Spectroscopic Study of Solar and Planetary Atmospheres Semiannual Status Report No. 6, Aug. 1, 1965 - Feb. 1, 1966

Spectroscopic study of solar and planetary atmospheres - observations of Venus and Jupiter, and analysis of simulated Martian atmosphere in visible and infrared region

Fluidic Plasma Display Study, Phase 3 Quarterly Report

Crosstalk problems and cross grid control, and experimental hardware design for fluidically controlled plasma display device

Efficient simulations of tubulin-driven axonal growth

This work concerns efficient and reliable numerical simulations of the dynamic behaviour of a moving-boundary model for tubulin-driven axonal growth. The model is nonlinear and consists of a coupled set of a partial differential equation (PDE) and two ordinary differential equations. The PDE is defined on a computational domain with a moving boundary, which is part of the solution. Numerical simulations based on standard explicit time-stepping methods are too time consuming due to the small time steps required for numerical stability. On the other hand standard implicit schemes are too complex due to the nonlinear equations that needs to be solved in each step. Instead, we propose to use the Peaceman--Rachford splitting scheme combined with temporal and spatial scalings of the model. Simulations based on this scheme have shown to be efficient, accurate, and reliable which makes it possible to evaluate the model, e.g.\ its dependency on biological and physical model parameters. These evaluations show among other things that the initial axon growth is very fast, that the active transport is the dominant reason over diffusion for the growth velocity, and that the polymerization rate in the growth cone does not affect the final axon length.Comment: Authors' accepted version, (post refereeing). The final publication (in Journal of Computational Neuroscience) is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10827-016-0604-

Curvature Dependence of Hydrophobic Hydration Dynamics

We investigate the curvature-dependence of water dynamics in the vicinity of hydrophobic spherical solutes using molecular dynamics simulations. For both, the lateral and perpendicular diffusivity as well as for H-bond kinetics of water in the first hydration shell, we find a non-monotonic solute-size dependence, exhibiting extrema close to the well-known structural crossover length scale for hydrophobic hydration. Additionally, we find an apparently anomalous diffusion for water moving parallel to the surface of small solutes, which, however, can be explained by topology effects. The intimate connection between solute curvature, water structure and dynamics has implications for our understanding of hydration dynamics at heterogeneous biomolecular surfaces.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figure

End user development: Satisfaction with tools and satisfaction with applications

This study explored the relationship between end user developers’ perceptions of their applications and their perceptions of the tools used to create them. Satisfaction with a user developed application was found to be significantly correlated with satisfaction with the tool used to create the application. The role of experience in this relationship was also explored, and possible implications of the findings are discussed

Performance of the Roche Total Mycophenolic Acid® assay on the Cobas Integra 400®, Cobas 6000® and comparison to LC-MS/MS in liver transplant patients

Background: Mycophenolic acid (MPA) is an immunosuppressant for which therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) is performed for optimal prophylaxis and avoidance of toxicity in transplant patients. Liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) is ideally suited for TDM of MPA. There have been several method comparisons of the Roche Total MPA assay, but none have been performed with respect to liver transplant patients. Methods: We validated the Roche Total MPA assay on the Cobas Integra 400 and Cobas 6000 and compared it to a validated LC-MS/MS (API 2000 (TM)) method. Fifty-five EDTA plasma samples from liver transplant patients were measured with the Roche assay on these platforms and compared to the LC-MS/MS results. Results: Validation of the LC-MS/MS, Cobas Integra 400 and 6000 was performed with good results. The LC-MS/MS/Integra 400/Cobas 6000 were linear up to 30, 15 and 17 mg/L, respectively. Imprecision was <10% for LC-MS/MS and <7% for the Roche assay on both platforms. The samples showed good agreement with LC-MS/MS. Passing-Bablok regression analysis showed Cobas Integra (mg/L) = 1.02 x LC-MS/MS (mg/L)-0.50 and Cobas 6000 (mg/L) = 0.98 x LC-MS/MS-0.47. Conclusions: The Roche Total Mycophenolic Acid-assay is suitable for measuring total MPA in plasma from liver transplant patients and is a good alternative for LC-MS/MS