WO3 pillar-type and helical-type thin film structures to be used in microbatteries

In the present study WO₃ thin films were deposited by sputtering onto ITO glass, W/ITO and Si substrates by using the glancing angle deposition (GLAD) technique, with the objective of applying these materials in electrochemical intercalation devices. The thin films microstructure and electrochemical behavior were determined through scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and cycling at constant current with potential limitation. By mainly adjusting the substrate holder speed rotation, pillar-type and helical-type structures were obtained under high and low speed rotation levels, respectively. The electrochemical results showed that the best charge capacity performance was obtained for the WO₃/W/ITO films with pillar-type structures, which are more porous.     

SIR-C data quality and calibration results

The SIR-C/X-SAR imaging radar took its first flight on the Space Shuttle Endeavour in April 1994 and flew for a second time in October 1994. This multifrequency radar has fully polarimetric capability at L- and C-band, and a single polarization at X-band (X-SAR). The Endeavour missions were designated the Space Radar Laboratory-1 (SRL-1) and -2 (SRL-2). Calibration of polarimetric L- and C-band data for all the different modes SIR-C offers is an especially complicated problem. The solution involves extensive analysis of pre-flight test data to come up with a model of the system, analysis of in-flight test data to determine the antenna pattern and gains of the system during operation, and analysis of data from over fourteen calibration sites distributed around the SIR-C/X-SAR orbit track. The SRL missions were the first time a multifrequency polarimetric imaging radar employing a phased array antenna has been flown in space. Calibration of SIR-C data products involved some unique technical problems given the complexity of the radar system. In this paper, the approach adopted for calibration of SIR-C data is described and the calibration performance of the data products is presented     

Geographic distribution and clinical description of leishmaniasis cases in Peru

Asymmetric acetylcholinesterase (AChE) is anchored to the basal lamina (BL) of cholinergic synapses via its collagenic tail, yet the complement of matrix receptors involved in its attachment remains unknown. The development of a novel overlay technique has allowed us to identify two Torpedo BL components that bind asymmetric AChE: a polypeptide of approximately 140 kDa and a doublet of 195-215 kDa. These were found to stain metachromatically with Coomassie blue R-250, were solubilized by acetic acid, and were sensitive to collagenase treatment. Upon sequence analysis, the 140 kDa polypeptide yielded a characteristic collagenous motif. Another AChE-binding BL constituent, identified by overlay, corresponded to a heparan sulfate proteoglycan. Lastly, we established that this proteoglycan, but not the collagenous proteins, interacted with at least one heparin binding domain of the collagenic tail of AChE. Our results indicate that at least two BL receptors are likely to exist for asymmetric AChE in Torpedo electric organ.     

Macrophage formation of angiostatin during inflammation. A byproduct of the activation of plasminogen

Angiostatin is a potent inhibitor of tumor angiogenesis and the growth of metastatic foci. Recent studies have indicated that neoplastic cells can generate angiostatin directly or in cooperation with tumor-associated macrophages. In studies reported here, we determined whether angiostatin is generated in mice under non-neoplastic settings. Utilizing murine RAW264.7 macrophages and thioglycollate-elicited peritoneal macrophages, we demonstrate that angiostatin-like fragments are generated as a byproduct of the proteolytic regulation of membrane-bound plasmin. Plasmin proteolysis and subsequent loss in membrane-bound plasmin activity requires active plasmin but was unaffected by inhibitors of metalloproteinases. Lysine binding fragments of plasmin, isolated from macrophage-conditioned media utilizing affinity chromatography, appeared as a major (48 kDa) and two minor bands (42 and 50 kDa) in SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and were immunoreactive with anti-kringle 1-3 IgG. Each peptide begins with Lys77 and contains the entire sequence of angiostatin. The affinity isolated plasmin fragments inhibited bFGF-induced endothelial cell proliferation. Lavage fluid recovered from the peritoneal cavities of mice previously injected with thioglycollate contained angiostatin-like plasmin fragments similar to those generated in vitro. This is the first demonstration that angiostatin-like plasmin fragments are generated in a non-neoplastic inflammatory setting. Thus, in addition to regulating pericellular plasmin activity, proteolysis of plasmin generates inactive kringle-containing fragments expressing angiostatic properties.     

Failure pressure evaluation of the containment building of a large dry nuclear power plant

The evaluation of the failure pressure of the containment building of a large dry PWR-W three loops nuclear power plant, based on computer numerical simulation, is described in this paper. The proposed method considers fully three-dimensional finite element models in order to take into account the effect of the most significant structural characteristics (presence of three buttresses, penetrations, additional reinforcement around the penetrations, etc.), the lack of symmetry of the forces generated by the prestressing system, as well as the nonlinear behaviour of the materials and the sensitivity of the results to uncertainties associated with several parameters. The computational model is completely described, including the constitutive equations for the concrete, the reinforcing steel and prestressing tendons, the spatial discretization—isoparametric elements including the reinforcement are used. The structural models and the analyses performed for their calibration are also described. The influence on the failure pressure of incorporating the foundation slab in the structural model, and the influence of the thermal effects, are discussed. One of the conclusions of the numerical study is that the failure process can be appropriately simulated by means of a structural model which does not include either the foundation slab or the thermal effects. Finally, results of a probabilistic simulation of the failure pressure are given.     

Optimization of the grapes reception process

Neural Computing and Applications - Grapes reception is a key process in wine production. The harvest days are extremely challenging days in managing the reception of the grapes, as the winery...     

Query language-based inverses of schema mappings: semantics, computation, and closure properties

The inversion of schema mappings has been identified as one of the fundamental operators for the development of a general framework for metadata management. During the last few years, three alternative notions of inversion for schema mappings have been proposed (Fagin-inverse (Fagin, TODS 32(4), 25:1–25:53, 2007), quasi-inverse (Fagin et?al., TODS 33(2), 11:1–11:52, 2008), and maximum recovery (Arenas et?al., TODS 34(4), 22:1–22:48, 2009)). However, these notions lack some fundamental properties that limit their practical applicability: most of them are expressed in languages including features that are difficult to use in practice, some of these inverses are not guaranteed to exist for mappings specified with source-to-target tuple-generating dependencies (st-tgds), and it has been futile to search for a meaningful mapping language that is closed under any of these notions of inverse. In this paper, we develop a framework for the inversion of schema mappings that fulfills all of the above requirements. It is based on the notion of ${\mathcal{C}}$ -maximum recovery, for a query language ${\mathcal{C}}$ , a notion designed to generate inverse mappings that recover back only the information that can be retrieved with queries in ${\mathcal{C}}$ . By focusing on the language of conjunctive queries (CQ), we are able to find a mapping language that contains the class of st-tgds, is closed under CQ-maximum recovery, and for which the chase procedure can be used to exchange data efficiently. Furthermore, we show that our choices of inverse notion and mapping language are optimal, in the sense that choosing a more expressive inverse operator or mapping language causes the loss of these properties.