Will Washington Provide Its Own Feedstocks for Biofuels?

The study finds that Washington State’s field corn, sugar beet and canola production could satisfy only a small percentage of the State’s annual gasoline or diesel consumption. Linear programming projections for 2008 showed a relatively close match between projected and actual production. Projections for 2009-2011 showed no increase in the State’s capacity to increase biofuel crop feedstocks. In comparison to crop feedstocks, Washington’s total annual lignocellulosic biomass is abundant. However, only a fraction of the biomass could be converted to biofuel due to high costs of collection and processing, competing markets for some biomass, and limitations in current technology.biofuels, biofuel feedstocks, canola, cellulosic inventories, grain corn, linear programming, Washington State

Development of a technology adoption and usage prediction tool for assistive technology for people with dementia

This article is available open access through the publisher’s website at the link below. Copyright @ The Authors 2013.In the current work, data gleaned from an assistive technology (reminding technology), which has been evaluated with people with Dementia over a period of several years was retrospectively studied to extract the factors that contributed to successful adoption. The aim was to develop a prediction model with the capability of prospectively assessing whether the assistive technology would be suitable for persons with Dementia (and their carer), based on user characteristics, needs and perceptions. Such a prediction tool has the ability to empower a formal carer to assess, through a very limited amount of questions, whether the technology will be adopted and used.EPSR

Investigating the Expression and Function of the Glucose Transporter GLUT6 in Obesity

Obesity-related insulin resistance is a highly prevalent and growing health concern, which places stress on the pancreatic islets of Langerhans by increasing insulin secretion to lower blood glucose levels. The glucose transporters GLUT1 and GLUT3 play a key role in glucose-stimulated insulin secretion in human islets, while GLUT2 is the key isoform in rodent islets. However, it is unclear whether other glucose transporters also contribute to insulin secretion by pancreatic islets. Herein, we show that SLC2A6 (GLUT6) is markedly upregulated in pancreatic islets from genetically obese leptin-mutant (ob/ob) and leptin receptor-mutant (db/db) mice, compared to lean controls. Furthermore, we observe that islet SLC2A6 expression positively correlates with body mass index in human patients with type 2 diabetes. To investigate whether GLUT6 plays a functional role in islets, we crossed GLUT6 knockout mice with C57BL/6 ob/ob mice. Pancreatic islets isolated from ob/ob mice lacking GLUT6 secreted more insulin in response to high-dose glucose, compared to ob/ob mice that were wild type for GLUT6. The loss of GLUT6 in ob/ob mice had no adverse impact on body mass, body composition, or glucose tolerance at a whole-body level. This study demonstrates that GLUT6 plays a role in pancreatic islet insulin secretion in vitro but is not a dominant glucose transporter that alters whole-body metabolic physiology in ob/ob mice

Transient absorption and reshaping of ultrafast XUV light by laser-dressed helium

We present a theoretical study of transient absorption and reshaping of extreme ultraviolet (XUV) pulses by helium atoms dressed with a moderately strong infrared (IR) laser field. We formulate the atomic response using both the frequency-dependent absorption cross section and a time-frequency approach based on the time-dependent dipole induced by the light fields. The latter approach can be used in cases when an ultrafast dressing pulse induces transient effects, and/or when the atom exchanges energy with multiple frequency components of the XUV field. We first characterize the dressed atom response by calculating the frequency-dependent absorption cross section for XUV energies between 20 and 24 eV for several dressing wavelengths between 400 and 2000 nm and intensities up to 10^12 W/cm^2. We find that for dressing wavelengths near 1600 nm, there is an Autler-Townes splitting of the 1s ---> 2p transition that can potentially lead to transparency for absorption of XUV light tuned to this transition. We study the effect of this XUV transparency in a macroscopic helium gas by incorporating the time-frequency approach into a solution of the coupled Maxwell-Schr\"odinger equations. We find rich temporal reshaping dynamics when a 61 fs XUV pulse resonant with the 1s ---> 2p transition propagates through a helium gas dressed by an 11 fs, 1600 nm laser pulse.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, 1 table, RevTeX4, revise

The zebrafish xenograft platform-A novel tool for modeling KSHV-associated diseases

Kaposi\u27s sarcoma associated-herpesvirus (KSHV, also known as human herpesvirus-8) is a gammaherpesvirus that establishes life-long infection in human B lymphocytes. KSHV infection is typically asymptomatic, but immunosuppression can predispose KSHV-infected individuals to primary effusion lymphoma (PEL); a malignancy driven by aberrant proliferation of latently infected B lymphocytes, and supported by pro-inflammatory cytokines and angiogenic factors produced by cells that succumb to lytic viral replication. Here, we report the development of the firs

Pioneer Venus 12.5 km Anomaly Workshop Report, volume 1

A workshop was convened at Ames Research Center on September 28 and 29, 1993, to address the unexplained electrical anomalies experienced in December 1978 by the four Pioneer Venus probes below a Venus altitude of 12.5 km. These anomalies caused the loss of valuable data in the deep atmosphere, and, if their cause were to remain unexplained, could reoccur on future Venus missions. The workshop participants reviewed the evidence and studied all identified mechanisms that could consistently account for all observed anomalies. Both hardware problems and atmospheric interactions were considered. Based on a workshop recommendation, subsequent testing identified the cause as being an insulation failure of the external harness. All anomalous events are now explained

Probing ISM Structure in Trumpler 14 & Carina I Using The Stratospheric Terahertz Observatory 2

We present observations of the Trumpler 14/Carina I region carried out using the Stratospheric Terahertz Observatory 2 (STO2). The Trumpler 14/Carina I region is in the west part of the Carina Nebula Complex, which is one of the most extreme star-forming regions in the Milky Way. We observed Trumpler 14/Carina I in the 158 $\mu$m transition of [C\,{\sc ii}] with a spatial resolution of 48$''$ and a velocity resolution of 0.17 km s$^{-1}$. The observations cover a 0.25$^\circ$ by 0.28$^\circ$ area with central position {\it l} = 297.34$^\circ$, {\it b} = -0.60$^\circ$. The kinematics show that bright [C\,{\sc ii}] structures are spatially and spectrally correlated with the surfaces of CO clouds, tracing the photodissociation region and ionization front of each molecular cloud. Along 7 lines of sight that traverse Tr 14 into the dark ridge to the southwest, we find that the [C\,{\sc ii}] luminosity from the HII region is 3.7 times that from the PDR. In same los we find in the PDRs an average ratio of 1:4.1:5.6 for the mass in atomic gas:dark-CO gas: molecular gas traced by CO. Comparing multiple gas tracers including HI 21cm, [C\,{\sc ii}], CO, and radio recombination lines, we find that the HII regions of the Carina Nebula Complex are well-described as HII regions with one-side freely expanding towards us, consistent with the champagne model of ionized gas evolution. The dispersal of the GMC in this region is dominated by EUV photoevaporation; the dispersal timescale is 20-30 Myr.Comment: ApJ accepte