ANALYSIS OF THE ELECTRICAL CHARACTERISTICS IN MULTIPHASE FLOW THROUGH THE WIRE-MESH SENSOR

Many studies on the characterization of electrical properties of multiphase fluid are found in the literature. One of the main motivations of these efforts has been the development of instrumentation for the measurement of volumetric fraction using electrical sensors. Although one can find a variety of instruments for that purpose, relatively few works in the open literature present studies on the best range of measurement frequency and its effect on permittivity models. An experimental and theoretical study is presented, where the best frequency to measure the volumetric fraction in two and three-phase mixtures is selected. Several permittivity models are applied to measure the volumetric fraction. The fluids used in the experiments were tap water, deionized water, mineral oil, isopropyl alcohol and hexane. Known volumes of fluids were mixed until obtaining a homogeneous mixture. The data were taken by a 1×4 wire-mesh sensor (WMS) immersed in the mixture. The WMS had a gap between planes of 1.4 mm, the wires were 3 mm apart from each other and the diameter of the wires was of 0.2 mm. The experimental system consisted of a generator, an oscilloscope and conditioning circuits (formed by operational amplifiers). A frequency scan was performed between 7000 Hz and 20 MHz for each mixture. A total of 60 logarithmically spaced frequencies were applied

Search for low instability strip variables in the young open cluster NGC 2516

In this paper we revise and complete the photometric survey of the instability strip of the southern open cluster NGC 2516 published by Antonello and Mantegazza (1986). No variable stars with amplitudes larger than $0^m.02$ were found. However by means of an accurate analysis based on a new statistical method two groups of small amplitude variables have been disentangled: one with periods $< 0^d.25$ (probably $\delta$ Scuti stars) and one with periods $>0^d.025$. The position in the HR diagram and the apparent time-scale may suggest that the stars of the second group belong to a recently discovered new class of variables, named $\gamma$ Dor variables. They certainly deserve further study. We also present a comparison between the results of the photometric survey and the available pointed ROSAT observations of this cluster.Comment: 7 pages, 2 ps figures. Accepted for P.A.S.

TWO-PHASE FRICTION FACTOR IN GAS-LIQUID PIPE FLOW

An improved friction factor prediction model for two-phase gas-liquid pipe flow is proposed. The model is based on a previous no-slip formulation where a mixture Reynolds number was defined. In this study, the mixture Reynolds number is modified by introducing slip-ratio information through the inclusion of void-fraction and flow-pattern dependent models. An experimental database reconstituted from the available literature and new frictional pressure-drop data for air-water horizontal flow in an I.D. 0.0204m pipe are also presented. The full database considers several different flow conditions for horizontal two-phase flow of refrigerants and air-water mixtures. It was compared to predictions of models from the literature as well as the new proposed model. We found that the proposed and Müller-Steinhagen-and-Heck methods provide better agreement for the current experimental database. It is shown that the inclusion of void-fraction information on the previous mixture Reynolds definition improves the friction-factor predictio

Monoamine oxidase-A modulates apoptotic cell death induced by staurosporine in human neuroblastoma cells

Monoamine oxidases (MAOs) are mitochondrial enzymes which control the levels of neurotransmitters in the brain and dietary amines in peripheral tissues via oxidative deamination. MAO has also been implicated in cell signalling. In this study, we describe the MAO-A isoform as functional in apoptosis induced by staurosporine (STS) in human dopaminergic neuroblastoma cells (SH-SY5Y). Increased levels of MAO-A activity were induced by STS, accompanied by increased MAO-A protein and activation of the initiator of the intrinsic pathway, caspase 9, and the executioner caspase 3. MAO-A mRNA levels were unaffected by STS, suggesting that changes in MAO-A protein are due to post-transcriptional events. Two unrelated MAO-A inhibitors reduced caspase activation. STS treatment resulted in sustained activation of the mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway enzymes extracellular regulated kinase, c-jun terminal kinase and p38, and depletion of the anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-2. These changes were significantly reversed by MAO inhibition. Production of reactive oxygen species was increased following STS exposure, which was blocked by both MAO inhibition and the antioxidant N-acetylcysteine. Therefore our data provide evidence that MAO-A, through its production of reactive oxygen species as a by-product of its catalytic activity on the mitochondrial surface, is recruited by the cell to enhance apoptotic signalling

On the Decoupling of Layered Superconducting Films in Parallel Magnetic Field

The issue of the decoupling of extreme type-II superconducting thin films ($\lambda_L\rightarrow\infty$) with weakly Josephson-coupled layers in magnetic field parallel to the layers is considered via the corresponding frustrated $XY$ model used to describe the mixed phase in the critical regime. For the general case of arbitrary field orientations such that the perpendicular magnetic field component is larger than the decoupling cross-over scale characteristic of layered superconductors, we obtain independent parallel and perpendicular vortex lattices. Specializing to the double-layer case, we compute the parallel lower-critical field with entropic effects included, and find that it vanishes exponentially as temperature approaches the layer decoupling transition in zero-field. The parallel reversible magnetization is also calculated in this case, where we find that it shows a cross-over phenomenon as a function of parallel field in the intermediate regime of the mixed phase in lieu of a true layer-decoupling transition. It is argued that such is the case for any finite number of layers, since the isolated double layer represents the weakest link.Comment: 29 pages of plain TeX, 2 postscript figures, improved discussio

Distilling Information Reliability and Source Trustworthiness from Digital Traces

Online knowledge repositories typically rely on their users or dedicated editors to evaluate the reliability of their content. These evaluations can be viewed as noisy measurements of both information reliability and information source trustworthiness. Can we leverage these noisy evaluations, often biased, to distill a robust, unbiased and interpretable measure of both notions? In this paper, we argue that the temporal traces left by these noisy evaluations give cues on the reliability of the information and the trustworthiness of the sources. Then, we propose a temporal point process modeling framework that links these temporal traces to robust, unbiased and interpretable notions of information reliability and source trustworthiness. Furthermore, we develop an efficient convex optimization procedure to learn the parameters of the model from historical traces. Experiments on real-world data gathered from Wikipedia and Stack Overflow show that our modeling framework accurately predicts evaluation events, provides an interpretable measure of information reliability and source trustworthiness, and yields interesting insights about real-world events.Comment: Accepted at 26th World Wide Web conference (WWW-17

Ground- and excited-state electronic structure of an iron-containing molecular spin photoswitch

The electronic structure of the cation of [Fe(ptz)(6)](BF4)(2), a prototype of a class of complexes that display light-induced excited-state spin trapping (LIESST), has been investigated by time-independent and time-dependent density-functional theories. The density of states of the singlet ground state reveals that the highest occupied orbitals are metal centered and give rise to a low spin configuration Fe2+(3d(xy)(up arrow down arrow)3d(xz)(up arrow down arrow)3d(yz)(up arrow down arrow)) in agreement with experiment. Upon excitation with light in the 2.3-3.3 eV range, metal-centered spin-allowed but parity-forbidden ligand field (LF) antibonding states are populated which, in conjunction with electron-phonon coupling, explain the experimental absorption intensities. The computed excitation energies are in excellent agreement with experiment. Contrary to simpler models we show that the LF absorption bands, which are important for LIESST, do not originate in transitions from the ground to a single excited state but from transitions to manifolds of nearly degenerate excited singlets. Consistent with crystallography, population of the LF states promotes a drastic dilation of the ligand cage surrounding the iron. (C) 2005 American Institute of Physics