The Solenoidal Large Intensity Device (SoLID) for JLab 12 GeV

The Solenoidal Large Intensity Device (SoLID) is a new experimental apparatus planned for Hall A at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab). SoLID will combine large angular and momentum acceptance with the capability to handle very high data rates at high luminosity. With a slate of approved high-impact physics experiments, SoLID will push JLab to a new limit at the QCD intensity frontier that will exploit the full potential of its 12 GeV electron beam. In this paper, we present an overview of the rich physics program that can be realized with SoLID, which encompasses the tomography of the nucleon in 3-D momentum space from Semi-Inclusive Deep Inelastic Scattering (SIDIS), expanding the phase space in the search for new physics and novel hadronic effects in parity-violating DIS (PVDIS), a precision measurement of $J/\psi$ production at threshold that probes the gluon field and its contribution to the proton mass, tomography of the nucleon in combined coordinate and momentum space with deep exclusive reactions, and more. To meet the challenging requirements, the design of SoLID described here takes full advantage of recent progress in detector, data acquisition and computing technologies. In addition, we outline potential experiments beyond the currently approved program and discuss the physics that could be explored should upgrades of CEBAF become a reality in the future.Comment: This white paper for the SoLID program at Jefferson Lab was prepared in part as an input to the 2023 NSAC Long Range Planning exercise. To be submitted to J. Phys.

A Novel Biochemical Route for Fuels and Chemicals Production from Cellulosic Biomass

The conventional biochemical platform featuring enzymatic hydrolysis involves five key steps: pretreatment, cellulase production, enzymatic hydrolysis, fermentation, and product recovery. Sugars are produced as reactive intermediates for subsequent fermentation to fuels and chemicals. Herein, an alternative biochemical route is proposed. Pretreatment, enzymatic hydrolysis and cellulase production is consolidated into one single step, referred to as consolidated aerobic processing, and sugar aldonates are produced as the reactive intermediates for biofuels production by fermentation. In this study, we demonstrate the viability of consolidation of the enzymatic hydrolysis and cellulase production steps in the new route using Neurospora crassa as the model microorganism and the conversion of cellulose to ethanol as the model system. We intended to prove the two hypotheses: 1) cellulose can be directed to produce cellobionate by reducing β-glucosidase production and by enhancing cellobiose dehydrogenase production; and 2) both of the two hydrolysis products of cellobionate—glucose and gluconate—can be used as carbon sources for ethanol and other chemical production. Our results showed that knocking out multiple copies of β-glucosidase genes led to cellobionate production from cellulose, without jeopardizing the cellulose hydrolysis rate. Simulating cellobiose dehydrogenase over-expression by addition of exogenous cellobiose dehydrogenase led to more cellobionate production. Both of the two hydrolysis products of cellobionate: glucose and gluconate can be used by Escherichia coli KO 11 for efficient ethanol production. They were utilized simultaneously in glucose and gluconate co-fermentation. Gluconate was used even faster than glucose. The results support the viability of the two hypotheses that lay the foundation for the proposed new route

Challenges and Potential in Increasing Lutein Content in Microalgae

Research on enhancing lutein content in microalgae has made significant progress in recent years. However, strategies are needed to address the possible limitations of microalgae as practical lutein producers. The capacity of lutein sequestration may determine the upper limit of cellular lutein content. The preliminary estimation presented in this work suggests that the lutein sequestration capacity of the light-harvesting complex (LHC) of microalgae is most likely below 2% on the basis of dry cell weight (DCW). Due to its nature as a structural pigment, higher lutein content might interfere with the LHC in fulfilling photosynthetic functions. Storing lutein in a lipophilic environment is a mechanism for achieving high lutein content but several critical barriers must be overcome such as lutein degradation and access to lipid droplet to be stored through esterification. Understanding the mechanisms underlying lipid droplet biogenesis in chloroplasts, as well as carotenoid trafficking through chloroplast membranes and carotenoid esterification, may provide insight for new approaches to achieve high lutein contents in algae. In the meantime, building the machinery for esterification and sequestration of lutein and other hydroxyl-carotenoids in model microorganisms, such as yeast, with synthetic biology technology provides a promising option

Challenges and Potential in Increasing Lutein Content in Microalgae

Research on enhancing lutein content in microalgae has made significant progress in recent years. However, strategies are needed to address the possible limitations of microalgae as practical lutein producers. The capacity of lutein sequestration may determine the upper limit of cellular lutein content. The preliminary estimation presented in this work suggests that the lutein sequestration capacity of the light-harvesting complex (LHC) of microalgae is most likely below 2% on the basis of dry cell weight (DCW). Due to its nature as a structural pigment, higher lutein content might interfere with the LHC in fulfilling photosynthetic functions. Storing lutein in a lipophilic environment is a mechanism for achieving high lutein content but several critical barriers must be overcome such as lutein degradation and access to lipid droplet to be stored through esterification. Understanding the mechanisms underlying lipid droplet biogenesis in chloroplasts, as well as carotenoid trafficking through chloroplast membranes and carotenoid esterification, may provide insight for new approaches to achieve high lutein contents in algae. In the meantime, building the machinery for esterification and sequestration of lutein and other hydroxyl-carotenoids in model microorganisms, such as yeast, with synthetic biology technology provides a promising option

Metabolic Engineering of Oleaginous Yeast Yarrowia lipolytica for Overproduction of Fatty Acids

The oleaginous yeastYarrowia lipolyticahas attracted much attention due to its ability to utilize a wide range of substrates to accumulate high lipid content and its flexibility for genetic manipulation. In this study, intracellular lipid metabolism inY. lipolyticawas tailored to produce fatty acid, a renewable oleochemical and precursor for production of advanced biofuels. Two main strategies, including blocking activation and peroxisomal uptake of fatty acids and elimination of biosynthesis of lipids, were employed to reduce fatty acid consumption by the native pathways inY. lipolytica. Both genetic modifications improved fatty acid production. However, disruption of the genes responsible for assembly of nonpolar lipid molecules including triacylglycerols (TAGs) and steryl esters resulted in the deleterious effects on the cell growth. The genetesAencoding thioesterase fromEscherichia coliwas expressed in the strain with disruptedfaagenes encoding fatty acyl-CoA synthetases andpxa1encoding peroxisomal acyl-CoA transporter, and the titer of fatty acids resulted in 2.3 g/L in shake flask culture, representing 11-fold improvement compared with the parent strain. Expressing the native genes encoding acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACC) and hexokinase also increased fatty acid production, although the improvement was not as significant as that withtesAexpression. Saturated fatty acids including palmitic acid (C16:0) and stearic acid (C18:0) increased remarkably in the fatty acid composition of the recombinant bearingtesAcompared with the parent strain. The recombinant expressingtesAgene resulted in high lipid content, indicating the great fatty acid producing potential ofY. lipolytica. The results highlight the achievement of fatty acid overproduction without adverse effect on growth of the strain. Results of this study provided insight into the relationship between fatty acid and lipid metabolism inY. lipolytica, confirming the avenue to reprogram lipid metabolism of this host for overproduction of renewable fatty acids

Engineering of a xylose metabolic pathway in Rhodococcus strains

The two metabolically versatile actinobacteria Rhodococcus opacus PD630 and R. jostii RHA1 can efficiently convert diverse organic substrates into neutral lipids mainly consisting of triacylglycerol (TAG), the precursor of energy-rich hydrocarbon. Neither, however, is able to utilize xylose, the important component present in lignocellulosic biomass, as the carbon source for growth and lipid accumulation. In order to broaden their substrate utilization range, the metabolic pathway of d-xylose utilization was introduced into these two strains. This was accomplished by heterogenous expression of two well-selected genes, xylA, encoding xylose isomerase, and xylB, encoding xylulokinase from Streptomyces lividans TK23, under the control of the tac promoter with an Escherichia coli-Rhodococcus shuttle vector. The recombinant R. jostii RHA1 bearing xylA could grow on xylose as the sole carbon source, and additional expression of xylB further improved the biomass yield. The recombinant could consume both glucose and xylose in the sugar mixture, although xylose metabolism was still affected by the presence of glucose. The xylose metabolic pathway was also introduced into the high-lipid-producing strain R. opacus PD630 by expression of xylA and xylB. Under nitrogen-limited conditions, the fatty acid composition was determined, and lipid produced from xylose by recombinants of R. jostii RHA1 and R. opacus PD630 carrying xylA and xylB represented up to 52.5% and 68.3% of the cell dry weight (CDW), respectively. This work demonstrates that it is feasible to produce lipid from the sugars, including xylose, derived from renewable feedstock by genetic modification of rhodococcus strains

A Novel Passive Indoor Localization Method by Fusion CSI Amplitude and Phase Information

With the rapid development of wireless network technology, wireless passive indoor localization has become an increasingly important technique that is widely used in indoor location-based services. Channel state information (CSI) can provide more detailed and specific subcarrier information, which has gained the attention of researchers and has become an emphasis in indoor localization technology. However, existing research has generally adopted amplitude information for eigenvalue calculations. There are few research studies that have used phase information from CSI signals for localization purposes. To eliminate the signal interference existing in indoor environments, we present a passive human indoor localization method named FapFi, which fuses CSI amplitude and phase information to fully utilize richer signal characteristics to find location. In the offline stage, we filter out redundant values and outliers in the CSI amplitude information and then process the CSI phase information. A fusion method is utilized to store the processed amplitude and phase information as a fingerprint database. The experimental data from two typical laboratory and conference room environments were gathered and analyzed. The extensive experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is more efficient than other algorithms in data processing and achieves decimeter-level localization accuracy

PCA-Kalman: device-free indoor human behavior detection with commodity Wi-Fi

Abstract Human behavior detection has become increasingly significant in various fields of application. In this paper, we propose a device-free indoor human behavior detection method with channel state information (CSI) and principal component analysis (PCA), respectively, in the line of sight environment, non-line-of-sight environment, and through the wall environment experiments. We divide this method into two parts. It begins with an online phase. A fingerprint database is established by collecting the original data packets of CSI in different time periods and using the characteristics of PCA algorithm to reduce the dimension of the original CSI data. Then, some outlier values are removed by Kalman filter algorithm, and we will get more stable data and fully prepared for the docking experiments. At the same time, the PCA algorithm’s estimation results are corrected according to the detected real-time motion speed to reduce the mismatch target. Then, in the offline phase, the classification of data is collected in the real-time environment by using support vector machine (SVM) algorithm. This method not only reduces the time complexity of the algorithm but also improves the detection rate of the human’s behavior and reduces the error. The processed data are matched with the data in the fingerprint database, and finally, the detection of different behaviors performed by humans in an indoor environment is finally achieved according to the matching results. We experimented repeatedly in three different scenarios, with an average 95% of human behavior detection rate in three different environments. In addition, we compare the method proposed in this paper with the existing methods in different aspects, such as the impact of the number of subcarriers, the impact of data packets, and the impact of the test area. The experimental results show that this method is superior to other algorithms in terms of average error and indoor activity recognition accuracy, which can more accurately identify indoor human motion behavior and improve the stability of the system

Sep. Sci. Technol.

Adsorption properties of different adsorbents such as reduced NiY, AgY, alumina, 13X, and activated carbon were studied with dibenzothiophene (DBT) and naphthalene as model compounds. The desorption of DBT was carried on thermo gravimetric-differential thermal analysis (TG-DTA). The interaction of DBT with different adsorbents follows the sequence: activated carbon > reduced NiY > AgY > activated alumina > 13X. The bio-regeneration of these adsorbents was studied with P. delafieldii R-8 as desulfurization strains. Adding P. delafieldii R-8 cells can improve DBT desorption from adsorbent AgY. The desorption of DBT from adsorbents by bioregeneration of adsorbents follows the sequence: 13X > alumina > AgY > reduced NiY > activated carbon. The presence of naphthalene can decrease the desorption of sulfur compounds. The adsorption capacity of AgY decreases for the first time recycling and then changes little. The decrease of the adsorption capacity is due to the loss of Ag+ ions.Adsorption properties of different adsorbents such as reduced NiY, AgY, alumina, 13X, and activated carbon were studied with dibenzothiophene (DBT) and naphthalene as model compounds. The desorption of DBT was carried on thermo gravimetric-differential thermal analysis (TG-DTA). The interaction of DBT with different adsorbents follows the sequence: activated carbon > reduced NiY > AgY > activated alumina > 13X. The bio-regeneration of these adsorbents was studied with P. delafieldii R-8 as desulfurization strains. Adding P. delafieldii R-8 cells can improve DBT desorption from adsorbent AgY. The desorption of DBT from adsorbents by bioregeneration of adsorbents follows the sequence: 13X > alumina > AgY > reduced NiY > activated carbon. The presence of naphthalene can decrease the desorption of sulfur compounds. The adsorption capacity of AgY decreases for the first time recycling and then changes little. The decrease of the adsorption capacity is due to the loss of Ag+ ions