Cellulase production by Trichoderma sp. on apple pomace under solid state fermentation

The feasibility of using apple pomace for cellulase production by Trichoderma sp. under solid state fermentation was evaluated in this study. Our results indicated that initial moisture level of the medium, incubation temperature and inoculum size influenced the cellulase production greatly. The optimuminitial moisture level, incubation temperature and inoculum size were 70%, 32 and 2×108 spores/flask, respectively. The supplement of lactose and corn-steep solid to the apple pomace favored the enzyme formation markedly

Maintenance optimization for a Markovian deteriorating system with population heterogeneity

We develop a partially observable Markov decision process model to incorporate population heterogeneity when scheduling replacements for a deteriorating system. The single-component system deteriorates over a finite set of condition states according to a Markov chain. The population of spare components that is available for replacements is composed of multiple component types that cannot be distinguished by their exterior appearance but deteriorate according to different transition probability matrices. This situation may arise, for example, because of variations in the production process of components. We provide a set of conditions for which we characterize the structure of the optimal policy that minimizes the total expected discounted operating and replacement cost over an infinite horizon. In a numerical experiment, we benchmark the optimal policy against a heuristic policy that neglects population heterogeneity

Invisible surfaces enabled by the coalescence of anti-reflection and wavefront controllability in ultrathin metasurfaces

Though existing metamaterial antireflection coatings have been optimized in terms of thickness and functionality, these coatings do not provide phase control in the deep subwavelength scale. Here, the authors report multi-layered metasurfaces that provide both antireflection and phase control

The mineralogy of newly formed dust in active galactic nuclei

The tori around active galactic nuclei (AGN) are potential formation sites for large amounts of dust, and they may help resolve the so-called dust budget crisis at high redshift. We investigate the dust composition in 53 of the 87 Palomar Green (PG) quasars showing the 9.7 micron silicate feature in emission. By simultaneously fitting the mid-infrared spectroscopic features and the underlying continuum, we estimate the mass fraction in various amorphous and crystalline dust species. We find that the dust consists predominantly of alumina and amorphous silicates, with a small fraction in crystalline form. The mean crystallinity is 8 +/- 6%, with more than half of the crystallinities greater than 5%, well above the upper limit determined for the Galaxy. Higher values of crystallinity are found for higher oxide fractions and for more luminous sources.Comment: 24 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in Planetary and Space Scienc

Microscopic magnetic dipole radiation in neutron stars

There is ${}^3P_2$ neutron superfluid region in NS (neutron star) interior. For a rotating NS, the ${}^3P_2$ superfluid region is like a system of rotating magnetic dipoles. It will give out electromagnetic radiation, which may provides a new heating mechanism of NSs. This heating mechanism plus some cooling agent may give sound explanation to NS glitches.Comment: To be published by ChJA

Testing the Bell Inequality at Experiments of High Energy Physics

Besides using the laser beam, it is very tempting to directly testify the Bell inequality at high energy experiments where the spin correlation is exactly what the original Bell inequality investigates. In this work, we follow the proposal raised in literature and use the successive decays $J/\psi\to\gamma\eta_c\to \Lambda\bar\Lambda\to p\pi^-\bar p\pi^+$ to testify the Bell inequality. Our goal is twofold, namely, we first make a Monte-Carlo simulation of the processes based on the quantum field theory (QFT). Since the underlying theory is QFT, it implies that we pre-admit the validity of quantum picture. Even though the QFT is true, we need to find how big the database should be, so that we can clearly show deviations of the correlation from the Bell inequality determined by the local hidden variable theory. There have been some critiques on the proposed method, so in the second part, we suggest some improvements which may help to remedy the ambiguities indicated by the critiques. It may be realized at an updated facility of high energy physics, such as BES III.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure