Recent development in organic scintillators

Discussion on recent developments of organic scintillators includes studies of organic compounds that form glass-like masses which scintillate and are stable at room temperature, correlations between molecular structure of organic scintillators and self-quenching, recently developed fast scintillators, and applications of liquid-scintillation counters

Analytic calculation of anomalous scaling in random shell models for a passive scalar

An exact non-perturbative calculation of the fourth-order anomalous correction to the scaling behaviour of a random shell-model for passive scalars is presented. Importance of ultraviolet (UV) and infrared (IR) boundary conditions on the inertial scaling properties are determined. We find that anomalous behaviour is given by the null-space of the inertial operator and we prove strong UV and IR independence of the anomalous exponent. A limiting case where diffusive behaviour can influence inertial properties is also presented.Comment: 3 pages, 1 figure, revised versio

Natural convection with mixed insulating and conducting boundary conditions: low and high Rayleigh numbers regimes

We investigate the stability and dynamics of natural convection in two dimensions, subject to inhomogeneous boundary conditions. In particular, we consider a Rayleigh-B\`enard (RB) cell, where the horizontal top boundary contains a periodic sequence of alternating thermal insulating and conducting patches, and we study the effects of the heterogeneous pattern on the global heat exchange, both at low and high Rayleigh numbers. At low Rayleigh numbers, we determine numerically the transition from a regime characterized by the presence of small convective cells localized at the inhomogeneous boundary to the onset of bulk convective rolls spanning the entire domain. Such a transition is also controlled analytically in the limit when the boundary pattern length is small compared with the cell vertical size. At higher Rayleigh number, we use numerical simulations based on a lattice Boltzmann method to assess the impact of boundary inhomogeneities on the fully turbulent regime up to $Ra \sim 10^{10}$

Calculating glass-forming ability in absence of key kinetic and thermodynamic parameters

Glass-forming ability (GFA) as defined by a critical cooling rate R_c to vitrify a liquid upon solidification is a complex function of many parameters. Some of the parameters, such as liquid-crystal interfacial energy, temperature-dependent liquid viscosity, and influence of heterogeneities, are crucial but their accurate experimental determination is challenging. Here, instead of relying on the experimental data, we draw random values for the difficult parameters and use the classical theory to examine probabilistic distributions of Rc for two well-known metallic glasses. Direct random parameterization produces extremely broad distributions spanning tens of orders of magnitude. Dramatically sharpened distributions are obtained around experimental R_c upon guiding the random parameterization with limited calorimetric data. The results suggest that it is plausible to determine GFA even in absence of data for crucial parameters

Expression cartography of human tissues using self organizing maps

Background: The availability of parallel, high-throughput microarray and sequencing experiments poses a challenge how to best arrange and to analyze the obtained heap of multidimensional data in a concerted way. Self organizing maps (SOM), a machine learning method, enables the parallel sample- and gene-centered view on the data combined with strong visualization and second-level analysis capabilities. The paper addresses aspects of the method with practical impact in the context of expression analysis of complex data sets.
Results: The method was applied to generate a SOM characterizing the whole genome expression profiles of 67 healthy human tissues selected from ten tissue categories (adipose, endocrine, homeostasis, digestion, exocrine, epithelium, sexual reproduction, muscle, immune system and nervous tissues). SOM mapping reduces the dimension of expression data from ten thousands of genes to a few thousands of metagenes where each metagene acts as representative of a minicluster of co-regulated single genes. Tissue-specific and common properties shared between groups of tissues emerge as a handful of localized spots in the tissue maps collecting groups of co-regulated and co-expressed metagenes. The functional context of the spots was discovered using overrepresentation analysis with respect to pre-defined gene sets of known functional impact. We found that tissue related spots typically contain enriched populations of gene sets well corresponding to molecular processes in the respective tissues. Analysis techniques normally used at the gene-level such as two-way hierarchical clustering provide a better signal-to-noise ratio and a better representativeness of the method if applied to the metagenes. Metagene-based clustering analyses aggregate the tissues into essentially three clusters containing nervous, immune system and the remaining tissues. 
Conclusions: The global view on the behavior of a few well-defined modules of correlated and differentially expressed genes is more intuitive and more informative than the separate discovery of the expression levels of hundreds or thousands of individual genes. The metagene approach is less sensitive to a priori selection of genes. It can detect a coordinated expression pattern whose components would not pass single-gene significance thresholds and it is able to extract context-dependent patterns of gene expression in complex data sets.
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Civilian Conservation Corps Program of the United States Department of the Interior (March 1933 to June 30, 1943)

I submit herewith my final report as the Department of the Interior Representative on the Advisory Council of the Civilian Conservation Corps. The report consists of two main parts, Observations and Summary and Recommendations, which are summarized below for your convenience

Motion of a Janus Particle Very Near a Wall

This article describes the simulated Brownian motion of a sphere comprising hemispheres of unequal zeta potential (i.e., “Janus” particle) very near a wall. The simulation tool was developed and used to assist in the methodology development for applying Total Internal Reflection Microscopy (TIRM) to anisotropic particles. Simulations of the trajectory of a Janus sphere with cap density matching that of the base particle very near a boundary were used to construct 3D potential energy landscapes that were subsequently used to infer particle and solution properties, as would be done in a TIRM measurement. Results showed that the potential energy landscape of a Janus sphere has a transition region at the location of the boundary between the two Janus halves, which depended on the relative zeta potential magnitude. The potential energy landscape was fit to accurately obtain the zeta potential of each hemisphere, particle size, minimum potential energy position and electrolyte concentration, or Debye length. We also determined the appropriate orientation bin size and regimes over which the potential energy landscape should be fit to obtain system properties. Our simulations showed that an experiment may require more than 106 observations to obtain a suitable potential energy landscape as a consequence of the multivariable nature of observations for an anisotropic particle. These results illustrate important considerations for conducting TIRM for anisotropic particles

Electrolyte Dependence of Particle Motion Near an Electrode During Ac Polarization

The phase angle between the imposed ac electric field and the oscillations in particle height is the key parameter governing the sign of interparticle force during two-dimensional directed assembly. The phase angle depends on a number of experimental parameters, including the frequency of the electric field and dispersing electrolytes. The origin of electrolyte dependence in this phase angle has been a mystery for a decade. Electrolyte dependence arises from polarization of the particle\u27s diffuse layer, which affects the dynamic electrophoretic mobility of the particle. A full description of the magnitude and phase angle of the dynamic electrophoretic mobility was incorporated into a nonlinear integro-differential equation of motion for a 5.7 μm diameter particle suspended in 0.15 mM KOH, KCl, NaHCO3, NH4OH, and NaOH at frequencies between 5 and 1000 Hz. Integration of the equation revealed that the phase angles for a particle in KOH, NH4OH, and NaOH were smaller than the phase angles calculated for a particle in KCl and NaHCO3, which is consistent with previously published experiments. Although the phase angles for each electrolyte are spread over only ∼1°, the results cluster around 90°, which is the crucial boundary between particle aggregation (\u3e90°) and separation (\u3c90°). A family of curves of the oscillation in particle height collapsed to a master curve when the amplitude of motion was scaled with the product of the dynamic electrophoretic mobility and electric field strength. These results constitute the first a priori prediction of electrolyte-dependent motion of a particle near an electrode during ac polarization

The Relative Importance of Search versus Credence Product Attributes: Organic and Locally Grown

Organic foods and local foods have come to the forefront of consumer issues, due to concerns about nutrition, health, sustainability, and food safety. A conjoint analysis experiment quantified the relative importance of, and trade-offs between, apple search and experience attributes (quality/blemishes, size, flavor), credence attributes (conventional vs. organic production method, local origin vs. product of USA vs. imported), and purchase price when buying apples. Quality is the most important apple attribute. Production method—organic versus conventional—had no significant impact on preferences.conjoint analysis, organic, locally grown, credence attributes, Consumer/Household Economics, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Marketing,

A Polymer Microdevice for Tensiometry of Insoluble Components

A semi-flexible SU-8 polymer microdevice was designed to deflect in response to a change in surface tension at an air-water interface. The suspended microtensiometer encloses a clean water-air interface, while externally the device is surrounded by an interface containing an insoluble component. The difference in surface tension between the inside and outside of the device, called the surface pressure, causes the device to deflect. Finite element simulations were performed to predict device behavior prior to fabrication. Finished devices were tested in a Langmuir trough during multiple compression and expansion cycles, using a platinum Wilhelmy plate for an independent surface pressure measurement. A resolution of 0.16 mN/m was achieved