Effective Rheology of Bubbles Moving in a Capillary Tube

We calculate the average volumetric flux versus pressure drop of bubbles moving in a single capillary tube with varying diameter, finding a square-root relation from mapping the flow equations onto that of a driven overdamped pendulum. The calculation is based on a derivation of the equation of motion of a bubble train from considering the capillary forces and the entropy production associated with the viscous flow. We also calculate the configurational probability of the positions of the bubbles.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

Synthesis and study of CuII complex with nitroxide, a jumping crystal analogue

We synthesized 1-ethylimidazolyl-substituted nitronyl nitroxides, i.e., 2-(1-ethylimidazol-4-yl)- (L4Et) and 2-(1-ethylimidazol-5-yl)-4,4,5,5-tetramethyl-4,5-dihydro-1H-imidazole 3-oxide-1-oxyl (L5Et). The stable radical L5Et is an ethyl analog of 2-(1-methylimidazol-5-yl)-4,4,5,5-tetramethyl-4,5-dihydro-1H-imidazole 3-oxide-1-oxyl (L5Me) described earlier, the reaction of which with Cu(hfac)2 (hfac is 1,1,1,5,5,5-hexafluoropentane-2,4-dionate) leads to the formation of the [Cu(hfac)2(L5Me)2] jumping crystals. The reaction of Cu(hfac)2 with L5Et with reagent ratios 1: 2 and 1: 1 yields heterospin complexes [Cu(hfac)2(L5Et)2] and [Cu(hfac)2L5Et]2, respectively. X-ray diffraction study of the mononuclear complex [Cu(hfac)2(L5Et)2] determined that the compound has a packing similar to that of jumping crystals studied earlier, with the only difference being that the O...O contacts between neigh- boring nitroxide groups were found to be 0.3—0.5 Å longer than in [Cu(hfac)2(L5Me)2]. As a result of the lengthening of these contacts, [Cu(hfac)2(L5Et)2] crystals lack chemomechanical activi- ty. We found that when cooling crystals of binuclear complex [Cu(hfac)2L5Et]2 below 50 K, the antiferromagnetic exchange between unpaired electrons of the >N—•O groups of neighboring molecules leads to the full spin-pairing of the nitroxides, with only the Cu2+ ions contributing to the residual paramagnetism of the compound

The Hidden World of Rickettsiales Symbionts: “Candidatus Spectririckettsia obscura,” a Novel Bacterium Found in Brazilian and Indian Paramecium caudatum

Symbioses between bacteria and eukaryotes are widespread and may have significant impact on the evolutionary history of symbiotic partners. The order Rickettsiales is a lineage of intracellular Alphaproteobacteria characterized by an obligate association with a wide range of eukaryotic hosts, including several unicellular organisms, such as ciliates and amoebas. In this work, we characterized the Rickettsiales symbionts associated with two different genotypes of the freshwater ciliate Paramecium caudatum originated from freshwater environments in distant geographical areas. Phylogenetic analyses based on 16S rRNA gene showed that the two symbionts are closely related to each other (99.4% identity), belong to the family Rickettsiaceae, but are far-related with respect to previously characterized Rickettsiales. Consequently, they were assigned to a new species of a novel genus, namely “Candidatus Spectririckettsia obscura.” Screening on a database of short reads from 16S rRNA gene amplicon-based profiling studies confirmed that bacterial sequences related to the new symbiont are preferentially retrieved from freshwater environments, apparently with extremely scarce occurrence (< 0.1% positive samples). The present work provides new information on the still under-explored biodiversity of Rickettsiales, in particular those associated to ciliate host cells