Passive solar systems such as solar chimneys need solar radiation in order to work. Therefore, they cannot present stable natural ventilation when solar energy vanishes: to have a more robust and stable condition, solar energy should be stored during the day and released back during the night. Phase change materials can save additional thermal energy during the day and release it during the nig...

Northeast India and its adjoining region constitutes an important geotectonic element of Southeast Asia and is connected to India via a narrow corridor squeezed between Nepal and Bangladesh. Geomorphologically, the entire NE India is located in an earthquake prone zone ( Zone – V ) of the Indian subcontinent. The strain energy release has been studied by dividing the region into in the six geo ...

A split Hopkinson pressure bar is used to investigate the dynamic mechanical properties of biomedical 316L stainless steel under strain rates ranging from 1 × 10(3) s(-1) to 5 × 10(3) s(-1) and temperatures between 25°C and 800°C. The results indicate that the flow stress, work-hardening rate, strain rate sensitivity, and thermal activation energy are all significantly dependent on the strain, ...

Exoprotease activity during 120 h of total energy and nutrient starvation was examined in two marine bacteria, Vibrio sp. strain S14 and Pseudomonas sp. strain S9. The activity was determined by spectrophotometric measurement of the rate of release of soluble color from an insoluble azure dye derivative of hide powder (hide powder azure). Starved cells of both strains (5 h for S14, and 4 or 24 ...

By using the method presented by Isobe et al. (2002), the non-dimensional reconnection rate vin/vA has been determined for the impulsive phase of three two-ribbon flares, where vin is the velocity of the reconnection inflow and vA is the Alfvén velocity. The non-dimensional reconnection rate is important to make a constraint on the theoretical models of magnetic reconnection. In order to reduce...

Infectious biofilms are problematic in many healthcare-related devices and are especially challenging and ubiquitous in urinary catheters. This report presents an on-demand fouling-release methodology to mechanically disrupt and remove biofilms, and proposes this method for the active removal of infectious biofilms from the previously inaccessible main drainage lumen of urinary catheters. Matur...

Fluoroethene (FE) is a stable molecule in aqueous solution and its aerobic transformation potentially yields F-. This work evaluated if FE is a suitable surrogate for monitoring aerobic vinyl chloride (VC) utilization or cometabolic transformation. Experiments were carried out with three isolates, Mycobacterium strain EE13a, Mycobacterium strain JS60, and Nocardioides strain JS614 to evaluate i...

The dynamic behavior of three high manganese steels with very different stacking faultenergy (SFE) values (4-30 mJ/m2) were studied using high strain rate torsional tests. The hotrolledmicrostructure of the steel with the lowest SFE of 4 mJ/m2 consisted of a duplex mixture ofaustenite and ε-martensite, but those of the other two steels were fully austenitic. The deformedmicrostructures were stu...

Locusts have excellent jumping and kicking abilities to survive in nature, which are achieved through the energy storage and release processes occurring in cuticles, especially in the semi-lunar processes (SLP) at the femorotibial joints. As yet, however, the strain energy-storage mechanisms of the SLP cuticles remain unclear. To decode this mystery, we investigated the microstructure, material...

The evolutionary mechanisms of energy efficiency have been addressed. One important question is to understand how the optimized usage of energy can be selected in an evolutionary process, especially when the immediate advantage of gathering efficient individuals in an energetic context is not clear. We propose a model of two competing metabolic strategies differing in their resource usage, an e...