Hollow Fiber Space Water Membrane Evaporator Flight Prototype Design and Testing

The spacesuit water membrane evaporator (SWME) is being developed to perform thermal control for advanced spacesuits and to take advantage of recent advances in micropore membrane technology. This results in a robust heat-rejection device that is potentially less sensitive to contamination than is the sublimator. The current design was based on a previous design that grouped the fiber layers into stacks, which were separated by small spaces and packaged into a cylindrical shape. This was developed into a full-scale prototype consisting of 14,300 tube bundled into 30 stacks, each of which is formed into a chevron shape and separated by spacers and organized into three sectors of 10 nested stacks. The new design replaced metal components with plastic ones, eliminated the spacers, and has a custom built flight like backpressure valve mounted on the side of the SWME housing to reduce backpressure when fully open. A number of tests were performed in order to improve the strength of the polyurethane header that holds the fibers in place while the system is pressurized. Vacuum chamber testing showed similar heat rejection as a function of inlet water temperature and water vapor backpressure was similar to the previous design. Other tests pushed the limits of tolerance to freezing and showed suitability to reject heat in a Mars pressure environment with and without a sweep gas. Tolerance to contamination by constituents expected to be found in potable water produced by distillation processes was tested in a conventional way by allowing constituents to accumulate in the coolant as evaporation occurs. For this purpose, the SWME cartridge has endured an equivalent of 30 EVAs exposure and demonstrated acceptable performance decline

A Genome-wide Drosophila Screen for Heat Nociception Identifies α2δ3 as an Evolutionarily Conserved Pain Gene

Worldwide, acute and chronic pain affects 20% of the adult population and represents an enormous financial and emotional burden. Using genome-wide neuronal-specific RNAi knock-down in Drosophila, we report a global screen for an innate behavior and identify hundreds of novel genes implicated in heat nociception, including the α2δ-family calcium channel subunit straightjacket (stj). Mice mutant for the stj ortholog CACNA2D3 (α2δ3) also exhibit impaired behavioral heat pain sensitivity. In addition, in humans, α2δ3 SNP variants associate with reduced sensitivity to acute noxious heat and chronic back pain. Functional imaging in α2δ3 mutant mice revealed impaired transmission of thermal pain evoked signals from the thalamus to higher order pain centers. Intriguingly, in α2δ3 mutant mice thermal pain and tactile stimulation triggered strong cross-activation or synesthesia of brain regions involved in vision, olfaction, and hearing

Journal of Cardiology Cases : official online journal of the Japanese College of Cardiology for publishing case reports

Natural superhydrophobic surfaces are often thought to have antibiofouling potential due to their self-cleaning properties. However, when incubated on cicada wings, Pseudomonas aeruginosa cells are not repelled; instead they are penetrated by the nanopillar arrays present on the wing surface, resulting in bacterial cell death. Cicada wings are effective antibacterial, as opposed to antibiofouling, surfaces

Thai migrants in Singapore: State, intimacy and desire

10.1080/09663690802518495Gender, Place and Culture156595-61