Effect of cold deformation on age hardening of alloy VT35

The effect of cold deformation on the variation of hardness during aging of sheets from alloy VT35 with β-structure is studied. Diagrams of isothermal transformations due to aging of alloy VT35 with β-phase are plotted for sheets without work hardening and for sheets with an initial β-structure subjected to cold rolling.     

High-Strength Granulated Titanium Alloys with the Intermetallic Type of Hardening

Creation of titanium-base high-strength high-temperature alloys is of great scientific interest. Alloy VT22 additionally alloyed with carbon or boron, or simultaneously alloyed with carbon and boron is considered, with the aim of estimating the effect of the degree of dispersity, shape, and uniformity of distribution of intermetallic phases (titanium carbides and borides) on the combination of physical and mechanical properties and the structure of titanium alloys with the intermetallic type of hardening. The test rods were fabricated by traditional (hot deformation of the ingot) and granule (hot isostatic pressing of granules hardened from the melt) methods. The granule process is shown to provide substantially finer segregations of intermetallic phases and their more uniform distribution in the structure, which results in an increase in the high-temperature and conventional strengths and in the creep resistance of the alloy.     

Energy spectra of electrons and depressed potential collector in gyrotrons

Energy distributions of electrons after their interaction with RF field in the gyrotron with the output power 1 MW and frequency 140 GHz are calculated. The energy spectra evolution is studied for the cases when velocity spread, pitch-factor, beam current and cyclotron frequency change. The efficiency of one- and two stage energy recovery systems are investigated.     

Divergence and conservation of SUP2(SUP35) gene of yeasts Pichia pinus and Saccharomyces cerevisiae

SUP2(SUP35) is an omnipotent suppressor gene, coding for an EF-1α-like protein factor, intimately involved in the control of translational accuracy in yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In the present study a SUP2 gene analogue from yeast Pichia pinus was isolated by complementation of the temperature-sensitive sup2 mutation of S. cerevisiae. The nucleotide sequence of the SUP2 gene of P. pinus codes for a protein of 82·4 kDa, exceeding the Sup2 protein of S. cerevisiae by 6 kDa. Like the SUP2 gene product of S. cerevisiae, the Sup2 protein of P. pinus represents a fusion of a unique N-terminal part of a region homologous to EF-1α. The comparison of amino acid sequences of the Sup2 proteins reveals high conservations (76%) of the C-terminal region and low conservation (36%) of the N-terminal part where, in addition, the homologous correspondence is ambiguous. Proteins related to the Sup2 of S. cerevisiae where found in P. pinus and some other yeast species by the immunoblotting technique. The relation between the evolutionary conservation of different regions of the Sup2 protein and their functional significance is discussed.     

Measurement of optical properties of highly scattering ceramic materials

Radiation transfer in highly scattering ceramics is described by a diffusion approximation based on the asymptotic relation of the radiant flux and the radiant energy density in material depth. In this approximation, a calculation of the effective absorption coefficient k and the radiation diffusion coefficient D is based on the measurement of normal-hemispherical transmission of specimens shaped as various-thickness disks. Taken into account are radiation field, twodimensionality, and the radiation boundary reflection effect. The optical property measurements have been performed on the experimental apparatus based on an integrating sphere, a collimated radiation source, and a twochannel data acquisition and processing system. Results of the measurements of k and D for the silica ceramic are given at room temperature.     

Effect of pressure on the phase composition of Li(Na)/W/Mn/SiO2 composites and their catalytic activity for oxidative coupling of methane

The phase state of Li/W/Mn/SiO₂ and Na/W/Mn/SiO₂ composites after exposure to high pressures (2.5 GPa at 500°C) and subsequent exploitation in oxidative coupling of methane (OCM) was studied. Comparison of the catalytic activity of the composites before and after exposure to high pressures indicates that the formation of Li(Na)/W/Mn/SiO₂ composites catalytically active for OCM is significantly influenced by high pressures.     

Breakthrough paper indicator 2.0: can geographical diversity and interdisciplinarity improve the accuracy of outstanding papers prediction?

We report progress on new developments in the breakthrough paper indicator, which allows early selection of a small group of publications which may become potential breakthrough candidates based on dynamics of publication citations and certain qualitative characteristics of citations. We used a quantitative approach to identify typical citation patterns of highly cited papers. Based on these analyses, we propose two forecasting models to select groups of breakthrough paper candidates that exceed high citation thresholds five years post-publication. Here we study whether interdisciplinarity in the subject categories or geographical diversity serve as possible measures to improve ranking of breakthrough paper candidates. We found that ranked geographical diversities of known breakthrough papers have equal or better ranks than corresponding citations ranks. This allows us to apply additional filtering for better identifications of breakthrough candidates. We studied several interdisciplinarity indices, including richness, Shannon index, Simpson index, and Rao-Stirling-Porter index. We did not find any correlations between citation ranks and ranked interdisciplinarity indices.     

Designing winning robots by careful design of their development process

We present a comprehensive robot development process and its evaluation. We designed this process in the context of a robotics course in high schools. The motivation for designing this new process was improving the robustness and reliability of robots developed by students and preparing students for becoming better designers. The newly designed process proved to be highly successful in designing top quality robots. In the process design, we explored and adapted existing design tools and methods to the specific designers, the nature of the product, the environment, the product needs, and the design context goals. At the end of this thorough design, we selected a synergetic integration of six tools and methods to compose the new comprehensive development process for this product context: conceptual design, fault-tolerant design, atomic requirements, fuzzy logic for control, creative thinking, and microprogramming-based design. The design skills of the students that learned the design process and the performance of robots they designed and participated in an international robotics contest were examined. The high school teams that studied the proposed process won the first places in an international contest. The robots developed by the students had better performance than robots built by engineers and faculty teams. Professional experts rated the robots’ designs as excellent. The students that studied the process demonstrated high level of diverse design skills including creativity and design management capabilities. Additionally, they improved their science subject grades and their attitude toward engineering. Both the results obtained by the study and the authors’ experience in teaching robotics demonstrate that the proposed robot development process could be taught successfully in high school and that it leads to superior robotic products. Our experience also indicates that this process could serve industry design by improving the robustness of robots operating in uncertain environments and supporting fast change management practices.     

Oligonucleotide Insecticides for Green Agriculture: Regulatory Role of Contact DNA in Plant–Insect Interactions

Insects vastly outnumber us in terms of species and total biomass, and are among the most efficient and voracious consumers of plants on the planet. As a result, to preserve crops, one of the primary tasks in agriculture has always been the need to control and reduce the number of insect pests. The current use of chemical insecticides leads to the accumulation of xenobiotics in ecosystems and a decreased number of species in those ecosystems, including insects. Sustainable development of human society is impossible without useful insects, so the control of insect pests must be effective and selective at the same time. In this article, we show for the first time a natural way to regulate the number of insect pests based on the use of extracellular double-stranded DNA secreted by the plant Pittosporum tobira. Using a principle similar to one found in nature, we show that the topical application of artificially synthesized short antisense oligonucleotide insecticides (olinscides, DNA insecticides) is an effective and selective way to control the insect Coccus hesperidum. Using contact oligonucleotide insecticide Coccus-11 at a concentration of 100 ng/μL on C. hesperidum larvae resulted in a mortality of 95.59 ± 1.63% within 12 days. Green oligonucleotide insecticides, created by nature and later discovered by humans, demonstrate a new method to control insect pests that is beneficial and safe for macromolecular insect pest management.     

Galaxy Dnpatterntools for Computational Analysis of Nucleosome Positioning Sequence Patterns

Nucleosomes are basic units of DNA packing in eukaryotes. Their structure is well conserved from yeast to human and consists of the histone octamer core and 147 bp DNA wrapped around it. Nucleosomes are bound to a majority of the eukaryotic genomic DNA, including its regulatory regions. Hence, they also play a major role in gene regulation. For the latter, their precise positioning on DNA is essential. In the present paper, we describe Galaxy dnpatterntools—software package for nucleosome DNA sequence analysis and mapping. This software will be useful for computational biologists practitioners to conduct more profound studies of gene regulatory mechanisms.