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This paper describes briefly the design and construction of a small modular stellarator for magnetic confinement of plasma, called Stellarator of Costa Rica 1, or SCR-1; developed by the Plasma Physics Group of the Instituto Tecnologico de Costa Rica, PlasmaTEC. The SCR-1 is based on the small Spanish stellarator UST_1, created by the engineer Vicente Queral. The SCR-1 will employ stainless steel torus-shaped vacuum vessel with a major radius of 460.33 mm and a cross section radius of 110.25mm. A typical SCR-1 plasma will have an average radius 42.2 mm and a volume of 8 liters (0.01 m3), and an aspect ratio of 5.7. The magnetic resonant field will be 0.0878 T, and a period of 2 (m=2) with a rotational transform of 0.3. The magnetic field will be provided by 12 modular coils, with 8 turns each, with an electrical current of 8704 A per coil (1088 A per turn of each coil). This current will be fed by a bank of cell batteries. The plasma will be heated by ECRH with magnetrons of a total power of 5kW, in the first harmonic at 2.45GHz. The expected electron temperature and density are 15 eV and 1017 m−3 respectively with an estimated confinement time of 7.30 x 10−4 ms. The initial diagnostics on the SCR-1 will consist of a Langmuir probe, a heterodyne microwave interferometer, and a field mapping system. The first plasma of the SCR-1 is expected at the end of 2011.

The structure and content of endoplasmic reticulum (ER) were studied in the shake cultures of two strains of Trichoderma reesei, one wild type (QM6a) and the other a cellulase (EC 3.2.1.4) hyper-producing and catabolite repression resistant mutant (RUT-C30). The results of quantitative electron microscopic and biochemical assays were correlated. At the stage of growth when cellulase secretion was high the ER in RUT-C30 cells was highly developed and more abundant than the ER in QM6a cells. A process regulating ER biogenesis may have been deactivated by mutation in RUT-C30 cells and thus the potential for extracellular enzyme synthesis and secretion has been enhanced .

A growing trend in the development of viable processes for the conversion of renewable cellulosic biomass to glucose is the use of microbial cellulases as biological catalysts. Unfortunately, the cost of the cellulase enzymes has been prohibitive for large scale industrial application in saccharification of cellulose. The high cost of cellulase is due largely to the low yield and to the low specific activity of enzymes from the available microbial strains. Improvement of the cellulolytic microbial strains can be considerably enhanced through selective screening programs. However, the rationale for selection and the chance of isolation of more useful strains are hampered by our lack of understanding of mechanisms controlling the synthesis and secretion of cellulase. Successful genetic cloning and expression of the cellulase genes from Tviohodevma or any other cellulolytic microorganism is similarly dependent upon a sound basic knowledge of the control mechanisms. Tviohodevma genetics is an unexplored abyss. Although Tviohodevma is reported to have a sexual stage, in the Hypoovea (1,2) mating types are generally unavailable. Thus, traditional methods of delineating genetic linkages are elusive.