Understanding the recovery dynamics of ecosystems presents a major challenge in the human-impacted tropics. We tested whether secondary forests follow equilibrium or non-equilibrium dynamics by evaluating community reassembly over time, across different successional stages, and among multiple life stages. Based on long-term and static data from six 1-ha plots in NE Costa Rica, we show that seco...

We investigate the critical nucleus and equilibrium morphologies during precipitation of a second-phase particle in a solid. We show that a combination of diffuse-interface description and a constrained string method is able to predict both the critical nucleus and equilibrium precipitate morphologies simultaneously without a priori assumptions. Using the cubic to cubic transformation as an exa...

BACKGROUND Nanoparticles in contact with biological fluids interact with proteins and other biomolecules, thus forming a dynamic corona whose composition varies over time due to continuous protein association and dissociation events. Eventually equilibrium is reached, at which point the continued exchange will not affect the composition of the corona. RESULTS We developed a simple and effecti...

A model for steam gasification of biomass was developed by applying thermodynamic equilibrium calculations. With this model, the simulation of a decentralized combined heat and power station based on a dual fluidized-bed steam gasifier was carried out. Fuel composition (ultimate analysis and moisture content) and the operating parameters, temperature and amount of gasification agent, were varie...

cationic copolymer gels of acrylamide and [(methacrylamido) propyl] trimethyl ammonium chloride (maptac) were synthesized by free radical aqueous solution polymerization. the taguchi method, a robust experimental design, was employed for the optimization of the synthesis based on the equilibrium swelling capacity of the hydrogels. based on taguchi method a standard l16 orthogonal array with fiv...

The intramolecular base composition heterogeneity of human DNA has been investigated by electron microscopic observations of partially denatured structures and by equilibrium solution thermal denaturation techniques. DNA sequences having an average length of less than 2000 base pairs are found to be heterogeneous in base composition. These heterogeneous sequences occupy a minimum of 67 to 81% o...

Gas mixing in a T-shape micro mixer has been simulated using the Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method. It is considered that the adequate mixing occurs when the mass composition of the species, CO or N2, deviates below 1 % from their equilibrium composition. The mixing coefficient is defined as the ratio of the mixing length to the main channel’s height. As the inlet Kn increases, while ...