Hypervelocity impact damage characteristics in beryllium and graphite plates and tubes

Hypervelocity impact damage characteristics in beryllium and graphite plates and tube

Genomic insights into the rapid emergence and evolution of MDR in Staphylococcus pseudintermedius.

OBJECTIVES: MDR methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus pseudintermedius (MRSP) strains have emerged rapidly as major canine pathogens and present serious treatment issues and concerns to public health due to their, albeit low, zoonotic potential. A further understanding of the genetics of resistance arising from a broadly susceptible background of S. pseudintermedius is needed. METHODS: We sequenced the genomes of 12 S. pseudintermedius isolates of varied STs and resistance phenotypes. RESULTS: Nine distinct clonal lineages had acquired either staphylococcal cassette chromosome (SCC) mec elements and/or Tn5405-like elements carrying up to five resistance genes [aphA3, sat, aadE, erm(B), dfrG] to generate MRSP, MDR methicillin-susceptible S. pseudintermedius and MDR MRSP populations. The most successful and clinically problematic MDR MRSP clones, ST68 SCCmecV(T) and ST71 SCCmecII-III, have further accumulated mutations in gyrA and grlA conferring resistance to fluoroquinolones. The carriage of additional mobile genetic elements (MGEs) was highly variable, suggesting that horizontal gene transfer is frequent in S. pseudintermedius populations. CONCLUSIONS: Importantly, the data suggest that MDR MRSP evolved rapidly by the acquisition of a very limited number of MGEs and mutations, and that the use of many classes of antimicrobials may co-select for the spread and emergence of MDR and XDR strains. Antimicrobial stewardship will need to be comprehensive, encompassing human medicine and veterinary disciplines to successfully preserve antimicrobial efficacy

Compositional and Microstructural Evolution of Olivine During Pulsed Laser Irradiation: Insights Based on a FIB/Field-Emission TEM Study

Introduction: The use of pulsed laser irradiation to simulate the short duration, high-energy conditions characteristic of micrometeorite impacts is now an established approach in experimental space weathering studies. The laser generates both melt and vapor deposits that contain nanophase metallic Fe (npFe(sup 0)) grains with size distributions and optical properties similar to those in natural impact-generated melt and vapor deposits. There remains uncertainty, however, about how well lasers simulate the mechanical work and internal (thermal) energy partitioning that occurs in actual impacts. We are currently engaged in making a direct comparison between the products of laser irradiation and experimental/natural hypervelocity impacts. An initial step reported here is to use analytical TEM is to attain a better understanding of how the microstructure and composition of laser deposits evolve over multiple cycles of pulsed laser irradiation. Experimental Methods: We irradiated pressed-powder pellets of San Carlos olivine (Fo(sub 90)) with up to 99 rastered pulses of a GAM ArF excimer laser. The irradiated surface of the sample were characterized by SEM imaging and areas were selected for FIB cross sectioning for TEM study using an FEI Quanta dual-beam electron/focused ion beam instrument. FIB sections were characterized using a JEOL2500SE analytical field-emission scanning transmission electron microscope (FE-STEM) optimized for quantitative element mapping at less than 10 nm spatial resolutions. Results: In the SEM the 99 pulse pressed pellet sample shows a complex, inhomogeneous, distribution of laser-generated material, largely concentrated in narrow gaps and larger depressions between grains. Local concentrations of npFe0 spherules 0.1 to 1 micrometers in size are visible within these deposits in SEM back-scatter images. Fig. 1 shows bright-field STEM images of a FIB cross-section of a one of these deposits that continuously covers the top and sloping side of an olivine grain. The deposit has 3 microstructurally distinct sub-layers composed of silicate glass with varying modal fractions and size distributions of npFe( sup 0) spherules, along with nanocrystalline silicate material. A relatively thin (50-300 nm) topmost surface layer has a high-concentration of npFe0 spherules 5-20 nm in size. Element mapping shows the layer to be enriched in Fe by a factor of 2.5 relative to the olivine substrate, with Mg and Si depleted by 20% and 10% respectively. This is compositionally complementary to the underlying, middle layer of the deposit that is depleted in Fe, enriched in Mg and has a much lower npFe0 concentration. A third layer of nanocrystalline olivine occurs at the substrate interface. Discussion: The FE-STEM results suggest the topmost layer is a vapor deposit, underlain by a thicker microstructurally complex melt-generated layer. The compositional relations suggest the melt layer was partially vaporized, preferentially losing more volatile elements (e.g., Fe). The vaporized material re-condensed to form the thin, npFe(sup 0)-rich surface deposit during or immediately after the scan cycle. Nanocrystalline olivine that grew within the melt layer as it formed and cooled is similar in volume and microstructure to what we have observed in the impact melt lining of a micrometeorite impact crater in olivine. This suggest the time-temperature relations attained in the laser sample may not be too different from a micrometeorite impact. Our TEM observations, however, do not show evidence for the same level of mechanical dam-age (e.g., fracturing) seen around the natural micrometeorite crater

Titan Aerosol Analogs from Aromatic Precursors: Comparisons to Cassini CIRS Observations in the Thermal Infrared

Since Cassini's arrival at Titan, ppm levels of benzene (C6H6) as well as large positive ions, which may be polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). have been detected in the atmosphere. Aromatic molecules. photolytically active in the ultraviolet, may be important in the formation of the organic aerosol comprising the Titan haze layer even when present at low mixing ratios. Yet there have not been laboratory simulations exploring the impact of these molecules as precursors to Titan's organic aerosol. Observations of Titan by the Cassini Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) in the far-infrared (far-IR) between 560 and 20/cm (approx. 18 to 500 microns) and in the mid-infrared (mid-IR) between 1500 and 600/cm (approx. 7 to 17 microns) have been used to infer the vertical variations of Titan's aerosol from the surface to an altitude of 300 km in the far-IR and between 150 and 350 km in the mid-IR. Titan's aerosol has several observed emission features which cannot be reproduced using currently available optical constants from laboratory-generated Titan aerosol analogs, including a broad far-IR feature centered approximately at 140/cm (71 microns)

Scalable Bayesian inference for self-excitatory stochastic processes applied to big American gunfire data

The Hawkes process and its extensions effectively model self-excitatory phenomena including earthquakes, viral pandemics, financial transactions, neural spike trains and the spread of memes through social networks. The usefulness of these stochastic process models within a host of economic sectors and scientific disciplines is undercut by the processes' computational burden: complexity of likelihood evaluations grows quadratically in the number of observations for both the temporal and spatiotemporal Hawkes processes. We show that, with care, one may parallelize these calculations using both central and graphics processing unit implementations to achieve over 100-fold speedups over single-core processing. Using a simple adaptive Metropolis-Hastings scheme, we apply our high-performance computing framework to a Bayesian analysis of big gunshot data generated in Washington D.C. between the years of 2006 and 2019, thereby extending a past analysis of the same data from under 10,000 to over 85,000 observations. To encourage wide-spread use, we provide hpHawkes, an open-source R package, and discuss high-level implementation and program design for leveraging aspects of computational hardware that become necessary in a big data setting.Comment: Submitted to Statistics and Computin

Photolysis of H2O-H2O2 Mixtures: The Destruction of H2O2

We present laboratory results on the loss of H2O2 in solid H2O + H2O2 mixtures at temperatures between 21 and 145 K initiated by UV photolysis (193 nm). Using infrared spectroscopy and microbalance gravimetry, we measured the decrease of the 3.5 micrometer infrared absorption band during UV irradiation and obtained a photodestruction cross section that varies with temperature, being lowest at 70 K. We use our results, along with our previously measured H2O2 production rates via ionizing radiation and ion energy fluxes from the spacecraft to compare H2O2 creation and destruction at icy satellites by ions from their planetary magnetosphere and from solar UV photons. We conclude that, in many cases, H2O2 is not observed on icy satellite surfaces because the H2O2 photodestruction rate is much higher than the production rate via energetic particles, effectively keeping the H2O2 infrared signature at or below the noise level

Compositional and Microstructural Evolution of Olivine Under Multiple-Cycle Pulsed Laser Irradiation as Revealed by FIB/Field-Emission TEM

The use of pulsed laser irradiation to simulate the short duration, high-energy conditions characteristic of micrometeorite impacts is now an established approach in experimental space weathering studies. The laser generates both melt and vapor deposits that contain nanophase metallic Fe (npFe(sup 0)) grains with size distributions and optical properties similar to those in natural impact-generated melt and vapor deposits. There remains uncertainty, however, about how well lasers simulate the mechanical work and internal (thermal) energy partitioning that occurs in actual impacts. We are currently engaged in making a direct comparison between the products of laser irradiation and experimental/natural hypervelocity impacts. An initial step reported here is to use analytical SEM and TEM is to attain a better understanding of how the microstructure and composition of laser deposits evolve over multiple cycles of pulsed laser irradiation

Status Report on Education in the Economics of Animal Health: Results from a European Survey

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Structural studies of the PARP-1 BRCT domain

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase-1 (PARP-1) is one of the first proteins localized to foci of DNA damage. Upon activation by encountering nicked DNA, the PARP-1 mediated trans-poly(ADP-ribosyl)ation of DNA binding proteins occurs, facilitating access and accumulation of DNA repair factors. PARP-1 also auto-(ADP-ribosyl)ates its central BRCT-containing domain forming part of an interaction site for the DNA repair scaffolding protein X-ray cross complementing group 1 protein (XRCC1). The co-localization of XRCC1, as well as bound DNA repair factors, to sites of DNA damage is important for cell survival and genomic integrity.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Here we present the solution structure and biophysical characterization of the BRCT domain of rat PARP-1. The PARP-1 BRCT domain has the globular α/β fold characteristic of BRCT domains and has a thermal melting transition of 43.0°C. In contrast to a previous characterization of this domain, we demonstrate that it is monomeric in solution using both gel-filtration chromatography and small-angle X-ray scattering. Additionally, we report that the first BRCT domain of XRCC1 does not interact significantly with the PARP-1 BRCT domain in the absence of ADP-ribosylation. Moreover, none of the interactions with other longer PARP-1 constructs which previously had been demonstrated in a pull-down assay of mammalian cell extracts were detected.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The PARP-1 BRCT domain has the conserved BRCT fold that is known to be an important protein:protein interaction module in DNA repair and cell signalling pathways. Data indicating no significant protein:protein interactions between PARP-1 and XRCC1 likely results from the absence of poly(ADP-ribose) in one or both binding partners, and further implicates a poly(ADP-ribose)-dependent mechanism for localization of XRCC1 to sites of DNA damage.</p