Creep at very low rates

The creep rate in a land-based power station must be less than 10⁻¹¹ s⁻¹. At these low rates of deformation the transport of matter occurs by the migration of vacancies rather than by the glide of dislocations. A quantitative understanding of these diffusional processes is, therefore, important. First type of diffusional creep (Nabarro-Herring (N-H)): the sources and sinks of vacancies are grain boundaries. The vacancies may diffuse through the bulk of the grain or along the grain boundaries (Coble (C)). Second type (Harper-Dorn (H-D)): the vacancies diffuse from edge dislocations with their Burgers vectors parallel to the major tensile axis to those with Burgers vectors perpendicular to this axis. The coherence of the polycrystalline aggregate is maintained by sliding along the grain boundaries. The three mechanisms of vacancy migration, grain boundary sliding, and dislocation glide may all interact. The theories of N-H and C creep in pure metals are established and confirmed, but H-D creep and grain boundary sliding are less well understood. Practical engineering materials are usually strengthened by precipitates that accumulate on grain boundaries and slow down creep in complicated ways. This article is based on a presentation made in the workshop entitled “Mechanisms of Elevated Temperature Plasticity and Fracture,” which was held June 27–29, 2001, in Dan Diego, CA, concurrent with the 2001 Joint Applied Mechanics and Materials Summer Conference. The workshop was sponsored by Basic Energy Sciences of the United States Department of Energy.     

MR safety at high magnetic fields

MR imaging requires the exposure of human patients to magnetic fields that are much more intense than ever occur naturally. Under most circumstances, however, these fields do not appear to pose a health or safety risk even at levels well above those currently in clinical use. This margin of safety results from the extreme weakness of the diamagnetic interaction between human tissues and magnetic fields. Ferromagnetic materials, however, present either as implants within the patient or inadvertently introduced into the scanner environment, pose significant risks and must be scrupulously avoided. At very high field strengths, there is evidence for mild sensory effects, such as vertigo and metallic tastes, which do not appear to be harmful.     

On nonaxisymmetric entry flow at very low Reynolds numbers

We describe the construction and testing of a structural model at the nucleotide level for conformation CH of the central hairpin of genomic RNA from coliphage Q beta. The model was developed with the computer program MFOLD using both optimal and suboptimal predictions. Structural information obtained by electron microscopic analysis of Kleinschmidt spreadings of Q beta RNA was used to guide the modeling. The model was tested in solution with three enzymatic probes: RNase T1, RNase T2, and RNase V1, as well as four chemical probes: dimethylsulfate, diethylpyrocarbonate, kethoxal and 1-cyclohexyl-3-(2-morpholinoethyl)carbodiimide metho-p-toluene sulfonate (CMCT). The structural analyses in solution are consistent with the predicted structural model. The model is also supported by comparative structural analysis with the related coliphage SP. The model provides a structural basis for published biochemical and genetic studies implicating large, long-range structural features in the co-regulation of viral coat and replicase expression. In addition, we show that the read-through region of the viral protein A1 forms a separate structural domain, and we suggest that it functions as a nucleation site that participates in the folding and refolding of the molecule during replication and translation. In addition to the central hairpin, we have analyzed the structure of the viral coat initiation region. Our studies show that the entire region consists of small local hairpins and that 26 nucleotides immediately surrounding the coat initiation codon are single-stranded.