Search results for "Goals"
showing 10 items of 643 documents
Cave bear occupation in Schwabenreith Cave, Austria, during the early last glacial: constraints from 230 Th/U‐dated speleothems
2019
The cave bear was a prominent member of the Upper Pleistocene fauna in Eurasia. While breakthroughs were recently achieved with respect to its phylogeny using ancient DNA techniques, it is still challenging to date cave bear fossils beyond the radiocarbon age range. Without an accurate and precise chronological framework, however, key questions regarding the palaeoecology cannot be addressed, such as the extent to which large climate swings during the last glacial affected the habitat and possibly even conditioned the final extinction of this mammal. Key to constraining the age of cave bear fossils older than the lower limit of radiocarbon dating is to date interlayered speleothems using 23…
The impact of quantitative easing on UK bank lending: Why banks do not lend to businesses?
2021
Abstract The growing proportion of UK bank lending to the financial sector reached a peak in 2007 just before the onset of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). This marks a trend in the dwindling amount of bank lending to private sector non-financial corporations (PNFCs), which was exacerbated with the Great Recession. Many central banks aimed to revive bank lending with quantitative easing (QE) and unconventional monetary policy. We propose an agent based computational economics (ACE) model which combines the main factors in the economic environment of QE and Basel regulatory framework to analyse why UK banks do not prioritize lending to non-financial businesses. The lower bond yields caused…
The 3D structure of fabric and its relationship to liquid and vapor transport
2004
Polymeric carrier fabrics are commonly used in many industrial processes including manufacture of paper and board. Apart from acting as a carrier for the compressible porous material during the manufacturing process, the synthetic woven fabrics comprising mainly of poly ethylene terypthalate (PET) yarns, impart valuable product attributes, i.e. softness, bulk, absorbency, etc. in consumer products. The three-dimensional structure of the fabrics plays a critical role in deciding the manufacturing and energy efficiency as well as product end-use properties. X-ray micro computed tomography (X-CT) provides a non-intrusive technique to visualize and analyze the three-dimensional structure of por…
Use of Density Functional Based Tight Binding Methods in Vibrational Circular Dichroism.
2018
Vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) is a spectroscopic technique used to resolve the absolute configuration of chiral systems. Obtaining a theoretical VCD spectrum requires computing atomic polar and axial tensors on top of the computationally demanding construction of the force constant matrix. In this study we evaluated a VCD model in which all necessary quantities are obtained with density functional based tight binding (DFTB) theory. The analyzed DFTB parametrizations fail at providing accurate vibrational frequencies and electric dipole gradients but yield reasonable normal modes at a fraction of the computational cost of density functional theory (DFT). Thus, by applying DFTB in comp…
“Sweet” ionic liquid gels: materials for sweetening of fuels
2018
The search for new materials to be used in desulfurisation (sweetening) of fuels is one of the main topics of current research. In this paper, we explored the possibility of using supramolecular gels obtained from the gelation of ionic liquid binary mixtures. Indeed, some ionic liquids are generally known as efficient extraction phases for desulfurisation of fuels. In rare cases, one of their main drawbacks is their partial solubility in the fuel, leading to contamination. Then, their immobilisation due to the formation of a gelatinous network may be a challenge. Ionic liquid gels were obtained by mixing certain [NTf2]−-based ionic liquids (solvents) with the ones of gluconate-based ionic l…
Energy transfer in LH2 of Rhodospirillum Molischianum, studied by subpicosecond spectroscopy and configuration interaction exciton calculations.
2001
Two color transient absorption measurements were performed on a LH2 complex from Rhodospirillum molischianum by using several excitation wavelengths (790, 800, 810, and 830 nm) and probing in the spectral region from 790 to 870 nm at room temperature. The observed energy transfer time of ∼1.0 ps from B800 to B850 at room temperature is longer than the corresponding rates in Rhodopseudomonas acidophila and Rhodobacter sphaeroides. We observed variations (0.9-1.2 ps) of B800-850 energy transfer times at different B800 excitation wavelengths, the fastest time (0.9 ps) was obtained with 800 nm excitation. At 830 nm excitation the energy transfer to the B850 ring takes place within 0.5 ps. The m…
Injection and ultrafast regeneration in dye-sensitized solar cells
2014
Injection of an electron from the excited dye molecule to the semiconductor is the initial charge separation step in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSC's). Though the dynamics of the forward injection process has been widely studied, the results reported so far are controversial, especially for complete DSC's. In this work, the electron injection in titanium dioxide (TiO2) films sensitized with ruthenium bipyridyl dyes N3 and N719 was studied both in neat solvent and in a typical iodide/triiodide (I-/I3 -) DSC electrolyte. Transient absorption (TA) spectroscopy was used to monitor both the formation of the oxidized dye and the arrival of injected electrons to the conduction band of TiO2. Emiss…
Parasite–copepod interactions in Svalbard: diversity, host specificity, and seasonal patterns
2022
AbstractCopepods of the genera Calanus and Pseudocalanus are important components of Arctic marine ecosystems. Despite the key roles of these zooplankters, little is known about the organisms they interact with most intimately, their parasites and symbionts. We applied metabarcode sequencing to uncover eukaryotic parasites present within these two copepod genera from three areas around the high Arctic archipelago of Svalbard. Ten distinct parasite groups were observed: four different Apostome ciliates, four different dinoflagellates (Chytriodinium sp., Ellobiopsis sp., Thalassomyces sp., and Hematodinium sp.), a Paradinium sp., and a trematode. Apostome ciliates closely related to Pseudocol…
Genome architecture enables local adaptation of Atlantic cod despite high connectivity
2017
Adaptation to local conditions is a fundamental process in evolution; however, mechanisms maintaining local adaptation despite high gene flow are still poorly understood. Marine ecosystems provide a wide array of diverse habitats that frequently promote ecological adaptation even in species characterized by strong levels of gene flow. As one example, populations of the marine fish Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) are highly connected due to immense dispersal capabilities but nevertheless show local adaptation in several key traits. By combining population genomic analyses based on 12K single-nucleotide polymorphisms with larval dispersal patterns inferred using a biophysical ocean model, we show…
The effects of environment on Arctica islandica shell formation and architecture
2017
Mollusks record valuable information in their hard parts that reflect ambient environmental conditions. For this reason, shells can serve as excellent archives to reconstruct past climate and environmental variability. However, animal physiology and biomineralization, which are often poorly un- derstood, can make the decoding of environmental signals a challenging task. Many of the routinely used shell-based proxies are sensitive to multiple different environmental and physiological variables. Therefore, the identification and in- terpretation of individual environmental signals (e.g., water temperature) often is particularly difficult. Additional prox- ies not influenced by multiple enviro…