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Measured Flux (measured + flux)
Selected AbstractsAlbedo, atmospheric solar absorption and heating rate measurements with stacked UAVsTHE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY, Issue 629 2007M. V. Ramana Abstract This paper reports unique measurements of albedo, atmospheric solar absorption, and heating rates in the visible (0.4 to 0.7 µm) and broadband (0.3 to 2.8 µm) spectral regions using vertically stacked multiple lightweight autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The most significant finding of this study is that when absorbing aerosols and water vapour concentrations are measured accurately and accounted for in models, and when heating rates are measured directly with stacked aircraft, the simulated clear sky heating rates are consistent with the observed broadband heating rates within experimental errors (about 15%). We conclude that there is no need to invoke anomalous or excess absorption or unknown physics in clear skies. Aerosol,radiation,cloud measurements were made over the tropical Indian Ocean within the lowest 3 km of the atmosphere during the Maldives Autonomous UAV Campaign (MAC). The UAVs and ground-based remote sensing instruments determined most of the parameters required for calculating the albedo and vertical distribution of solar fluxes. The paper provides a refined analytical procedure to reduce errors and biases due to the offset errors arising from mounting of the radiometers on the aircraft and due to the aircraft attitude. Measured fluxes have been compared with those derived from a Monte-Carlo radiative transfer algorithm which can incorporate both gaseous and aerosol components. Under cloud-free conditions the calculated and measured incoming fluxes agree within 2,10 W m,2 (<1%) depending upon the altitudes. Similarly, the measured and calculated reflected fluxes agreed within 2,5 W m,2 (<5%). The analysis focuses on a cloud-free day when the air was polluted due to long-range transport from India, and the mean aerosol optical depth (AOD) was 0.31 and mean single scattering albedo was 0.92. The UAV-measured absorption AOD was 0.019 which agreed within 20% of the value of 0.024 reported by a ground-based instrument. The observed and simulated solar absorption agreed within 5% above 1.0 km and aerosol absorption accounted for 30% to 50% of the absorption depending upon the altitude and solar zenith angle. Thus there was no need to invoke spurious or anomalous absorption, provided we accounted for aerosol black carbon. The diurnal mean absorption values for altitudes between 0.5 and 3.0 km above mean sea level were observed to be 41 ± 3 W m,2 (1.5 K/day) in the broadband region and 8 ± 2 W m,2 (0.3 K/day) in the visible region. The contribution of absorbing aerosols to the heating rate was an order of magnitude larger than the contribution of CO2 and one-third that of the water vapour. In the lowest 3 km of the tropical atmosphere, aerosols accounted for more than 80% of the atmospheric absorption in the visible region. Copyright © 2007 Royal Meteorological Society [source] Increased glucose metabolism and ATP level in brain tissue of Huntington's disease transgenic miceFEBS JOURNAL, Issue 19 2008Judit Oláh Huntington's disease (HD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by multifarious dysfunctional alterations including mitochondrial impairment. In the present study, the formation of inclusions caused by the mutation of huntingtin protein and its relationship with changes in energy metabolism and with pathological alterations were investigated both in transgenic and 3-nitropropionic acid-treated mouse models for HD. The HD and normal mice were characterized clinically; the affected brain regions were identified by immunohistochemistry and used for biochemical analysis of the ATP-producing systems in the cytosolic and the mitochondrial compartments. In both HD models, the activities of some glycolytic enzymes were somewhat higher. By contrast, the activity of glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase was much lower in the affected region of the brain compared to that of the control. Paradoxically, at the system level, glucose conversion into lactate was enhanced in cytosolic extracts from the HD brain tissue, and the level of ATP was higher in the tissue itself. The paradox could be resolved by taking all the observed changes in glycolytic enzymes into account, ensuing an experiment-based detailed mathematical model of the glycolytic pathway. The mathematical modelling using the experimentally determined kinetic parameters of the individual enzymes and the well-established rate equations predicted the measured flux and concentrations in the case of the control. The same mathematical model with the experimentally determined altered Vmax values of the enzymes did account for an increase of glycolytic flux in the HD sample, although the extent of the increase was not predicted quantitatively. This suggested a somewhat altered regulation of this major metabolic pathway in HD tissue. We then used the mathematical model to develop a hypothesis for a new regulatory interaction that might account for the observed changes; in HD, glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase may be in closer proximity (perhaps because of the binding of glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase to huntingtin) with aldolase and engage in channelling for glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate. By contrast to most of the speculation in the literature, our results suggest that the neuronal damage in HD tissue may be associated with increased energy metabolism at the tissue level leading to modified levels of various intermediary metabolites with pathological consequences. [source] The crystallography beamline I711 at MAX,IIJOURNAL OF SYNCHROTRON RADIATION, Issue 4 2000Y. Cerenius A new X-ray crystallographic beamline is operational at the MAX,II synchrotron in Lund. The beamline has been in regular use since August 1998 and is used both for macro- and small molecule diffraction as well as powder diffraction experiments. The radiation source is a 1.8,T multipole wiggler. The beam is focused vertically by a bendable mirror and horizontally by an asymmetrically cut Si(111) monochromator. The wavelength range is 0.8,1.55,Å with a measured flux at 1,Å of more than 1011,photons,s,1 in 0.3,mm × 0.3,mm at the sample position. The station is currently equipped with a Mar345 imaging plate, a Bruker Smart 1000 area CCD detector and a Huber imaging-plate Guinier camera. An ADSC 210 area CCD detector is planned to be installed during 2000. [source] Spitzer observations of M83 and the hot star, H ii region connectionMONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY, Issue 4 2007Robert H. Rubin ABSTRACT We have undertaken a programme to observe emission lines of [S iv] 10.51, [Ne ii] 12.81, [Ne iii] 15.56, and [S iii] 18.71 ,m in a number of extragalactic H ii regions with the Spitzer Space Telescope. Here we report our results for the nearly face-on spiral galaxy M83. A subsequent paper will present our data and analysis for another substantially face-on spiral galaxy M33. The nebulae selected cover a wide range of galactocentric radii (RG). The observations were made with the infrared spectrograph in the short wavelength, high dispersion configuration. The above set of four lines is observed cospatially, thus permitting a reliable comparison of the fluxes. From the measured fluxes, we determine the ionic abundance ratios including Ne++/Ne+, S3+/S++ and S++/Ne+ and find that there is a correlation of increasingly higher ionization with larger RG. By sampling the dominant ionization states of Ne and S for H ii regions, we can approximate the Ne/S ratio by (Ne++ Ne++)/(S+++ S3+). Our findings of ratios that significantly exceed the benchmark Orion Nebula value, as well as a decrease in this ratio with increasing RG, are more likely due to other effects than a true gradient in Ne/S. Two effects that will tend to lower these high estimates and to flatten the gradient are first, the method does not account for the presence of S+ and second, S but not Ne is incorporated into grains. Both Ne and S are primary elements produced in ,-chain reactions, following C and O burning in stars, making their yields depend very little on the stellar metallicity. Thus, it is expected that Ne/S remains relatively constant throughout a galaxy. We stress that this type of observation and method of analysis does have the potential for accurate measurements of Ne/S, particularly for H ii regions that have lower metallicity and higher ionization than those here, such as those in M33. Our observations may also be used to test the predicted ionizing spectral energy distribution (SED) of various stellar atmosphere models. We compare the ratio of fractional ionizations ,Ne++,/,S++, and ,Ne++,/,S3+, versus ,S3+,/,S++, with predictions made from our photoionization models using several of the state-of-the-art stellar atmosphere model grids. The overall best fit appears to be the nebular models using the supergiant stellar atmosphere models of Pauldrach, Hoffmann & Lennon and Sternberg, Hoffmann & Pauldrach. This result is not sensitive to the electron density and temperature range expected for these M83 nebulae. Considerable computational effort has gone into the comparison between data and models, although not all parameter studies have yet been performed on an ultimate level (e.g. in the present paper the stellar atmosphere model abundances have been fixed to solar values). A future paper, with the benefit of more observational data, will continue these studies to further discriminate how the ionic ratios depend on the SED and the other nebular parameters. [source] Reduction of a set of elementary modes using yield analysisBIOTECHNOLOGY & BIOENGINEERING, Issue 2 2009Hyun-Seob Song Abstract This article proposes a new concept termed "yield analysis" (YA) as a method of extracting a subset of elementary modes (EMs) essential for describing metabolic behaviors. YA can be defined as the analysis of metabolic pathways in yield space where the solution space is a bounded convex hull. Two important issues arising in the analysis and modeling of a metabolic network are handled. First, from a practical sense, the minimal generating set spanning the yield space is recalculated. This refined generating set excludes all the trivial modes with negligible contribution to convex hull in yield space. Second, we revisit the problem of decomposing the measured fluxes among the EMs. A consistent way of choosing the unique, minimal active modes among a number of possible candidates is discussed and compared with two other existing methods, that is, those of Schwartz and Kanehisa (Schwartz and Kanehisa, 2005. Bioinformatics 21: 204,205) and of Provost et al. (Provost et al., 2007. Proceedings of the 10th IFAC Symposium on Computer Application in Biotechnology, 321,326). The proposed idea is tested in a case study of a metabolic network of recombinant yeasts fermenting both glucose and xylose. Due to the nature of the network with multiple substrates, the flux space is split into three independent yield spaces to each of which the two-staged reduction procedure is applied. Through a priori reduction without any experimental input, the 369 EMs in total was reduced to 35 modes, which correspond to about 91% reduction. Then, three and four modes were finally chosen among the reduced set as the smallest active sets for the cases with a single substrate of glucose and xylose, respectively. It should be noted that the refined minimal generating set obtained from a priori reduction still provides a practically complete description of all possible states in the subspace of yields, while the active set covers only a specific set of experimental data. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2009;102: 554,568. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] | ||||||||||