Tribolium beetles as a model system in evolution and ecology

Flour beetles of the genus Tribolium have been utilised as informative study systems for over a century and contributed to major advances across many fields. This review serves to highlight the significant historical contribution that Tribolium study systems have made to the fields of ecology and evolution, and to promote their use as contemporary research models. We review the broad range of studies employing Tribolium to make significant advances in ecology and evolution. We show that research using Tribolium beetles has contributed a substantial amount to evolutionary and ecological understanding, especially in the fields of population dynamics, reproduction and sexual selection, population and quantitative genetics, and behaviour, physiology and life history. We propose a number of future research opportunities using Tribolium, with particular focus on how their amenability to forward and reverse genetic manipulation may provide a valuable complement to other insect models

Crosswind Sensitivity of Passenger Cars and the Influence of Chassis and Aerodynamic Properties on Driver Preferences

Results of vehicle crosswind research involving both full-scale driver-vehicle tests and associated analyses are presented. The paper focuses on experimental crosswind testing of several different vehicle configurations and a group of seven drivers. A test procedure, which utilized wind-generating fans arranged in alternating directions to provide a crosswind "gauntlet", is introduced and described. Driver preferences for certain basic chassis and aerodynamic properties are demonstrated and linked to elementary system responses measured during the crosswind gauntlet tests. Based on these experimental findings and confirming analytical results, a two-stage vehicle design process is then recommended for predicting and analyzing the crosswind sensitivity of a particular vehicle or new design.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/65022/1/MacAdam 1990 VSD Aerodynamic Crosswind paper.pd

DOE Project on Heavy Vehicle Aerodynamic Drag

Class 8 tractor-trailers consume 11-12% of the total US petroleum use. At highway speeds, 65% of the energy expenditure for a Class 8 truck is in overcoming aerodynamic drag. The project objective is to improve fuel economy of Class 8 tractor-trailers by providing guidance on methods of reducing drag by at least 25%. A 25% reduction in drag would present a 12% improvement in fuel economy at highway speeds, equivalent to about 130 midsize tanker ships per year. Specific goals include: (1) Provide guidance to industry in the reduction of aerodynamic drag of heavy truck vehicles; (2) Develop innovative drag reducing concepts that are operationally and economically sound; and (3) Establish a database of experimental, computational, and conceptual design information, and demonstrate the potential of new drag-reduction devices. The studies described herein provide a demonstration of the applicability of the experience developed in the analysis of the standard configuration of the Generic Conventional Model. The modeling practices and procedures developed in prior efforts have been applied directly to the assessment of new configurations including a variety of geometric modifications and add-on devices. Application to the low-drag 'GTS' configuration of the GCM has confirmed that the error in predicted drag coefficients increases as the relative contribution of the base drag resulting from the vehicle wake to the total drag increases and it is recommended that more advanced turbulence modeling strategies be applied under those circumstances. Application to a commercially-developed boat tail device has confirmed that this restriction does not apply to geometries where the relative contribution of the base drag to the total drag is reduced by modifying the geometry in that region. Application to a modified GCM geometry with an open grille and radiator has confirmed that the underbody flow, while important for underhood cooling, has little impact on the drag coefficient of the vehicle. Furthermore, the evaluation of the impact of small changes in radiator or grille dimensions has revealed that the total drag is not particularly sensitive to those changes. This observation leads to two significant conclusions. First, a small increase in radiator size to accommodate heat rejection needs related to new emissions restrictions may be tolerated without significant increases in drag losses. Second, efforts to reduce drag on the tractor requires that the design of the entire tractor be treated in an integrated fashion. Simply reducing the size of the grille will not provide the desired result, but the additional contouring of the vehicle as a whole which may be enabled by the smaller radiator could have a more significant effect

Topical Report: Natural Convection Shutdown Heat Removal Test Facility (NSTF) Evaluation for Generating Additional Reactor Cavity Cooling System (RCCS) data.

As part of the Department of Energy (DOE) Generation IV roadmapping activity, the Very High Temperature gas cooled Reactor (VHTR) has been selected as the principal concept for hydrogen production and other process-heat applications such as district heating and potable water production. On this basis, the DOE has selected the VHTR for additional R&D with the ultimate goal of demonstrating emission-free electricity and hydrogen production with this advanced reactor concept. One of the key passive safety features of the VHTR is the potential for decay heat removal by natural circulation of air in a Reactor Cavity Cooling System (RCCS). The air-cooled RCCS concept is notably similar to the Reactor Vessel Auxiliary Cooling System (RVACS) that was developed for the General Electric PRISM sodium-cooled fast reactor. As part of the DOE R&D program that supported the development of this fast reactor concept, the Natural Convection Shutdown Heat Removal Test Facility (NSTF) was developed at ANL to provide proof-of-concept data for the RVACS under prototypic natural convection flow, temperature, and heat flux conditions. Due to the similarity between RVACS and the RCCS, current VHTR R&D plans call for the utilization of the NSTF to provide RCCS model development and validation data, in addition to supporting design validation and optimization activities. Both air-cooled and water-cooled RCCS designs are to be included. In support of this effort, ANL has been tasked with the development of an engineering plan for mechanical and instrumentation modifications to NSTF to ensure that sufficiently detailed temperature, heat flux, velocity and turbulence profiles are obtained to adequately qualify the codes under the expected range of air-cooled RCCS flow conditions. Next year, similar work will be carried out for the alternative option of a water-cooled RCCS design. Analysis activities carried out in support of this experiment planning task have shown that: (a) in the RCCS, strong 3-D effects result in large heat flux, temperature, and heat transfer variations around the tube wall; (b) there is a large difference in the heat transfer coefficient predicted by turbulence models and heat transfer correlations, and this underscores the need of experimental work to validate the thermal performance of the RCCS; and (c) tests at the NSTF would embody all important fluid flow and heat transfer phenomena in the RCCS, in addition to covering the entire parameter ranges that characterize these phenomena. Additional supporting scaling study results are available in Reference 2. The purpose of this work is to develop a high-level engineering plan for mechanical and instrumentation modifications to NSTF in order to meet the following two technical objectives: (1) provide CFD and system-level code development and validation data for the RCCS under prototypic (full-scale) natural convection flow conditions, and (2) support RCCS design validation and optimization. As background for this work, the report begins by providing a summary of the original NSTF design and operational capabilities. Since the facility has not been actively utilized since the early 1990's, the next step is to assess the current facility status. With this background material in place, the data needs and requirements for the facility are then defined on the basis of supporting analysis activities. With the requirements for the facility established, appropriate mechanical and instrumentation modifications to NSTF are then developed in order to meet the overall project objectives. A cost and schedule for modifying the facility to satisfy the RCCS data needs is then provided

NEAMS update quarterly report for January - March 2012.

Quarterly highlights are: (1) The integration of Denovo and AMP was demonstrated in an AMP simulation of the thermo-mechanics of a complete fuel assembly; (2) Bison was enhanced with a mechanistic fuel cracking model; (3) Mechanistic algorithms were incorporated into various lower-length-scale models to represent fission gases and dislocations in UO2 fuels; (4) Marmot was improved to allow faster testing of mesoscale models using larger problem domains; (5) Component models of reactor piping were developed for use in Relap-7; (6) The mesh generator of Proteus was updated to accept a mesh specification from Moose and equations were formulated for the intermediate-fidelity Proteus-2D1D module; (7) A new pressure solver was implemented in Nek5000 and demonstrated to work 2.5 times faster than the previous solver; (8) Work continued on volume-holdup models for two fuel reprocessing operations: voloxidation and dissolution; (9) Progress was made on a pyroprocessing model and the characterization of pyroprocessing emission signatures; (10) A new 1D groundwater waste transport code was delivered to the used fuel disposition (UFD) campaign; (11) Efforts on waste form modeling included empirical simulation of sodium-borosilicate glass compositions; (12) The Waste team developed three prototypes for modeling hydride reorientation in fuel cladding during very long-term fuel storage; (13) A benchmark demonstration problem (fission gas bubble growth) was modeled to evaluate the capabilities of different meso-scale numerical methods; (14) Work continued on a hierarchical up-scaling framework to model structural materials by directly coupling dislocation dynamics and crystal plasticity; (15) New 'importance sampling' methods were developed and demonstrated to reduce the computational cost of rare-event inference; (16) The survey and evaluation of existing data and knowledge bases was updated for NE-KAMS; (17) The NEAMS Early User Program was launched; (18) The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Office of Regulatory Research was introduced to the NEAMS program; (19) The NEAMS overall software quality assurance plan (SQAP) was revised to version 1.5; and (20) Work continued on NiCE and its plug-ins and other utilities, such as Cubit and VisIt

Processes and Procedures for Application of CFD to Nuclear Reactor Safety Analysis

Traditionally, nuclear reactor safety analysis has been performed using systems analysis codes such as RELAP5, which was developed at the INL. However, goals established by the Generation IV program, especially the desire to increase efficiency, has lead to an increase in operating temperatures for the reactors. This increase pushes reactor materials to operate towards their upper temperature limits relative to structural integrity. Because there will be some finite variation of the power density in the reactor core, there will be a potential for local hot spots to occur in the reactor vessel. Hence, it has become apparent that detailed analysis will be required to ensure that local ‘hot spots’ do not exceed safety limits. It is generally accepted that computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes are intrinsically capable of simulating fluid dynamics and heat transport locally because they are based on ‘first principles.’ Indeed, CFD analysis has reached a fairly mature level of development, including the commercial level. However, CFD experts are aware that even though commercial codes are capable of simulating local fluid and thermal physics, great care must be taken in their application to avoid errors caused by such things as inappropriate grid meshing, low-order discretization schemes, lack of iterative convergence and inaccurate time-stepping. Just as important is the choice of a turbulence model for turbulent flow simulation. Turbulence models model the effects of turbulent transport of mass, momentum and energy, but are not necessarily applicable for wide ranges of flow types. Therefore, there is a well-recognized need to establish practices and procedures for the proper application of CFD to simulate flow physics accurately and establish the level of uncertainty of such computations. The present document represents contributions of CFD experts on what the basic practices, procedures and guidelines should be to aid CFD analysts to obtain accurate estimates of the flow and energy transport as applied to nuclear reactor safety. However, it is expected that these practices and procedures will require updating from time to time as research and development affect them or replace them with better procedures. The practices and procedures are categorized into five groups. These are: 1.Code Verification 2.Code and Calculation Documentation 3.Reduction of Numerical Error 4.Quantification of Numerical Uncertainty (Calculation Verification) 5.Calculation Validation. These five categories have been identified from procedures currently required of CFD simulations such as those required for publication of a paper in the ASME Journal of Fluids Engineering and from the literature such as Roache [1998]. Code verification refers to the demonstration that the equations of fluid and energy transport have been correctly coded in the CFD code. Code and calculation documentation simply means that the equations and their discretizations, etc., and boundary and initial conditions used to pose the fluid flow problem are fully described in available documentation. Reduction of numerical error refers to practices and procedures to lower numerical errors to negligible or very low levels as is reasonably possible (such as avoiding use of first-order discretizations). The quantification of numerical uncertainty is also known as calculation verification. This means that estimates are made of numerical error to allow the characterization of the numerica

Primeiro registro do gastrópode africano invasor Melanoides tuberculatus (Gastropoda: Prosobranchia: Thiaridae) na Bacia do Rio Paranã, GO, Brasil

The Thiarid snail Melanoides tuberculatus (Müller, 1774), native to Asia and East Africa was recorded for the first time in the Paranã River basin, Goiás State. There is no evidence concerning introduction vectors but aquarium releases is the most probable vector. Specimens were collected at three different water bodies after twenty-seven rivers were investigated. The possible spread of this species to other habitats and potential effects on native thermal water communities are discussed.O gastrópode Thiaridae Melanoides tuberculatus (Müller, 1774), nativo da Ásia e do Leste Africano, é registrado pela primeira vez na Bacia Hidrográfica do Rio Paranã (Estado de Goiás). Não se conhecem os vetores de introdução da espécie, mas o setor de aquariofilia foi apontado por alguns moradores locais como a mais provável causa. Os espécimes foram coletados em três corpos d´água depois de serem investigados vinte e sete rios e lagoas. A possibilidade de dispersão dessa espécie para outros habitats e os efeitos potenciais dessa introdução sobre a comunidade nativa são discutidos no artigo

MaDDOSY (Mass Determination Diffusion Ordered Spectroscopy) using an 80 MHz bench top NMR for the rapid determination of polymer and macromolecular molecular weight

YesMeasurement of molecular weight is an integral part of macromolecular and polymer characterization which usually has limitations. Herein, we present the use of a bench-top 80 MHz NMR spectrometer for diffusion-ordered spectroscopy as a practical and rapid approach for the determination of molecular weight/size using a novel solvent and polymer-independent universal calibration.Royal Society. Grant Number: URF∖R1∖180274. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Grant Numbers: EP/V037943/1, EP/V007688/1, EP/V036211/

DOE Project on Heavy Vehicle Aerodynamic Drag FY 2005 Annual Report

Class 8 tractor-trailers consume 11-12% of the total US petroleum use. At high way speeds, 65% of the energy expenditure for a Class 8 truck is in overcoming aerodynamic drag. The project objective is to improve fuel economy of Class 8 tractor-trailers by providing guidance on methods of reducing drag by at least 25%. A 25% reduction in drag would present a 12% improvement in fuel economy at highway speeds, equivalent to about 130 midsize tanker ships per year. Specific goals include: (1) Provide guidance to industry in the reduction of aerodynamic drag of heavy truck vehicles; and (2) Establish a database of experimental, computational, and conceptual design information, and demonstrate the potential of new drag-reduction devices