Effect of additives on lithium doped magnesium oxide catalysts used in the oxidative coupling of methane

It has been found that it is possible to improve the activity and stability for the oxidative coupling of methane of a Li/MgO catalyst by the addition of small amounts of the oxides of various transition and rare earth metals. A number of these additives, e.g. SnO2, TiO2, Dy2O3 and Tb4O7, caused little or no difference in the selectivity to C2 products achieved with the resultant catalyst while considerably lowering the temperatures required to give the optimum yields of C2 products. Several other additives caused slight improvements (e.g. La2O3 and NiO) without changing the selectivity and some lowered the temperature for a particular conversion (e.g. CoO, MnO2, PbO and Bi2O3). A number of aspects of some of these catalysts are examined, including the nature of the phases present in the calcined materials, the decomposition of carbonate phases in the catalysts, the effect of promoter concentration and the ageing behaviour under oxidative coupling conditions. A comparison of the various systems shows that the Li/Sn/MgO is an extremely promising catalyst system for the oxidative coupling of methane

Draft guidelines concerning E&D issues: The TELSCAN handbook of design guidelines for usability of systems by elderly and disabled drivers and travellers. Version 2

Draft guidelines concerning E&D issues: The TELSCAN handbook of design guidelines for usability of systems by elderly and disabled drivers and travellers. Version

Syk, c-Src, the αvβ3 integrin, and ITAM immunoreceptors, in concert, regulate osteoclastic bone resorption

In this study, we establish that the tyrosine kinase Syk is essential for osteoclast function in vitro and in vivo. Syk−/− osteoclasts fail to organize their cytoskeleton, and, as such, their bone-resorptive capacity is arrested. This defect results in increased skeletal mass in Syk−/− embryos and dampened basal and stimulated bone resorption in chimeric mice whose osteoclasts lack the kinase. The skeletal impact of Syk deficiency reflects diminished activity of the mature osteoclast and not impaired differentiation. Syk regulates bone resorption by its inclusion with the αvβ3 integrin and c-Src in a signaling complex, which is generated only when αvβ3 is activated. Upon integrin occupancy, c-Src phosphorylates Syk. αvβ3-induced phosphorylation of Syk and the latter's capacity to associate with c-Src is mediated by the immunoreceptor tyrosine-based activation motif (ITAM) proteins Dap12 and FcRγ. Thus, in conjunction with ITAM-bearing proteins, Syk, c-Src, and αvβ3 represent an essential signaling complex in the bone-resorbing osteoclast, and, therefore, each is a candidate therapeutic target

Signals of neutralinos and charginos from gauge boson fusion at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

We point out that interesting signals of the non-strongly interacting sector of the supersymmetric standard model arise from the production of charginos and neutralinos via vector boson fusion (VBF) at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In particular, if R-parity is violated, the hadronically quiet signals of charginos and neutralinos through direct production get considerably suppressed. We show that in such cases, the VBF channel can be useful in identifying this sector through clean and background-free final states.Comment: 10 pages Latex, 8 figures, minor changes in text and few references added, to be published in Phys. Rev.

Like Sign Dilepton Signature for R-Parity Violating SUSY Search at the Tevatron Collider

The like sign dileptons provide the most promising signature for superparticle search in a large category of $R$-parity violating SUSY models. We estimate the like sign dilepton signals at the Tevatron collider, predicted by these models, over a wide region of the MSSM parameter space. One expects an unambiguous signal upto a gluino mass of $200 - 300$ GeV ($\geq 500$ GeV) with the present (proposed) accumulated luminosity of $\sim 0.1~(1)~{\rm fb}^{-1}$.Comment: 12 page LaTeX file; 5 figures available upon request from the autho

Bottom-Tau Unification in SUSY SU(5) GUT and Constraints from b to s gamma and Muon g-2

An analysis is made on bottom-tau Yukawa unification in supersymmetric (SUSY) SU(5) grand unified theory (GUT) in the framework of minimal supergravity, in which the parameter space is restricted by some experimental constraints including Br(b to s gamma) and muon g-2. The bottom-tau unification can be accommodated to the measured branching ratio Br(b to s gamma) if superparticle masses are relatively heavy and higgsino mass parameter \mu is negative. On the other hand, if we take the latest muon g-2 data to require positive SUSY contributions, then wrong-sign threshold corrections at SUSY scale upset the Yukawa unification with more than 20 percent discrepancy. It has to be compensated by superheavy threshold corrections around the GUT scale, which constrains models of flavor in SUSY GUT. A pattern of the superparticle masses preferred by the three requirements is also commented.Comment: 21pages, 6figure

Detailed insights into pan-European population structure and inbreeding in wild and hatchery Pacific oysters (Crassostrea gigas) revealed by genome-wide SNP data.

Cultivated bivalves are important not only because of their economic value, but also due to their impacts on natural ecosystems. The Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas) is the world's most heavily cultivated shellfish species and has been introduced to all continents except Antarctica for aquaculture. We therefore used a medium-density single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) array to investigate the genetic structure of this species in Europe, where it was introduced during the 1960s and has since become a prolific invader of coastal ecosystems across the continent. We analyzed 21,499 polymorphic SNPs in 232 individuals from 23 localities spanning a latitudinal cline from Portugal to Norway and including the source populations of Japan and Canada. We confirmed the results of previous studies by finding clear support for a southern and a northern group, with the former being indistinguishable from the source populations indicating the absence of a pronounced founder effect. We furthermore conducted a large-scale comparison of oysters sampled from the wild and from hatcheries to reveal substantial genetic differences including significantly higher levels of inbreeding in some but not all of the sampled hatchery cohorts. These findings were confirmed by a smaller but representative SNP dataset generated using restriction site-associated DNA sequencing. We therefore conclude that genomic approaches can generate increasingly detailed insights into the genetics of wild and hatchery produced Pacific oysters

Random forest for gene selection and microarray data classification

A random forest method has been selected to perform both gene selection and classification of the microarray data. In this embedded method, the selection of smallest possible sets of genes with lowest error rates is the key factor in achieving highest classification accuracy. Hence, improved gene selection method using random forest has been proposed to obtain the smallest subset of genes as well as biggest subset of genes prior to classification. The option for biggest subset selection is done to assist researchers who intend to use the informative genes for further research. Enhanced random forest gene selection has performed better in terms of selecting the smallest subset as well as biggest subset of informative genes with lowest out of bag error rates through gene selection. Furthermore, the classification performed on the selected subset of genes using random forest has lead to lower prediction error rates compared to existing method and other similar available methods