Lox droplet vaporization in a supercritical forced convective environment

A systematic investigation has been conducted to study the effects of ambient flow conditions (i.e. pressure and velocity) on supercritical droplet gasification in a forced-convective environment. The model is based on the time-dependent conservation equations in axisymmetric coordinates, and accommodates thermodynamic nonidealities and transport anomalies. In addition, an efficient scheme for evaluating thermophysical properties over the entire range of fluid thermodynamic states is established. The analysis allows a thorough examination of droplet behavior during its entire lifetime, including transient gasification, dynamic deformation, and shattering. A parametric study of droplet vaporization rate in terms of ambient pressure and Reynolds number is also conducted

The Impact of Electronic Shopping Site\u27s Privacy Policy, Reputation, and Trust on Customers\u27 Purchase Intentions

With the advent of EC, Internet shopping becomes a way of business transactions. This research investigates how trust can affect customers’ purchase intentions. Having surveyed related literature, a conceptual framework has been proposed. The framework consists of four components: independent variables (privacy policy and reputation), intervening variables (cognitive and affective trust), dependent variable (customers’ purchase intentions), and moderating variable (perceived risk). The 2(with/without privacy policy)*2(good/bad reputation) experiments are employed to collect primary data to validate the proposed conceptual framework. The two levels privacy policy and reputation can significantly influence cognitive and affective trust. Moreover, the effect of cognitive trust and purchase intentions is more than that of affective trust. The study result also shows the interaction between privacy policy, reputation, and trust for the major product is not significant. Therefore, we suggest that electronic shopping sites’ managers should consider customers’ mentality in order to raise their purchase intentions

iTAR: A Web Server for Identifying Target Genes of Transcription Factors using ChIP-Seq or ChIP-Chip Data

Chromatin immunoprecipitation followed by massively parallel DNA sequencing (ChIP-seq) or microarray hybridization (ChIP-chip) has been widely used to determine the genomic occupation of transcription factors (TFs). We have previously developed a probabilistic method, called TIP (Target Identification from Profiles), to identify TF target genes using ChIP-seq/ChIP-chip data. To achieve high specificity, TIP applies a conservative method to estimate significance of target genes, with the trade-off being a relatively low sensitivity of target gene identification compared to other methods. Additionally, TIP’s output does not render binding-peak locations or intensity, information highly useful for visualization and general experimental biological use, while the variability of ChIP-seq/ChIP-chip file formats has made input into TIP more difficult than desired. To improve upon these facets, here we present are fined TIP with key extensions. First, it implements a Gaussian mixture model for p-value estimation, increasing target gene identification sensitivity and more accurately capturing the shape of TF binding profile distributions. Second, it enables the incorporation of TF binding-peak data by identifying their locations in significant target gene promoter regions and quantifies their strengths. Finally, for full ease of implementation we have incorporated it into a web server (http://syslab3.nchu.edu.tw/iTAR/) that enables flexibility of input file format, can be used across multiple species and genome assembly versions, and is freely available for public use. The web server additionally performs GO enrichment analysis for the identified target genes to reveal the potential function of the corresponding TF

Donor Site Morbidity Associated with Cancellous Bone Harvest from the Anterior Iliac Crest: Using a Mini-Access Approach and Literature Review

Introduction: The anterior iliac crest is a popular donor sites for cancellous bone in alveolar cleft reconstruction. Potential problems such as donor site pain, restricted ambulation, and sensory nerve injury, are common drawbacks. We developed a mini-access approach to harvest cancellous bone graft from the iliac crest and reviewed the donor site morbidity in the literature.Methods: We reviewed the previously-collected data from patients who underwent alveolar bone grafting using the mini-access approach from the iliac crest in 2005, which was the second year in which we used this method. Donor site morbidity was recorded and analyzed. Data from a total of 40 patients were reviewed.Results: 28 patients were male and 12 were female with a mean age of 10. Thirty-three patients had a unilateral cleft, and 7 patients had bilateral clefts. The average bone graft volume was 5.35 ml, while the average length of hospitalization was 4.55 days. Suspected lateral femoral cutaneous nerve injury occurred in 10% of the cases.Conclusion: Compared to the literature, although we could not conclude that the mini-access approach is absolutely better than the other methods, it provides an easy, alternative way without special equipments to decrease the donor site morbidity

A Simple Model for Cavity Enhanced Slow Lights in Vertical Cavity Surface Emission Lasers

We develop a simple model for the slow lights in Vertical Cavity Surface Emission Lasers (VCSELs), with the combination of cavity and population pulsation effects. The dependences of probe signal power, injection bias current and wavelength detuning for the group delays are demonstrated numerically and experimentally. Up to 65 ps group delays and up to 10 GHz modulation frequency can be achieved in the room temperature at the wavelength of 1.3 $\mu$m. The most significant feature of our VCSEL device is that the length of active region is only several $\mu$m long. Based on the experimental parameters of quantum dot VCSEL structures, we show that the resonance effect of laser cavity plays a significant role to enhance the group delays

Inferring Condition-Specific Targets of Human TF-TF Complexes Using ChIP-seq Data

Background: Transcription factors (TFs) often interact with one another to form TF complexes that bind DNA and regulate gene expression. Many databases are created to describe known TF complexes identified by either mammalian two-hybrid experiments or data mining. Lately, a wealth of ChIP-seq data on human TFs under different experiment conditions are available, making it possible to investigate condition-specific (cell type and/or physiologic state) TF complexes and their target genes. Results: Here, we developed a systematic pipeline to infer Condition-Specific Targets of human TF-TF complexes (called the CST pipeline) by integrating ChIP-seq data and TF motifs. In total, we predicted 2,392 TF complexes and 13,504 high-confidence or 127,994 low-confidence regulatory interactions amongst TF complexes and their target genes. We validated our predictions by (i) comparing predicted TF complexes to external TF complex databases, (ii) validating selected target genes of TF complexes using ChIP-qPCR and RT-PCR experiments, and (iii) analysing target genes of select TF complexes using gene ontology enrichment to demonstrate the accuracy of our work. Finally, the predicted results above were integrated and employed to construct a CST database. Conclusions: We built up a methodology to construct the CST database, which contributes to the analysis of transcriptional regulation and the identification of novel TF-TF complex formation in a certain condition. This database also allows users to visualize condition-specific TF regulatory networks through a user-friendly web interface