Biochemical Investigation of the Interaction of pICln,RioK1 and COPR5 with the PRMT5–MEP50 Complex

The PRMT5–MEP50 methyltransferase complex plays a key role in various cancers and is regulated by different protein–protein interactions. Several proteins have been reported to act as adaptor proteins that recruit substrate proteins to the active site of PRMT5 for the methylation of arginine residues. To define the interaction between these adaptor proteins and PRMT5, we employed peptide truncation and mutation studies and prepared truncated protein constructs. We report the characterisation of the interface between the TIM barrel of PRMT5 and the adaptor proteins pICln, RioK1 and COPR5, and identify the consensus amino acid sequence GQF[D/E]DA[E/D] involved in binding. Protein crystallography revealed that the RioK1 derived peptide interacts with a novel PPI site.     

Constructal design of distributed cooling on the landscape

Here we constructal design to determine the area size (or number of users N) to be allocated to a central refrigeration plant, and to configure the distribution network for the distributed cooling system. The main objective is to maximize the net cooling capacity delivered to every user, and to minimize the pumping power required for transporting the chilled water. Two types of distribution networks are investigated: radial and tree‐shaped networks. First, when ducts with a single diameter are used, the net cooling capacity delivered to every user is almost the same, while the pumping power requirement for the tree network is greater than that for the radial network. Multi‐diameter tree networks are investigated next. The pumping power requirement for multi‐diameter tree‐shaped network is less than for radial network when N is greater than 19 if the flow is laminar, and when N is greater than 80 if the flow is turbulent. The global performance of the area‐based cooling system can be improved by increasing the freedom to morph the configuration. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An Initial Inventory and Indexation of Groundwater Mega-Depletion Cases

The state of groundwater systems worldwide is presently not well defined, and in particular there is little context for agencies responsible for managing water resources to evaluate occurrences of groundwater depletion against other cases globally. In this study, an initial inventory of groundwater depletion problems is compiled and ranked to identify the world’s most critical cases, i.e. situations of groundwater mega-depletion. The ranking is based on an indexed approach that considers overdraft, drawdown and subsidence, plus the importance of the resources in terms of population-dependency and rates of extraction. The five most highly ranked depleted aquifers of the world include the shallow aquifers of the Hai River Plain (China), the Altiplano region (Spain), the Mexico Basin (Mexico), the Huang River basin (China) and the California Central Valley (USA). An abridged account of modelling to assess drawdown is described for the Hai River Plain, revealing that despite recharge in the order of 13,000 GL/yr, an overdraft of about 8,000 GL/yr is occurring to support the vast population of the region. This has led to up to 100 m of drawdown in places and reports of subsidence of several metres. The Hai River situation demonstrates that falling water levels may not act to alleviate pumping stresses; a symptom of unchecked extraction and an exemplary illustration of the tragedy of the commons. The causal factors leading to mega-depletion are varying across the globe and each mega-depletion case contains unique elements, although population appears to be an important factor.     

Pore microgeometry analysis in low-resistivity sandstone reservoirs

The objective of this work is to analyse the pore microgeometry and its effect on petrophysical properties in six low-resistivity sandstone reservoirs by combining a 2D quantitative petrographic image analysis (PIA) and 3D petrophysical tools. The classic petrophysical tools enable the measurement of different classic reservoir properties such as specific surface area, average pore diameter, pore size distribution, macroporosity and microporosity, capillary pressure versus saturation, pore chamber–pore throat diameter ratio, electrical properties and permeability. The petrographic image analysis quantifies pore microgeometry in more than four orders of magnitude, from submicron to millimeter scale. Chloritic low-resistivity sandstones show dual porosity structure defined as chloritic texture. The pore microgeometrical parameters measured by petrographic image analysis allow one to model different reservoir properties such as capillary pressure, permeability and electrical behaviour. The results obtained in these models show that pore microgeometry plays an important role in the physical properties of low-resistivity sandstone reservoirs.     

Charged-Spray Deposition Characteristics Within Cereal Crops

Fluorescent tracer studies experimentally quantified the spatial distribution of droplet mass transfer and charge transfer characterizing three modes of electrostatic pesticide spraying onto barley-weed-soil target arrays. Droplet charging in the 1.5-4.5 mC/kg range provided significant deposition increases on all plant surfaces while beneficially reducing residues on underlying soil. With the intense space-charge spray clouds utilized (e.g., 10 μC/m3), externally applied driving fields as great as 37 kV/m provided no significant deposition increases but instead exacerbated gaseous charge exchange between the spray cloud and the target via undesirable leaf-tip coronas. Nonuniformity characterized deposition of both uncharged and charged sprays throughout the target array, with no improvement provided by spray-entrainment air velocities as great as 2 m/s. Results will guide prototype design by establishing the relative importance of the space charge, the applied field, and the aerodynamic force components for selectively targeting specific sites within living-plant arrays.     

The Economic Value of Groundwater Irrigation for Food Security Under Climate Change: Implication of Representative Concentration Pathway Climate Scenarios

Sustainable management of groundwater resources to support food security under the potential effects of climate change is an emerging area of research and particularly relevant in the context of Small Island Developing States. Employing three regional downscaled Representative Connection Pathway (RCP 2.6, RCP4.5, and RCP 8.5) emission scenarios that have been linked to an economic evaluation framework, the potential impact of climate change on groundwater scarcity, economic value of groundwater irrigation, food security, and farming livelihoods is investigated. A nonlinear hydro-economic framework, which integrates groundwater hydrology, climate data, land use, economics and institutions, has been applied for the island of Barbados. Results indicate that climate change would intensify the dependency on groundwater irrigation overtime, modulated by climate intensity. The strength of climate change will boost the marginal value of groundwater irrigation, as food price will scale up, presenting negative impacts on food security and reducing farming livelihoods. The climate change would also result in higher cost of producing foods resulting from increased cost of pumping, mainly driven by the effect of meeting abstraction needs for domestic and municipal consumption. Our primary results show that for a small island, sustaining groundwater resources will be a challenging objective to achieve under severe climate change.     

A bioenergetic biomagnification model for the animal kingdom

Species vary greatly in the degree to which they accumulate dietary contaminants. Bioenergetic processes play a key role in chemical uptake and elimination, and interspecific variation in bioaccumulation can be attributed in large part to variation in how species feed, digest, and allocate energy. We present a quantitative treatment of this relationship for the entire animal kingdom. We derive a model to predict the biomagnification factor for nonmetabolizable, slowly eliminated chemicals, BMF(max). We test the model with observed biomagnification factors and independently derived bioenergetic parameters for a diverse suite of species, including herbivores and carnivores, heterotherms and homeotherms, vertebrates and invertebrates, adults and juveniles, domestic/laboratory animals and wild individuals from freshwater, marine, and terrestrial environments. The model successfully predicts species-specific BMF(max) values across this range of taxa, with values ranging from less than 1 in caterpillars to nearly 100 in some carnivores. In addition, we make novel predictions of BMF(max) for several taxa for which no measured bioaccumulation data are available. Our analysis provides new insights into the role of ecology in chemical dynamics across the animal kingdom, providing a general framework for understanding how characteristics of an organism and its ecological context influence the degree to which that organism accumulates chemicals present in its diet.     

Real-time three-dimensional wind simulation for windmill rig tests

This paper deals with the methods of three-dimensional fixed-point wind speed real-time simulation modelled in large band, in order to use them in test rigs for experimental investigation of the wind energy conversion systems. The medium- and long-term components of the non-stationary wind speed are considered as known, being issued from measured data or by adopting a generic model. The spectral characteristics of three-dimensional turbulence are described either by the Kaimal or the von Karman models. The turbulence intensity and the length scale that take part in these models are calculated by the site parameters, using current standards. The basic idea of the methods for large-band three-dimensional wind simulation is to use rational shaping filters that approximate non-integer orders shaping filters issued from the Kaimal and the von Karman models. All the synthesized rational shaping filters use one time constant, automatically adapted to the medium- and long-term components that pilot the other time constants of the shaping filters by a set of parameters practically constant. Some numerical results concerning time series that simulate the non-stationary wind speed with three-dimensional turbulence components based on Kaimal and von Karman models are presented.