Carbon Dioxide Heat Transfer Coefficients And Pressure Drops During Flow Boiling: Assessment Of Predictive Methods

Among the alternatives to the HCFCs and HFCs, carbon dioxide emerged as one of the most promising environmentally friendly refrigerants. In past years many works were carried out about CO2 flow boiling and very different two-phase flow characteristics from conventional fluids were found. In order to assess the best predictive methods for the evaluation of CO2 heat transfer coefficients and pressure gradients in macro-channels, in the current article a literature survey of works and a collection of the results of statistical comparisons available in literature are furnished. In addition the experimental data from University of Naples are used to run a deeper analysis. Both a statistical and a direct comparison against some of the most quoted predictive methods are carried out. Methods implemented both for low–medium pressure refrigerants and specifically developed for R744 are used in the comparison. Some general indications about the choice of the predictive methods dependently on the operating conditions are given

Kinetic equations for Stark line shapes

The BBGKY formalism is revisited in the framework of plasma spectroscopy. We address the issue of Stark line shape modeling by using kinetic transport equations. In the most simplified treatment of these equations, triple correlations between an emitter and the perturbing charged particles are neglected and a collisional description of Stark effect is obtained. Here we relax this assumption and retain triple correlations using a generalization of the Kirkwood truncature hypothesis to quantum operator. An application to hydrogen lines is done in the context of plasma diagnostic, and indicates that the neglect of triple correlations can lead to a significant overestimate of the line width.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figur

Astrocomp: a web service for the use of high performance computers in Astrophysics

Astrocomp is a joint project, developed by the INAF-Astrophysical Observatory of Catania, University of Roma La Sapienza and Enea. The project has the goal of providing the scientific community of a web-based user-friendly interface which allows running parallel codes on a set of high-performance computing (HPC) resources, without any need for specific knowledge about parallel programming and Operating Systems commands. Astrocomp provides, also, computing time on a set of parallel computing systems, available to the authorized user. At present, the portal makes a few codes available, among which: FLY, a cosmological code for studying three-dimensional collisionless self-gravitating systems with periodic boundary conditions; ATD, a parallel tree-code for the simulation of the dynamics of boundary-free collisional and collisionless self-gravitating systems and MARA, a code for stellar light curves analysis. Other codes are going to be added to the portal.Comment: LaTeX with elsart.cls and harvard.sty (included). 7 pages. To be submitted to a specific journa

EXPERIMENTS DURING FLOW BOILING OF A R22 DROP-IN: R422D ADIABATIC PRESSURE GRADIENTS

R22, the HCFC most widely used in refrigeration and air-conditioning systems in the last years, is phasing-out. R422D, a zero ozone-depleting mixture of R125, R134a and R600a (65.1%/31.5%/3.4% by weight, respectively), has been recently proposed as a drop-in substitute. For energy consumption calculations and temperature control, it is of primary importance to estimate operating conditions after substitution. To determine pressure drop in the evaporator and piping line to the compressor, in this paper the experimental adiabatic pressure gradients during flow boiling of R422D are reported for a circular smooth horizontal tube (3.00 mm inner radius) in a range of operating conditions of interest for dry-expansion evaporators. The data are used to establish the best predictive method for calculations and its accuracy: the Moreno-Quibèn and Thome method provided the best predictions for the whole database and also for the segregated data in the annular flow regime. Finally, the experimental data have been compared with the adiabatic pressure gradients of both R22 and its much used alternative R407C available in the literature

Isoscaling and the symmetry energy in spectator fragmentation

Isoscaling and its relation to the symmetry energy in the fragmentation of excited residues produced at relativistic energies were studied in two experiments conducted at the GSI laboratory. The INDRA multidetector has been used to detect and identify light particles and fragments with Z <= 5 in collisions of 12C on 112,124Sn at incident energies of 300 and 600 MeV per nucleon. Isoscaling is observed, and the deduced parameters decrease with increasing centrality. Symmetry term coefficients, deduced within the statistical description of isotopic scaling, are near gamma = 25 MeV for peripheral and gamma < 15 MeV for central collisions. In a very recent experiment with the ALADIN spectrometer, the possibility of using secondary beams for reaction studies at relativistic energies has been explored. Beams of 107Sn, 124Sn, 124La, and 197Au were used to investigate the mass and isospin dependence of projectile fragmentation at 600 MeV per nucleon. The decrease of the isoscaling parameters is confirmed and extended over the full fragmentation regime covered in these reactions.Comment: Proceedings of the IWM2005, Catania, Italy, Nov 200

Early evolutionary colocalization of the nuclear ribosomal 5S and 45S gene families in seed plants: evidence from the living fossil gymnosperm Ginkgo biloba

In seed plants, the colocalization of the 5S loci within the intergenic spacer (IGS) of the nuclear 45S tandem units is restricted to the phylogenetically derived Asteraceae family. However, fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) colocalization of both multigene families has also been observed in other unrelated seed plant lineages. Previous work has identified colocalization of 45S and 5S loci in Ginkgo biloba using FISH, but these observations have not been confirmed recently by sequencing a 1.8 kb IGS. In this work, we report the presence of the 45S–5S linkage in G. biloba, suggesting that in seed plants the molecular events leading to the restructuring of the ribosomal loci are much older than estimated previously. We obtained a 6.0 kb IGS fragment showing structural features of functional sequences, and a single copy of the 5S gene was inserted in the same direction of transcription as the ribosomal RNA genes. We also obtained a 1.8 kb IGS that was a truncate variant of the 6.0 kb IGS lacking the 5S gene. Several lines of evidence strongly suggest that the 1.8 kb variants are pseudogenes that are present exclusively on the satellite chromosomes bearing the 45S–5S genes. The presence of ribosomal IGS pseudogenes best reconciles contradictory results concerning the presence or absence of the 45S–5S linkage in Ginkgo. Our finding that both ribosomal gene families have been unified to a single 45S–5S unit in Ginkgo indicates that an accurate reassessment of the organization of rDNA genes in basal seed plants is necessary

Evolutionary site-number changes of ribosomal DNA loci during speciation: complex scenarios of ancestral and more recent polyploid events

Several genome duplications have been identified in the evolution of seed plants, providing unique systems for studying karyological processes promoting diversification and speciation. Knowledge about the number of ribosomal DNA (rDNA) loci, together with their chromosomal distribution and structure, provides clues about organismal and molecular evolution at various phylogenetic levels. In this work, we aim to elucidate the evolutionary dynamics of karyological and rDNA site-number variation in all known taxa of subtribe Vellinae, showing a complex scenario of ancestral and more recent polyploid events. Specifically, we aim to infer the ancestral chromosome numbers and patterns of chromosome number variation, assess patterns of variation of both 45S and 5S rDNA families, trends in site-number change of rDNA loci within homoploid and polyploid series, and reconstruct the evolutionary history of rDNA site number using a phylogenetic hypothesis as a framework. The best-fitting model of chromosome number evolution with a high likelihood score suggests that the Vellinae core showing x=17 chromosomes arose by duplication events froma recent x=8 ancestor. Our survey suggests more complex patterns of polyploid evolution than previously noted for Vellinae. High polyploidization events (6x, 8x) arose independently in the basal clade Vella castrilensis–V. lucentina, where extant diploid species are unknown. Reconstruction of ancestral rDNA states in Vellinae supports the inference that the ancestral number of loci in the subtribe was two for each multigene family, suggesting that an overall tendency towards a net loss of 5S rDNA loci occurred during the splitting of Vellinae ancestors from the remaining Brassiceae lineages. A contrasting pattern for rDNA site change in both paleopolyploid and neopolyploid species was linked to diversification of Vellinae lineages. This suggests dynamic and independent changes in rDNA site number during speciation processes and a significant lack of correlation between 45S and 5S rDNA evolutionary pathwaysThis research was supported by funds from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (Project CGL2010-22347-C02-01), the Catalan Government (Consolidated Research Group 2009SGR608) and by a Ph.D. grant from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science to J.A.G

Synthesis and characterisation of a new benzamide-containing nitrobenzoxadiazole as a GSTP1-1 inhibitor endowed with high stability to metabolic hydrolysis

The antitumor agent 6-((7-nitrobenzo[c][1,2,5]oxadiazol-4-yl)thio)hexan-1-ol (1) is a potent inhibitor of GSTP1-1, a glutathione S-transferase capable of inhibiting apoptosis by binding to JNK1 and TRAF2. We recently demonstrated that, unlike its parent compound, the benzoyl ester of 1 (compound 3) exhibits negligible reactivity towards GSH, and has a different mode of interaction with GSTP1-1. Unfortunately, 3 is susceptible to rapid metabolic hydrolysis. In an effort to improve the metabolic stability of 3, its ester group has been replaced by an amide, leading to N-(6-((7-nitrobenzo[c][1,2,5]oxadiazol-4-yl)thio)hexyl)benzamide (4). Unlike 3, compound 4 was stable to human liver microsomal carboxylesterases, but retained the ability to disrupt the interaction between GSTP1-1 and TRAF2 regardless of GSH levels. Moreover, 4 exhibited both a higher stability in the presence of GSH and a greater cytotoxicity towards cultured A375 melanoma cells, in comparison with 1 and its analog 2. These findings suggest that 4 deserves further preclinical testing