The chemistry of Venus' atmosphere

A model for the Venus atmosphere involving photochemistry of oxygen, hydrogen, chlorine and sulfur species is presented. Sulfur reaction schemes and hydrogen and chlorine reaction schemes were included. The impact of sulfur on the oxygen budget and the subsequent production of H2SO4 molecules for the Venus cloud deck were explored. A major new reaction scheme for production of H2SO4 molecules involving sulfur and oxygen chemistry was established shown to dominate over the odd hydrogen scheme proposed earlier. The efficiency of the scheme in formation of H2SO4 is only about 50%, with the remaining sulfur residing in SO2 molecules. The calculated downward flux of H2SO4 may be sufficient to maintain a steady state sulfuric acid cloud if the resident time of H2SO4 droplets in the cloud is as long as a few years. If however, the resident time is half a year or shorter, additional chemistry capable of more efficient conversion of SO2 to SO3 is required

Minimal hepatic toxicity of Onyx-015: spatial restriction of coxsackie-adenoviral receptor in normal liver.

We administered an adenoviral vector, Onyx-015, into the hepatic artery of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer involving the liver. Thirty-five patients enrolled in this multi-institutional phase I/II trial received up to eight arterial infusions of up to 2 x 10(12) viral particles. Hepatic toxicity was the primary dose-limiting toxicity observed in preclinical models. However, nearly 200 infusions of this adenoviral vector were administered directly into the hepatic artery without significant toxicity. Therefore, we undertook this analysis to determine the impact of repeated adenoviral exposure on hepatic function. Seventeen patients were treated at our institution, providing a detailed data set on the changes in hepatic function following repeated exposure to adenovirus. No changes in hepatic function occurred with the first treatment of Onyx-015 among these patients. Transient increases in transaminase levels occurred in one patient starting with the second infusion and transient increases in bilirubin was observed in two patients starting with the fifth treatment. These changes occurred too early to be explained by viral-mediated lysis of hepatocytes. In addition, viremia was observed starting 3-5 days after the viral infusion in half of the patient, but was not associated with hepatic toxicity. To further understand the basis for the minimal hepatic toxicity of adenoviral vectors, we evaluated the replication of adenovirus in primary hepatocytes and tumor cells in culture and the expression of the coxsackie-adenoviral receptor (CAR) in normal liver and colon cancer metastatic to the liver. We found that adenovirus replicates poorly in primary hepatocytes but replicates efficiently in tumors including tumors derived from hepatocytes. In addition, we found that CAR is localized at junctions between hepatocytes and is inaccessible to hepatic blood flow. CAR is not expressed on tumor vasculature but is expressed on tumor cells. Spatial restriction of CAR to the intercellular space in normal liver and diminished replication of adenovirus in hepatocytes may explain the minimal toxicity observed following repeated hepatic artery infusions with Onyx-015

Local conductivity and the role of vacancies around twin walls of (001)-BiFeO3 thin films

BiFeO3 thin films epitaxially grown on SrRuO3-buffered (001)-oriented SrTiO3 substrates show orthogonal bundles of twin domains, each of which contains parallel and periodic 71o domain walls. A smaller amount of 109o domain walls are also present at the boundaries between two adjacent bundles. All as-grown twin walls display enhanced conductivity with respect to the domains during local probe measurements, due to the selective lowering of the Schottky barrier between the film and the AFM tip (see S. Farokhipoor and B. Noheda, Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 127601 (2011)). In this paper we further discuss these results and show why other conduction mechanisms are discarded. In addition we show the crucial role that oxygen vacancies play in determining the amount of conduction at the walls. This prompts us to propose that the oxygen vacancies migrating to the walls locally lower the Schottky barrier. This mechanism would then be less efficient in non-ferroelastic domain walls where one expects no strain gradients around the walls and thus (assuming that walls are not charged) no driving force for accumulation of defects

A simple assumed strain method for enhancing the accuracy of the cubic triangular C degree plate bending element

The conventional cubic triangular Mindlin/Reissner plate bending element, DISP10, is in general too stiff. To reduce the element stiffness, three of the strain sampling points are shifted from the integration stations to the element corners so as to reduce the number of shear constraints in the global level. The strain field is then obtained by interpolation. In this way, the constraint ratio of the element increases from 1.125 to 1.5 which is exactly equal to a postulated optimal value. However, the element does not appear to be more accurate than its conventional counterpart. While keeping the constraint ratio and interpolation pivots unchanged, two different ways of refining the sampled strains at the element corners are attempted and the pertinent elements are consistently more accurate than DISP10postprin

Transition finite element families for adaptive analysis of axisymmetric elasticity problems

In this paper, four transition element families that comprise five- to seven-node quadrilateral elements are developed based on the hybrid-stress and enhanced assumed strain (EAS) formulations for adaptive analyses of axisymmetric elasticity problems. For members in the first hybrid-stress family, a quasi-linear stress field with ten equilibrating stress modes is derived and employed. To study the effect of including more stress modes in the assumed stress field, another family with two additional stress modes is implemented. On the other hand, two EAS element families are constructed with respect to the incompatible displacement modes of two existing incompatible displacement transition element families. Several numerical examples are exercised. It can be seen that the first hybrid-stress family is the most accurate one among the proposed families. Moreover, the EAS families are close to the respective incompatible families in accuracy yet the former families are not only more efficient in computation but also more concise in formulation. © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.postprin

On the relative merits of three-point integration rules for six-node triangles

There exist two three-point integration rules for triangular elements. Both rules are precise up to the second order and used for evaluating the six-node triangles. While one of rules has its sampling stations inside the triangle, that of the other coincide with the edge nodes. Though the former is commonly employed, it will be seen in this short paper that latter is indeed more favourable in view of element accuracy. © 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.postprin

Assumed strain and hybrid destabilized ten-node C0 triangular shell elements

The conventional ten-node C0 triangular shell element is in general too stiff. In this paper, several less stiff formulations are proposed. To reduce the transverse shear stiffness, the assumed strain method is adopted. On the other hand, both assumed strain method and hybrid destabilization are employed for softening the membrane stiffness. The improvement is validated by popular numerical problems.postprin

A quadratic assumed natural strain curved triangular shell element

In this paper, a six-node triangular C 0 curved shell element is developed by the assumed natural or covariant strain (ANS) method. All the sampled natural strains are optimal with respect to the derivative of a prescribed cubic field in a subparametric element. Numerical examinations reveal that the element shows no sign of locking, passes all the patch tests and yields satisfactory accuracy. © 1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.postprin

The development of a model to infer precipitation from microwave measurements

To permit the inference of precipitation amounts from radiometric measurements, a radiative interaction model was developed. This model uses a simple computational scheme to determine the effects of rain upon brightness temperatures and can be used with a statistical inversion procedure to invert for rain rate. Precipitating cloud models was also developed and used with the microwave model for frequencies of 19.35 and 37 GHz to determine the variability of the microwave-rain rate relationship on a global and seasonal basis