An investigation of carbon nanotube jet grinding

Since their observation in 1976 and 1991, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have generated much interest due to their properties and potential applications. CNTs are tubular carbon molecules with remarkable mechanical, electrical, chemical and thermal properties, which make them useful in various applications. Industries producing CNTs via the fluidized bed chemical vapor deposition technique face challenges related to the size of CNT bundles. The two main challenges are agglomeration and agglomerate size distribution control. A solution to these challenges involves the use of jet mills to grind the CNT agglomerates. The goal of this study was to determine whether the nanotubes could be ground with air jets using a commercial jet mill and apply a two-parameter model to describe the grinding process. The present study has indicated that air-jet grinding of CNTs is feasible with a typical commercial jet mill. This paper presents the effect of operational parameters on the arithmetic mean diameter of the ground product. Sonic velocity through the grinding nozzles was required to obtain reasonable grinding rates and relatively narrow particle size distributions. This occurs at high air to solids feedrate ratios. Additionally, a simple attrition model can describe the grinding process in the spiral jet mill.     

The minimum information about failures for solving non-local tasks in message-passing systems

We first define the basic notions of local and non-local tasks for distributed systems. Intuitively, a task is local if, in a system with no failures, each process can compute its output value locally by applying some local function on its own input value (so the output value of each process depends only on the process’ own input value, not on the input values of the other processes); a task is nonlocal otherwise. All the interesting distributed tasks, including all those that have been investigated in the literature (e.g., consensus, set agreement, renaming, atomic commit, etc.) are non-local. In this paper we consider non-local tasks and determine the minimum information about failures that is necessary to solve such tasks in message-passing distributed systems. As part of this work, we also introduces weak set agreement—a natural weakening of set agreement—and show that, in some precise sense, it is the weakest nonlocal task in message-passing systems.     

Stress Generation, Avoidance Coping, and Depressive Symptoms: A 10-Year Model.

This study examined (a) the role of avoidance coping in prospectively generating both chronic and acute life stressors and (b) the stress-generating role of avoidance coping as a prospective link to future depressive symptoms. Participants were 1,211 late-middle-aged individuals (500 women and 711 men) assessed 3 times over a 10-year period. As predicted, baseline avoidance coping was prospectively associated with both more chronic and more acute life stressors 4 years later. Furthermore, as predicted, these intervening life stressors linked baseline avoidance coping and depressive symptoms 10 years later, controlling for the influence of initial depressive symptoms. These findings broaden knowledge about the stress-generation process and elucidate a key mechanism through which avoidance coping is linked to depressive symptoms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Pre-Omicron Vaccine Breakthrough Infection Induces Superior Cross-Neutralization against SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA.1 Compared to Infection Alone

SARS-CoV-2 variants raise concern because of their high transmissibility and their ability to evade neutralizing antibodies elicited by prior infection or by vaccination. Here, we compared the neutralizing abilities of sera from 70 unvaccinated COVID-19 patients infected before the emergence of variants of concern (VOCs) and of 16 vaccine breakthrough infection (BTI) cases infected with Gamma or Delta against the ancestral B.1 strain, the Gamma, Delta and Omicron BA.1 VOCs using live virus. We further determined antibody levels against the Nucleocapsid (N) and full Spike proteins, the receptor-binding domain (RBD) and the N-terminal domain (NTD) of the Spike protein. Convalescent sera featured considerable variability in the neutralization of B.1 and in the cross-neutralization of different strains. Their neutralizing capacity moderately correlated with antibody levels against the Spike protein and the RBD. All but one convalescent serum failed to neutralize Omicron BA.1. Overall, convalescent sera from patients with moderate disease had higher antibody levels and displayed a higher neutralizing ability against all strains than patients with mild or severe forms of the disease. The sera from BTI cases fell into one of two categories: half the sera had a high neutralizing activity against the ancestral B.1 strain as well as against the infecting strain, while the other half had no or a very low neutralizing activity against all strains. Although antibody levels against the spike protein and the RBD were lower in BTI sera than in unvaccinated convalescent sera, most neutralizing sera also retained partial neutralizing activity against Omicron BA.1, suggestive of a better cross-neutralization and higher affinity of vaccine-elicited antibodies over virus-induced antibodies. Accordingly, the IC50: antibody level ratios were comparable for BTI and convalescent sera, but remained lower in the neutralizing convalescent sera from patients with moderate disease than in BTI sera. The neutralizing activity of BTI sera was strongly correlated with antibodies against the Spike protein and the RBD. Together, these findings highlight qualitative differences in antibody responses elicited by infection in vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. They further indicate that breakthrough infection with a pre-Omicron variant boosts immunity and induces cross-neutralizing antibodies against different strains, including Omicron BA.1.     

Broadband liquid antenna

A new class of reconfigurable antenna based on monopole structures containing liquid dielectrics is presented. It was determined that the operating principle of this class of antenna is essentially that of a dielectric resonator, where salt (in solution) modifies the dielectric properties. The resonator column height determined the operating frequency, allowing match and frequency of operation to be fully tunable over 1-2.5 GHz while salinity mainly influences the bandwidth.     

Self-repelling snakes for topology-preserving segmentation models.

The implicit framework of the level-set method has several advantages when tracking propagating fronts. Indeed, the evolving contour is embedded in a higher dimensional level-set function and its evolution can be phrased in terms of a Eulerian formulation. The ability of this intrinsic method to handle topological changes (merging and breaking) makes it useful in a wide range of applications (fluid mechanics, computer vision) and particularly in image segmentation, the main subject of this paper. Nevertheless, in some applications, this topological flexibility turns out to be undesirable: for instance, when the shape to be detected has a known topology, or when the resulting shape must be homeomorphic to the initial one. The necessity of designing topology-preserving processes arises in medical imaging, for example, in the human cortex reconstruction. It is known that the human cortex has a spherical topology so throughout the reconstruction process this topological feature must be preserved. Therefore, we propose in this paper a segmentation model based on an implicit level-set formulation and on the geodesic active contours, in which a topological constraint is enforced.     

Immunocytochemical localisation of para-coumaric acid and feruloyl-arabinose in the cell walls of maize stem

Two phenolic compounds, p-coumaric acid and feruloyl-arabinose, were localised by immunocytochemistry in the cell walls of the apical internode of two lines of maize (Co125 and W401) of different digestibility. The compounds were detected at two stages of cell maturity in the lignified tissues (sclerenchyma, fibres and xylem) and in the medullary parenchyma, which, in the samples studied, was not lignified. p-Coumaric acid is a phenolic acid associated with lignins, which confer resistance on plant cell walls to microbial degradation in the rumen. Feruloyl-arabinose is a compound associated with xylans, the principal hemicelluloses in Gramineae, which are potentially degradable. Labelling of p-coumaric acid decreased in both maize lines with cell age and as the cell walls became lignified. The mass of lignin deposited in the cell walls masked p-coumaric acid, thereby making it less accessible to the antibodies. There was an inverse relationship in the labelling of p-coumaric acid and feruloyl-arabinose. Feruloyl-arabinose was more heavily labelled as the plant cell walls matured in all the lignified tissues of both maize lines and in the parenchyma of the less digestible line. All tissues except the parenchyma were more heavily labelled with both sera in Co125, the more digestible line. © 1998 Society of Chemical Industry.     

Proteome Based Approach Defines Candidates for Designing a Multitope Vaccine against the Nipah Virus

Nipah virus is one of the most harmful emerging viruses with deadly effects on both humans and animals. Because of the severe outbreaks, in 2018, the World Health Organization focused on the urgent need for the development of effective solutions against the virus. However, up to date, there is no effective vaccine against the Nipah virus in the market. In the current study, the complete proteome of the Nipah virus (nine proteins) was analyzed for the antigenicity score and the virulence role of each protein, where we came up with fusion glycoprotein (F), glycoprotein (G), protein (V), and protein (W) as the candidates for epitope prediction. Following that, the multitope vaccine was designed based on top-ranking CTL, HTL, and BCL epitopes from the selected proteins. We used suitable linkers, adjuvant, and PADRE peptides to finalize the constructed vaccine, which was analyzed for its physicochemical features, antigenicity, toxicity, allergenicity, and solubility. The designed vaccine passed these assessments through computational analysis and, as a final step, we ran a docking analysis between the designed vaccine and TLR-³ and validated the docked complex through molecular dynamics simulation, which estimated a strong binding and supported the nomination of the designed vaccine as a putative solution for Nipah virus. Here, we describe the computational approach for design and analysis of this vaccine.