Evidence of successful river spawning by lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) in the Lower Niagara River,Lake Ontario

Restoration of a wild-produced lake trout Salvelinus namaycush population in Lake Ontario has not been successful despite the adult population often meeting or exceeding restoration targets. Lack of high-quality spawning habitat in Lake Ontario is suggested as one impediment to recruitment of wild lake trout, although the quantity and location of spawning habitat is poorly understood. If high-quality spawning habitat is limited in Lake Ontario, lake trout may be using uncommon spawning locations such as rivers. Anecdotal angler accounts point to the Niagara River as a lake trout spawning location. To better understand the potential of the Niagara River as a spawning location, egg and juvenile fish collections were conducted 12–14 river kilometers from the mouth of the Niagara River from 2010 to 2012; and mature female lake trout with surgically implanted acoustic tags were monitored from 2015 to 2019. Genetic analyses confirmed 60% of collected eggs and 93% of collected post-hatch juvenile fish in the Niagara River were lake trout. Tagged female lake trout returned to the Niagara River over consecutive years during the spawning season. The short duration of lake trout presence in the river (mean = 56 days/year) suggests female lake trout use the Niagara River primarily for spawning. Diversity in spawning locations may provide lake trout population’s resilience against environmental variability through a portfolio effect. Improved identification of riverine spawning locations, including their overall contribution to wild recruitment, may be a useful tool for managers to restore a wild-produced population of lake trout in Lake Ontario.     

Phase retrieval of speckle fields based on 2D Hilbert transform

The use of a “window” 2D Hilbert transform for reconstruction of the phase distribution of remote objects is proposed. It is shown that the advantage of this approach consists in the invariance of a phase map to a change of the position of the kernel of transformation and in a possibility to reconstruct the structure-forming elements of the skeleton of an optical field, including singular points and saddle points. We demonstrate the possibility to reconstruct the equi-phase lines within a narrow confidence interval, and introduce a new algorithm for solving the phase problem for random 2D intensity distributions.     

Modified Low Density Lipoprotein and Lipoprotein-Containing Circulating Immune Complexes as Diagnostic and Prognostic Biomarkers of Atherosclerosis and Type 1 Diabetes Macrovascular Disease

In atherosclerosis; blood low-density lipoproteins (LDL) are subjected to multiple enzymatic and non-enzymatic modifications that increase their atherogenicity and induce immunogenicity. Modified LDL are capable of inducing vascular inflammation through activation of innate immunity; thus, contributing to the progression of atherogenesis. The immunogenicity of modified LDL results in induction of self-antibodies specific to a certain type of modified LDL. The antibodies react with modified LDL forming circulating immune complexes. Circulating immune complexes exhibit prominent immunomodulatory properties that influence atherosclerotic inflammation. Compared to freely circulating modified LDL; modified LDL associated with the immune complexes have a more robust atherogenic and proinflammatory potential. Various lipid components of the immune complexes may serve not only as diagnostic but also as essential predictive markers of cardiovascular events in atherosclerosis. Accumulating evidence indicates that LDL-containing immune complexes can also serve as biomarker for macrovascular disease in type 1 diabetes.     

Modification of pool boiling regimes by sand deposition

Sand spots, attached to a copper ball surface by means of polyvinyl acetate adhesive and distributed over the surface with areal density that ranges between one spot per 1.18 cm² (for low‐density spots) and one spot per 0.51 cm² (for high‐density spots), serve as a temporary heat transfer enhancer during the quenching in liquid nitrogen. Highest heat flux densities, achieved during quenching, lie in the range 10.8 to 20.2 W/cm², depending on the sand layer structure. Application of the temporary enhancer increases an amount of heat, evacuated by highly effective nucleate and transition boiling, by factor of 4.5 as compared with the bare sample. The process of sand layer preparation, data acquisition peculiarities, relationship between heat exchange efficiency and the spots areal density, along with sand grit size are discussed in this paper.     

Optimization of flow stress in cool deformed Nb-microalloyed steel by combining strain induced transformation of retained austenite, cooling rate and heat treatment

In this study cool deformation was incorporated in the overall thermo-mechanical processing of a Nb-microalloyed steel. Included in this was the effect of cooling rate subsequent to hot rolling on precipitate formation in the ferrite phase. The results show that increasing the cooling rate prevents precipitate formation in the ferrite phase at the cool deformation temperature. As well, the amount of retained austenite under the low cooling condition in the temperature range of cool deformation, 700-300 °C, was measured by neutron diffraction. It is then shown that strain-induced transformation of retained austenite to martensite is the main factor in increasing the strength of cool deformed Nb microalloyed steel. Combining accelerated cooling, strain-induced transformation of austenite to martensite during cool deformation and a subsequent heat treatment stage to increase precipitation maximizes the flow stress of the steel. Finally, it is shown that this process also lowers the yield strength/ultimate strength ratio.     

Co-tunneling enhancement of the electrical response of nanoparticle networks

A co-tunneling charge-transfer process dominates the electrical properties of a nanometer-sized "slice" in a nanoparticle network, which results in universal scaling of the conductance with temperature and bias voltage, as well as enhanced spintronics properties. By designing two large (10 μm) electrodes with short (60 nm) separation, access is obtained to transport dominated by charge transfer involving "nanoslices" made of three nanoparticles only. Magnetic iron oxide nanoparticle networks exhibit a magnetoresistance ratio that is not reachable by tunneling or hopping processes, thereby illustrating how such a size-matched planar device with dominant co-tunneling charge-transfer process is optimal for realizing multifunctional devices with enhanced change of conductance under external stimulus.     

Radar‐based structural health monitoring of wind turbine blades: The case of damage localization

This short communication reports on a radar approach for structural health monitoring of wind turbine blades. Therefore, a bistatic frequency‐modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar in the frequency range from 33.4 to 36.0 GHz has been developed and tested experimentally using a laboratory wind turbine demonstrator. A differential damage localization framework is presented here that exploits signal differences between measurements from the intact and the damaged structure for 3D imaging of the defect. We have achieved the localization of a 30‐mm cut in a glass fiber composite structure as well as the localization of a water pack at the backside of the specimen with a localization error of several centimeters.     

Improved Graphitic Structure of Continuous Carbon Nanofibers via Graphene Oxide Templating

Continuous carbon nanofibers (CNF) present an attractive building block for a variety of multifunctional materials and devices. However, the carbonization of poly(acrylonitrile) (PAN) precursors usually results in CNFs with poor graphitic structure and, consequently, modest/non‐optimized properties. This paper reports that the graphitic structure of CNFs can be improved with an addition of a small amount of graphene oxide into PAN prior to processing. Continuous CNFs with 1.4 wt% of graphene oxide nanoparticles are prepared from PAN solutions by electrospinning, stabilized, and carbonized at 800 °C, 1200 °C, and 1850 °C. While the as‐prepared graphene oxide‐filled PAN nanofibers exhibit a considerable reduction in polymer crystallinity, Raman analysis of the carbonized nanofibers shows that both templating with graphene oxide and increasing the carbonization temperature significantly improve the graphitic order in CNFs. The effect of graphene oxide is more significant at higher carbonization temperatures. Selected area electron diffraction analysis of individual nanofibers reveals increased graphitic order and preferred orientation both in the vicinity of visible graphene oxide nanoparticles and in the regions where nanoparticles were not visible. These results indicate a possibility of global templating in CNFs, where the addition of a small amount of graphene oxide nanoparticles can template the formation of good, preferentially oriented graphitic crystallites in CNFs, leading to improved structure and mechanical and transport properties.     

Risk assessment of accidents involving environmental high-toxicity substances

The introduction of new safety legislation in Russia has been accompanied by R&D into risk assessment, especially needed when dealing with high-toxicity substances. In the present article, two models for evaluation of the dose absorbed by recipients as a result of instantaneous releases and short-term continuous emissions of toxicant to the atmosphere are developed. The models have the form of definite integrals with Green's function. The numerical problem of evaluation of the absorbed dose with obtained models is reduced to the calculation of single definite integrals. It is shown that under similar initial conditions, the dose absorbed as a result of instantaneous discharge is greater than the dose resulting in a short-term continuous emission of toxicant. An interval approach is developed to estimate the sensitivity of the numerical results to the errors in empirical parameters and variables included in the models. On the base of introduced definitions of interval variables, interval vectors and interval functions, interval estimates for absorbed dose are developed. It is shown that there exists an optimal number of terms in empirical equations with inexact parameters. Numerical examples of interval analysis are given.