21,510 research outputs found
The changing role of cell culture in the generation of transgenic livestock
Transgenesis may allow the generation of farm animals with altered phenotype, animal models for research and animal bioreactors. Although such animals have been produced, the time and expense involved in generating transgenic livestock and then evaluating the transgene expression pattern is very restrictive. If questions about the ability and efficiency of expression could be asked solely in vitro rapid progress could be achieved. Unfortunately, experiments addressing transcriptional control in vitro have proved unreliable in their ability to indicate whether a transgene will be transcribed or not. However, initial studies suggest that cell culture may be able to predict in vivo post-transcriptional events. We review these issues and propose that strategies which engineer the transgene integration site could enhance the probability for efficient expression. This approach has now become feasible with the development of techniques allowing animals to be generated from somatic cells by nuclear transfer. The important step in this procedure is the use of cells grown in culture as the source of genetic information, allowing the selection of specific transgene integration events. This technology which has dramatically increased the potential use of transgenic livestock for both agricultural and biotechnological applications, is based on standard cell culture methodology. We are now at the start of a new era in large animal transgenics
New functional redundancy approaches for attitude control thruster systems
Functional redundancy safeguards for inert gas attitude control thruster system
Ab-initio determined electronic and magnetic properties of half-metallic NiCrSi and NiMnSi Heusler alloys; the role of interfaces and defects
Using state-of-the-art first-principles calculations we study the properties
of the ferromagnetic Heusler compounds NiYSi where Y stands for V, Cr or Mn.
NiCrSi and NiMnSi contrary to NiVSi are half-metallic at their equilibrium
lattice constant exhibiting integer values of the total spin magnetic moment
and thus we concentrate on these two alloys. The minority-spin gap has the same
characteristics as for the well-known NiMnSb alloy being around 1 eV.
Upon tetragonalization the gap is present in the density of states even for
expansion or contraction of the out-of-plane lattice parameter by 5%. The Cr-Cr
and Mn-Mn interactions make ferromagnetism extremely stable and the Curie
temperature exceeds 1000 K for NiMnSi. Surface and interfaces with GaP, ZnS and
Si semiconductors are not half-metallic but in the case of NiCrSi the Ni-based
contacts present spin-polarization at the Fermi level over 90%. Finally, we
show that there are two cases of defects and atomic-swaps. The first-ones which
involve the Cr(Mn) and Si atoms induce states at the edges of the gap which
persists for a moderate-concentration of defects. Defects involving Ni atoms
induce states localized within the gap completely destroying the
half-metallicity. Based on single-impurity calculations we associate these
states to the symmetry of the crystal
3d-electron induced magnetic phase transition in half-metallic semi-Heusler alloys
We study the effect of the non-magnetic 3\textit{d} atoms on the magnetic
properties of the half-metallic (HM) semi-Heusler alloys CoCuMnSb
and NiCuMnSb () using first-principles
calculations. We determine the magnetic phase diagram of both systems at zero
temperature and obtain a phase transition from a ferromagnetic to an
antiferromagnetic state. For low Cu concentrations the ferromagnetic RKKY-like
exchange mechanism is dominating, while the antiferromagnetic superexchange
coupling becomes important for larger Cu content leading to the observed
magnetic phase transition. A strong dependence of the magnetism in both systems
on the position of the Fermi level within the HM gap is obtained. Obtained
results are in good agreement with the available experimental data
Seismic Stabilization of Historic Adobe Structures: Final Report of the Getty Seismic Adobe Project
Provides the final report of GSAP activities, and the first publication to provide an overview of the results of scale-model laboratory research along with field data from a survey of damage to historic adobe buildings after an actual earthquake
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