Optical Levitation of a Droplet under Linear Increase of Gravitational Acceleration

Optical levitation of a liquid droplet in gas phase was investigated under timedependent change of the gravitational acceleration with specific flight pattern of an airplane. Through multiple trials under linear increase of effective gravitational acceleration, we performed the experiment of ptical trapping of a droplet from 0.3g_0 to 0.9g_0, where g_0 = 9.8 m/s^2. During such change of the effective gravitational acceleration, the trapping position on a droplet with the radius of 14 μm was found to be lowered by ca. 100 μm. The essential feature of the change of the trapping position is reproduced by a theoretical calculation under the framework of ray optics. As far as we know, the present study is the first report on optical levitation under time-dependent gravitational change

Toward the Stable Optical Trapping of a Droplet with Counter Laser Beams under Microgravity

To identify the optimum conditions for the optical trapping of a droplet under microgravity, we theoretically analyzed the efficiency of trapping with counter laser beams. We found that the distance between the two foci is an important parameter for obtaining stable trapping conditions. We also performed an optical trapping experiment with counter laser beams under microgravity. The experimental results correspond well to the theoretical prediction

Self Running Droplet: Emergence of Regular Motion from Nonequilibrium Noise

Spontaneous motion of an oil droplet driven by chemical nonequilibricity is reported. It is shown that the droplet undergoes regular rhythmic motion under appropriately designed boundary conditions, whereas it exhibits random motion in an isotropic environment. This study is a novel manifestation on the direct energy transformation of chemical energy into regular spatial-motion under isothermal conditions. A simple mathematical equation including noise reproduces the essential feature of the transition from irregularity into periodic regular motion. Our results will inspire the theoretical study on the mechanism of molecular motors in living matter, working under significant influence of thermal fluctuation.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Chemo-Sensitive Running Droplet

Chemical control of the spontaneous motion of a reactive oil droplet moving on a glass substrate under an aqueous phase is reported. Experimental results show that the self-motion of an oil droplet is confined on an acid-treated glass surface. The transient behavior of oil-droplet motion is also observed with a high-speed video camera. A mathematical model that incorporates the effect of the glass surface charge is built based on the experimental observation of oil-droplet motion. A numerical simulation of this mathematical model reproduced the essential features concerning confinement within a certain chemical territory of oil-droplet motion, and also its transient behavior. Our results may shed light on physical aspects of reactive spreading and a chemotaxis in living things.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figure

A dominant repressor version of the tomatoSl-ERF.B3gene confers ethylene hypersensitivity via feedback regulation of ethylene signaling and response components

Ethylene Response Factors (ERFs) are downstream components of the ethylene signal transduction pathway, although their role in ethylene-dependent developmental processes remains poorly understood. As the ethylene-inducible tomato Sl-ERF.B3 has been shown previously to display a strong binding affinity to GCC-box-containing promoters, its physiological significance was addressed here by a reverse genetics approach. However, classical up- and down-regulation strategies failed to give clear clues to its roles in planta, probably due to functional redundancy among ERF family members. Expression of a dominant repressor ERF.B3-SRDX version of Sl-ERF.B3 in the tomato resulted in pleiotropic ethylene responses and vegetative and reproductive growth phenotypes. The dominant repressor etiolated seedlings displayed partial constitutive ethylene response in the absence of ethylene and adult plants exhibited typical ethylene-related alterations such as leaf epinasty, premature flower senescence and accelerated fruit abscission. The multiple symptoms related to enhanced ethylene sensitivity correlated with the altered expression of ethylene biosynthesis and signaling genes and suggested the involvement of Sl-ERF.B3 in a feedback mechanism that regulates components of ethylene production and response. Moreover, Sl-ERF.B3 was shown to modulate the transcription of a set of ERFs and revealed the existence of a complex network interconnecting different ERF genes. Overall, the study indicated that Sl-ERF.B3 had a critical role in the regulation of multiple genes and identified a number of ERFs among its primary targets, consistent with the pleiotropic phenotypes displayed by the dominant repression lines

Re-development and arrangement of waterfront space as the iconic area of Makassar, Indonesia

LAUREA MAGISTRALEIl progetto di tesi si trova a Makassar, in Indonesia, che si trova nel clima tropicale. Questo progetto sta venendo dalla visione del comune per ridisegnare e ri-sviluppare quella zona nel centro della città e area iconica per la città. L'obiettivo è come progettare tutte quelle funzioni lì solo in una particolare area. Quindi, fondamentalmente, l'edificio ha una funzione commerciale che ha vendite al dettaglio e ristoranti insieme. Tutti i venditori al dettaglio e i ristoranti provengono da quella zona. li facciamo tutti diventare in un unico edificio. L'altro scopo, noi proviamo a minimizzare il consumo di energia con la raccolta dell'energia dalle parti naturali che la città ha. Sono il sole, il vento e l'acqua del mare e della pioggia. Tutte quelle risorse naturali di energia daranno all'edificio e all'area circostante, finché non avremo quasi zero consumi di energia. Stiamo usando pannelli solari fotovoltaici e turbine eoliche per raccogliere le energie.The Thesis Project is located in Makassar, Indonesia which is in tropical climate. This project is coming from the vision of the municipality to redesign and re-develop that area into the city centre and iconic area for the city. The aim is how to design all those functions there into one particular area only. SO, basically, the building has commercial funtion which has retails and restaurants together.All retails and restaurants are from that area. we just make all of them become in one unit building. The other aim, we try to minimize the energy consumption with collecting the energy from the natural parts which the city has. They are the sun, wind, and water from the sea and from the rain. All those natural resources of energy will give to the building and the surrounding area, until we got nearly zero energy consumption. We are using solar photovoltaic panels and wind turbines to collect the energies

Higher-continuity s-version of finite element method with B-spline functions

This paper proposes a strategy to solve the problems of the conventional s-version of finite element method (SFEM) fundamentally. Because SFEM can reasonably model an analytical domain by superimposing meshes with different spatial resolutions, it has intrinsic advantages of local high accuracy, low computation time, and simple meshing procedure. However, it has disadvantages such as accuracy of numerical integration and matrix singularity. Although several additional techniques have been proposed to mitigate these limitations, they are computationally expensive or ad-hoc, and detract from its strengths. To solve these issues, we propose a novel strategy called B-spline based SFEM. To improve the accuracy of numerical integration, we employed cubic B-spline basis functions with $C^2$-continuity across element boundaries as the global basis functions. To avoid matrix singularity, we applied different basis functions to different meshes. Specifically, we employed the Lagrange basis functions as local basis functions. The numerical results indicate that using the proposed method, numerical integration can be calculated with sufficient accuracy without any additional techniques used in conventional SFEM. Furthermore, the proposed method avoids matrix singularity and is superior to conventional methods in terms of convergence for solving linear equations. Therefore, the proposed method has the potential to reduce computation time while maintaining a comparable accuracy to conventional SFEM.Comment: 40 pages, 15 figures and 2 table