Aqueous nickel-nitrilotriacetate modified Fe(3)O(4)-NH(3)(+) nanoparticles for protein purification and cell targeting

A comprehensive totally aqueous phase synthesis of nickel-nitrilotriacetate (Ni-NTA) modified superparamagnetic Fe(3)O(4) nanoparticles is presented. The Fe(3)O(4)-NTA-Ni nanoparticles are able to perform efficient and specific purification of 6-His tagged proteins from crude cell lysates, as evidenced by sodium dodecyl sulphate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) and Western blot analysis. The average binding capacity, as demonstrated by streptopain (M(W) 42?kDa), is 0.23?mg/mg (protein/Fe(3)O(4)-NTA-Ni). Considering the high affinity and specificity of the binding between hexahistidine motif and Ni-NTA, Ni-NTA modified nanoparticles could act as a module to carry 6-His tagged proteins on the particle surface with molecular orientation control, since only the 6-His domain could be attached. These modularly designed functional nanoparticles enhance cancer cell targeting, as supported by the in vitro receptor mediated targeting assay using RGD-4C-6-His fusion peptide. The nanoparticles show no significant hemolysis for human blood and could be investigated further for their in vivo functional imaging applications.     

Analysis, design, and implementation of a random frequency PWMinverter

Random pulse width modulation (RPWM) approaches can make the harmonic spectrum of inverter output voltage be continuously distributed without affecting the fundamental frequency component, and thus the acoustic noise and mechanical vibration of an inverter-fed AC motor drive are greatly reduced. However, the analysis and design of the RPWM mechanisms are generally not so trivial for practical engineers that their applications are limited. In this paper, a random frequency PWM (RFPWM) inverter and its practical design procedure are presented. First, the effects of the attributes of a random signal on the inverter output harmonic spectrum distribution characteristics are analyzed using an intuitive concept, then based on which, the quantitative design. Simulink simulation and implementation of the proposed RFPWM inverter are introduced. The proposed RFPWM inverter is employed to power an indirect field-oriented induction motor drive. The simulated and measured results indicate that the uniform random distribution of inverter output harmonic spectrum and thus smaller acoustic noise and mechanical vibration are obtained by the proposed RFPWM scheme     

The Partial Reverse If-Conversion Framework for Balancing Control Flow and Predication

Predicated execution is a promising architectural feature for exploiting instruction-level parallelism in the presence of control flow. Compiling for predicated execution involves converting program control flow into conditional, or predicated, instructions. This process is known as if-conversion. In order to apply ifconversion effectively, one must address two major issues: what should be ifconverted and when the if-conversion should be performed. A compiler's use of predication as a representation is most effective when large amounts of code are if-converted and when if-conversion is performed early in the compilation procedure. On the other hand, efficient execution of code generated for a processor with predicated execution requires a delicate balance between control flow and predication. The appropriate balance is tightly coupled with scheduling decisions and detailed processor characteristics. This paper presents a compilation framework based on partial reverse if-conversion that allows the compiler to maximize the benefits of predication as a compiler representation while delaying the final balancing of control flow and predication to schedule time.     

Effect of automatic recirculation flow control on the transient response for Lungmen ABWR plant

In this study the automatic mode of the recirculation flow control system (RFCS) for the Lungmen ABWR plant has been modeled and incorporated into the basic RETRAN-02 system model. The integrated system model is then used to perform the analyses for the two transients in which the automatic RFCS is involved. The two transients selected are: (1) one reactor internal pump (RIP) trip, and (2) loss of feedwater heating. In general, the integrated system model can predict well the response of key system parameters, including neutron flux, steam dome pressure, heat flux, RIP flow, core inlet flow, feedwater flow, steam flow, and reactor water level. The transients are also analyzed for manual RFCS case, between the automatic RFCS and the manual RFCS cases, comparisons of the transient response for the key system parameter show that the difference of transient response can be clearly identified. Also, the results show that the ΔCPR (delta critical power ratio) for the transients analyzed may not be less limiting for the automatic RFCS case under certain combination of control system settings.