Study of fluid flow by charged particles

Analytical and experimental effort explores possibility of using charged particles as diagnostic tool in study of fluid flows. Test program involved right circular cylinder and airfoil located in large wind tunnel; ions were injected into flow and resulting currents at surfaces were monitored

StemNet: An Evolving Service for Knowledge Networking in the Life Sciences

Up until now, crucial life science information resources, whether bibliographic or factual databases, are isolated from each other. Moreover, semantic metadata intended to structure their contents is supplied in a manual form only. In the StemNet project we aim at developing a framework for semantic interoperability for these resources. This will facilitate the extraction of relevant information from textual sources and the generation of semantic metadata in a fully automatic manner. In this way, (from a computational perspective) unstructured life science documents are linked to structured biological fact databases, in particular to the identifiers of genes, proteins, etc. Thus, life scientists will be able to seamlessly access information from a homogeneous platform, despite the fact that the original information was unlinked and scattered over the whole variety of heterogeneous life science information resources and, therefore, almost inaccessible for integrated systematic search by academic, clinical, or industrial users

Sds22 regulates aurora B activity and microtubule-kinetochore interactions at mitosis

Sds22 defines protein phosphatase 1 location and function at kinetochores and subsequent activity of aurora B in mitosis

Design of A Flexible, High-volume Direct Flue Gas-to-Algae Conversion Process for Value-added Bioproducts

Carbon conversion processes (where carbon dioxide is not only captured and stored, but converted to commercially-valuable products) have high barriers to sustained and large-scale commercial viability. Mass algae production as a means to carbon emissions reductions is considered to have great commercial potential, but the viability of deployment is going to rely on technological leaps supported by strong public and private investment. Presented in this Design Report is a novel pilot-scale microalgae cultivation system that successfully converts over 50% of the carbon dioxide (CO2) present in a stream of flue gas from a coal-red power plant flue gas into valuable biomass. The process operates at a carbon dioxide input rate of 200 kilograms per day from a 10% carbon dioxide by volume flue gas stream. A 9-15% Return on Investment over a 4-5 year period is reported. The project met a set of highly ambitious carbon conversion goals, and contributes to a positive outlook for the future of algae production for sustainable carbon emissions reduction and value-added product creation. This presented design should encourage investment into pilot-scale and demonstration facilities in a move towards large-scale operation. The presented process can be used to convert high volumes of CO2 to valuable biomass that can be sold for many applications ranging from feed to nutraceuticals to biofuels. The innovative Hybrid Petal Reactor design incorporates a central gas exchange column with a horizontal tubular photobioreactor system that harnesses sunlight during the day, and an internally- illuminated nighttime tank that involves innovative use of optics. The outdoor system was designed to scale with a series of tubes that branch out like petals from the central gas exchange column. The tube design is optimized for high productivity and low costs. An emphasis was placed on designing a process highly considerate of biological constraints. The presented final design offers great flexibility and opportunity for scale-up

Kinetic pinning and biological antifreezes

Biological antifreezes protect cold-water organisms from freezing. An example are the antifreeze proteins (AFPs) that attach to the surface of ice crystals and arrest growth. The mechanism for growth arrest has not been heretofore understood in a quantitative way. We present a complete theory based on a kinetic model. We use the `stones on a pillow' picture. Our theory of the suppression of the freezing point as a function of the concentration of the AFP is quantitatively accurate. It gives a correct description of the dependence of the freezing point suppression on the geometry of the protein, and might lead to advances in design of synthetic AFPs.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Characterization of the Inner Knot of the Crab: The Site of the Gamma-ray Flares?

One of the most intriguing results from the gamma-ray instruments in orbit has been the detection of powerful flares from the Crab Nebula. These flares challenge our understanding of pulsar wind nebulae and models for particle acceleration. We report on the portion of a multiwavelength campaign using Keck, HST, and Chandra concentrating on a small emitting region, the Crab's inner knot, located a fraction of an arcsecond from the pulsar. We find that the knot's radial size, tangential size, peak flux, and the ratio of the flux to that of the pulsar are correlated with the projected distance of the knot from the pulsar. A new approach, using singular value decomposition for analyzing time series of images, was introduced yielding results consistent with the more traditional methods while some uncertainties were substantially reduced. We exploit the characterization of the knot to discuss constraints on standard shock-model parameters that may be inferred from our observations assuming the inner knot lies near to the shocked surface. These include inferences as to wind magnetization, shock shape parameters such as incident angle and poloidal radius of curvature, as well as the IR/optical emitting particle enthalpy fraction. We find that while the standard shock model gives good agreement with observation in many respects, there remain two puzzles: (a) The observed angular size of the knot relative to the pulsar--knot separation is much smaller than expected; (b) The variable, yet high degree of polarization reported is difficult to reconcile with a highly relativistic downstream flow.Comment: 46 pages, 14 figures, submitted to the Astrophysical Journa