proGenomes: a resource for consistent functional and taxonomic annotations of prokaryotic genomes

The availability of microbial genomes has opened many new avenues of research within microbiology. This has been driven primarily by comparative genomics approaches, which rely on accurate and consistent characterization of genomic sequences. It is nevertheless difficult to obtain consistent taxonomic and integrated functional annotations for defined prokaryotic clades. Thus, we developed proGenomes, a resource that provides user-friendly access to currently 25 038 high-quality genomes whose sequences and consistent annotations can be retrieved individually or by taxonomic clade. These genomes are assigned to 5306 consistent and accurate taxonomic species clusters based on previously established methodology. proGenomes also contains functional information for almost 80 million protein-coding genes, including a comprehensive set of general annotations and more focused annotations for carbohydrate-active enzymes and antibiotic resistance genes. Additionally, broad habitat information is provided for many genomes. All genomes and associated information can be downloaded by user-selected clade or multiple habitat-specific sets of representative genomes. We expect that the availability of high-quality genomes with comprehensive functional annotations will promote advances in clinical microbial genomics, functional evolution and other subfields of microbiology. proGenomes is available at http://progenomes.embl.de

Experimental investigation on shock wave diffraction over sharp and curved splitters

Shock wave diffraction occurs when a normal travelling wave passes through a sudden area expansion. Turbulent, compressible, and vortical are the characterising adjectives that describe the flow features, which are slowly smeared out due to the dissipative nature of turbulence. The study of this phenomenon provides insight into several flow structures such as shear layer formation, vortex development, and vortex/shock interaction whose applications include noise control, propulsion or wing aerodynamics. A large amount of research has been carried out in the analysis of shock wave diffraction mainly around sharp wedges, but only few studies have considered rounded corners. This project has the aim to examine and compare the flow features which develop around three different geometries, ramp, symmetric and rounded, with experimental incident shock Mach numbers of 1.31 and 1.59, and Reynolds numbers of 1.08×106 and 1.68×106. Schlieren photography is used to obtain qualitative information about the evolution of the flow field. The results show that ramp and symmetrical wedges with a tip angle of 172° behave in the same manner, which exhibit clear dissimilarities with a curved corner. The flow field evolves more rapidly for a higher incoming Mach number which is also responsible for the development of stronger structures

Large Anomalous Hall and Nernst Effects in High Curie-Temperature Iron-Based Heusler Compounds

Abstract The interplay between topology and magnetism has recently sparked the frontier studies of magnetic topological materials that exhibit intriguing anomalous Hall and Nernst effects owning to the large intrinsic Berry curvature (BC). To better understand the anomalous quantum transport properties of these materials and their implications for future applications such as electronic and thermoelectric devices, it is crucial to discover more novel material platforms for performing anomalous transverse transport studies. Here, it is experimentally demonstrated that low-cost Fe-based Heusler compounds exhibit large anomalous Hall and Nernst effects. An anomalous Hall conductivity of 250?750 S cm?1 and Nernst thermopower of above 2 µV K?1 are observed near room temperature. The positive effect of anti-site disorder on the anomalous Hall transport is revealed. Considering the very high Curie temperature (nearly 1000 K), larger Nernst thermopowers at high temperatures are expected owing to the existing magnetic order and the intrinsic BC. This work provides a background for developing low-cost Fe-based Heusler compounds as a new material platform for anomalous transport studies and applications, in particular, near and above room temperature