166 research outputs found
Dynamics of braze spreading
AbstractFundamental studies of liquid flow provide a useful framework for analysing the spreading behaviour of brazes. Three stages can be distinguished by analysing kinetic data for the spreading of a reactive NiP braze over FeCr workpieces. The first and last stages when the interfacial microstructure is relatively stable can be modelled by mathematical relationships developed to describe the flow of idealised non-reactive systems, while the intermediate stage can be related to the flow kinetics of active metal brazes over ceramics. We discuss the mechanisms responsible and argue that classification of kinetic behaviour could be of value in modelling other systems
Analysis and prevention of dent defects formed during strip casting of twin-induced plasticity steels
Rapid-solidification experiments were conducted for understanding dent defects formed during strip casting of twin-induced plasticity (TWIP) steels. The rapid-solidification experiments reproduced the dent defects formed on these steels, which were generally located at valleys of the shot-blasted roughness on the substrate. The rapid-solidification experiment results reveal that the number of dips, the Mn content of the steel, and the surface roughness of the substrate affect the depth and size of dents formed on the solidified-shell surfaces, while the composition of the atmosphere gases and the carbon content of the steel are not factors. The formation of dents was attributed to the entrapment of gases inside the roughness valleys of the substrate surface and their volume expansion due to the temperature of the steel melt and the latent heat. The dents could be prevented when the thermal expansion of gases was suppressed by making longitudinal grooves on the substrate surface, which allowed the entrapped gases to escape. Sound solidified shells were obtained by optimizing the width and depth of the longitudinal grooves and by controlling the shot-blasting conditions.ope
Genome-wide association analysis of susceptibility and clinical phenotype in multiple sclerosis
Multiple sclerosis (MS), a chronic disorder of the central nervous system and common cause of neurological disability in young adults, is characterized by moderate but complex risk heritability. Here we report the results of a genome-wide association study performed in a 1000 prospective case series of well-characterized individuals with MS and group-matched controls using the Sentrix® HumanHap550 BeadChip platform from Illumina. After stringent quality control data filtering, we compared allele frequencies for 551 642 SNPs in 978 cases and 883 controls and assessed genotypic influences on susceptibility, age of onset, disease severity, as well as brain lesion load and normalized brain volume from magnetic resonance imaging exams. A multi-analytical strategy identified 242 susceptibility SNPs exceeding established thresholds of significance, including 65 within the MHC locus in chromosome 6p21.3. Independent replication confirms a role for GPC5, a heparan sulfate proteoglycan, in disease risk. Gene ontology-based analysis shows a functional dichotomy between genes involved in the susceptibility pathway and those affecting the clinical phenotyp
MetNH3 Whim Bog Intercomparison Off-line ammonia metrology intercomparison
There is no regular quality assurance programme for ammonia passive samplers despite widespread use of these samplers across Europe and the rest of the world. In order to improve standards and begin to embed quality assurance in the measurement of ambient ammonia using passive samplers, within the EMRP MetNH3 project a passive sampler intercomparison was planned to enable side-by side exposure of the samplers to varying levels of ammonia in the field. From this experiment and in parallel the NPL CATFAC experiment (also within MetNH3), sufficient information and protocols could be developed. The method and infrastructure developed will then be available for future studies
Statistical Mechanics of Horizontal Gene Transfer in Evolutionary Ecology
The biological world, especially its majority microbial component, is
strongly interacting and may be dominated by collective effects. In this
review, we provide a brief introduction for statistical physicists of the way
in which living cells communicate genetically through transferred genes, as
well as the ways in which they can reorganize their genomes in response to
environmental pressure. We discuss how genome evolution can be thought of as
related to the physical phenomenon of annealing, and describe the sense in
which genomes can be said to exhibit an analogue of information entropy. As a
direct application of these ideas, we analyze the variation with ocean depth of
transposons in marine microbial genomes, predicting trends that are consistent
with recent observations using metagenomic surveys.Comment: Accepted by Journal of Statistical Physic
Meta-analysis of Genome-Wide Association Studies for Extraversion: Findings from the Genetics of Personality Consortium
Extraversion is a relatively stable and heritable personality trait associated with numerous psychosocial, lifestyle and health outcomes. Despite its substantial heritability, no genetic variants have been detected in previous genome-wide association (GWA) studies, which may be due to relatively small sample sizes of those studies. Here, we report on a large meta-analysis of GWA studies for extraversion in 63,030 subjects in 29 cohorts. Extraversion item data from multiple personality inventories were harmonized across inventories and cohorts. No genome-wide significant associations were found at the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) level but there was one significant hit at the gene level for a long non-coding RNA site (LOC101928162). Genome-wide complex trait analysis in two large cohorts showed that the additive variance explained by common SNPs was not significantly different from zero, but polygenic risk scores, weighted using linkage information, significantly predicted extraversion scores in an independent cohort. These results show that extraversion is a highly polygenic personality trait, with an architecture possibly different from other complex human traits, including other personality traits. Future studies are required to further determine which genetic variants, by what modes of gene action, constitute the heritable nature of extraversion
A Universal Power-law Prescription for Variability from Synthetic Images of Black Hole Accretion Flows
We present a framework for characterizing the spatiotemporal power spectrum of the variability expected from the horizon-scale emission structure around supermassive black holes, and we apply this framework to a library of general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations and associated general relativistic ray-traced images relevant for Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) observations of Sgr A*. We find that the variability power spectrum is generically a red-noise process in both the temporal and spatial dimensions, with the peak in power occurring on the longest timescales and largest spatial scales. When both the time-averaged source structure and the spatially integrated light-curve variability are removed, the residual power spectrum exhibits a universal broken power-law behavior. On small spatial frequencies, the residual power spectrum rises as the square of the spatial frequency and is proportional to the variance in the centroid of emission. Beyond some peak in variability power, the residual power spectrum falls as that of the time-averaged source structure, which is similar across simulations; this behavior can be naturally explained if the variability arises from a multiplicative random field that has a steeper high-frequency power-law index than that of the time-averaged source structure. We briefly explore the ability of power spectral variability studies to constrain physical parameters relevant for the GRMHD simulations, which can be scaled to provide predictions for black holes in a range of systems in the optically thin regime. We present specific expectations for the behavior of the M87* and Sgr A* accretion flows as observed by the EHT
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