Measure of morphological and performance properties in polymeric silicone foams by X-ray tomography

In the absence of nuclear weapons testing, assuring comparable material performance for replacement of no-longer-available material with modern formulations is difficult. The replacement material must completely replicate the performance of the original. Quantification of morphological characteristics in three dimensions by micro X-ray computed tomography (μCT) lends statistics and property values not otherwise achieved. This allows for the measurement of lot-to-lot, synthesis formula variations, as well as pre- and post-experimental structural changes that would be invisible to qualitative image comparison techniques. Owing to the unavailability of the original material, several novel formulations of poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) foams were imaged and quantitatively compared to aid in choosing a replacement material. In this study, bulk properties were measured with μCT including, percent void volume, average void equivalent diameter and others, and were collected for four different formulations of PDMS foams from pristine, return for service, as well as samples that were aged by gamma ray exposure. Performance characteristics (e.g., Poisson ratio) were measured and compared. From this study, we will be able to provide more information for the selection of the material that most closely matches the performance of the original material.     

Charge Transfer at Junctions of a Single Layer of Graphene and a Metallic Single Walled Carbon Nanotube

Junctions between a single walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) and a monolayer of graphene are fabricated and studied for the first time. A single layer graphene (SLG) sheet grown by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is transferred onto a SiO₂/Si wafer with aligned CVD‐grown SWNTs. Raman spectroscopy is used to identify metallic‐SWNT/SLG junctions, and a method for spectroscopic deconvolution of the overlapping G peaks of the SWNT and the SLG is reported, making use of the polarization dependence of the SWNT. A comparison of the Raman peak positions and intensities of the individual SWNT and graphene to those of the SWNT‐graphene junction indicates an electron transfer of 1.12 × 10¹³ cm^?2 from the SWNT to the graphene. This direction of charge transfer is in agreement with the work functions of the SWNT and graphene. The compression of the SWNT by the graphene increases the broadening of the radial breathing mode (RBM) peak from 3.6 ± 0.3 to 4.6 ± 0.5 cm^?1 and of the G peak from 13 ± 1 to 18 ± 1 cm^?1, in reasonable agreement with molecular dynamics simulations. However, the RBM and G peak position shifts are primarily due to charge transfer with minimal contributions from strain. With this method, the ability to dope graphene with nanometer resolution is demonstrated.     

Investigation of chemical rinses suitable for very small meat plants to reduce pathogens on beef surfaces

Numerous antimicrobial interventions are capable of reducing the prevalence of harmful bacteria on raw meat products. There is a need to identify effective and inexpensive antimicrobial interventions that could, in practice, be used in very small meat plants because of limited financial, space, and labor resources. Eight antimicrobial compounds (acetic acid, citric acid, lactic acid, peroxyacetic acid, acidified sodium chlorite, chlorine dioxide, sodium hypochlorite, and aqueous ozone) were applied at various concentrations with small, hand-held spraying equipment, and bactericidal effectiveness was examined. Beef plate pieces were inoculated with fecal slurry containing a pathogen cocktail (Escherichia coli O157:H7, Salmonella Typhimurium, Campylobacter coli, and Campylobacter jejuni) and natural populations of aerobic plate counts, coliforms, and E. coli. Antimicrobial solutions were applied to beef surfaces via a portable, pressurized hand-held spray tank, and treated surfaces were subjected to appropriate methods for the enumeration and isolation of pathogens and hygiene indicators. Relative antimicrobial effectiveness was determined (from greatest to least): (i) organic acids, (ii) peroxyacetic acid, (iii) chlorinated compounds, and (iv) aqueous ozone. Using the equipment described, a 2% lactic acid rinse provided 3.5- to 6.4-log CFU/cm(2) reductions across all bacterial populations studied. Conversely, aqueous ozone yielded 0.02- to 2.9-log CFU/cm(2) reductions in pathogens and hygiene indicators, and did not differ significantly from a control tap water rinse (P = 0.055 to 0.731). This 2% lactic acid rinse will be subsequently combined with a previously described water wash to create a multistep antimicrobial intervention that will be examined under laboratory conditions and validated in very small meat plants.     

Quasi-Static Axial Damping of Poroviscoelastic Cylinders

Design of infrastructure materials with inherent material damping may help dissipate energy during dynamic loading events such as earthquakes, thereby reducing structural damage and risk of collapse. One possible method to enhance damping of cementitious materials such as concrete is to utilize poromechanical damping. To evaluate the potential damping associated with the poromechanical effect and to aid in the design of high damping porous materials such as concrete, approximate closed-form solutions have been derived for poromechanical damping as a function of frequency, maximum damping, and critical damping frequency for axially loaded solid and hollow cylinders. The effect of inherent viscoelastic damping of the porous material body was included in the analysis, which indicated that inherent viscoelastic damping could be superposed on poromechanical damping to predict overall damping capacity. Simulations indicate that poromechanical damping may be significant for cementitious materials if designed appropriately.     

Speed and accuracy of facial expression classification in avoidant personality disorder: A preliminary study.

The aim of this preliminary study was to examine whether individuals with avoidant personality disorder (APD) could be characterized by deficits in the classification of dynamically presented facial emotional expressions. Using a community sample of adults with APD (n = 17) and non-APD controls (n = 16), speed and accuracy of facial emotional expression recognition was investigated in a task that morphs facial expressions from neutral to prototypical expressions (Multi-Morph Facial Affect Recognition Task; Blair, Colledge, Murray, & Mitchell, 2001). Results indicated that individuals with APD were significantly more likely than controls to make errors when classifying fully expressed fear. However, no differences were found between groups in the speed to correctly classify facial emotional expressions. The findings are some of the first to investigate facial emotional processing in a sample of individuals with APD and point to an underlying deficit in processing social cues that may be involved in the maintenance of APD. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Double helical laser beams based on interfering first-order Bessel beams

We demonstrate the generation of a nondiffracting double helical beam using axicons and ±1 vortex phase plates in a common-path interferometric system. Using linear diffraction theory, a simple analytical expression describing beam propagation is shown to agree with both experiments and Fresnel-diffraction-based simulations. Experiments are performed using continuous laser light in addition to ultrafast pulses, demonstrating that the common-path arrangement and the diffraction theory work equally well for both cases.     

Melanization of flavonoids by fungal and bacterial laccases

Laccase activity in plants results in the formation of a number of brown pigments, often referred to as tannins. Laccase-dependent pigment production is also catalogued in numerous fungal and bacterial species. The laccase of the haploid yeast Cryptococcus neoformans forms melanin-like pigmentation outside the cell wall in the presence of exogenous substrates. While this process is a contributing factor to its virulence in humans, the evolutionary intent for the laccase function remains a mystery. We show here that C. neoformans and Bacillus subtilis have the ability to create melanin-like pigments from a variety of flavonoid molecules across a range of conformations, preferring those with 3',4'-dihydroxylations. Since flavonoids are ubiquitous plant molecules and often-considered antimicrobial agents, we postulate that they are the intended natural targets of laccase activity and result in the formation of a defensive melanin-like coat. These results suggests a new mechanism by which flavonoid-melanin formation may occur, using not only A- and C-ring linkages, but also monomer links through the B-ring of the flavonoid structure. We also show that resveratrol and other non- and mono-hydroxylated polyphenol substrates have the ability to restrict pigment formation and may be potent inhibitors of laccase activity.     

Considerations for the development of cost-effective cell culture media for cultivated meat production

Innovation in cultivated meat development has been rapidly accelerating in recent years because it holds the potential to help attenuate issues facing production of dietary protein for a growing world population. There are technical obstacles still hindering large-scale commercialization of cultivated meat, of which many are related to the media that are used to culture the muscle, fat, and connective tissue cells. While animal cell culture media has been used and refined for roughly a century, it has not been specifically designed with the requirements of cultivated meat in mind. Perhaps the most common industrial use of animal cell culture is currently the production of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies, which sell for orders of magnitude more than meat. Successful production of cultivated meat requires media that is food grade with minimal cost, can regulate large-scale cell proliferation and differentiation, has acceptable sensory qualities, and is animal ingredient-free. Much insight into strategies for achieving media formulations with these qualities can be obtained from knowledge of conventional culture media applications and from the metabolic pathways involved in myogenesis and protein synthesis. In addition, application of principles used to optimize media for large-scale microbial fermentation processes producing lower value commodity chemicals and food ingredients can also be instructive. As such, the present review shall provide an overview of the current understanding of cell culture media as it relates to cultivated meat.     

Short‐term forecasting of categorical changes in wind power with Markov chain models

As penetrations of renewable wind energy increase, accurate short‐term predictions of wind power become crucial to utilities that must balance the load and supply of electricity. As storage of wind energy is not yet feasible on a large scale, the utility must integrate wind energy as soon as it is generated and decide at each balancing time‐step whether a change in conventional energy output is required. With high penetrations of wind energy, utilities must also plan for operating reserves to maintain stability of the electricity system when forecasts for renewable energy are inaccurate. Thus, a simple forecast of whether the wind power will increase, decrease or not change in the next time‐step will give utility operators an easy tool for assessing whether changes need to be made to the current generation mix. In this work, Markov chain models based on the change in power output at up to three locations or lags in time are presented that not only produce such an hourly forecast but also include a measure of the uncertainty of the forecast. Forecasts are greatly improved when knowledge of whether the maximum or minimum wind power is currently being produced and the intrahour trend in wind power are incorporated. These models are trained, tested and evaluated with a uniquely long set of 2 years of 10 min measurements at four meteorological stations in the Pacific Northwest and perform better than a benchmark state‐of‐the‐art wind speed forecasting model.Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effects of short-term variation in forage quality and forage to concentrate ratio on lactating dairy cows

Within-farm variation in forage composition can be substantial and potentially costly, and it presents challenges for sampling the forage accurately. We hypothesized that day-to-day variation in forage neutral detergent fiber (FNDF) concentrations and diet variation caused by sampling error would have negative effects on production measures in lactating dairy cows. Twenty-four Holstein cows (73 d in milk) were used in 8 replicated 3 × 3 Latin squares with 21-d periods. Treatments were (1) control (CON), (2) variable (VAR), and (3) overreacting (ORR). On average, over the 21-d period, all 3 treatments were the same [24.7% FNDF and 48.2% forage dry matter (DM) composed of 67% alfalfa silage and 33% grass silage]. The CON treatment was essentially consistent day-to-day in total forage and FNDF concentrations and proportion of alfalfa and grass silages. The VAR treatment changed daily (in a random pattern) in proportion of alfalfa and grass silages fed, which resulted in day-to-day changes in FNDF (range was 21.5 to 28%). The ORR treatment varied in a 5-d cyclic pattern in total forage and FNDF concentrations (26, 24, 28, and 21.5% FNDF). Over the 21 d, ORR (25.1 kg/d) had higher DM intake compared with CON (24.5 kg/d) and VAR (24.3 kg/d). Milk production (42.8 kg/d), milk fat (3.5%), and milk protein (2.8%) were not affected by treatment; however, a treatment × day interaction was observed for milk production. Lower daily milk yields for VAR and ORR compared with CON were rare; they only followed sustained 4- and 5-d periods of feeding higher FNDF diets compared with CON. In contrast, increased daily milk yields for VAR and ORR versus CON were more frequent and followed sustained diet changes of only 2 or 3 d. Lipolytic and lipogenic-related enzyme mRNA abundances in subcutaneous adipose tissue were not affected by treatment. Treatment × day interactions were observed for milk fatty acid markers of cellulolytic bacteria (iso-14:0, iso-15:0, iso-16:0) and lipolysis (18:0) and generally followed the expected response to changes in daily rations. Overall, extreme daily fluctuations in FNDF had no cumulative negative effect on production measures over a 21-d period, and daily responses to transient increases in FNDF were less than expected.