a lightweight cross-platform tool for controlled vocabulary queries

BACKGROUND: With the vast amounts of biomedical data being generated by high-throughput analysis methods, controlled vocabularies and ontologies are becoming increasingly important to annotate units of information for ease of search and retrieval. Each scientific community tends to create its own locally available ontology. The interfaces to query these ontologies tend to vary from group to group. We saw the need for a centralized location to perform controlled vocabulary queries that would offer both a lightweight web-accessible user interface as well as a consistent, unified SOAP interface for automated queries. RESULTS: The Ontology Lookup Service (OLS) was created to integrate publicly available biomedical ontologies into a single database. All modified ontologies are updated daily. A list of currently loaded ontologies is available online. The database can be queried to obtain information on a single term or to browse a complete ontology using AJAX. Auto-completion provides a user-friendly search mechanism. An AJAX-based ontology viewer is available to browse a complete ontology or subsets of it. A programmatic interface is available to query the webservice using SOAP. The service is described by a WSDL descriptor file available online. A sample Java client to connect to the webservice using SOAP is available for download from SourceForge. All OLS source code is publicly available under the open source Apache Licence. CONCLUSION: The OLS provides a user-friendly single entry point for publicly available ontologies in the Open Biomedical Ontology (OBO) format. It can be accessed interactively or programmatically at

Serum resistin is associated with C-reactive protein and LDL- cholesterol in type 2 diabetes and coronary artery disease in a Saudi population

Aims Resistin is an adipocyte-derived factor implicated in obesity-associated type 2 diabetes (T2DM). This study examines the association between human serum resistin, T2DM and coronary heart disease. Methods One hundred and fourteen Saudi Arabian patients (male: female ratio 46:68; age 51.4 (mean ± SD)11.7 years; median and range: 45.59 (11.7) years and BMI: 27.1 (mean ± SD) 8.1 Kgm2 median and range: 30.3 (6.3) were studied. Serum resistin and C-reactive protein (CRP), a marker of inflammation CRP levels, were measured in all subjects. (35 patients had type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM); 22 patients had coronary heart disease (CHD). Results Serum resistin levels were 1.2-fold higher in type 2 diabetes and 1.3-fold higher in CHD than in controls (p = 0.01). In addition, CRP was significantly increased in both T2DM and CHD patients (p = 0.007 and p = 0.002 respectively). The use of regression analysis also determined that serum resistin correlated with CRP levels (p = 0.04, R2 0.045). Conclusion The findings from this study further implicate resistin as a circulating protein associated with T2DM and CHD. In addition this study also demonstrates an association between resistin and CRP, a marker of inflammation in type 2 diabetic patients

{Polynomial Kernels for λ\lambda-extendible Properties Parameterized Above the {Poljak--Turz{\'{i}}k} Bound}

Poljak and Turzik (Discrete Mathematics 1986) introduced the notion of {\lambda}-extendible properties of graphs as a generalization of the property of being bipartite. They showed that for any 0 < {\lambda} < 1 and {\lambda}-extendible property {\Pi}, any connected graph G on n vertices and m edges contains a spanning subgraph H in {\Pi} with at least {\lambda}m + (1-{\lambda})(n-1)/2 edges. The property of being bipartite is {\lambda}-extendible for {\lambda} = 1/2, and so the Poljak-Turzik bound generalizes the well-known Edwards-Erdos bound for Max-Cut. Other examples of {\lambda}-extendible properties include: being an acyclic oriented graph, a balanced signed graph, or a q-colorable graph for some integer q. Mnich et. al. (FSTTCS 2012) defined the closely related notion of strong {\lambda}-extendibility. They showed that the problem of finding a subgraph satisfying a given strongly {\lambda}-extendible property {\Pi} is fixed-parameter tractable (FPT) when parameterized above the Poljak-Turzik bound - does there exist a spanning subgraph H of a connected graph G such that H in {\Pi} and H has at least {\lambda}m + (1-{\lambda})(n-1)/2 + k edges? - subject to the condition that the problem is FPT on a certain simple class of graphs called almost-forests of cliques. In this paper we settle the kernelization complexity of nearly all problems parameterized above Poljak-Turzik bounds, in the affirmative. We show that these problems admit quadratic kernels (cubic when {\lambda} = 1/2), without using the assumption that the problem is FPT on almost-forests of cliques. Thus our results not only remove the technical condition of being FPT on almost-forests of cliques from previous results, but also unify and extend previously known kernelization results in this direction. Our results add to the select list of generic kernelization results known in the literature

‘Priming’ exercise and O2 uptake kinetics during treadmill running

We tested the hypothesis that priming exercise would speed kinetics during treadmill running. Eight subjects completed a square-wave protocol, involving two bouts of treadmill running at 70% of the difference between the running speeds at lactate threshold (LT) and max, separated by 6-min of walking at 4 km h−1, on two occasions. Oxygen uptake was measured breath-by-breath and subsequently modelled using non-linear regression techniques. Heart rate and blood lactate concentration were significantly elevated prior to the second exercise bout compared to the first. However, kinetics was not significantly different between the first and second exercise bouts (mean ± S.D., phase II time constant, Bout 1: 16 ± 3 s vs. Bout 2: 16 ± 4 s; slow component amplitude, Bout 1: 0.24 ± 0.10 L min−1vs. Bout 2: 0.20 ± 0.12 L min−1; mean response time, Bout 1: 34 ± 4 s vs. Bout 2: 34 ± 6 s; P > 0.05 for all comparisons). These results indicate that, contrary to previous findings with other exercise modalities, priming exercise does not alter kinetics during high-intensity treadmill running, at least in physically active young subjects. We speculate that the relatively fast kinetics and the relatively small slow component in the control (‘un-primed’) condition negated any enhancement of kinetics by priming exercise in this exercise modality