Bacterial growth rate and host factors as determinants of intracellular bacterial distributions in systemic Salmonella enterica infections.

Bacteria of the species Salmonella enterica cause a range of life-threatening diseases in humans and animals worldwide. The within-host quantitative, spatial, and temporal dynamics of S. enterica interactions are key to understanding how immunity acts on these infections and how bacteria evade immune surveillance. In this study, we test hypotheses generated from mathematical models of in vivo dynamics of Salmonella infections with experimental observation of bacteria at the single-cell level in infected mouse organs to improve our understanding of the dynamic interactions between host and bacterial mechanisms that determine net growth rates of S. enterica within the host. We show that both bacterial and host factors determine the numerical distributions of bacteria within host cells and thus the level of dispersiveness of the infection.

Effective elastic moduli of two-dimensional solids with multiple cracks

An accurate method which directly accounts for the interactions between different microcracks is used for analyzing the elastic problem of multiple cracks solids. The effective elastic moduli for randomly oriented cracks and parallel cracks are evaluated for the representative volume element (RVE) with microcracks in infinite media. The numerical results are compared with those from various micromechanics models and experimental data. These results show that the present method is simple and provides a direct and efficient approach to dealing with elastic solids containing multiple cracks.

Behavior of Multiple Shear Bands in Zr-Based Bulk Metallic Glass

The deformation behavior of Zr41.2Ti13.8Cu12.5Ni10Be22.5 bulk metallic glass was studied by in situ scanning electron microscopy (SEM) quasi-static uniaxial compression tests at room temperature. Multiple shear bands were observed with a large plasticity. Microscopic examination demonstrates that slipping, branching and intersecting of multiple shear bands are the main mechanisms for enhancing the plasticity of this metallic glass. Additionally, nano/micro-scale voids and cracks at the intersecting sites of shear bands and preferential etching of shear bands were observed as well. These observations demonstrated that the formation of shear bands in bulk metallic glasses is resulted mainly from local free volume coalescence.

Interacting multiple cracks in piezoelectric materials

In this paper, a method is presented to calculate the plane electro-elastic fields in piezoelectric materials with multiple cracks. The cracks may be distributed randomly in locations, orientations and sizes. In the method, each crack is treated as a continuous distributed dislocations with the density function to be determined according to the conditions of external loads and crack surfaces. Some numerical examples are given to show the interacting effect among multiple cracks.

Evaluación de tres compuestos simuladores de alfa pineno y sinérgicos de frontalin para la captura de gorgojos descortezadores de pino y fauna asociada en trampas de embudo multiple en el municipio de San Fernando, Nueva Segovia

Con el objetivo de evaluar la efectividad de tres compuestos considerados simuladores de alfa pineno se realizó el presente estudio en tres sitios del municipio de San Fernando, siendo ellos San Nicolás, Las Tapias y San José. Los compuestos evaluados fueron pinene lure, esencia de trementina (aguarrás) y el diluyente FT 90, el trabajo se realizo durante el periodo Octubre 2007 a Marzo 2008. Los principales insectos capturados durante el estudio correspondieron a: Dendroctonus frontalis, Dendroctonus approximatus, Ips sp, Xyleborus sp, Temnochila sp, Enoclerus sp, Cossonus sp, Silvanus sp, Sascelis sp, Tomolips sp, Pangaeus sp y varios miembros de la familia Staphylinidae. Para el caso de los gorgojos descortezadores D. frontalis, D. approximatus e Ips sp no ocurrieron capturas en el sitio San Nicolás, lo que evidencia la importancia de la práctica del manejo forestal en la disminución de la incidencia estos insectos, comparado con los sitios Las Tapias y San José en donde se dieron capturas y no había una práctica efectiva de manejo forestal. El compuesto esencia de trementina (aguarrás), combinado con la feromona frontalin fue estadísticamente el mas efectivo en la captura de Dendroctonus frontalis, Dendroctonus approximatus y Temnochila sp. La sustancia química conocida como diluyente FP 90 no debe ser considerado como un simulador de alfa pineno y no debe ser usado como equivalente o sustituto de aguarrás dado que es una sustancia que proviene del petróleo y no contiene en su esencia química alfa pineno. En el mes de noviembre fue notorio observar un patrón de incremento poblacional por parte la mayoría de los insectos estudiados, con particular referencia al caso de Dendroctonus frontalis. Los resultados de estudio refuerzan el hecho observado en otros estudios relativo a que en los meses de noviembre y diciembre parece existir una mayor actividad de vuelo de Dendroctonus frontalis, lo cual se refleja en mayores capturas durante dichos meses.

Concentrated-Mass Cantilever Enhances Multiple Harmonics In Tapping-Mode Atomic Force Microscopy

The natural frequencies of a cantilever probe can be tuned with an attached concentrated mass to coincide with the higher harmonics generated in a tapping-mode atomic force microscopy by the nonlinear tip-sample interaction force. We provide a comprehensive map to guide the choice of the mass and the position of the attached particle in order to significantly enhance the higher harmonic signals containing information on the material properties. The first three eigenmodes can be simultaneously excited with only one carefully positioned particle of specific mass to enhance multiple harmonics. Accessing the interaction force qualitatively based on the high-sensitive harmonic signals combines the real-time material characterization with the imaging capability. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics.

Clemaps: Multiple Alignment Of Protein Structures Based On Conformational Letters

CLEMAPS is a tool for multiple alignment of protein structures. It distinguishes itself from other existing algorithms for multiple structure alignment by the use of conformational letters, which are discretized states of 3D segmental structural states. A letter corresponds to a cluster of combinations of three angles formed by C-alpha pseudobonds of four contiguous residues. A substitution matrix called CLESUM is available to measure the similarity between any two such letters. The input 3D structures are first converted to sequences of conformational letters. Each string of a fixed length is then taken as the center seed to search other sequences for neighbors of the seed, which are strings similar to the seed. A seed and its neighbors form a center-star, which corresponds to a fragment set of local structural similarity shared by many proteins. The detection of center-stars using CLESUM is extremely efficient. Local similarity is a necessary, but insufficient, condition for structural alignment. Once center-stars are found, the spatial consistency between any two stars are examined to find consistent star duads using atomic coordinates. Consistent duads are later joined to create a core for multiple alignment, which is further polished to produce the final alignment. The utility of CLEMAPS is tested on various protein structure ensembles.