Inter- and Intramolecular recombinations in the Cucumber Mosaic Virus genome related to adaptation to Alstroemeria

In four distinct alstroemeria-infecting cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) isolates, additional sequences of various lengths were present in the 3' nontranslated regions of their RNAs 2 and 3, apparently the result of intra- and intermolecular recombination events. Competition experiments revealed that these recombined RNA 2 and 3 segments increased the biological fitness of CMV in alstroemeri

Simulation of Near-Tip Crack Behaviour and Its Correlation to Fatigue Crack Growth with a Modified Strip-Yield Model

A modified strip-yield model has been developed to simulate the plasticity-induced crack closure under the constant amplitude (CA) and a single overload loading conditions. The paper focuses on the simulation of the near tip crack profiles and stress distributions during the fatigue process. Detailed information on near-tip stress and displacement fields at the maximum load (Pmax), the minimum load (Pmin), and the crack opening load (Pop) of a fatigue load cycle have been presented. The correlation of the crack closure to the near-tip material fatigue damage has been investigated and used to rationalize the crack growth behaviour under the CA and a single overload loading conditions.Peer reviewedSubmitted Versio

The effect of different metallic counterface materials and different surface treatments on the wear and friction of polyamide 66 and its composite in rolling-sliding contact

Original article can be found at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00431648 Copyright Elsevier B. V. DOI: 10.1016/S0043-1648(03)00054-1The effect of different metallic counterface materials and different surface treatments on the tribological behaviour of polymer and polymer composite under unlubricated, non-conformal and rolling-sliding contact has been investigated. The most widely used polymer materials - unreinforced polyamide 66 and its composite (RFL4036) – were tested. The metallic materials include aluminium, brass and steel and the surface treatments include Tufftride** treated (known as nitrocarbonising) and magnesium phosphate treated, etc. Tests were conducted over a range of slip ratios at a fixed load of 300 N, 1000 rpm rotational speed using a twin-disc test rig. The experimental results showed that the polyamide composite exhibited less friction and wear than the unreinforced polyamide 66 when running against steel and aluminium counterfaces. However, when tested against brass, polyamide 66 exhibited lower wear than the composite. The surface treatment of steel has a significant effect on the coefficient of friction and the wear rate, as well as on the tribological mechanism, of polyamide 66 composites. It has been observed that a thin film on the contact surface plays a dominant role in reducing the wear and friction of the composite and in suppressing the transverse cracks. This study clearly indicates that both the characteristics of the different counterface metallic materials and the surface treatment greatly control the wear behaviour of polyamide 66 and its composite.Peer reviewe

A Review of Computational Fluid Dynamics Simulations on PEFC Performance

Among the number of fuel cells in existence, the proton exchange fuel cell (PEFC) has been favoured because of its numerous applications. These applications range from small power generation in cell phones, to stationary power plants or vehicular applications. However, the principle of operation on PEFCs naturally leads to the development of water from the reaction between hydrogen and oxygen. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has played an important role in many research and development projects. From automotive to aerospace and even medicine, to the development of fuel cells, by making it possible to investigate different scenarios and fluid flow patterns for optimal performance. CFD allows for in-situ analysis of PEFCs, by studying fluid flow and heat and mass transfer phenomena, thus reducing the need for expensive prototypes and cutting down test-time by a substantial mount. This paper aims at investigating the advances made in the use of CFD as a technique for the performance and optimisation of PEFCs to identify the research and development opportunities in the field, such as the performance of a novel PEFC, with focus on the underlying physics and in-situ analysis of the operations

Thermal analysis of Phase Change Material Board (PCMB) under weather conditions in the summer

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following article: D. Zhuo, Y. tian, Y. Qu, and Y. K. Chen, ‘Thermal analysis of phase change material board (PCMB) under weather conditions in the summer’, Applied Thermal Engineering, Vol. 99: 690-702, April 2016, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2016.01.121. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.Phase Change Material Board (PCMB) has been considered as an effective way to improve the thermal comfort in either new or existing buildings. In this work, firstly the optimal melting temperatures of internal and external PCMB are given, and the optimal heat storage capacities are obtained under the idealised circumstance of considering sinusoidal changes of the room and outdoor temperatures during a day. Secondly, to study the potential energy saving from applying a PCMB, a case study of a lightweight office with real environmental conditions is carried out. The air conditioning is switched on in the model to keep the indoor temperature within thermal comfort. Using the daily energy consumption and daily thermal comfort rate as the performance criteria, the effects of major influencing factors including melting temperature, latent heat and thermal conductivity of PCMB are studied parametrically. The results show that both the external and internal PCMB can achieve better performance when the melting temperature is chosen to be slightly higher than the average indoor air temperature. In the summer, the external PCMB has a better performance than the internal PCMB because the external PCMB works not only as a heat storage system whose function is similar to the internal PCMB, but also as a thermal connection between the outdoor and indoor environment due to its thermal insulation function, which reduces the influence of the changing outdoor environment.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Moisture Sorption Isotherms of Oolong Tea

The sorption isotherms of Oolong tea were determined at temperatures ranging from 5 to 50 degrees C. Estimated parameters and fitting ability for nine equilibrium relative humidity (ERH) models were evaluated. The modified Oswin equations were found to be an adequate model of three parameters to describe the sorption data. The Andrieu model was the only adequate model of four parameters. In comparing the results of this study with previously published data, it was found that the sorption properties were affected by species and manufacture techniques. The Guggenheim-Anderson-de Boer (GAB) model was not an adequate model as indicated by checking residual plots. The monolayer moisture content calculated from the Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) model was lesser than that calculated from the GAB model. The errors of moisture content determined by measuring the ERH and temperature of samples was within 0.35%

A review on prognostics and health monitoring of proton exchange membrane fuel cell

Fuel cell technology can be traced back to 1839 when British scientist Sir William Grove discovered that it was possible to generate electricity by the reaction between hydrogen and oxygen gases. However, fuel cell still cannot compete with internal combustion engines although they have many advantages including zero carbon emissions. Fossil fuels are cheaper and present very high volumetric energy densities compared with the hydrogen gas. Furthermore, hydrogen storage as a liquid is still a huge challenge. Another important disadvantage is the lifespan of the fuel cell because of their durability, reliability and maintainability. Prognostics is an emerging technology in sustainability of engineering systems through failure prevention, reliability assessment and remaining useful lifetime estimation. Prognostics and health monitoring can play a critical role in enhancing the durability, reliability and maintainability of the fuel cell system. This paper presents a review on the current state-of-the-art in prognostics and health monitoring of Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC), aiming at identifying research and development opportunities in these fields. This paper also highlights the importance of incorporating prognostics and failure modes, mechanisms and effects analysis (FMMEA) in PEMFC to give them sustainable competitive advantage when compared with other non-clean energy solutions

NTMG (N-terminal Truncated Mutants Generator for cDNA): an automatic multiplex PCR assays design for generating various N-terminal truncated cDNA mutants

The sequential deletion method is generally used to locate the functional domain of a protein. With this method, in order to find the various N-terminal truncated mutants, researchers have to investigate the ATG-like codons, to design various multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) forward primers and to do several PCR experiments. This web server (N-terminal Truncated Mutants Generator for cDNA) will automatically generate groups of forward PCR primers and the corresponding reverse PCR primers that can be used in a single batch of a multiplex PCR experiment to extract the various N-terminal truncated mutants. This saves much time and money for those who use the sequential deletion method in their research. This server is available at http://oblab.cs.nchu.edu.tw:8080/WebSDL/

Identical Bands in Superdeformed Nuclei: A Relativistic Description

Relativistic Mean Field Theory in the rotating frame is used to describe superdeformed nuclei. Nuclear currents and the resulting spatial components of the vector meson fields are fully taken into account. Identical bands in neighboring Rare Earth nuclei are investigated and excellent agreement with recent experimental data is observed.Comment: 11 pages (Latex) and 4 figures (available upon request) TUM-ITP-Ko93/