Prior exposure to an attenuated <Emphasis Type="Italic">Listeria</Emphasis> vaccine does not reduce immunogenicity: pre-clinical assessment of the efficacy of a <Emphasis Type="Italic">Listeria</Emphasis>vaccine in the induction of immune responses against HIV

Background  

We have evaluated an attenuated Listeria monocytogenes (Lm) candidate vaccine vector in nonhuman primates using a delivery regimen relying solely on oral vaccination. We sought to determine the impact of prior Lm vector exposure on the development of new immune responses against HIV antigens.     

Theoretical development of a new surface heat flux calibration method for thin-film resistive temperature gauges and co-axial thermocouples

This paper presents a theoretically developed and computationally demonstrated surface heat flux calibration method applicable to thin-film resistive temperature gauges and co-axial thermocouples. For this study, the physical situation of interest involves hypersonic shock-tunnel studies. For experiments instrumented with these gauges, constant thermophysical properties are assumed since small temperature variations normally occur in the short-duration run times. Extraction of the net surface heat flux is acquired by resolving a newly formulated first-kind Volterra integral equation that contains calibration data. The proposed calibration method is based on an inverse approach which contrasts system identification methods. Several key advantages to this approach are discussed and demonstrated in the context of these gauges. Advantages of the proposed approach include (a) only one unknown “regularization” parameter is required; (b) estimation of the optimal regularization parameter is systematically and theoretically developed and demonstrated through the energy residuals, (c) computational coding is minimal and computer run times are short, and (d) results indicate robustness, stability and accuracy in the methodology. This calibration formulation and its subsequent regularized numerical method do not explicitly require the thermal effusivity, $\sqrt{\rho C k}$ owing to its input–output based derivation.     

A new multidimensional integral relationship between heat flux and temperature for direct internal assessment of heat flux

This paper derives a new integral relationship between heat flux and temperature in a transient, two-dimensional heat conducting half space. A unified mathematical treatment is proposed that is extendable to higher-dimensional and finite-region geometries. The analytic expression provides the local heat flux perpendicular to the front surface solely based on an embedded line of temperature sensors parallel to the surface. The relationship does not require apriori knowledge of the surface boundary condition. A new sensor strategy is analytically conceived based on the integral relationship for estimating the local, in-depth heat flux without surface instrumentation. It should further be clarified that the integral relationship requires only knowledge of the local, in-depth temperature and heating/cooling rate (time rate of change of temperature). The resulting formulation is mildly ill-posed and either requires digital filtering of the temperature signal to remove high frequency components of noise or the development of direct heating/cooling rate sensors. This paper (a) develops the new mathematical relationship; (b) demonstrates that the proposed relationship reduces to well-known (i) one-dimensional results under the appropriate assumptions; and, (ii) two-dimensional surface results; and, (c) provides a simple numerical example validating the concept.     

Analysis of volumetric changes through melting using a dilatometer

Summary A conventional push-rod dilatometer is modified in order to accurately correlate the measured density to the predicted sample temperature of alloys in the phase-change regime. This new configuration makes use of a standard furnace assembly; however, the specimen is now symmetrically encased in a well-instrumented, graphite cylindrical shell. The combination of system geometry and high-conductivity sample holder material promotes the development of a simplified heat transfer model. The solution of this model properly correlates the measured density to that of the actual sample temperature based on using remote, sample-holder temperature measurements. Preliminary results using aluminum A356 provide insight into the proposed configuration.     

Dynamics of Thermally-Insulated Nonequilibrium Stefan Problem

We study a two-phase Stefan problem with kinetics. Here we prove existence of a finite-dimensional attractor for the problem without heat losses. Fot the most part we use a more elegant technique of energetic type estimates in appropriately defined weighted Sobolev spaces as opposite to the parabolic potentials of [9]. We demonstrate existence of compact attractors in the Sobolev spaces and prove that the attractor consists of sufficiently regular functions. This allows us to show that the Hausdorff dimension of the attractor is finite.     

Deuteron formation in nuclear collisions

Deuteron production cross sections are calculated from an intranuclear cascade model for Ne + U and Ar + Ca at 400 MeV/A. In effect, there are no adjustable parameters in this calculation. The parameters of the cascade code are fixed by sum charged inclusive data. Furthermore, the high momentum deuteron inclusive distribution is found to be insensitive to the details of the deuteron wave function. This latter observation leads to a justification of a generalized coalescence formula involving both momentum and spatial coordinates. Satisfactory agreement is found between our calculations and both the untriggered and high multiplicity triggered inclusive spectra of deuterons with energies ?50 MeV/A.     

Constraining inverse stefan design problems

A new formulation possessing stable numerical characteristics is presented for inverse Stefan design processes. In such processes, the goal of the analysis is to design transient boundary conditions which produce the desired interfacial surface motion. This subclass of mildly ill-posed mathematical problems is amenable to the proposed solution methodology. This investigation presents a fixed-front differential formulation from which a weighted residual statement is developed. Orthogonal collocation is used to obtain numerical results illustrating the merit of imposing physical constraints in the mathematical model. These mathematical constraints can be viewed as design specifications and are available to the designer or experimentalist. The proposed methodology is flexible and can be generalized to problems involving continuous casting or crystal growth. Finally, symbolic manipulation is used for augmenting the computational methodology.     

Hadronization of excited nucleons in nuclear collisions at ISR energies

Calorimeters downstream of the intersection of pα and αα beams in the ISR have been used to study the hadronization of excited nucleons. These data extend and support the conclusions from previous studies of the A-dependence of particle multiplicities in ultrarelativistic p-nucleus collisions, which provided evidence that the proton hadronizes outside the nuclear volume.