Ion current densities produced by energetic electrons in electrostatic precipitator geometries

A new laboratory test system for electron beam ionization in electrostatic precipitator geometries has been constructed to measure ion current densities as a function of voltage differences for clean (bare) plate conditions. The new system incorporates improved electrodes, which withstand a driving voltage of /sup + -/ 55 kV, a factor of 5 increase over the previous test system. A 3 MeV Van de Graaff accelerator produced ionizing electron beams of 1.2 and 2 MeV and currents of 10.5 and 21 ..mu..A in place of corona wire ionization. Current densities of up to 130 mA/m/sup 2/ were measured before breakdown between the plates, and no current saturation was observed. A comparison of I-V curves and sparkover voltages for various beam energies, currents, and collimation are discussed and the need for measurements with good beam geometry is reviewed

Doses response of dietary viscosity on digestibility and faecal characteristics of striped catfish (Pangasionodon hypophthalmus)

The study analysed the dose–response relationship between dietary viscosity and nutrient digestibility, faecal waste characteristics in striped catfish and the long-term impacts of viscosity on performance of striped catfish. This was done in two experiments: Exp.1 lasted 29 days, in which six dietary viscosity levels were created by including different amount of guar gum (GG; 0, 0.25, 0.5, 1.0, 2.0 or 3.0 g/kg) and Exp.2 lasted 60 days and assessed the long-term effects of three dietary GG levels (0, 0.5 and 3.0 g/kg) were checked. In Exp.1, digestibility of nutrients (except crude fat) decreased linearly with dietary viscosity. With increasing viscosity, removal efficiency of faeces from the water reduced linearly, whereas the total amount of faeces produced and the fraction of big-sized faecal particles (>2 mm). increased linearly. In Exp.1, viscosity did not affect performance. However, in Exp.2, the GG inclusion level of 3.0 g/kg (1.72 cP for the viscosity) affected fish performance. In conclusion, the best strategy for faecal waste management in striped catfish by dietary viscosity is to keep it as low as possible in the diet.</p

An efficient time-domain implementation of the multichromophoric Förster resonant energy transfer method

The excitation energy transfer (EET) process for photosynthetic antenna complexes consisting of subunits, each comprised of multiple chromophores, remains challenging to describe. The multichromophoric Förster resonance energy transfer theory is a popular method to describe the EET process in such systems. This paper presents a new time-domain method for calculating energy transfer based on the combination of multichromophoric Förster resonance energy transfer theory and the Numerical Integration of the Schrödinger Equation method. After validating the method on simple model systems, we apply it to the Light-Harvesting antenna 2 (LH2) complex, a light harvesting antenna found in purple bacteria. We use a simple model combining the overdamped Brownian oscillators to describe the dynamic disorder originating from the environmental fluctuations and the transition charge from the electrostatic potential coupling model to determine the interactions between chromophores. We demonstrate that with this model, both the calculated spectra and the EET rates between the two rings within the LH2 complex agree well with experimental results. We further find that the transfer between the strongly coupled rings of neighboring LH2 complexes can also be well described with our method. We conclude that our new method accurately describes the EET rate for biologically relevant multichromophoric systems, which are similar to the LH2 complex. Computationally, the new method is very tractable, especially for slow processes. We foresee that the method can be applied to efficiently calculate transfer in artificial systems as well and may pave the way for calculating multidimensional spectra of extensive multichromophoric systems in the future