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Entropy and vorticity wave generation in realistic gas turbine combustors
Understanding the nature of the unsteady flow at the combustor exit is required to accurately simulate time dependent phenomena in the turbine entry, such as indirect noise generation. Using Large Eddy Simulations of the combustion process in a realistic geometry, we analyse the flow at its exit. Two realistic, near-ground certification operating conditions are considered. Different mechanisms for large-scale flow and thermal structure generation are described, which are ejected into the turbine. Modal decomposition methods are used to extract the spatial and temporal scales at the turbine entry. We find that, depending on the operating condition, the entropy waves convect as elongated streaks in the core of the combustor annulus or the proximity of the walls. The dominant unsteady character of the fluctuations exhibits different spectral properties, i.e. low-frequency in the core and high-frequency towards walls. At the combustor exit, the vortical field is dominated by the swirl in the air inlet, which is found to have little influence on the entropy perturbations. Further, the importance of considering the interaction of multiple fuel injectors and combustion zones in an annular combustor is investigated. It is shown that pulsating circumferential vorticity modes can occur in multi-sector annular combustors but these, however, do not affect the entropy wave distribution.The authors wish to express their sincere gratitude to Rolls-Royce plc for permission to publish this paper. This work was conducted within the EU Horizon 2020 Framework Research Programme - Clean Sky (CORNET-CORE Noise Technologies), project number: H2020-CS2-CFP01-2014-01/ 686332
Drosophila embryos as model systems for monitoring bacterial infection in real time.
Journal ArticleResearch Support, Non-U.S. Gov'tDrosophila embryos are well studied developmental microcosms that have been used extensively as models for early development and more recently wound repair. Here we extend this work by looking at embryos as model systems for following bacterial infection in real time. We examine the behaviour of injected pathogenic (Photorhabdus asymbiotica) and non-pathogenic (Escherichia coli) bacteria and their interaction with embryonic hemocytes using time-lapse confocal microscopy. We find that embryonic hemocytes both recognise and phagocytose injected wild type, non-pathogenic E. coli in a Dscam independent manner, proving that embryonic hemocytes are phagocytically competent. In contrast, injection of bacterial cells of the insect pathogen Photorhabdus leads to a rapid 'freezing' phenotype of the hemocytes associated with significant rearrangement of the actin cytoskeleton. This freezing phenotype can be phenocopied by either injection of the purified insecticidal toxin Makes Caterpillars Floppy 1 (Mcf1) or by recombinant E. coli expressing the mcf1 gene. Mcf1 mediated hemocyte freezing is shibire dependent, suggesting that endocytosis is required for Mcf1 toxicity and can be modulated by dominant negative or constitutively active Rac expression, suggesting early and unexpected effects of Mcf1 on the actin cytoskeleton. Together these data show how Drosophila embryos can be used to track bacterial infection in real time and how mutant analysis can be used to genetically dissect the effects of specific bacterial virulence factors.Wellcome TrustBBSR
Quantum Clock Synchronization Based on Shared Prior Entanglement
We demonstrate that two spatially separated parties (Alice and Bob) can
utilize shared prior quantum entanglement, and classical communications, to
establish a synchronized pair of atomic clocks. In contrast to classical
synchronization schemes, the accuracy of our protocol is independent of Alice
or Bob's knowledge of their relative locations or of the properties of the
intervening medium.Comment: 4 page
Protection of Pepper Plants from Drought by Microbacterium sp 3J1 by Modulation of the Plant's Glutamine and alpha-ketoglutarate Content: A Comparative Metabolomics Approach
Vilchez JI, Niehaus K, Dowling DN, Gonzalez-Lopez J, Manzanera M. Protection of Pepper Plants from Drought by Microbacterium sp 3J1 by Modulation of the Plant's Glutamine and alpha-ketoglutarate Content: A Comparative Metabolomics Approach. FRONTIERS IN MICROBIOLOGY. 2018;9: 17.Drought tolerance of plants such as tomato or pepper can be improved by their inoculation with rhizobacteria such as Microbacterium sp. 3J1. This interaction depends on the production of trehalose by the microorganisms that in turn modulate the phyto-hormone profile of the plant. In this work we describe the characterization of metabolic changes during the interaction of pepper plants with Microbacterium sp. 3J1 and of the microorganism alone over a period of drought. Our main findings include the observation that the plant responds to the presence of the microorganism by changing the C and N metabolism based on its glutamine and alpha-ketoglutarate content, these changes contribute to major changes in the concentration of molecules involved in the balance of the osmotic pressure. These include sugars and amino-acids; the concentration of antioxidant molecules, of metabolites involved in the production of phytohormones like ethylene, and of substrates used for lignin production such as ferulic and sinapic acids. Most of the altered metabolites of the plant when inoculated with Microbacterium sp. 3J1 in response to drought coincided with the profile of altered metabolites in the microorganism alone when subjected to drought, pointing to a response by which the plant relies on the microbe for the production of such metabolites. To our knowledge this is the first comparative study of the microbe colonized-plant and microbe alone metabolomes under drought stress
Simulations of atomic trajectories near a dielectric surface
We present a semiclassical model of an atom moving in the evanescent field of
a microtoroidal resonator. Atoms falling through whispering-gallery modes can
achieve strong, coherent coupling with the cavity at distances of approximately
100 nanometers from the surface; in this regime, surface-induced Casmir-Polder
level shifts become significant for atomic motion and detection. Atomic transit
events detected in recent experiments are analyzed with our simulation, which
is extended to consider atom trapping in the evanescent field of a microtoroid.Comment: 29 pages, 10 figure
Ion trap simulations of quantum fields in an expanding universe
We propose an experiment in which the phonon excitation of ion(s) in a trap, with a trap frequency exponentially modulated at rate kappa, exhibits a thermal spectrum with an Unruh temperature given by k(B)T=h kappa. We discuss the similarities of this experiment to the response of detectors in a de Sitter universe and the usual Unruh effect for uniformly accelerated detectors. We demonstrate a new Unruh effect for detectors that respond to antinormally ordered moments using the ion's first blue sideband transition
Nano-displacement measurements using spatially multimode squeezed light
We demonstrate the possibility of surpassing the quantum noise limit for
simultaneous multi-axis spatial displacement measurements that have zero mean
values. The requisite resources for these measurements are squeezed light beams
with exotic transverse mode profiles. We show that, in principle, lossless
combination of these modes can be achieved using the non-degenerate Gouy phase
shift of optical resonators. When the combined squeezed beams are measured with
quadrant detectors, we experimentally demonstrate a simultaneous reduction in
the transverse x- and y- displacement fluctuations of 2.2 dB and 3.1 dB below
the quantum noise limit.Comment: 21 pages, 9 figures, submitted to "Special Issue on Fluctuations &
Noise in Photonics & Quantum Optics" of J. Opt.
Quantum computation with linear optics
We present a constructive method to translate small quantum circuits into
their optical analogues, using linear components of present-day quantum optics
technology only. These optical circuits perform precisely the computation that
the quantum circuits are designed for, and can thus be used to test the
performance of quantum algorithms. The method relies on the representation of
several quantum bits by a single photon, and on the implementation of universal
quantum gates using simple optical components (beam splitters, phase shifters,
etc.). The optical implementation of Brassard et al.'s teleportation circuit, a
non-trivial 3-bit quantum computation, is presented as an illustration.Comment: LaTeX with llncs.cls, 11 pages with 5 postscript figures, Proc. of
1st NASA Workshop on Quantum Computation and Quantum Communication (QCQC 98
High precision fundamental constants at the TeV scale
This report summarizes the proceedings of the 2014 Mainz Institute for
Theoretical Physics (MITP) scientific program on "High precision fundamental
constants at the TeV scale". The two outstanding parameters in the Standard
Model dealt with during the MITP scientific program are the strong coupling
constant and the top-quark mass . Lacking knowledge on the
value of those fundamental constants is often the limiting factor in the
accuracy of theoretical predictions. The current status on and
has been reviewed and directions for future research have been identified.Comment: 57 pages, 24 figures, pdflate
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