Effects of water vapor presence in Martian atmospheric entry plasma (MAEP) were calculated based on entry data from the Viking, Pathfinder, and the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity Landers. Calculations of the temperature and electron density across the shock front were made. We employed steady state and non-steady state kinetic models to describe the rate of dissociation of CO2 in the Martia...

Experiments and computer simulations demonstrate that water spontaneously fills the hydrophobic cavity of a carbon nanotube. To gain a quantitative thermodynamic understanding of this phenomenon, we use the recently developed two phase thermodynamics method to compute translational and rotational entropies of confined water molecules inside single-walled carbon nanotubes and show that the incre...

Although atmospheric vapour pressure deficit (VPD) has been widely recognized as the evaporative driving force for water transport, the potential to reduce plant water consumption and improve water productivity by regulating VPD is highly uncertain. To bridge this gap, water transport in combination with plant productivity was examined in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) plants grown under cont...

KCl causes smooth muscle contraction by elevating intracellular free Ca2+, whereas receptor stimulation activates an additional mechanism, termed Ca2+ sensitization, that can involve activation of RhoA-associated kinase (ROK) and PKC. However, recent studies support the hypothesis that KCl may also increase Ca2+ sensitivity. Our data showed that the PKC inhibitor GF-109203X did not, whereas the...

We develop a bimodal force microscopy method to map the three-dimensional force fields and their time-evolution on a variety of solid-water interfaces. The force maps show an oscillatory decaying force perpendicular to the solid surface with a 0.3 nm periodicity. The technique enables the three-dimensional imaging and mapping of the hydration layers and forces on mica and protein GroEL surfaces...

Using a hard sphere model and numerical calculations, the effect of the hydration force between a conical tip and a flat surface in the atomic force microscope (AFM) is examined. The numerical results show that the hydration force remains oscillatory, even down to a tip apex of a single water molecule, but its lateral extent is limited to a size of a few water molecules. In general, the contrib...

Ice adhesion is mainly dictated by surface properties, and water wettability is frequently correlated with ice adhesion strength. However, these established correlations are limited to high ice adhesion and become invalid when the ice adhesion strength is low. Here we carried out an experimental study to explore the relationships between low ice adhesion strength and room temperature surface pr...

This paper proposes and analyses a new demand response technique for renewable energy regulation using smart hot water heaters that forecast water consumption at an individual dwelling level. Distributed thermal energy storage has many advantages, including high overall efficiency, use of existing infrastructure and a distributed nature. In addition, the use of a smart thermostatic controller e...

Reverse micelles are attractive nanoscale systems used for the confinement of molecules in studies of structure and chemical reactions, including protein folding, and aggregation. The simulation of reverse micelles, in which a water "pool" is separated from a nonpolar bulk phase by a surfactant layer, poses significant challenges to empirical force fields due to the diversity of interactions be...

We present a program package based on finite elements for twoand three-dimensional analysis of interconnect structures. Thereby, triangular and tetrahedral grid elements with quadratic shape functions are used. Two preprocessors allow a layer-based input of the simulation geometry and the specification of the boundary conditions. The main program calculates amongst other things the distribution...