Three Dimensional Structure and Energy Balance of a Coronal Mass Ejection

The Ultraviolet Coronagraph Spectrometer (UVCS) observed Doppler shifted material of a partial Halo Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) on December 13 2001. The observed ratio of [O V]/O V] is a reliable density diagnostic important for assessing the state of the plasma. Earlier UVCS observations of CMEs found evidence that the ejected plasma is heated long after the eruption. We have investigated the heating rates, which represent a significant fraction of the CME energy budget. The parameterized heating and radiative and adiabatic cooling have been used to evaluate the temperature evolution of the CME material with a time dependent ionization state model. The functional form of a flux rope model for interplanetary magnetic clouds was also used to parameterize the heating. We find that continuous heating is required to match the UVCS observations. To match the O VI-bright knots, a higher heating rate is required such that the heating energy is greater than the kinetic energy. The temperatures for the knots bright in Ly$\alpha$ and C III emission indicate that smaller heating rates are required for those regions. In the context of the flux rope model, about 75% of the magnetic energy must go into heat in order to match the O VI observations. We derive tighter constraints on the heating than earlier analyses, and we show that thermal conduction with the Spitzer conductivity is not sufficient to account for the heating at large heights.Comment: 40 pages, 16 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ For associated mpeg file, please see https://www.cora.nwra.com/~jylee/mpg/f5.mp

Adaptive evolution of molecular phenotypes

Molecular phenotypes link genomic information with organismic functions, fitness, and evolution. Quantitative traits are complex phenotypes that depend on multiple genomic loci. In this paper, we study the adaptive evolution of a quantitative trait under time-dependent selection, which arises from environmental changes or through fitness interactions with other co-evolving phenotypes. We analyze a model of trait evolution under mutations and genetic drift in a single-peak fitness seascape. The fitness peak performs a constrained random walk in the trait amplitude, which determines the time-dependent trait optimum in a given population. We derive analytical expressions for the distribution of the time-dependent trait divergence between populations and of the trait diversity within populations. Based on this solution, we develop a method to infer adaptive evolution of quantitative traits. Specifically, we show that the ratio of the average trait divergence and the diversity is a universal function of evolutionary time, which predicts the stabilizing strength and the driving rate of the fitness seascape. From an information-theoretic point of view, this function measures the macro-evolutionary entropy in a population ensemble, which determines the predictability of the evolutionary process. Our solution also quantifies two key characteristics of adapting populations: the cumulative fitness flux, which measures the total amount of adaptation, and the adaptive load, which is the fitness cost due to a population's lag behind the fitness peak.Comment: Figures are not optimally displayed in Firefo

Verifying Policy Enforcers

Policy enforcers are sophisticated runtime components that can prevent failures by enforcing the correct behavior of the software. While a single enforcer can be easily designed focusing only on the behavior of the application that must be monitored, the effect of multiple enforcers that enforce different policies might be hard to predict. So far, mechanisms to resolve interferences between enforcers have been based on priority mechanisms and heuristics. Although these methods provide a mechanism to take decisions when multiple enforcers try to affect the execution at a same time, they do not guarantee the lack of interference on the global behavior of the system. In this paper we present a verification strategy that can be exploited to discover interferences between sets of enforcers and thus safely identify a-priori the enforcers that can co-exist at run-time. In our evaluation, we experimented our verification method with several policy enforcers for Android and discovered some incompatibilities.Comment: Oliviero Riganelli, Daniela Micucci, Leonardo Mariani, and Yli\`es Falcone. Verifying Policy Enforcers. Proceedings of 17th International Conference on Runtime Verification (RV), 2017. (to appear

The Molecular Basis of Anti-HCV Drug Resistance

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a significant medical problem and has become one of the leading causes of chronic liver disease. HCV replicates at a high rate, and due to inherently inaccurate nucleotide incorporation and lack of proofreading and post-replication repair, mutations are inevitable. In the era of direct acting antivirals (DAAs), treatment for HCV has become highly effective, but there are still about 5–10% of treated patients who do not achieve sustained virological response (SVR). There are many factors that affect SVR rates including the absorption and metabolism of DAAs, genetic make-up, the presence or absence of cirrhosis, and severity and resistance of HCV to DAAs. An important factor influencing treatment failure is HCV resistance. The majority of treatment failures while on DAAs are not due to on-treatment failures, but due to relapses. The exact mechanism for mutation-associated relapse is unclear, but possible theories include persistent intrahepatocytic viral replication and/or differences in the levels of host immune response

A solar powered handheld plasma source for microbial decontamination applications

A fully portable atmospheric pressure air plasma system is reported to be suitable for the microbial decontamination of both surfaces and liquids. The device operates in quiescent air, and includes an integrated battery which is charged from a solar cell and weighs less than 750 g, making it highly amenable for a wide variety of applications beyond the laboratory. Using particle imaging velocimetry to visualise air flows around the device, the geometric configuration of the plasma generating electrodes was enhanced to induce a gas flow on the order of 0.5 m s-1 directed towards a sample placed downstream, thus improving the transport of plasma generated reactive species to the sample. The microbial decontamination efficiency of the system was assessed using potable water samples inoculated with common waterborne organisms Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas fluorescens. The reduction in the number of microorganisms was found to be in the range of 2-8 log and was strongly dependent on the plasma generation conditions