Opacity Optimization for Surfaces

In flow visualization, integral surfaces rapidly tend to expand, fold and produce vast amounts of occlusion. While silhouette enhancements and local transparency mappings proved useful for semi‐transparent depictions, they still introduce visual clutter when surfaces grow more complex. An effective visualization of the flow requires a balance between the presentation of interesting surface parts and the avoidance of occlusions that hinder the view. In this paper, we extend the concept of opacity optimization to surfaces to obtain a global approach to the occlusion problem. Starting with a partition of the surfaces into patches, we compute per‐patch opacity as minimizer of a bounded‐variable least‐squares problem. For the final rendering, opacity is interpolated on the surfaces. The resulting visualization technique is interactive, frame‐coherent, view‐dependent and driven by domain knowledge.     

Plasmonic Enhancement or Energy Transfer? On the Luminescence of Gold‐, Silver‐, and Lanthanide‐Doped Silicate Glasses and Its Potential for Light‐Emitting Devices

With the technique of synchrotron X‐ray activation, molecule‐like, non‐plasmonic gold and silver particles in soda‐lime silicate glasses can be generated. The luminescence energy transfer between these species and lanthanide(III) ions is studied. As a result, a significant lanthanide luminescence enhancement by a factor of up to 250 under non‐resonant UV excitation is observed. The absence of a distinct gold and silver plasmon resonance absorption, respectively, the missing nanoparticle signals in previous SAXS and TEM experiments, the unaltered luminescence lifetime of the lanthanide ions compared to the non‐enhanced case, and an excitation maximum at 300–350 nm (equivalent to the absorption range of small noble metal particles) indicate unambiguously that the observed enhancement is due to a classical energy transfer between small noble metal particles and lanthanide ions, and not to a plasmonic field enhancement effect. It is proposed that very small, molecule‐like noble metal particles (such as dimers, trimers, and tetramers) first absorb the excitation light, undergo a singlet‐triplet intersystem crossing, and finally transfer the energy to an excited multiplet state of adjacent lanthanide(III) ions. X‐ray lithographic microstructuring and excitation with a commercial UV LED show the potential of the activated glass samples as bright light‐emitting devices with tunable emission colors.     

Hydroxy Acid Activation in Fungal Non-Ribosomal Peptide Synthesis Assessed by Site-Directed Mutagenesis

The fungal cyclodepsipeptides (CDPs) enniatin, beauvericin, bassianolide, and PF1022 consist of alternating N-methylated l -amino and d -hydroxy acids. They are synthesized by non-ribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPS). The amino acid and hydroxy acid substrates are activated by adenylation (A) domains. Although various A domains have been characterized thus giving insights into the mechanism of substrate conversion, little is known about the utilization of hydroxy acids in NRPSs. Therefore, we used homology modelling and molecular docking of the A₁ domain of enniatin synthetase (EnSyn) to gain insights into the mechanism of hydroxy acid activation. We introduced point mutations into the active site and used a photometric assay to study the substrate activation. The results suggest that the hydroxy acid is selected by interaction with backbone carbonyls rather than by a specific side chain. These insights enhance the understanding of non-amino acid substrate activation and could contribute to the engineering of depsipeptide synthetases.     

Activation Profile of TAS2R2, the 26th Human Bitter Taste Receptor

Scope

To avoid ingestion of potentially harmful substances, humans are equipped with about 25 bitter taste receptor genes (TAS2R) expressed in oral taste cells. Humans exhibit considerable variance in their bitter tasting abilities, which are associated with genetic polymorphisms in bitter taste receptor genes. One of these variant receptor genes, TAS2R2, is initially believed to represent a pseudogene. However, TAS2R2 exists in a putative functional variant within some populations and can therefore be considered as an additional functional bitter taste receptor.

Methods and results

To learn more about the function of the experimentally neglected TAS2R2, a functional screening with 122 bitter compounds is performed. The study observes responses with eight of the 122 bitter substances and identifies the substance phenylbutazone as a unique activator of TAS2R2 among the family of TAS2Rs, thus filling one more gap in the array of cognate bitter substances.

Conclusions

The comprehensive characterization of the receptive range of TAS2R2 allows the classification into the group of TAS2Rs with a medium number of bitter agonists. The variability of bitter taste and its potential influences on food choice in some human populations may be even higher than assumed.     

Solvent effects on esterification equilibria

Solvents are known to have strong impacts on the yields of equilibrium reactions. This work focuses on the thermodynamic investigation of these solvent effects on esterification reactions of acetic acid and propionic acid with ethanol. Esterification of acetic acid was performed in the solvents acetone, acetonitrile (ACN), dimethylformamide (DMF), and tetrahydrofurane as well as in mixtures thereof. ACN promotes the esterification of acetic acid, whereas it is strongly suppressed by DMF. The esterification of propionic acid was investigated with various reactant concentrations in acetone. The experimental equilibrium data in pure solvents and solvent mixtures were modeled using the thermodynamic equilibrium constant K_a and the reactant/product activity coefficients predicted by the perturbed chain‐statistical associating fluid theory (PC‐SAFT). For a given K_a, PC‐SAFT is able to predict the influence of the solvent and even solvent mixtures on the equilibrium concentrations of esterification in almost quantitative agreement with the experimental data. © 2015 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 61: 3000–3011, 2015     

Dislocation creep controlled superplasticity in the high carbon steel 140NiCr16-6

Superplasticity in the alloyed high carbon-steel 140NiCr16-6 with phosphorus additions and a fine grained microdupiex structure – containing cementite in volume fractions of 22 % (Fe,Cr,Ni)₃C, particle size of about 1 μm and with a medium ferrite grain size of about 2 μm – has been investigated in the temperature regime of 550 to 675°C and in the strain rate range of 10^?5 to 5 · 10^?2 s^?1. Maximum strain rate exponents of m = 0,45 at 675°C with strain rates of the order of 10^?4 s^?1 have been determined. Maximum superplastic elongations of about 700 % were detected. At higher strain rates of 10^?3 s^?1 superplastic elongations of about 570 % were achieved. At relatively low test temperatures of 550°C elongations up to 230 % were recorded. The activation analysis in the temperature regime of 550 to 650°C show an activation energy for superplastic flow of 250 ± 20 kJ/mol. This is in agreement with the activation energy for lattice self diffusion of iron in α-iron. Above 650°C the activation energy decreases to 70 kJ/mol. This is due to a stress induced decrease in the eutectoid α-γ-transformation temperature from 685°C to somewhat lower temperatures during superplastic deformation. The superplastic deformability (m > 0.3) of this steel in a wide strain rate range at relatively low temperatures above 550°C allows near net shape forming of complex parts applying low flow stresses.     

Secure and Optimal LOADng Routing for IoT with Composite Routing Metric

Security is the one of the major challenges for routing the data between the source and destination in an Internet of Things (IoT) network. To overcome this challenge, a secure Lightweight On-demand Ad hoc Distance-vector—Next Generation (LOADng) Routing Protocol is proposed in this paper. As the LOADng protocol is the second version of Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) protocol, it retains most of the basic functionality and characteristics of AODV. During the route discovery process, the cyclic shift transposition algorithm (CSTA) is used to encrypt the control packets of the LOADng protocol to improve its security. CSTA approach only derives transposition and substitution without product cipher with respect to input data. Besides this, for choosing the best probable path between the source and destination, routing metrics such as link quality Indicator (LQI), hop count (HC) and queue length (QL) are included in the control packets. The data is then securely sent using CSTA using the optimal secure path selected. Experimental Results depict that the proposed secure and optimal LOADng (SO-LOADng) using CSTA encryption obtains better throughput, delivery ratio encryption time and decryption time than the existing state-of-art approaches.     

Textile reinforcement in the bed joint of basement masonry and infill walls subjected to high wind loads

The successful structural verification of basement walls under earth pressure loading with light vertical loading is often difficult. This situation is often encountered for external basement walls under terrace doors, stairs, masonry light wells, etc., where the vertical loading that is theoretically necessary is absent. This makes it impossible to resist the acting flexural forces from earth using a vertical arch model alone. In such cases the basement wall must also resist the earth pressure in a horizontal direction. However, due to the fact the bending moment capacity of unreinforced masonry parallel to the bed joint is low you have the option here of using a textile‐reinforced bed joint with longitudinal fibres of alkali‐resistant glass or carbon fibre. With an appropriately adapted textile reinforcement in the bed joints, the masonry can fulfil the requirements for load‐bearing capacity against earth pressure with a horizontal load transfer, even under a small vertical load. The same applies to infill walls subjected to high wind loads the bending moment capacities of which are also slightly parallel to and vertically to the bed joint and cannot be provably demonstrated on large infill surfaces and strong wind loads. The load‐bearing can also be increased by improving the flexural strength parallel to the bed joint. The Chair of Structural Design in the Faculty of Architecture of the Technical University (TU) Dresden was carrying out extensive numerical and experimental studies for this purpose. In the journal Mauerwerk 01/2018 [1] first findings from small trial series have already been presented. In the meantime, a series of large‐scale tests have additionally been performed to check the promising results of the small‐scale tests with respect to their real applicability. This report should provide a combined insight into the work of the concluded research project.