An Unusual Application of NASTRAN Contour Plotting Capability

A procedure is presented for obtaining contour plots of any physical quantity defined on a number of points of the surface of a structure. Rigid Format 1 of HEAT approach in Cosmic NASTRAN is ALTERED to enable use of contour plotting capability for scalar quantities. The ALTERED DMAP sequence is given. Examples include temperature distribution on the face of a cooled laser mirror and the angle of incidence or a radome surface

Design for a Rapid Automatic Sync Acquisition System

System provides rapid command sync acquisition between widely separated transmitter-receivers. It is based on a rapid, automatic range-adjustment approach rather than the time-consuming cycle slipping or stepping techniques of conventional phase-locked loops

Determination of plasmid copy number in yeast transformants by means of agarose plugs

The determination of plasmid copy number in Saccharomyces cerevisiaetransformants containing circular or linear plasmids is currently performed with total yeast DNA extracts obtained from cultures grown under selection. The determination is based essentially on quantitative Southern hybridization of an appropirate probe to a sequence present both on plasmid and chromosomal DNA in digested or undigested samples run out on conventional agarose gels. The DNA extraction procedure calls for treatment of cell lysates with organic solvents that could entail systemic losses of eithr plasmid or chromosomal DNA thus producing artifactual results. We propose here a method based on the assumption that quantitative analysis of plasmid and chromosomal DNA extracted from yeast cells embedded in agarose plugs will furnish more reliable results. With this procedure the cells are lysed in situ, thus avoiding possible losses of material, and the chromosomes and plasmid DNAs, trapped within the agarose matrix, can be separated by pulse field electrophoresis

Cartan Normal Conformal Connections from Pairs of 2nd Order PDE's

We explore the different geometric structures that can be constructed from the class of pairs of 2nd order PDE's that satisfy the condition of a vanishing generalized W\"{u}nschmann invariant. This condition arises naturally from the requirement of a vanishing torsion tensor. In particular, we find that from this class of PDE's we can obtain all four-dimensional conformal Lorentzian metrics as well as all Cartan normal conformal O(4,2) connections. To conclude, we briefly discuss how the conformal Einstein equations can be imposed by further restricting our class of PDE's to those satisfying additional differential conditions.Comment: 39 page

Discovery of the Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 galaxy Mkn 335 in an historical low X-ray flux state

We report the discovery of the Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 galaxy Mkn 335 in an extremely low X-ray state. A comparison of Swift observations obtained in May and June/July 2007 with all previous X-ray observations between 1971 to 2006 show the AGN to have diminished in flux by a factor of more than 30, the lowest X-ray flux Mkn 335 has ever been observed in. The Swift observations show an extremely hard X-ray spectrum at energies above 2 keV. Possible interpretations include partial covering absorption or X-ray reflection from the disk. In this letter we consider the partial covering interpretation. The Swift observations can be well fit by a strong partial covering absorber with varying absorption column density N_H= 1-4 x 10^{23} cm-2 and a covering fraction f_c=0.9 - 1. When corrected for intrinsic absorption, the X-ray flux of Mkn 335 varies by only factors of 4-6. In the UV Mkn 335 shows variability in the order of 0.2 mag. We discuss the similarity of Mkn 335 with the highly variable NLS1 WPVS007, and speculate about a possible link between NLS1 galaxies and broad-absorption line quasars.Comment: ApJ Letter accepted; 8 pages, 2 figures; The new version has three more sentences in the introduction and three references added to the discussio

Impact of First Occupation on Health at Older Ages

Occupation is discussed as a social determinant of health. Occupation has received little attention in this light in the economics literature. We examine occupation in a life-course framework and use measures of first-occupation, initial health, and mother’s education. We contend that first occupation is a choice made relatively early in life that affects health outcomes at later ages. We examine first-occupation for two reasons: 1) there is growing evidence that early determinants affect later health and occupation has received little attention in this regard and 2) first occupation is predetermined in analysis of later health, which helps to address the issue of potential simultaneity. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) we estimate the impact of initial occupation on two measures of health later in life: respondent-reported fair/poor health and ever suffering a heart attack. The PSID offers the opportunity to examine a lifecycle perspective as we can examine the impact of early occupation on later health while controlling for several predetermined conditions such as mother’s education and health in youth. Estimates suggest that first-occupation has a durable impact on later health, ceteris paribus, but that the impact varies by health measure and the set of control variables in regression specifications. Early choice of occupation could be a critical factor in successful aging and this information may pave the way to developing more effective workplace and public policies to improve health in older ages.

Meeting UK heat demands in zero emission renewable energy systems using storage and interconnectors

Providing heat without emissions is a critical challenge to reach the 2050 UK net-zero target. Here, we simulate high renewable zero-emission energy system architectures with heat supply based on the major options of district heating, heat pumps, and electrolytic hydrogen boilers. We adopt a novel whole system modelling approach that combines meteorology-driven hourly simulations of demand and supply with storage, flexible technologies, and interconnections on the European scale. Our results show that systems with heat supply based on consumer or district heat pumps require about four times less electricity per unit of heat, with a heat cost about half of that from electrolytic hydrogen boilers. Furthermore, we compare trade-offs between investment in different infrastructure components. For example, we find that, compared to the reference scenario, increasing renewable capacity by 33%, or interconnections by 200%, can lower system storage capacity by up to 50%

Excellent diagnostic characteristics for ultrafast gene profiling of DEFA1-IL1B-LTF in detection of prosthetic joint infections

The timely and exact diagnosis of prosthetic joint infection (PJI) is crucial for surgical decision-making. Intraoperatively, delivery of the result within an hour is required. Alpha-defensin lateral immunoassay of joint fluid (JF) is precise for the intraoperative exclusion of PJI; however, for patients with a limited amount of JF and/or in cases where the JF is bloody, this test is unhelpful. Important information is hidden in periprosthetic tissues that may much better reflect the current status of implant pathology. We therefore investigated the utility of the gene expression patterns of 12 candidate genes (TLR1, -2, -4, -6, and 10, DEFA1, LTF, IL1B, BPI, CRP, IFNG, and DEFB4A) previously associated with infection for detection of PJI in periprosthetic tissues of patients with total joint arthroplasty (TJA) (n = 76) reoperated for PJI (n = 38) or aseptic failure (n = 38), using the ultrafast quantitative reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) Xxpress system (BJS Biotechnologies Ltd.). Advanced data-mining algorithms were applied for data analysis. For PJI, we detected elevated mRNA expression levels of DEFA1 (P < 0.0001), IL1B (P < 0.0001), LTF (P < 0.0001), TLR1 (P = 0.02), and BPI (P = 0.01) in comparison to those in tissues from aseptic cases. A feature selection algorithm revealed that the DEFA1-IL1B-LTF pattern was the most appropriate for detection/exclusion of PJI, achieving 94.5% sensitivity and 95.7% specificity, with likelihood ratios (LRs) for positive and negative results of 16.3 and 0.06, respectively. Taken together, the results show that DEFA1-IL1B-LTF gene expression detection by use of ultrafast qRT-PCR linked to an electronic calculator allows detection of patients with a high probability of PJI within 45 min after sampling. Further testing on a larger cohort of patients is needed.Web of Science5592697268