Global Analysis of the Flows of Fluids with Pressure-Dependent Viscosities

 To describe the flows of fluids over a wide range of pressures, it is necessary to take into account the fact that the viscosity of the fluid depends on the pressure. That the viscosity depends on the pressure has been verified by numerous careful experiments. While the existence of solutions local-in-time to the equations governing the flows of such fluids are available for small, special data and rather unrealistic dependence of the viscosity on the pressure, no global existence results are in place. Our interest here is to establish the existence of weak solutions for spatially periodic three-dimensional flows that are global in time, for a large class of physically meaningful viscosity-pressure relationships. (Accepted May 1, 2002) Published online November 15, 2002 Communicated by S. S. ANTMAN     

Capillary electrophoretic determination of carboxyhemoglobin concentrations in postmortem blood samples

The use of capillary electrophoresis (CE) as an alternative to existing methods of quantitation of carbon monoxide (CO) in hemoglobin from postmortem blood samples is presented. The isolation of heme (the portion of the hemoglobin molecule in which CO binding takes place) from hemoglobin is described. Reduced (containing no gas molecules) heme and CO-heme isolated from hemoglobin standards were successfully separated using CE. Heme and CO-heme were also isolated from blood samples of accident victims and analyzed using CE. A quantifiable difference in the CO-heme signals from blood samples containing fatal and nonfatal levels of CO was observed.     

Alcohols,ethers, carbohydrates,and related compounds. II. The anomeric effect

The anomeric effect has been studied for a variety of compounds using the MM4 force field, and also using MP2/6-311++G(2d,2p) ab initio calculations and experimental data for reference purposes. Geometries and energies, including conformational, rotational barriers, and heats of formation were examined. Overall, the agreement of MM4 with the experimental and ab initio data is good, and significantly better than the agreement obtained with the MM3 force field. The anomeric effect is represented in MM4 by various explicit terms in the force constant matrix. The bond length changes are accounted for with torsion-stretch elements. The angle changes are accounted for with torsion-bend elements. The energies are taken into account with a number of torsional terms in the usual way. A torsion-torsion interaction is also of some importance. With all of these elements included in the calculation, the MM4 results now appear to be adequately accurate. The heats of formation were examined for a total of 12 anomeric compounds, and the experimental values were fit by MM4 with an RMS error of 0.42 kcal/mol.     

The genome sequence of Bacillus anthracis Ames and comparison to closely related bacteria

Bacillus anthracis is an endospore-forming bacterium that causes inhalational anthrax. Key virulence genes are found on plasmids (extra-chromosomal, circular, double-stranded DNA molecules) pXO1 (ref. 2) and pXO2 (ref. 3). To identify additional genes that might contribute to virulence, we analysed the complete sequence of the chromosome of B. anthracis Ames (about 5.23 megabases). We found several chromosomally encoded proteins that may contribute to pathogenicity--including haemolysins, phospholipases and iron acquisition functions--and identified numerous surface proteins that might be important targets for vaccines and drugs. Almost all these putative chromosomal virulence and surface proteins have homologues in Bacillus cereus, highlighting the similarity of B. anthracis to near-neighbours that are not associated with anthrax. By performing a comparative genome hybridization of 19 B. cereus and Bacillus thuringiensis strains against a B. anthracis DNA microarray, we confirmed the general similarity of chromosomal genes among this group of close relatives. However, we found that the gene sequences of pXO1 and pXO2 were more variable between strains, suggesting plasmid mobility in the group. The complete sequence of B. anthracis is a step towards a better understanding of anthrax pathogenesis.     

Chemical Evolution of a Bacterial Proteome

We have changed the amino acid set of the genetic code of Escherichia coli by evolving cultures capable of growing on the synthetic noncanonical amino acid L ‐β‐(thieno[3,2‐b]pyrrolyl)alanine ([3,2]Tpa) as a sole surrogate for the canonical amino acid L ‐tryptophan (Trp). A long‐term cultivation experiment in defined synthetic media resulted in the evolution of cells capable of surviving Trp→[3,2]Tpa substitutions in their proteomes in response to the 20 899 TGG codons of the E. coli W3110 genome. These evolved bacteria with new‐to‐nature amino acid composition showed robust growth in the complete absence of Trp. Our experimental results illustrate an approach for the evolution of synthetic cells with alternative biochemical building blocks.     

Guided modes of integrated optical guides. A mathematical study

A waveguide in integrated optics is defined by its refractiveindex. The guide is assumed to be invariant in the propagationdirection while in the transverse direction it is supposed tobe a compact perturbation of an unbounded stratified medium.We are interested in the modes guided by this device, whichare waves with a transverse energy confined in a neighbourhoodof the perturbation. Our goal is to analyse the existence of such guided modes. Underthe assumptions of weak guidance the problem reduces to a two-dimensionaleigenvalue problem for a scalar field. The associated operatoris unbounded, selfadjoint, and bounded from below. Its spectrumconsists of the discrete spectrum corresponding to the guidedmodes and of the essential spectrum corresponding to the radiationmodes. We present existence results of guided modes and an asymptoticstudy at high frequencies, which shows that contrarily to thecase of optical fibers, the number of guided modes can remainbounded. The major tools are the min-max principle and comparisonof results between different eigenvalue problems. The originalityof the present study lies in the stratified character of theunbounded reference medium.