Chemical analysis of charged Li/SO(sub)2 cells

The initial focus of the program was to confirm that charging can indeed result in explosions and constitute a significant safety problem. Results of this initial effort clearly demonstrated that cells do indeed explode on charge and that charging does indeed constitute a real and severe safety problem. The results of the effort to identify the chemical reactions involved in and responsible for the observed behavior are described

The Evolution of the Global Star Formation History as Measured from the Hubble Deep Field

The Hubble Deep Field (HDF) is the deepest set of multicolor optical photometric observations ever undertaken, and offers a valuable data set with which to study galaxy evolution. Combining the optical WFPC2 data with ground-based near-infrared photometry, we derive photometrically estimated redshifts for HDF galaxies with J<23.5. We demonstrate that incorporating the near-infrared data reduces the uncertainty in the estimated redshifts by approximately 40% and is required to remove systematic uncertainties within the redshift range 1<z<2. Utilizing these photometric redshifts, we determine the evolution of the comoving ultraviolet (2800 A) luminosity density (presumed to be proportional to the global star formation rate) from a redshift of z=0.5 to z=2. We find that the global star formation rate increases rapidly with redshift, rising by a factor of 12 from a redshift of zero to a peak at z~1.5. For redshifts beyond 1.5, it decreases monotonically. Our measures of the star formation rate are consistent with those found by Lilly et al. (1996) from the CFRS at z 2, and bridge the redshift gap between those two samples. The overall star formation or metal enrichment rate history is consistent with the predictions of Pei and Fall (1995) based on the evolving HI content of Lyman-alpha QSO absorption line systems.Comment: Latex format, 10 pages, 3 postscript figures. Accepted for publication in Ap J Letter

Early-type galaxies in the SDSS. II. Correlations between observables

A magnitude limited sample of nearly 9000 early-type galaxies, in the redshift range 0.01 < z < 0.3, was selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey using morphological and spectral criteria. The sample was used to study how early-type galaxy observables, including luminosity L, effective radius R_o, surface brightness I_o, color, and velocity dispersion sigma, are correlated with one another. Measurement biases are understood with mock catalogs which reproduce all of the observed scaling relations and their dependences on fitting technique. At any given redshift, the intrinsic distribution of luminosities, sizes and velocity dispersions in our sample are all approximately Gaussian. A maximum likelihood analysis shows that sigma ~ L^{0.25\pm 0.012}, R_o ~ L^{0.63\pm 0.025}, and R_o ~ I^{-0.75\pm 0.02} in the r* band. In addition, the mass-to-light ratio within the effective radius scales as M_o/L ~ L^{0.14\pm 0.02} or M_o/L ~ M_o^{0.22\pm 0.05}, and galaxies with larger effective masses have smaller effective densities: Delta_o ~ M_o^{-0.52\pm 0.03}. These relations are approximately the same in the g*, i* and z* bands. Relative to the population at the median redshift in the sample, galaxies at lower and higher redshifts have evolved only little, with more evolution in the bluer bands. The luminosity function is consistent with weak passive luminosity evolution and a formation time of about 9 Gyrs ago.Comment: 29 pages, 11 figures. Accepted by AJ (scheduled for April 2003). This paper is part II of a revised version of astro-ph/011034

Expanding the Family of Grassmannian Kernels: An Embedding Perspective

Modeling videos and image-sets as linear subspaces has proven beneficial for many visual recognition tasks. However, it also incurs challenges arising from the fact that linear subspaces do not obey Euclidean geometry, but lie on a special type of Riemannian manifolds known as Grassmannian. To leverage the techniques developed for Euclidean spaces (e.g, support vector machines) with subspaces, several recent studies have proposed to embed the Grassmannian into a Hilbert space by making use of a positive definite kernel. Unfortunately, only two Grassmannian kernels are known, none of which -as we will show- is universal, which limits their ability to approximate a target function arbitrarily well. Here, we introduce several positive definite Grassmannian kernels, including universal ones, and demonstrate their superiority over previously-known kernels in various tasks, such as classification, clustering, sparse coding and hashing

An update of the JPL program to develop Li-SOCl2 cells

The goal of producing spiral wound D cell was met. The cell design and electrodes, particularly the carbon cathodes were produced in-house. Also all parts were assembled, the welding performed, the electrolyte aided and the cells sealed in-house. The lithium capacity (theoretical) was 19.3 Ah and that of the SOCl2 in the 1.8 m LiAlCl4 electrolyte, 16.4 Ah (a greater excess of SOCl2 is necessary for safe high rate operation). The electrode surface area was 452 sq cm. The carbon electrode comprised Shawinigen Black/Teflon -30 (90/10 by weight) mixture 0.020 inches thick on an expanded metal screen prepared in the JPL laboratory. There were two tab connections to the cathode. The 0.0078 inch thick lithium foil was rolled into an expanded nickel screen. The separator was Mead 934-5 fiberglass material

SARS CoV subunit vaccine: Antibodymediated neutralisation and enhancement

1. A SARS vaccine was produced based on recombinant native full-length Spike-protein trimers (triSpike) and efficient establishment of a vaccination procedure in rodents. 2. Antibody-mediated enhancement of SARS-CoV infection with anti-SARS-CoV Spike immune-serum was observed in vitro. 3. Antibody-mediated infection of SARS-CoV triggers entry into human haematopoietic cells via an FcγR-dependent and ACE2-, pH-, cysteine-protease-independent pathways. 4. The antibody-mediated enhancement phenomenon is not a mandatory component of the humoral immune response elicited by SARS vaccines, as pure neutralising antibody only could be obtained. 5. Occurrence of immune-mediated enhancement of SARS-CoV infection raises safety concerns regarding the use of SARS-CoV vaccine in humans and enables new ways to investigate SARS pathogenesis (tropism and immune response deregulation)

Fungal Chitin Dampens Inflammation through IL-10 Induction Mediated by NOD2 and TLR9 Activation

Funding: JW and NARG thank the Wellcome Trust (080088, 086827, 075470), The Wellcome Trust Strategic Award in Medical Mycology and Fungal Immunology (097377) and the European Union ALLFUN (FP7/2007 2013, HEALTH-2010-260338) for funding. MGN was supported by a Vici grant of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. AJPB and DMM were funded by STRIFE, ERC-2009-AdG-249793 and AJPB additionally by FINSysB, PITN-GA-2008-214004 and the BBSRC [BB/F00513X/1]. MDL was supported by the MRC (MR/J008230/1). GDB and SV were funded by the Wellcome Trust (086558) and TB and MK were funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Bi 696/3-1; Bi 696/5-2; Bi 696/10-1). MS was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Sch 897/1-3) and the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (R01 DE017514-01). TDK and RKSM were funded by the National Institute of Health (AR056296, AI101935) and the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities (ALSAC). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD