Effect of Anisotropy and Destructuration on the Behavior of Murro Test Embankment

This paper investigates the influence of anisotropy and destructuration on the behavior of a test embankment on soft clay. The test embankment at Murro, Finland, was commissioned in 1993 by the Finnish Road Administration and has been monitored for over 10?years. The construction and consolidation of Murro test embankment is analyzed with finite element method using three different constitutive models to represent the soft soil. The results are compared with field observations. The constitutive models used include two recently proposed constitutive models, namely S-CLAY1 that accounts for initial and plastic strain induced anisotropy and its extension, called S-CLAY1S. The S-CLAY1S model accounts, additionally, for interparticle bonding and degradation of bonds. For comparison, the test embankment is also analyzed using the isotropic Modified Cam Clay model. The simulations demonstrate that for this type of problem, it is important to account for the anisotropy, whereas destructuration appears to have less influence on predicted deformations. However, only a model incorporating destructuration can explain the decrease in undrained shear strength during consolidation that was measured in field.     

A multidomain spectral method for solving elliptic equations

We present a new solver for coupled nonlinear elliptic partial differential equations (PDEs). The solver is based on pseudo-spectral collocation with domain decomposition and can handle one- to three-dimensional problems. It has three distinct features. First, the combined problem of solving the PDE, satisfying the boundary conditions, and matching between different subdomains is cast into one set of equations readily accessible to standard linear and nonlinear solvers. Second, touching as well as overlapping subdomains are supported; both rectangular blocks with Chebyshev basis functions as well as spherical shells with an expansion in spherical harmonics are implemented. Third, the code is very flexible: The domain decomposition as well as the distribution of collocation points in each domain can be chosen at run time, and the solver is easily adaptable to new PDEs. The code has been used to solve the equations of the initial value problem of general relativity and should be useful in many other problems. We compare the new method to finite difference codes and find it superior in both runtime and accuracy, at least for the smooth problems considered here.     

Clostridiumnovyi’s Alpha-Toxin Changes Proteome and Phosphoproteome of HEp-2 Cells

C. novyi type A produces the alpha-toxin (TcnA) that belongs to the large clostridial glucosylating toxins (LCGTs) and is able to modify small GTPases by N-acetylglucosamination on conserved threonine residues. In contrast, other LCGTs including Clostridioides difficile toxin A and toxin B (TcdA; TcdB) modify small GTPases by mono-o-glucosylation. Both modifications inactivate the GTPases and cause strong effects on GTPase-dependent signal transduction pathways and the consequent reorganization of the actin cytoskeleton leading to cell rounding and finally cell death. However, the effect of TcnA on target cells is largely unexplored. Therefore, we performed a comprehensive screening approach of TcnA treated HEp-2 cells and analyzed their proteome and their phosphoproteome using LC-MS-based methods. With this data-dependent acquisition (DDA) approach, 5086 proteins and 9427 phosphosites could be identified and quantified. Of these, 35 proteins were found to be significantly altered after toxin treatment, and 1832 phosphosites were responsive to TcnA treatment. By analyzing the TcnA-induced proteomic effects of HEp-2 cells, 23 common signaling pathways were identified to be altered, including Actin Cytoskeleton Signaling, Epithelial Adherens Junction Signaling, and Signaling by Rho Family GTPases. All these pathways are also regulated after application of TcdA or TcdB of C. difficile. After TcnA treatment the regulation on phosphorylation level was much stronger compared to the proteome level, in terms of both strength of regulation and the number of regulated phosphosites. Interestingly, various signaling pathways such as Signaling by Rho Family GTPases or Integrin Signaling were activated on proteome level while being inhibited on phosphorylation level or vice versa as observed for the Role of BRCA1 in DNA Damage Response. ZIP kinase, as well as Calmodulin-dependent protein kinases IV & II, were observed as activated while Aurora-A kinase and CDK kinases tended to be inhibited in cells treated with TcnA based on their substrate regulation pattern.     

金属氧化物气体传感器阵列的制备

利用薄膜技术制作的半导体金属氧化物气体传感器阵列是由一个基底上的四个传感器单元组成的。基本结构是在4英寸的硅片上制作完成的。首先,沉积金属铂电极,加热棒和温度传感器。其次,沉积半导体金属氧化物SnO2。然后进行传感器阵列电极的焊接,封装。最后进行测量,测量结果显示了传感器阵列对不同气体甲烷(CH4),一氧化碳(CO),氢气(H2),二氧化氮(NO2)和氨气(NH3)的响应。     

INSYDER: a content-based visual-information-seeking system for the Web

This paper presents INSYDER, a content-based visual-information-seeking system for the Web. The Web can be seen as one huge digital library offering a variety of very useful information for business analysts. INSYDER addresses these possibilities and offers powerful retrieval and visualisation functionalities. The main focus during the development was on the usability of the system. Therefore, a variety of well-established visualisation components were employed to support the user during the information-seeking process (e.g. visual query, result table, bar graph, segment view with tile bars, and scatterplot). Also, the retrieval aspects were developed with the goal of increasing the usability of the system (e.g. natural language search, content-based classification, relevance feedback). Extensive evaluations of the retrieval performance and the usability of the visualisation were conducted. The results of these evaluations offered many helpful insights into developing a new visual-information-seeking system called VisMeB.     

Coherent interaction of atoms with a beam of light confined in a light cage

Controlling coherent interaction between optical fields and quantum systems in scalable, integrated platforms is essential for quantum technologies. Miniaturise...