BACKGROUND Over the last few years High-Throughput Protein Production (HTPP) has played a crucial role for functional proteomics. High-quality, high yield and fast recombinant protein production are critical for new HTPP technologies. Escherichia coli is usually the expression system of choice in protein production thanks to its fast growth, ease of handling and high yields of protein produced....

Fast scanning is highly desired for both ultrasound and photoacoustic microscopic imaging, whereas the liquid environment required for acoustic propagation limits the usage of traditional microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) scanning mirrors. Here, a new water-immersible scanning mirror microsystem has been designed, fabricated and tested. To achieve reliable underwater scanning, flexible poly...

A method is described for using plate lids to reduce evaporation in low-volume vapor-diffusion crystallization experiments. The plate lids contain apertures through which the protein and precipitants were added to different crystallization microplates (the reservoir was filled before fitting the lids). Plate lids were designed for each of these commonly used crystallization microplates. This sy...

The instability, morphology and pattern formation engendered by the van der Waals force in a thin liquid film of thickness h confined between two closely placed solid surfaces (at distance d > h) are investigated based on nonlinear 3D simulations. The initial and the final stages of dewetting and pattern formation are found to be crucially dependent on the volumetric (thickness) ratio of air an...

Three different aeration plates are used to study their effect on gas holdup and flow regime transition in fiber suspensions. The aeration plates differ by their open-area ratios (A=0.57%, 0.99%, and 2.14%), where the hole diameter remains the same while the number of holes increase. Experiments are performed using three different Rayon fiber lengths (L=3, 6, and 12mm) over a range of superfici...

In this article the modeling aspects of an electrostatic microactuator (μ-A) with squeezed thin film damping effects are presented. The μ-A is composed of a microcapacitor whose one plate is clamped on the ground while the other plate is floating on the air. Its highly nonlinear dynamic model is linearized at various operating points. A robust PID-controller is designed with its parameters-tuni...