UNLABELLED Type IV pili (Tfp) are expressed by many Gram-negative bacteria to promote aggregation, adhesion, internalization, twitching motility, or natural transformation. Tfp of Neisseria meningitidis, the causative agent of cerebrospinal meningitis, are involved in the colonization of human nasopharynx. After invasion of the bloodstream, Tfp allow adhesion of N. meningitidis to human endothe...

The PilE pilin subunit protein of the gonococcal Type IV pilus (Tfp) colonization factor undergoes multisite, covalent modification with the zwitterionic phospho-form modification phosphoethanolamine (PE). In a mutant lacking the pilin-like PilV protein however, PilE is modified with a mixture of PE and phosphocholine (PC). Moreover, intrastrain variation of PilE PC modification levels have bee...

A method of damage identification of piles was established by using vibration characteristics. The approach focused on the application of the element strain energy and sensitive modals. A damage identification equation of piles was deduced using the structural vibration equation. The equation contained three major factors: change rate of element modal strain energy, damage factor of pile, and s...

We define the Symmetric Ice Pile Model SIPMk(n), a generalization of the Ice Pile Model IPMk(n), and we show an efficient algorithm for generating the symmetric ice piles with n grains. More precisely, we show how to exploit an existing algorithm for generating IPMk(n) in order to generate SIPMk(n) in amortized time O(1) and in space O( √ kn).

The objective of the paper is to demonstrate the calculation of micromorphic continuum stress measures based directly on three-dimensional (3D) ellipsoidal discrete element (DE) simulations over representative volume elements (RVE) within the DE domain representing granular media. We will demonstrate these calculations for two simulations: (1) pile penetration, and (2) cavity expansion. All cal...

We define three new take-away games, the Rat game, the Mouse game and the Fat Rat game. Three winning strategies are given for the Rat game and outlined for the Mouse and Fat Rat games. The efficiencies of the strategies are determined. Whereas the winning strategies of nontrivial take-away games are based on irrational numbers, our games are based on rational numbers. Another motivation stems ...

The prediction of the ultimate bearing capacity of the pile under axial load is one of the important issues for many researches in the field of geotechnical engineering. In recent years, the use of computational intelligence techniques such as different methods of artificial neural network has been developed in terms of physical and numerical modeling aspects. In this study, a database of 100 p...

As nanofluidic channels, uniaxially oriented mesoporous-silica is, for the first time, in-situ self-assembled in a microfluidic chip for quick enrichment/extraction of ng L(-1)(ppt)-level organo-phosphorous (OP) pesticide residue from aqueous solution to ethanol. This micro/nano combined pre-treatment chip is essential for following gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) quantitative anal...

In recent years, determining bearing capacity of piles from in-situ testing data as a complement to static and dynamic analysis has been used by geotechnical engineers. In this paper, different approaches for estimating bearing capacity of piles from SPT data are studied and compared. A new method based on N value from SPT is presented. Data averaging, failure zone and plunging failure of pil...