Optogenetics Comes of Age: Novel Inhibitory Light‐Gated Anionic Channels Allow Efficient Silencing of Neural Function

Optogenetics, the developing field of research that uses light‐switchable biochemical tools in a sophisticated technological approach to monitor or control neural function, is rapidly evolving with the discovery and development of novel microbial rhodopsins. Light‐absorbing membrane proteins, as tools for brain research, are promoting new applications within the discipline of optogenetics. Light‐gated rhodopsin ion channels with better intrinsic light sensitivity and improved resolution are needed to overcome some of the current limitations of existing molecules. The recent discovery of light‐gated inhibitory anion channels opens new opportunities for studying physiological neural processes and, at the same time, represent a powerful approach for elucidating the mechanisms of neurological and mental disorders that could benefit from this approach.     

Development of a novel portable-size PEMFC short stack with electrodeposited Pt hydrogen diffusion anodes

This paper presents, for the first time, a five-cell polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) short stack with electrodeposited hydrogen diffusion anodes. The anodes were manufactured by means of galvanostatic pulse electrodeposition and the cathodes by air-brushing. Nafion^® 212 was employed as a solid polymer electrolyte membrane in all cases. The short stack, whose cells had an active geometric area of 14 cm², was assembled and tested under different operating conditions. A peak power of about 11 W was obtained at 50 °C and atmospheric pressure using hydrogen and air feed, whereas a smaller value of 8.6 W was obtained from a five-cell short PEMFC stack with conventional hydrogen diffusion anodes under the same operating conditions. The better performance of the cells described in this paper has been assigned to the higher utilization of the platinum in the electrodeposited anodes compared to the conventional ones.     

Partial specific volume of thermotropic polybibenzoates with different spacers

Summary Partial specific volume (v ₂ ^o ) of polybibenzoates with all-methylene and oxyethylene spacers have been determined in chloroalifatic solvents. The polybibenzoate with a heptamethylene spacer exhibits a more expanded state than the ones with one, two and three oxyethylene units in the spacer. A solvent effect on v ₂ ^o has been observed. Nevertheless, the values of v ₂ ^o in tetrachloroethane are in accord with the calculated by group contributions from rubbery polymers.     

Spectral response and field enhanced reverse current in a-Ge:H nip photodiodes

We demonstrate the effectiveness of using a high Ar+H₂ dilution of GeH₄, high pressure, and low substrate temperatures in producing device-grade a-Ge:H through standard radio-frequency glow discharge deposition. The enhanced plasma chemistry encourages the production, heating, and incorporation of nanoparticles to increase order, while the low substrate temperature encourages hydrogen incorporation to saturate dangling bonds. We utilize the material in nip photodiodes illuminated through the n-side, and demonstrate a device with an i-layer thickness of only 60 nm showing J_SC=20.6 mA/cm² (AM1.5 Efficiency=2.1%). Temperature-dependent conductivity and bias-dependent spectral response measurements suggest that a non-uniform field distribution and a defect-rich region near the i–p interface are currently the limiting factors for the device performance.     

Multiresolution for Algebraic Curves and Surfaces using Wavelets

This paper describes a multiresolution method for implicit curves and surfaces. The method is based on wavelets, and is able to simplify the topology. The implicit curves and surfaces are defined as the zero-valued piece-wise algebraic isosurface of a tensor-product uniform cubic B-spline. A wavelet multiresolution method that deals with uniform cubic B-splines on bounded domains is proposed. In order to handle arbitrary domains the proposed algorithm dynamically adds appropriate control points and deletes them in the synthesis phase.     

Performance assessment of intelligent distributed systems through software performance ontology engineering (SPOE)

In the computer science community there is a growing interest in the field of Ambient Intelligent Systems. This systems surround their human users with computing and networking technology unobtrusively embedded in their environment. This technology is aimed to provide the users with useful information and to take action to make the environment more convenient for them. As the number of users increases the resources that make Ambient Intelligence possible can be easily saturated making the system unstable and projecting an image of poor QoS to the users. The main goal of this paper is to provide the means for the Ambient Intelligent Systems to monitor themselves and take corrective action automatically if performance starts to drop. Our approach uses a Performance Ontology that structures the knowledge about Software Performance Engineering, and a reasoning engine that acts like an expert system with the Performance Ontology as its foundation. The case study at the end shows the applicability of the developed techniques.     

Degradation of pharmaceutical beta-blockers by electrochemical advanced oxidation processes using a flow plant with a solar compound parabolic collector

The degradation of the beta-blockers atenolol, metoprolol tartrate and propranolol hydrochloride was studied by electro-Fenton (EF) and solar photoelectro-Fenton (SPEF). Solutions of 10 L of 100 mg L⁻¹ of total organic carbon of each drug in 0.1 M Na₂SO₄ with 0.5 mM Fe²⁺ of pH 3.0 were treated in a recirculation flow plant with an electrochemical reactor coupled with a solar compound parabolic collector. Single Pt/carbon felt (CF) and boron-doped diamond (BDD)/air-diffusion electrode (ADE) cells and combined Pt/ADE-Pt/CF and BDD/ADE-Pt/CF cells were used. SPEF treatments were more potent with the latter cell, yielding 95-97% mineralization with 100% of maximum current efficiency and energy consumptions of about 0.250 kWh g TOC⁻¹. However, the Pt/ADE-Pt/CF cell gave much lower energy consumptions of about 0.080 kWh g TOC⁻¹ with slightly lower mineralization of 88-93%, then being more useful for its possible application at industrial level. The EF method led to a poorer mineralization and was more potent using the combined cells by the additional production of hydroxyl radicals (^•OH) from Fenton’s reaction from the fast Fe²⁺ regeneration at the CF cathode. Organics were also more rapidly destroyed at BDD than at Pt anode. The decay kinetics of beta-blockers always followed a pseudo first-order reaction, although in SPEF, it was accelerated by the additional production of ^•OH from the action of UV light of solar irradiation. Aromatic intermediates were also destroyed by hydroxyl radicals. Ultimate carboxylic acids like oxalic and oxamic remained in the treated solutions by EF, but their Fe(III) complexes were photolyzed by solar irradiation in SPEF, thus explaining its higher oxidation power. NO₃⁻ was the predominant inorganic ion lost in EF, whereas the SPEF process favored the production of NH₄⁺ ion and volatile N-derivatives.     

Nonlinear response of masonry wall structures subjected to cyclic and dynamic loading

The assessment of the dynamic or seismic performance of complex structures often requires the integration in the time domain of the structural equation of motion in the frame of a nonlinear analysis. Although sophisticated methods have been developed for the nonlinear analysis of masonry wall structures, including the macro- and micro-modeling approaches, these require large computational effort still limiting the extent and complexity of the structures analyzed. This paper presents an alternative method based on the Generalized Matrix Formulation for masonry skeletal structures and load bearing wall systems, which has been proved as an efficient formulation for the analysis of the strength capacity of these kinds of structures (Roca et al. (2005) [17]). The basic formulation has been complemented with a uniaxial cyclic constitutive model for masonry and a time integration scheme. The ability of the resulting approach to predict the nonlinear dynamic response of masonry structures is shown through its application to the time domain analysis of an experimental scale masonry building with available experimental results on its dynamic response.