Flow and heat transfer behaviour of nanofluids in microchannels

Flow and heat transfer of aqueous based silica and alumina nanofluids in microchannels were experimentally investigated. The measured friction factors were higher than conventional model predictions at low Reynolds numbers particularly with high nanoparticle concentrations. A decrease in the friction factor was observed with increasing Reynolds number, possibly due to the augmentation of nanoparticle aggregate shape arising from fluid shear and alteration of local nanoparticle concentration and nanofluid viscosity. Augmentation of the silica nanoparticle morphology by fluid shear may also have affected the friction factor due to possible formation of a core/shell structure of the particles. Measured thermal conductivities of the silica nanofluids were in approximate agreement with the Maxwell-Crosser model, whereas the alumina nanofluids only showed slight enhancements. Enhanced convective heat transfer was observed for both nanofluids, relative to their base fluids (water), at low particle concentrations. Heat transfer enhancement increased with increasing Reynolds number and microchannel hydraulic diameter. However, the majority of experiments showed a larger increase in pumping power requirements relative to heat transfer enhancements, which may hinder the industrial uptake of the nanofluids, particularly in confined environments, such as Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS).     

Aerobic bacterial pyrite oxidation and acid rock drainage during the Great Oxidation Event

The enrichment of redox-sensitive trace metals in ancient marine sedimentary rocks has been used to determine the timing of the oxidation of the Earth's land surface. Chromium (Cr) is among the emerging proxies for tracking the effects of atmospheric oxygenation on continental weathering; this is because its supply to the oceans is dominated by terrestrial processes that can be recorded in the Cr isotope composition of Precambrian iron formations. However, the factors controlling past and present seawater Cr isotope composition are poorly understood. Here we provide an independent and complementary record of marine Cr supply, in the form of Cr concentrations and authigenic enrichment in iron-rich sedimentary rocks. Our data suggest that Cr was largely immobile on land until around 2.48?Gyr ago, but within the 160?Myr that followed--and synchronous with independent evidence for oxygenation associated with the Great Oxidation Event (see, for example, refs 4-6)--marked excursions in Cr content and Cr/Ti ratios indicate that Cr was solubilized at a scale unrivalled in history. As Cr isotope fractionations at that time were muted, Cr must have been mobilized predominantly in reduced, Cr(III), form. We demonstrate that only the oxidation of an abundant and previously stable crustal pyrite reservoir by aerobic-respiring, chemolithoautotrophic bacteria could have generated the degree of acidity required to solubilize Cr(III) from ultramafic source rocks and residual soils. This profound shift in weathering regimes beginning at 2.48?Gyr ago constitutes the earliest known geochemical evidence for acidophilic aerobes and the resulting acid rock drainage, and accounts for independent evidence of an increased supply of dissolved sulphate and sulphide-hosted trace elements to the oceans around that time. Our model adds to amassing evidence that the Archaean-Palaeoproterozoic boundary was marked by a substantial shift in terrestrial geochemistry and biology.     

Role of sulphuric acid, ammonia and galactic cosmic rays in atmospheric aerosol nucleation

Atmospheric aerosols exert an important influence on climate through their effects on stratiform cloud albedo and lifetime and the invigoration of convective storms. Model calculations suggest that almost half of the global cloud condensation nuclei in the atmospheric boundary layer may originate from the nucleation of aerosols from trace condensable vapours, although the sensitivity of the number of cloud condensation nuclei to changes of nucleation rate may be small. Despite extensive research, fundamental questions remain about the nucleation rate of sulphuric acid particles and the mechanisms responsible, including the roles of galactic cosmic rays and other chemical species such as ammonia. Here we present the first results from the CLOUD experiment at CERN. We find that atmospherically relevant ammonia mixing ratios of 100 parts per trillion by volume, or less, increase the nucleation rate of sulphuric acid particles more than 100-1,000-fold. Time-resolved molecular measurements reveal that nucleation proceeds by a base-stabilization mechanism involving the stepwise accretion of ammonia molecules. Ions increase the nucleation rate by an additional factor of between two and more than ten at ground-level galactic-cosmic-ray intensities, provided that the nucleation rate lies below the limiting ion-pair production rate. We find that ion-induced binary nucleation of H(2)SO(4)-H(2)O can occur in the mid-troposphere but is negligible in the boundary layer. However, even with the large enhancements in rate due to ammonia and ions, atmospheric concentrations of ammonia and sulphuric acid are insufficient to account for observed boundary-layer nucleation.     

Does a lot help a lot? Forecasting stock returns with pooling strategies in a data‐rich environment

A variety of recent studies provide a skeptical view on the predictability of stock returns. Empirical evidence shows that most prediction models suffer from a loss of information, model uncertainty, and structural instability by relying on low‐dimensional information sets. In this study, we evaluate the predictive ability of various lately refined forecasting strategies, which handle these issues by incorporating information from many potential predictor variables simultaneously. We investigate whether forecasting strategies that (i) combine information and (ii) combine individual forecasts are useful to predict US stock returns, that is, the market excess return, size, value, and the momentum premium. Our results show that methods combining information have remarkable in‐sample predictive ability. However, the out‐of‐sample performance suffers from highly volatile forecast errors. Forecast combinations face a better bias–efficiency trade‐off, yielding a consistently superior forecast performance for the market excess return and the size premium even after the 1970s.     

Dialyzable serum factors alter cellular immunity in pregnancy

Summary Lymphocyte responsiveness was found to be decreased in pregnant and increased in habitually aborting women. This is attributed to a dialyzable serum factor(s), that can be removed from the surface of lymphocytes by repeated washing.     

Insertional mutagenesis in zebrafish rapidly identifies genes essential for early vertebrate development

To rapidly identify genes required for early vertebrate development, we are carrying out a large-scale, insertional mutagenesis screen in zebrafish, using mouse retroviral vectors as the mutagen. We will obtain mutations in 450 to 500 different genes--roughly 20% of the genes that can be mutated to produce a visible embryonic phenotype in this species--and will clone the majority of the mutated alleles. So far, we have isolated more than 500 insertional mutants. Here we describe the first 75 insertional mutants for which the disrupted genes have been identified. In agreement with chemical mutagenesis screens, approximately one-third of the mutants have developmental defects that affect primarily one or a small number of organs, body shape or swimming behavior; the rest of the mutants show more widespread or pleiotropic abnormalities. Many of the genes we identified have not been previously assigned a biological role in vivo. Roughly 20% of the mutants result from lesions in genes for which the biochemical and cellular function of the proteins they encode cannot be deduced with confidence, if at all, from their predicted amino-acid sequences. All of the genes have either orthologs or clearly related genes in human. These results provide an unbiased view of the genetic construction kit for a vertebrate embryo, reveal the diversity of genes required for vertebrate development and suggest that hundreds of genes of unknown biochemical function essential for vertebrate development have yet to be identified.     

What can we learn from the fifties?

Economists have increasingly elicited probabilistic expectations from survey respondents. Subjective probabilistic expectations show great promise to improve the estimation of structural models of decision making under uncertainty. However, a robust finding in these surveys is an inappropriate heap of responses at “50%,” suggesting that some of these responses are uninformative. The way these 50s are treated in the subsequent analysis is of major importance. Taking the 50s at face value will bias any aggregate statistics. Conversely, deleting them is not appropriate if some of these answers do convey some information. Furthermore, the attention of researchers is so focused on this heap of 50s that they do not consider the possibility that other answers may be uninformative as well. This paper proposes to take a fresh look at these questions using a new method based on weak assumptions to identify the informativeness of an answer. Applying the method to probabilistic expectations of equity returns in three waves of the Survey of Economic Expectations in 1999–2001, I find that: (i) at least 65% of the 50s convey no information at all; (ii) it is the answer most often provided among the answers identified as uninformative; (iii) but even if the 50s are a major contributor to noise, they represent at best 70% of the identified uninformative answers. These findings have various implications for survey design.     

Chronic lymphocytic leukaemia is driven by antigen-independent cell-autonomous signalling

B-cell antigen receptor (BCR) expression is an important feature of chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL), one of the most prevalent B-cell neoplasias in Western countries. The presence of stereotyped and quasi-identical BCRs in different CLL patients suggests that recognition of specific antigens might drive CLL pathogenesis. Here we show that, in contrast to other B-cell neoplasias, CLL-derived BCRs induce antigen-independent cell-autonomous signalling, which is dependent on the heavy-chain complementarity-determining region (HCDR3) and an internal epitope of the BCR. Indeed, transferring the HCDR3 of a CLL-derived BCR provides autonomous signalling capacity to a non-autonomously active BCR, whereas mutations in the internal epitope abolish this capacity. Because BCR expression was required for the binding of secreted CLL-derived BCRs to target cells, and mutations in the internal epitope reduced this binding, our results indicate a new model for CLL pathogenesis, with cell-autonomous antigen-independent signalling as a crucial pathogenic mechanism.     

Structure of Epac2 in complex with a cyclic AMP analogue and RAP1B

Epac proteins are activated by binding of the second messenger cAMP and then act as guanine nucleotide exchange factors for Rap proteins. The Epac proteins are involved in the regulation of cell adhesion and insulin secretion. Here we have determined the structure of Epac2 in complex with a cAMP analogue (Sp-cAMPS) and RAP1B by X-ray crystallography and single particle electron microscopy. The structure represents the cAMP activated state of the Epac2 protein with the RAP1B protein trapped in the course of the exchange reaction. Comparison with the inactive conformation reveals that cAMP binding causes conformational changes that allow the cyclic nucleotide binding domain to swing from a position blocking the Rap binding site towards a docking site at the Ras exchange motif domain.