Light-weight wood-magnesium oxychloride cement composite building products made by extrusion

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Construction and Building Materials. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2011 Elsevier B.V.Magnesium oxychloride (MOC) cement is a type of non-hydraulic cement with yellowish color in nature and low alkalinity exhibiting many other properties superior to Portland Cement (PC). In this study, light-weight wood–MOC cement composite building products, with sawdust and/or perlite as aggregate, were made through extrusion. Physical, nailing and mechanical properties of these composites were investigated. It was found that the specific dry densities of the wood–MOC cement composites were close to 1.0 and they were nailable like hard natural wood. Their flexural strength decreased as temperature increased. By replacing 50% sawdust in weight by perlite, the composite exhibited less die swell and better performance in resisting high temperature.China Ministry of Science & Technology and the European Commission

Protein chainmail variants in dsDNA viruses.

First discovered in bacteriophage HK97, biological chainmail is a highly stable system formed by concatenated protein rings. Each subunit of the ring contains the HK97-like fold, which is characterized by its submarine-like shape with a 5-stranded β sheet in the axial (A) domain, spine helix in the peripheral (P) domain, and an extended (E) loop. HK97 capsid consists of covalently-linked copies of just one HK97-like fold protein and represents the most effective strategy to form highly stable chainmail needed for dsDNA genome encapsidation. Recently, near-atomic resolution structures enabled by cryo electron microscopy (cryoEM) have revealed a range of other, more complex variants of this strategy for constructing dsDNA viruses. The first strategy, exemplified by P22-like phages, is the attachment of an insertional (I) domain to the core 5-stranded β sheet of the HK97-like fold. The atomic models of the Bordetella phage BPP-1 showcases an alternative topology of the classic HK97 topology of the HK97-like fold, as well as the second strategy for constructing stable capsids, where an auxiliary jellyroll protein dimer serves to cement the non-covalent chainmail formed by capsid protein subunits. The third strategy, found in lambda-like phages, uses auxiliary protein trimers to stabilize the underlying non-covalent chainmail near the 3-fold axis. Herpesviruses represent highly complex viruses that use a combination of these strategies, resulting in four-level hierarchical organization including a non-covalent chainmail formed by the HK97-like fold domain found in the floor region. A thorough understanding of these structures should help unlock the enigma of the emergence and evolution of dsDNA viruses and inform bioengineering efforts based on these viruses

Revealing Majorana Fermion states in a superfluid of cold atoms subject to a harmonic potential

We here explore Majorana Fermion states in an s-wave superfluid of cold atoms in the presence of spin-orbital coupling and an additional harmonic potential. The superfluid boundary is induced by a harmonic trap. Two locally separated Majorana Fermion states are revealed numerically based on the self-consistent Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations. The local density of states are calculated, through which the signatures of Majorana excitations may be indicated experimentally