Extraction of Plumes in Turbulent Thermal Convection

We present a scheme to extract information about plumes, a prominent coherent structure in turbulent thermal convection, from simultaneous local velocity and temperature measurements. Using this scheme, we study the temperature dependence of the plume velocity and understand the results using the equations of motion. We further obtain the average local heat flux in the vertical direction at the cell center. Our result shows that heat is not mainly transported through the central region but instead through the regions near the sidewalls of the convection cell.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Physical Review Letter

Out-Of-Band Management on UEFI System Firmware

The modern Redfish is a specification that utilize RESTful interface semantics to access data defined in model format to perform out-of-band (OOB) management through specific OOB software or hardware (such as Baseboard Management Controller, BMC). The OOB management allow users to configure system remotely when the system is in either power-off or power-on state. Industry can expect there are more and more pre-boot firmware drivers (like UEFI drivers) and system peripherals (such as PCI devices, PCI add-on-card and so on) support Redfish Schema/Configuration data model in the near future. This article describes the method to abstract the data communication/synchronization between UEFI drivers and OOB management on UEFI firmware environment. Furthermore, this article is not only restricted to single OOB management on system, the abstracts method described in this article is flexible and extensible to support multiple OOB management instances on one system simultaneously. Not only Redfish OOB management data model is supported, this article fulfills the requirements of any other data model of OOB managements such as OData XML/JSON data model, CIM-XML data model, 3rd party data model and etc

An Empirical Classification of Bidders in Online Auctions

Auctions have been a popular way of transaction on the Internet. Most of the studies of auction assume participants attending the auction are homogeneous. However, this assumption is open to question. In fact, every participant has his own personality, risk attitude, behavior, and cost when attending online auctions. This study takes an empirical approach and uses four variables, time of entry, time of exit, number of bids, and number of jump bids, to find the heterogeneity among bidders. We first used k-means clustering method to identify the types of bidders of online auctions, and then used C5.0 decision tree learning algorithm to find the rules to differentiate bidders. A taxonomy of four types of bidders is proposed in the study, which include observers, adventurers, opportunists, and early players. The results also suggest pacing of the auctions is an important factor that will affect bidder’s behavior in online auctions

Ixora parviflora Protects against UVB-Induced Photoaging by Inhibiting the Expression of MMPs, MAP Kinases, and COX-2 and by Promoting Type I Procollagen Synthesis

Ixora parviflora with high polyphenol content exhibited antioxidant activity and reducing UVB-induced intracellular reactive oxygen species production. In this study, results of the photoaging screening experiments revealed that IPE at 1000 μg/mL reduced the activity of bacterial collagenase by 92.7 ± 4.2% and reduced the activity of elastase by 32.6 ± 1.4%. Therefore, we investigated the mechanisms by which IPE exerts its anti-photoaging activity. IPE at 1 μg/mL led to an increase in type I procollagen expression and increased total collagen synthesis in fibroblasts at 5 μg/mL. We found that IPE inhibited MMP-1, MMP-3, and MMP-9 expression at doses of 1, 5, and 10 μg/mL, respectively, in fibroblasts exposed to UV irradiation (40 mJ/cm2). Gelatin zymography assay showed that IPE at 50 μg/mL inhibited MMP-9 secretion/activity in cultured fibroblasts after UVB exposure. In addition, IPE inhibited the phosphorylation of p38, ERK, and JNK induced by UVB. Furthermore, IPE inhibited the UVB-induced expression of Smad7. In addition, IPE at 1 μg/mL inhibited NO production and COX-2 expression in UV-exposed fibroblasts. These findings show that IPE exhibits anti-inflammatory and anti-photoaging activities, indicating that IPE could be a potential anti-aging agent

An electrophoretic analysis of the serum proteins in infectious mononucleosis

Thirty-six sera from cases of infectious mononucleosis and 25 normal human serum specimens were studied by electrophoresis on cellulose acetate. The results indicated that: The mean concentration of total protein in the mononucleosis sera was significantly higher than that of the normal sera. In 15 of the 36 mononucleosis specimens the total protein concentration was above the range of the normals. The higher protein concentration was due entirely to increased amounts of the globulin fractions. The gamma globulin contributed most to the increase. Its mean concentration was above normal and in 29 of the 36 cases the gamma globulin level was above the range for the normal sera. With respect to the alpha-2 globulin, the mean concentration was slightly above that for the normals and in nine of the 36 sera the concentration was above the normal range. The mean concentration of the alpha-1 and beta globulins was slightly higher than the corresponding means for the normals. Twenty-two mononucleosis sera were studied by electrophoresis on cellulose acetate followed by elution of each separate fraction and testing of the eluates for agglutination of sheep erythrocytes. The gamma globulin fraction of 21 of the 22 specimens agglutinated the sheep cells. The alpha-2 globulin fraction of ten mononucleosis specimens also showed hemagglutination. Nine of these ten sera had an alpha-2 globulin content above the upper limit of normal (0.89 g/100 ml). These results indicated that the heterophile antibodies were present in the gamma globulin fraction in almost all cases and in the alpha-2 globulin in about half the cases. In experiments in which eight mononucleosis sera were absorbed with beef erythrocytes, complete removal of the heterophile antibodies was observed in four specimens while four others retained a low titer of 1:5. The significant reduction of the gamma globulin fraction in all eight cases and of the alpha-2 fraction in four cases after absorption, with no reduction in other fractions indicates that the heterophile antibodies are mainly in the alpha-2 and gamma globulin fractions of the serum protein. These experiments support the quantitative data of the cellulose acetate experiments and the results of the hemagglutination experiments with the separate protein fractions. Twelve mononucleosis sera and 12 normal sera were studied by immunoelectrophoresis in agar gel. In all 12 mononucleosis specimens an abnormal pattern was observed in the alpha-2 globulin zone One and sometimes two of the components showed precipitin arcs longer than in normal sera, extending into the beta-1 globulin zone. These arcs apparently represent one or more altered components of the alpha-2 globulin, appearing on immunoelectrophoretic plates as a population of molecules with a wider than normal range of electrophoretic mobilities. These molecules could very possibly represent the heterophile antibodies shown by other methods to be present in the alpha-2 globulin. A second observation not revealed by other methods was the fact that in nine of the 12 mononucleosis sera the beta-2M globulin arcs were more heavily stained and more distinct than in the normal sera used for comparison, when antibody against normal and mononucleosis serum was used. Since beta-2M globulin is a recognized antibody carrier, and in view of the observation made by Strannegard (45) that ox cell hemolysins migrated with the beta-2M globulin in mononucleosis sera, the above observation suggests that the increase in the gamma globulin fraction, observed in our electrophoretic analyses of 36 mononucleosis sera, was at least partly due to an increase in the beta-2M globulin, which is not distinguishable from the gamma globulin in electrophoresis on cellulose acetate