AISI D2, an alloy tool steel, has been widely used as a cold-work die steel because of its excellent wear resistance, toughness, and machinability. However, when it is mold or under high load, hardness resistance are required to improve service life. This study aimed apply ultrasonic nanocrystal surface modification (UNSM), local hardening technology, the D2 steel. To maximize improvement effec...

Tailed bacteriophages are the most abundant biological entities in marine environments. However, most of these marine phages are uncharacterized because few of their hosts have been cultivated. To learn more about such phages, we designed a set of degenerate PCR primers for phage T4 g23, which encodes the major capsid protein in all of the T4-type phages, an important family of the tailed phage...

The thermodynamics and kinetics for base-pair opening of the P1 duplex of the Tetrahymena group I ribozyme were studied by NMR hydrogen exchange experiments. The apparent equilibrium constants for base pair opening were measured for most of the imino protons in the P1 duplex using the base catalysts NH3, HPO4(2-) or TRIS. These equilibrium constants were also measured for several modified P1 du...

Two lysis-defective but DNA synthesis non-defective temperature-sensitive (ts) mutants of mycobacteriophage L1, L1G23ts23 and L1G25ts889 were found to be defective also in phage-specific RNA synthesis in the late period of their growth at 42 degrees C, each to the extent of 50% of that at 32 degrees C. The double mutant, L1G23ts23G25ts889 showed the ts defect in phage RNA synthesis that was nea...

Viruses are an abundant and active component of marine sediments and play a significant role in microbial ecology and biogeochemical cycling at local and global scales. To obtain a better understanding of the ecological characteristics of the viriobenthos, the abundance and morphology of viruses and the diversity and community structure of T4-type phages were systematically investigated in the ...

Abstract This paper examines racial disparities in mortgage processing time prior to the global financial crisis. We find that Black borrowers are underrepresented and experience a longer than white among mortgages securitized by government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs). At same time, borrower overrepresented face similar privately (PLS) mortgages. Additionally, strongly associated with faster s...

We extend a standard overlapping-generations general-equilibrium model with idiosyncratic working ability shocks to design the optimal social security pension system. There are two main features in our approach. First, we keep track of individual social security wealth explicitly so that we can evaluate a wide range of policies, including “private accounts,” seamlessly. Second, we express our s...

Aging populations are leading countries worldwide to social security reforms. Many countries are moving from pay-as-you-go to personal retirement account (PRA) systems because of their financial sustainability and positive impact on private savings. PRA systems boost private savings at a macro level by converting a government liability into financial wealth managed by private fund managers. How...

The Changing of the Guards: Can Physicians Contain Social Insurance Costs? Based on administrative data from Norway, we examine the extent to which family doctors influence their clients’ propensity to claim sick pay and disability benefits. The analysis is based on exogenous shifts of family doctors occurring when physicians quit, retire, or for other reasons sell their patient lists to other ...

We discuss the Randall-Sundrum (RS) gauge in the brane-world. We begin with the de Donder gauge (transverse-tracefree) in five dimensions for comparison. One finds that h55 = 0 and h5μ has a tachyonic mass. Hence we have to set h5μ = 0. This leads to the RS gauge. It appears that the RS gauge is so restrictive for the five massless states, whereas it is unique for describing the massive states....