Miniature biaxial strain transducer

Transducer is completely reusable and permits relocation to alternate points to be accomplished quickly. Size permits measurements to be made simultaneously over small areas and yields outputs directly proportional to strains measured. Transducer verifies elastic modulus, Poisson's ratio, and principal strain axes on materials

Impact energy absorber Patent

Impact energy absorber with decreasing absorption rat

On Multiple Zeta Values of Even Arguments

For k <= n, let E(2n,k) be the sum of all multiple zeta values with even arguments whose weight is 2n and whose depth is k. Of course E(2n,1) is the value of the Riemann zeta function at 2n, and it is well known that E(2n,2) = (3/4)E(2n,1). Recently Z. Shen and T. Cai gave formulas for E(2n,3) and E(2n,4). We give two formulas form E(2n,k), both valid for arbitrary k <=n, one of which generalizes the Shen-Cai results; by comparing the two we obtain a Bernoulli-number identity. We also give explicit generating functions for the numbers E(2n,k) and for the analogous numbers E*(2n,k) defined using multiple zeta-star values of even arguments.Comment: DESY number added; misprints fixed; reference added. Second revision (2016): New result on multiple zeta-star values adde

Exponential clogging time for a one dimensional DLA

When considering DLA on a cylinder it is natural to ask how many particles it takes to clog the cylinder, e.g. modeling clogging of arteries. In this note we formulate a very simple DLA clogging model and establish an exponential lower bound on the number of particles arriving before clogging appears

Vegetable Forcing in Ohio

PDF pages: 3

Transcriptome of the dead: characterisation of immune genes and marker development from necropsy samples in a free-ranging marine mammal

Background Transcriptomes are powerful resources, providing a window on the expressed portion of the genome that can be generated rapidly and at low cost for virtually any organism. However, because many genes have tissue-specific expression patterns, developing a complete transcriptome usually requires a 'discovery pool' of individuals to be sacrificed in order to harvest mRNA from as many different types of tissue as possible. This hinders transcriptome development in large, charismatic and endangered species, many of which stand the most to gain from such approaches. To circumvent this problem in a model pinniped species, we 454 sequenced cDNA from testis, heart, spleen, intestine, kidney and lung tissues obtained from nine adult male Antarctic fur seals (Arctocephalus gazella) that died of natural causes at Bird Island, South Georgia. Results After applying stringent quality control criteria based on length and annotation, we obtained 12,397 contigs which, in combination with 454 data previously obtained from skin, gave a total of 23,096 unique contigs. Homology was found to 77.0% of dog (Canis lupus familiaris) transcripts, suggesting that the combined assembly represents a substantial proportion of this species' transcriptome. Moreover, only 0.5% of transcripts revealed sequence similarity to bacteria, implying minimal contamination, and the percentage of transcripts involved in cell death was low at 2.6%. Transcripts with immune-related annotations were almost five-fold enriched relative to skin and represented 13.2% of all spleen-specific contigs. By reference to the dog, we also identified transcripts revealing homology to five class I, ten class II and three class III genes of the Major Histocompatibility Complex and derived the putative genomic distribution of 17,121 contigs, 2,119 in silico mined microsatellites and 9,382 single nucleotide polymorphisms. Conclusions Our findings suggest that transcriptome development based on samples collected post mortem may greatly facilitate genomic studies, not only of marine mammals but also more generally of species that are of conservation concern

Filaments from the galaxy distribution and from the velocity field in the local universe

The cosmic web that characterizes the large-scale structure of the Universe can be quantified by a variety of methods. For example, large redshift surveys can be used in combination with point process algorithms to extract long curvilinear filaments in the galaxy distribution. Alternatively, given a full 3D reconstruction of the velocity field, kinematic techniques can be used to decompose the web into voids, sheets, filaments and knots. In this paper we look at how two such algorithms - the Bisous model and the velocity shear web - compare with each other in the local Universe (within 100 Mpc), finding good agreement. This is both remarkable and comforting, given that the two methods are radically different in ideology and applied to completely independent and different data sets. Unsurprisingly, the methods are in better agreement when applied to unbiased and complete data sets, like cosmological simulations, than when applied to observational samples. We conclude that more observational data is needed to improve on these methods, but that both methods are most likely properly tracing the underlying distribution of matter in the Universe.Comment: 6 Pages, 2 figures, Submitted to MNRAS Letter