Spontaneous formation of nonspherical water ice grains in a plasma environment

Saturn's rings, terrestrial polar mesospheric clouds, and astrophysical molecular clouds are all dusty plasma environments where tiny grains of water ice are an important constituent. Existing models typically assume that the ice grains are spherical and then invoke various arguments about the normal distribution or the power law dependence of grain number density on grain radius. Using a laboratory plasma in which water ice grains spontaneously form, we investigated the validity of the traditional assumption that these grains are spherical. We found that in certain cases at low ambient pressures, water ice grains in the laboratory dusty plasma are not spherical but instead are highly elongated, i.e., ellipsoidal. Preliminary analysis suggests that electrical forces associated with the dusty plasma environment are responsible for the nonspherical shape

Formation and Alignment of Elongated, Fractal-like Water-ice Grains in Extremely Cold, Weakly Ionized Plasma

Elongated, fractal-like water-ice grains are observed to form spontaneously when water vapor is injected into a weakly ionized laboratory plasma formed in a background gas cooled to an astrophysically relevant temperature. The water-ice grains form in 1–2 minutes, levitate with regular spacing, and are aligned parallel to the sheath electric field. Water-ice grains formed in plasma where the neutrals and ions have low mass, such as hydrogen and helium, are larger, more elongated, and more fractal-like than water-ice grains formed in plasmas where the neutrals and ions have high mass such as argon and krypton. Typical aspect ratios (length to width ratio) are as great as 5 while typical fractal dimensions are ~1.7. Water-ice grain lengths in plasmas with low neutral and ion masses can be several hundred microns long. Infrared absorption spectroscopy reveals that the water-ice grains are crystalline and so are similar in constitution to the water-ice grains in protoplanetary disks, Saturn's rings, and mesospheric clouds. The properties and behavior of these laboratory water-ice grains may provide insights into morphology and alignment behavior of water-ice grains in astrophysical dusty plasmas

Vortex motion of dust particles due to non-conservative ion drag force in a plasma

Vortex motion of the dust in a dusty plasma is shown to result because non-parallelism of the ion density gradient and the gradient of the magnitude of the ion ambipolar velocity cause the ion drag force on dust grains to be non-conservative. Dust grain poloidal vortices consistent with the model predictions are experimentally observed, and the vortices change character with imposed changes in the ion temperature profile as predicted. For a certain ion temperature profile, two adjacent co-rotating poloidal vortices have a well-defined X-point analogous to the X-point in magnetic reconnection

Direct Detection of the Biological Toxin in Acidic Environment by Electrochemical Impedimetric Immunosensor

This study describes the direct detection of the biological toxin (Ricin) in acidic environment without pH adjustment by hydrophobically modified electrochemical impedance immunosensor (EII). The nano-porous aluminum substrate for EII was hydrophobically modified via self-assembled monolayer (SAM) of APTES. Biosensor for the detection of the Ricin was fabricated by the covalent cross-linking of antibody (Ab) with APTES-SAM. The immunoreactions between the immobilized Ab and the biological toxin in several diagnostic solutions were monitored by the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) under the polarization of EII versus reference electrode. EII could detect the presence of the biological toxin in acidic foods in 20 mins without pH adjustment. The negatively charged ions including hydroxides would be adsorbed on the hydrophobic body of APTES-SAMs by the polarization during EIS analysis, and offset the effect of acids on the immunological activity of the immobilized Ab. It suggested that the adsorption of negatively charged ions helped to keep the immunological activities of the immobilized Ab on EII in acidic environment. Proposed mechanism of the localized pH adjustment that makes possible immunoreaction occurrence in low pH sample matrix is briefly discussed

The Empirical Investigation of a Wiki based group system in organizations.

In this paper, success factors for wiki based information systems in organizations are discussed. Based on information system success factors which have been discussed in previous research, this study will present the conceptual framework of how to predict knowledge work intention on using a wiki based information system and what the wiki based information system’s success factors are by studying relationships between user satisfactions and IS service quality. In addition, the role of managerial support for increasing a user’s adoption of a wiki-based information system will be discussed, based on a user’s behavioral intention to use the wiki

Extreme ultra-violet burst, particle heating, and whistler wave emission in fast magnetic reconnection induced by kink-driven Rayleigh-Taylor instability

A spatially localized energetic extreme ultra-violet (EUV) burst is imaged at the presumed position of fast magnetic reconnection in a plasma jet produced by a coaxial helicity injection source; this EUV burst indicates strong localized electron heating. A circularly polarized high frequency magnetic field perturbation is simultaneously observed at some distance from the reconnection region indicating that the reconnection emits whistler waves and that Hall dynamics likely governs the reconnection. Spectroscopic measurement shows simultaneous fast ion heating. The electron heating is consistent with Ohmic dissipation, while the ion heating is consistent with ion trajectories becoming stochastic

Automated Analysis of a Nematode Population-based Chemosensory Preference Assay

The nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans' compact nervous system of only 302 neurons underlies a diverse repertoire of behaviors. To facilitate the dissection of the neural circuits underlying these behaviors, the development of robust and reproducible behavioral assays is necessary. Previous C. elegans behavioral studies have used variations of a "drop test", a "chemotaxis assay", and a "retention assay" to investigate the response of C. elegans to soluble compounds. The method described in this article seeks to combine the complementary strengths of the three aforementioned assays. Briefly, a small circle in the middle of each assay plate is divided into four quadrants with the control and experimental solutions alternately placed. After the addition of the worms, the assay plates are loaded into a behavior chamber where microscope cameras record the worms' encounters with the treated regions. Automated video analysis is then performed and a preference index (PI) value for each video is generated. The video acquisition and automated analysis features of this method minimizes the experimenter's involvement and any associated errors. Furthermore, minute amounts of the experimental compound are used per assay and the behavior chamber's multi-camera setup increases experimental throughput. This method is particularly useful for conducting behavioral screens of genetic mutants and novel chemical compounds. However, this method is not appropriate for studying stimulus gradient navigation due to the close proximity of the control and experimental solution regions. It should also not be used when only a small population of worms is available. While suitable for assaying responses only to soluble compounds in its current form, this method can be easily modified to accommodate multimodal sensory interaction and optogenetic studies. This method can also be adapted to assay the chemosensory responses of other nematode species

Identification of Accretion as Grain Growth Mechanism in Astrophysically Relevant Water–Ice Dusty Plasma Experiment

The grain growth process in the Caltech water–ice dusty plasma experiment has been studied using a high-speed camera and a long-distance microscope lens. It is observed that (i) the ice grain number density decreases fourfold as the average grain major axis increases from 20 to 80 μm, (ii) the major axis length has a log-normal distribution rather than a power-law dependence, and (iii) no collisions between ice grains are apparent. The grains have a large negative charge resulting in strong mutual repulsion and this, combined with the fractal character of the ice grains, prevents them from agglomerating. In order for the grain kinetic energy to be sufficiently small to prevent collisions between ice grains, the volumetric packing factor (i.e., ratio of the actual volume to the volume of a circumscribing ellipsoid) of the ice grains must be less than ~0.1 depending on the exact relative velocity of the grains in question. Thus, it is concluded that direct accretion of water molecules is very likely to dominate the observed ice grain growth