To differentiate the Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato genospecies, LightCycler real-time PCR was used for the fluorescence (SYBR Green I) melting curve analysis of borrelial recA gene PCR products. The specific melting temperature analyzed is a function of the GC/AT ratio, length, and nucleotide sequence of the amplified product. A total of 32 DNA samples were tested. Of them three were isolated...

This paper describes an experimental validation exercise for a newly developed numerical model of the snow melting process on heated pavement surfaces. The model is able to predict the conditions of the snow, ice and water during the snow melting process on hydronically-heated pavements given time-varying weather and heating system boundary conditions. Validation results show that the model sat...

We present an atom-resolved analysis method that traces physical quantities such as the root-mean-square bond length fluctuation and coordination number for individual atoms as functions of temperature or time. This method is applied to explain the temperature-dependent behaviors of three types of NiN (N = 12, 13, 14) clusters. The detailed studies for the three types of clusters reveal charact...

DNA microarrays provide an efficient means of identifying single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in DNA samples and characterizing their frequencies in individual and mixed samples. We have studied the parameters that determine the sensitivity of DNA probes to SNPs and found that the melting temperature (T (m)) of the probe is the primary determinant of probe sensitivity. An isothermal-melting ...

Selective laser melting (SLM) is widely used in making three-dimensional functional parts layer by layer. Temperature magnitude and history during SLM directly determine the molten pool dimensions and surface integrity. However, due to the transient nature and small size of the molten pool, the temperature gradient and the molten pool size are very challenging to measure and control. A 3-dimens...

The rapid melting of silicon film due to the absorption of a CW laser beam radiation is studied. The silicon film melting and recrystallization is mainly controlled by the temperature distribution in the semiconductor. The enthalpy technique for the solution of phase change problems is used in an explicit finite difference form to calculate the transient temperature distribution in the silicon ...

On the surface of water ice, a quasi-liquid layer (QLL) has been extensively reported at temperatures below its bulk melting point at 273 K. Approaching the bulk melting temperature from below, the thickness of the QLL is known to increase. To elucidate the precise temperature variation of the QLL, and its nature, we investigate the surface melting of hexagonal ice by combining noncontact, surf...

Quenching probe PCR (QP-PCR) analysis was used to determine the frequency of ganciclovir (GCV) resistance among clinical isolates of human herpesvirus 6B (HHV-6B) obtained from patients with primary viral infection and viral reactivation. Forty-two HHV-6B clinical isolates were repeatedly recovered from 15 hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) recipients, and 20 isolates were recovered from...

When double-stranded DNA molecules are heated, or exposed to denaturing agents, the two strands are separated. The statistical physics of this process has a long history and is commonly described in terms of the Poland-Scheraga (PS) model. Crucial to this model is the configurational entropy for a melted region (compared to the entropy of an intact region of the same size), quantified by the lo...

Crystallization is almost always initiated at an interface to a solid. This observation is classically explained by the assumption of a reduced barrier for crystal nucleation at the interface. However, an interface can also induce crystallization by prefreezing (i.e., the formation of a crystalline layer that is already stable above the bulk melting temperature). We present an atomic force micr...