Entrapment of Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells in u.v. crosslinked hydroxyethylcellulose/poly(ethylene oxide) double-layered gels

Double-layered gels, consisting of hydroxyethylcellulose cryogel core and poly(ethylene oxide) hydrogel shell, were synthesized with u.v. irradiation, using the same photoinitiator, (4-benzoylbenzyl) trimethylammoniumchloride (BBTMAC) for the both layers. The gels were characterized by measuring their rheological parameters, gel fraction yield, the degree of equilibrium swelling and diffusion coefficient. The diffusion coefficients for glucose and ethanol through the hydroxyethylcellulose cryogel were 3.9 × 10^?6 cm²/s and 0.97 × 10^?5 cm²/s, respectively. The applicability of these double-layered gels as carriers for immobilization was investigated by entrapment of Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells. The immobilization efficiency and cell retention were determined in batch fermentation for ethanol production from glucose. The operational stability of the gels was evaluated in batch fermentation with three consecutive runs. The ethanol yield was in the range from 60% to 77% of the theoretical yield.     

Analysis of feedback-loop interactions with actuator and sensor parasitics

Feedback system design is often simplified by neglecting sensor and actuator dynamics. It is of practical importance to investigate the effects of such ‘parasitics’, especially when feedback gain is high. In this paper, we employ singular perturbations to model and analyze the interaction of sensor-actuator dynamics with the fast modes created by high feedback gain.     

Area decomposition for electromechanical models of power systems

Coherency and time scale properties of power system models are shown to be related by the dichotomic solution of a matrix Riccati equation. A grouping algorithm is proposed which reduces the area decomposition problem to obtaining a basis for the slow subsystem and performing a Gaussian elimination. Since the slow coherency measure allows for a lack of coherency in fast parts of machine transients, the resulting area decomposition is independent of fault locations. The procedure is illustrated by a 16-machine example.     

Singular perturbation analysis of systems with sustained high frequency oscillations

Using singular perturbation techniques, a system with high frequency oscillations is decomposed into two lower order subsystems, one containing only the slowly varying part and the other containing only the fast oscillatory part. Eigenvalue and state approximations achieved by the subsystems are given. A mass-spring-damper example shows that a stiff spring can be regarded as a perturbation of a rigid rod and an interconnected power system example illustrates the occurrence of coherency and inter-machine oscillations.     

A comparative study of 1H NMR lineshape fitting analyses and biochemical lipid analyses of the lipoprotein fractions VLDL, LDL and HDL, and total human blood plasma

The purpose of this work was two-fold. In the first instance, 1H NMR spectra of the ultracentrifuged lipoprotein fractions (VLDL, LDL and HDL) from six volunteers with different clinical conditions were measured. The methylene regions of the experimental spectra were modelled in the frequency domain using non-linear lineshape fitting analyses. In this way the resolvable Lorentzian component structures of the methylene regions of these lipoprotein fraction spectra could be determined. Second, the lipoprotein fraction analyses were used to construct simplified component structures, which interpreted the lipoprotein fraction spectra well, and were feasible to use in the total plasma spectra analyses. The considerable overlap problem of the resonances was properly handled in this way. The NMR-based relative amounts of the lipoproteins (relative integrated intensities of the lipoprotein model signals) obtained were compared to the biochemically resolved relative molar percentages of the lipoprotein fractions and also of the lipid contents between the lipoprotein complexes. It was noticed that nearly all correlations were extremely good. Thus, it is suggested that the developed methodology could be used as a fast method to predict the relative amounts of the lipoproteins and also possibly the relative lipid contents between the major lipoprotein categories directly from the proton NMR spectrum of a total blood plasma sample. Furthermore, if internal or external reference for the integrated intensities of the proton NMR resonances were used, it should also be possible to obtain the absolute amounts of these quantities.     

Time-harmonic analysis of grounding system in horizontally stratified multilayer medium

This paper extends an electromagnetic model for time-harmonic analysis of grounding system in horizontally stratified multilayer medium which consists of air and arbitrary number of soil layers. Complete electromagnetic coupling between grounding system segments is taken into account. The model is based on applying the finite element technique to an integral equation formulation. Through an effective approximation of the attenuation and phase shift effects the computation of Sommerfeld integrals has been avoided, which considerably shortens the computational time. The treatment of non-horizontal segments of grounding grid conductors has been resolved by approximating the segment with five current point sources distributed along the segment length. An algorithm for scalar electric potential computation in any soil layers is presented and compared to published results. The effects of approximating a complex heterogeneous earth structure with a homogeneous earth is also analyzed and discussed.     

Analysis of blocking probability in optical burst switched networks

In this article, we study the blocking probability in a wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) based asynchronous bufferless optical burst switched (OBS) network, equipped with a bank of wavelength converters. Our analysis encloses two wavelength reservation schemes JIT (just-in-time) and JET (just-enough-time), and two-class data rate. The contribution of our work includes: (i) derivation of an accurate model for blocking probability of lower priority bursts in case of a non-preempted model; (ii) provision of the analytical model for blocking probability calculation in the OBS network, which includes these variables: two signaling schemes, partial wavelength conversion, two-class data, traffic intensity, cross-connect speed, number of wavelengths in WDM fiber, number of fibers in the node, number of wavelength converters, and number of nodes in the path; (iii) simulation results, which show that partial wavelength conversion provide quite satisfactory quality of service. We compare performance in a single OBS node, under various sets of parameter values. The OBS network shows great flexibility in terms of used multiclass data, and there is no dependence on the used higher layer protocol.