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Optimizing Cellulase Mixtures for Maximum Rate and Extent of Hydrolysis. Final Report
Pure Thomomonospora fusca and Trichoderma reesei cellulases and their mixtures were studied to determine the optimal set of cellulases for biomass hydrolysis. The objective was to reduce the cost of cellulase in order to help lower the overall processing cost of the enzymatic conversion of biomass cellulose to sugars, which can then be fermented into fuels and other energy-intensive chemicals. No cellulase mixture was obtained that was much better than the best commercially available preparations. However, the study has greatly increased knowledge of T. fusca cellulases, synergism, and cellulose binding, and provide evidence that future work will produce cellulases with higher activity in degrading crystalline cellulose. T. fusca cellulases may have good industrial potential because: (1) they are compatible with industrial processes that operate at elevated temperatures; (2) they retain 90% of their activity under neutral or basic conditions, which provides a great deal of flexibility in reactor design and operation; and (3) tools are now available to change specific amino acid residues in their catalytic domains and to assess how these changes influence catalysis. 74 refs
Is the mean-field approximation so bad? A simple generalization yelding realistic critical indices for 3D Ising-class systems
Modification of the renormalization-group approach, invoking Stratonovich
transformation at each step, is proposed to describe phase transitions in 3D
Ising-class systems. The proposed method is closely related to the mean-field
approximation. The low-order scheme works well for a wide thermal range, is
consistent with a scaling hypothesis and predicts very reasonable values of
critical indices.Comment: 4 page
Critical exponents in zero dimensions
In the vicinity of the onset of an instability, we investigate the effect of
colored multiplicative noise on the scaling of the moments of the unstable mode
amplitude. We introduce a family of zero dimensional models for which we can
calculate the exact value of the critical exponents for all the
moments. The results are obtained through asymptotic expansions that use the
distance to onset as a small parameter. The examined family displays a variety
of behaviors of the critical exponents that includes anomalous exponents:
exponents that differ from the deterministic (mean-field) prediction, and
multiscaling: non-linear dependence of the exponents on the order of the
moment
Current-density functional for disordered systems
The effective action for the current and density is shown to satisfy an
evolution equation, the functional generalization of Callan-Symanzik equation.
The solution describes the dependence of the one-particle irreducible vertex
functions on the strength of the quenched disorder and the annealed Coulomb
interaction. The result is non-perturbative, no small parameter is assumed. The
a.c. conductivity is obtained by the numerical solution of the evolution
equation on finite lattices in the absence of the Coulomb interaction. The
static limit is performed and the conductivity is found to be vanishing beyond
a certain threshold of the impurity strength.Comment: final version, 28 pages, 17 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.
The Spin-Dependent Structure Functions of Nuclei in the Meson-Nucleon Theory
A theoretical approach to the investigation of spin-dependent structure
functions in deep inelastic scattering of polarized leptons off polarized
nuclei, based on the effective meson-nucleon theory and operator product
expansion method, is proposed and applied to deuteron and . The explicit
forms of the moments of the deuteron and spin-dependent structure
functions are found and numerical estimates of the influence of nuclear
structure effects are presented.Comment: 42 pages revtex, 7 postscript figures available from above e-mail
upon request. Perugia preprint DFUPG 92/9
Dynamics of 2D pancake vortices in layered superconductors
The dynamics of 2D pancake vortices in Josephson-coupled
superconducting/normal - metal multilayers is considered within the
time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau theory. For temperatures close to a
viscous drag force acting on a moving 2D vortex is shown to depend strongly on
the conductivity of normal metal layers. For a tilted vortex line consisting of
2D vortices the equation of viscous motion in the presence of a transport
current parallel to the layers is obtained. The specific structure of the
vortex line core leads to a new dynamic behavior and to substantial deviations
from the Bardeen-Stephen theory. The viscosity coefficient is found to depend
essentially on the angle between the magnetic field and the
axis normal to the layers. For field orientations close to the layers
the nonlinear effects in the vortex motion appear even for slowly moving vortex
lines (when the in-plane transport current is much smaller than the
Ginzburg-Landau critical current). In this nonlinear regime the viscosity
coefficient depends logarithmically on the vortex velocity .Comment: 15 pages, revtex, no figure
Wegner-Houghton equation and derivative expansion
We study the derivative expansion for the effective action in the framework
of the Exact Renormalization Group for a single component scalar theory. By
truncating the expansion to the first two terms, the potential and the
kinetic coefficient , our analysis suggests that a set of coupled
differential equations for these two functions can be established under certain
smoothness conditions for the background field and that sharp and smooth
cut-off give the same result. In addition we find that, differently from the
case of the potential, a further expansion is needed to obtain the differential
equation for , according to the relative weight between the kinetic and
the potential terms. As a result, two different approximations to the
equation are obtained. Finally a numerical analysis of the coupled equations
for and is performed at the non-gaussian fixed point in
dimensions to determine the anomalous dimension of the field.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figure
A Renormalization Group Approach to Relativistic Cosmology
We discuss the averaging hypothesis tacitly assumed in standard cosmology.
Our approach is implemented in a "3+1" formalism and invokes the coarse
graining arguments, provided and supported by the real-space Renormalization
Group (RG) methods. Block variables are introduced and the recursion relations
written down explicitly enabling us to characterize the corresponding RG flow.
To leading order, the RG flow is provided by the Ricci-Hamilton equations
studied in connection with the geometry of three-manifolds. The properties of
the Ricci-Hamilton flow make it possible to study a critical behaviour of
cosmological models. This criticality is discussed and it is argued that it may
be related to the formation of sheet-like structures in the universe. We
provide an explicit expression for the renormalized Hubble constant and for the
scale dependence of the matter distribution. It is shown that the Hubble
constant is affected by non-trivial scale dependent shear terms, while the
spatial anisotropy of the metric influences significantly the scale-dependence
of the matter distribution.Comment: 57 pages, LaTeX, 15 pictures available on request from the Author
Updated tests of scaling and universality for the spin-spin correlations in the 2D and 3D spin-S Ising models using high-temperature expansions
We have extended, from order 12 through order 25, the high-temperature series
expansions (in zero magnetic field) for the spin-spin correlations of the
spin-S Ising models on the square, simple-cubic and body-centered-cubic
lattices. On the basis of this large set of data, we confirm accurately the
validity of the scaling and universality hypotheses by resuming several tests
which involve the correlation function, its moments and the exponential or the
second-moment correlation-lengths.Comment: 21 pages, 8 figure
Further analysis of the quantum critical point of CeLaRuSi
New data on the spin dynamics and the magnetic order of
CeLaRuSi are presented. The importance of the Kondo
effect at the quantum critical point of this system is emphasized from the
behaviour of the relaxation rate at high temperature and from the variation of
the ordered moment with respect to the one of the N\'eel temperature for
various .Comment: Contribution for the Festschrift on the occasion of Hilbert von
Loehneysen 60 th birthday. To be published as a special issue in the Journal
of Low Temperature Physic
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