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A numerical model is investigated representing counter-current spontaneous imbibition of water to displace oil or gas from a core plug. The model is based on mass and momentum conservation equations in the framework of the theory of mixtures. We extend a previous imbibition model that included fluid–rock friction and fluid–fluid drag interaction (viscous coupling) by including fluid compressibility and Brinkman viscous terms. Gas compressibility accelerated recovery due to gas expansion from high initial non-wetting pressure to ambient pressure at typical lab conditions. Gas compressibility gave a recovery profile with two characteristic linear sections against square root of time which could match tight rock literature experiments. Brinkman terms decelerated recovery and delayed onset of imbibition. Experiments where this was prominent were successfully matched. Both compressibility and Brinkman terms caused recovery deviation from classical linearity with the square root of time. Scaling yielded dimensionless numbers when Brinkman term effects were significant.Article Highlights Spontaneous imbibition with viscous coupling, compressibility and Brinkman terms. Viscous coupling reduces spontaneous imbibition rate by fluid–fluid friction. Brinkman terms delay early recovery and explain seen delayed onset of imbibition. Gas compressibility accelerates recovery and can be significant at lab conditions. Gas compressibility gives recovery with two root of time lines as seen for shale.

The main purpose of this work is to explore a general cell–fluid model which is based on a mixture theory formulation that accounts for the interplay between oxytactically (chemotaxis toward gradient in oxygen) moving bacteria cells in water and the buoyance forces caused by the difference in density between cells and fluid. The model involves two mass balance and two general momentum balance equations, respectively, for the cell and fluid phase, combined with a convection–diffusion–reaction equation for oxygen. In particular, the momentum balance equations include interaction terms which describe the cell–fluid drag force effect. Hence, the model is an extension of the classical Navier–Stokes equation in two different ways: (i) inclusion of two phases (cell and fluid) instead of one; (ii) inclusion of a chemotactic transport mechanism. The model can be understood as a natural generalization of the much studied chemotaxis-Stokes model explored by [I. Tuval, L. Cisneros, C. Dombrowski, C. W. Wolgemuth, J. O. Kessler and R. E. Goldstein, Bacterial swimming and oxygen transport near contact lines, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 102 (2005) 2277–2282]. First, we explore the model for parameters in a range which ensures that it lies close to the previously studied chemotaxis-Stokes model (essentially very low cell volume fraction). Main observations are (i) formation of sinking finger-shaped plumes and (ii) convergence to plumes that possibly can be stationary (i.e. persist over time). The general cell–fluid model provides new insight into the role played by the cell–fluid interaction term which controls the competition between gravity segregation and chemotaxis effect on the formation of cell plumes. Second, we explore cases with large cell volume fraction (far beyond the regime captured by the chemotaxis-Stokes model), which gives rise to rich pattern-formation behavior. The general cell–fluid model opens for exploring a hierarchy of different “submodels”. Hence, it seems to be an interesting model for further investigations of various, general cell–fluid spatio-temporal evolution dynamics, both from an experimental and mathematical point of view.

Over the last decade, oncolytic virus (OV) therapy has shown its promising potential in tumor treatment. The fact that not every patient can benefit from it highlights the importance for defining biomarkers that help predict patients’ responses. As particular self-amplifying biotherapeutics, the anti-tumor effects of OVs are highly dependent on the host factors for viral infection and replication. By using weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA), we found matrix remodeling associated 8 (MXRA8) is positively correlated with the oncolysis induced by oncolytic virus M1 (OVM). Consistently, MXRA8 promotes the oncolytic efficacy of OVM in vitro and in vivo. Moreover, the interaction of MXRA8 and OVM studied by single-particle cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) showed that MXRA8 directly binds to this virus. Therefore, MXRA8 acts as the entry receptor of OVM. Pan-cancer analysis showed that MXRA8 is abundant in most solid tumors and is highly expressed in tumor tissues compared with adjacent normal ones. Further study in cancer cell lines and patient-derived tumor tissues revealed that the tumor selectivity of OVM is predominantly determined by a combinational effect of the cell membrane receptor MXRA8 and the intracellular factor, zinc-finger antiviral protein (ZAP). Taken together, our study may provide a novel dual-biomarker for precision medicine in OVM therapy.

Visual attention mechanism has been widely used in computer vision and plays a vital role in the research of human action recognition. In this paper, we explore a novel moving target detection mechanism for human action recognition and propose a new 3D CNN (3D Convolutional Neural Network) model, dubbed LaM-2SRN (Local Features Enhanced and Moving target detected 2Stream-ResNet) for extracting and learning attention-enhanced spatiotemporal features. The contributions of this paper are as follow: First, the traditional CAM (Class Activation Map) based visual attention algorithm is used to obtain the optical flow information of the human region, thus eliminating the influence of irrelevant optical flow information (such as background clutter). Second, the ViBe algorithm is used to identify the moving target in the continuous frame, retain the optical flow information of the moving target, and make it complement with the optical flow information of the human region, to obtain a complete motion descriptor. After the motion information is marked in the video frame, we put the marked video frames and the original video frames into the 3D CNN and 2D CNN models respectively, to acquired mixed descriptor, which serves as the basis for video classification. Different from most of the previous target detection algorithms, this paper not only detects the human target, but also detects the moving foreground targets in the video, so that the pre-trained CNN model can obtain more complete motion information from videos. We use RGB-only video data for evaluation on two benchmarks: UCF101 and HMDB51, the experimental results demonstrate that our LaM-2SRN is comparable to the previous state-of-the-art algorithms.

Gallid alpha-herpesvirus 1, also known as avian infectious laryngotracheitis virus (ILTV), continues to cause huge economic losses to the poultry industry worldwide. Similar to that of other herpesvirus-encoded proteins, the expression of viral genes encoded by ILTV is regulated by a cascade, and the underlying regulatory mechanism remains largely unclear. The viral immediate-early (IE) gene ICP4 plays a prominent role in the initiation of the transcription of early and late genes during ILTV replication. In this study, we identified AP-1 as the key regulator of the transcription of ILTV genes by bioinformatics analysis of genome-wide transcriptome data. Subsequent functional studies of the key members of the AP-1 family revealed that Fos, but not Jun, regulates ILTV infection through AP-1 since knockdown of Fos, but not Jun, by gene silencing significantly reduced ICP4 transcription and subsequent viral genome replication and virion production. Using several approaches, we identified ICP4 as a bona fide target gene of Fos that regulated Fos and has Fos response elements within its promoter. Neither the physical binding of Jun to the promoter of ICP4 nor the transcriptional activity of Jun was observed. In addition, knockdown of Fos reduced the transcription of MDH1 and ATP5A1, genes encoding two host rate-limiting enzymes essential for the production of the TCA intermediates OAA and ATP. The biological significance of the transcriptional regulation of MDH1 and ATP5A1 by Fos in ILTV infection was supported by the fact that anaplerosis of OAA and ATP rescued both ICP4 transcription and virion production in infected cells under when Fos was silenced. Our study identified the transcription factor Fos as a key regulator of ILTV infection through its transcription factor function on both the virus and host sides, improving the current understanding of both avian herpesvirus–host interactions and the roles of AP-1 in viral infection.

The purpose of this work is to carry out investigations of a generalized two-phase model for porous media flow. The momentum balance equations account for fluid-rock resistance forces as well as fluid-fluid drag force effects, in addition, to internal viscosity through a Brinkmann type viscous term. We carry out detailed investigations of a one-dimensional version of the general model. Various a priori estimates are derived that give rise to an existence result. More precisely, we rely on the energy method and use compressibility in combination with the structure of the viscous term to obtain \begin{document}$ H^1 $\end{document} -estimates as well upper and lower uniform bounds of mass variables. These a priori estimates imply existence of solutions in a suitable functional space for a global time \begin{document}$ T>0 $\end{document} . We also derive discrete schemes both for the incompressible and compressible case to explore the role of the viscosity term (Brinkmann type) as well as the incompressible versus the compressible case. We demonstrate similarities and differences between a formulation that is based, respectively, on interstitial velocity and Darcy velocity in the viscous term. The investigations may suggest that interstitial velocity seems more natural to use in the formulation of momentum balance than Darcy velocity.

Summary This paper presents a numerical study of water displacing oil using combined cocurrent/countercurrent spontaneous imbibition (SI) of water displacing oil from a water-wet matrix block exposed to water on one side and oil on the other. Countercurrent flows can induce a stronger viscous coupling than during cocurrent flows, leading to deceleration of the phases. Even as water displaces oil cocurrently, the saturation gradient in the block induces countercurrent capillary diffusion. The extent of countercurrent flow may dominate the domain of the matrix block near the water-exposed surfaces while cocurrent imbibition may dominate the domain near the oil-exposed surfaces, implying that one unique effective relative permeability curve for each phase does not adequately represent the system. Because relative permeabilities are routinely measured cocurrently, it is an open question whether the imbibition rates in the reservoir (depending on a variety of flow regimes and parameters) will in fact be correctly predicted. We present a generalized model of two-phase flow dependent on momentum equations from mixture theory that can account dynamically for viscous coupling between the phases and the porous media because of fluid/rock interaction (friction) and fluid/fluid interaction (drag). These momentum equations effectively replace and generalize Darcy's law. The model is parameterized using experimental data from the literature. We consider a water-wet matrix block in one dimension that is exposed to oil on one side and water on the other side. This setup favors cocurrent SI. We also account for the fact that oil produced countercurrently into water must overcome the so-called capillary backpressure, which represents a resistance for oil to be produced as droplets. This parameter can thus influence the extent of countercurrent production and hence viscous coupling. This complex mixture of flow regimes implies that it is not straightforward to model the system by a single set of relative permeabilities, but rather relies on a generalized momentum-equation model that couples the two phases. In particular, directly applying cocurrently measured relative permeability curves gives significantly different predictions than the generalized model. It is seen that at high water/oil-mobility ratios, viscous coupling can lower the imbibition rate and shift the production from less countercurrent to more cocurrent compared with conventional modeling. Although the viscous-coupling effects are triggered by countercurrent flow, reducing or eliminating countercurrent production by means of the capillary backpressure does not eliminate the effects of viscous coupling that take place inside the core, which effectively lower the mobility of the system. It was further seen that viscous coupling can increase the remaining oil saturation in standard cocurrent-imbibition setups.

It is well known that relative permeabilities can depend on the flow configuration and they are commonly lower during counter-current flow as compared to co-current flow. Conventional models must deal with this by manually changing the relative permeability curves depending on the observed flow regime. In this paper we use a novel two-phase momentum-equation-approach based on general mixture theory to generate effective relative permeabilities where this dependence (and others) is automatically captured. In particular, this formulation includes two viscous coupling effects: (i) Viscous drag between the flowing phases and the stagnant porous rock; (ii) viscous drag caused by momentum transfer between the flowing phases. The resulting generalized model will predict that during co-current flow the faster moving fluid accelerates the slow fluid, but is itself decelerated, while for counter-current flow they are both decelerated. The implications of these mechanisms are demonstrated by investigating recovery of oil from a matrix block surrounded by water due to a combination of gravity drainage and spontaneous imbibition, a situation highly relevant for naturally fractured reservoirs. We implement relative permeability data obtained experimentally through co-current flooding experiments and then explore the model behavior for different flow cases ranging from counter-current dominated to co-current dominated. In particular, it is demonstrated how the proposed model seems to offer some possible interesting improvements over conventional modeling by providing generalized mobility functions that automatically are able to capture more correctly different flow regimes for one and the same parameter set.

Unidirectional carbon fiber composites were tested under multi-axial loading conditions including tensile/compression/shear loadings along and perpendicular to fiber directions. Compression dominated tests showed brittle fracture mode like local kicking/buckling, while tension dominated tests showed fracture mode like delamination and fiber breakage. Pure shear tests with displacement control showed material hardening and softening before total failure. Tsai-Wu failure criterion with Mises-Hencky interaction term was used as the yield criterion, and an associated flow rule (AFR) was used to describe the plastic flow of this material. The modified Tsai-Wu failure criterion was able to predict the failure of the composites under different loading conditions. A new material post-failure softening rule was proposed, where a new parameter ψ was introduced to represent different loading conditions of the composite. This model was implemented to ABAQUS/Explicit as a user material subroutine (VUMAT). Numerical simulations using finite element method well duplicated the elasticity and plasticity of this material. Failure features like delamination was simulated using cohesive surface feature. This model showed good capacity in predicting both failure initiations and fracture modes for the unidirectional fiber composites. This model has good application potentials to large-scale engineering problems.

In this paper we focus on a general model to describe compressible and immiscible three-phase flow in porous media. The underlying idea is to replace Darcy’s law by more general momentum balance equations. In particular, we want to account for viscous coupling effects by introducing fluid-fluid interaction terms. In [Qiao, et al. (2018) Adv Water Resour 112: 170–188] a water-oil model based on the theory of mixtures was explored. It was demonstrated how the inclusion of viscous coupling effects could allow the model to better capture flow regimes which involve a combination of co-current and counter-current flow. In this work we extend the model in different aspects: (i) account for three phases (water,oil,gas) instead of two; (ii) deal with both the compressible and incompressible case; (iii) include viscous terms that represent frictional forces within the fluid (Brinkman type). A main objective of this work is to explore this three-phase model, which appears to be more realistic than standard formulation, in the context of petroleum related applications. We first provide development of stable numerical schemes in a one-dimensional setting which can be used to explore the generalized water-oil-gas model, both for the compressible and incompressible case. Then, several numerical examples with waterflooding in a gas reservoir and water alternating gas (WAG) experiments in an oil reservoir are investigated. Differences and similarities between the compressible and incompressible model are highlighted, and the fluid-fluid interaction effect is illustrated by comparison of results from the generalized model and a conventional model formulation.

Although therapeutics targeting viral metabolic processes have been considered as promising strategies to treat herpesvirus infection, the metabolic requirements of gallid alphaherpesvirus 1 (ILTV), which is economically important to the poultry industry worldwide, remain largely unknown. Using the ILTV-susceptible but nonpermissive chicken cell line DF-1 and the ILTV-permissive chicken cell line LMH as models, the present study explored the metabolic requirements of ILTV by global transcriptome analysis and metabolome assays of ILTV infected cell lines in combination with a set of functional validations. The extensive metabolic exploration demonstrated that ILTV infection tended to promote a metabolic shift from glycolysis to fatty acid (FA) and nucleotide biosynthesis and utilizes glutamine independently of glutaminolysis, without significant general effect on the TCA cycle. In addition, different metabolic pathways were found to be required for distinct stages of ILTV replication. Glucose and glutamine were required for the transcription of viral immediate early gene ICP4 and subsequent steps of viral replication. However, FA synthesis was essential for assembly but not required for other upstream steps of ILTV replication. Moreover, the metabolic requirements of ILTV infection revealed in chicken cell lines were further validated in chicken primary cells isolated from chicken embryo kidneys and chicken embryo livers. The present study, to the best of our knowledge, provides the first global metabolic profile of animal herpesviruses and illustrates the main characteristics of the metabolic program of ILTV., Author summary Virus-host metabolic interaction is a promising target for antiviral therapeutics. Explorations of viral-induced shifts of host metabolism could reveal substrates that are uniquely required at high levels for viral replication and have been conducted for many virus species in the last decade. Herpesviruses are commonly treated with nucleotide analogs in the clinic. However, recent metabolomics studies suggest that different herpesvirus species can execute distinct metabolic programs in host cells despite their high conservation of biological characteristics. To understand why herpesviruses have evolved to alter different metabolic processes in host cells and refine the antiviral treatments by targeting more species-specific metabolic requirements, metabolomic explorations of more herpesvirus species are needed. However, comprehensive exploration of virus-host metabolic interaction has only been limited to a few human herpesviruses. Gallid alphaherpesvirus 1 (ILTV), an economically important alphaherpesvirus to the poultry industry worldwide, is thought to be an ancient example of alphaherpesviruses. Here we reveal the global metabolic requirements of ILTV and highlight the common and unique metabolic characteristics of ILTV by comparing with the known global metabolic profiles of several human herpesviruses. Our study may increase current understanding of herpesvirus-host metabolic interplay and inspire further studies in this direction.

Experimental study on high volume fraction of metallic matrix nano composites (MMNCs) was conducted, including uniaxial tension, uniaxial compression, and three-point bending. The example materials were two magnesium matrix composites reinforced with 10 and 15% vol. SiC particles (50 nm size). Brittle fracture mode was exhibited under uniaxial tension and three-point bending, while shear dominated ductile fracture mode (up to 12% fracture strain) was observed under uniaxial compression. The original Modified Mohr–Coulomb (MMC) fracture model (Bai and Wierzbicki in Int J Fract 161:1–20, 2010; in a mixed space of stress invariants and equivalent strain) was transferred into a stress based MMC (sMMC) model. This model was demonstrated to be capable of predicting the coexistence of brittle and ductile fracture modes under different loading conditions for MMNCs. A material post-failure softening model was postulated along the damage accumulation to capture the above two different failure modes. This model was implemented to the Abaqus/Explicit as a material subroutine. Numerical simulations using finite element method well duplicated the material strength, fracture initiation sites and crack propagation modes of the Mg/SiC nano composites with a good accuracy. The proposed model has a good potential to predict fracture for a wide range of material with strength asymmetry and coexistence of brittle and ductile fractures modes.

Apoptosis is a common innate defense mechanism of host cells against viral infection and is therefore suppressed by many viruses, including herpes simplex virus (HSV), via various strategies. A recent in vivo study reported the apoptosis of remote uninfected cells during Gallid herpesvirus 1 (GaHV-1) infection, yet little is known about this previously unknown aspect of herpesvirus-host interactions. The aim of the present study was to investigate the apoptosis of uninfected host cells during GaHV-1 infection. The present study used in vitro and in ovo models, which avoided potential interference by host antiviral immunity, and demonstrated that this GaHV-1–host interaction is independent of host immune responses and important for both the pathological effect of viral infection and early viral dissemination from the primary infection site to distant tissues. Further, we revealed that GaHV-1 infection triggers this process in a paracrine-regulated manner. Using genome-wide transcriptome analyses in combination with a set of functional studies, we found that this paracrine-regulated effect requires the repression of p53 activity in uninfected cells. In contrast, the activation of p53 not only prevented the apoptosis of remote uninfected cells and subsequent pathological damage induced by GaHV-1 infection but also delayed viral dissemination significantly. Moreover, p53 activation repressed viral replication both in vitro and in ovo, suggesting that dual cell-intrinsic mechanisms underlie the suppression of GaHV-1 infection by p53 activation. This study uncovers the mechanism underlying the herpesvirus-triggered apoptosis of remote host cells and extends our understanding of both herpesvirus-host interactions and the roles of p53 in viral infection. IMPORTANCE It is well accepted that herpesviruses suppress the apoptosis of host cells via various strategies to ensure sustained viral replication during infection. However, a recent in vivo study reported the apoptosis of remote uninfected cells during GaHV-1 infection. The mechanism and the biological meaning of this unexpected herpesvirus-host interaction are unclear. This study uncovers the mechanisms of herpesvirus-triggered apoptosis in uninfected cells and may also contribute to a mechanistic illustration of paracrine-regulated apoptosis induced by other viruses in uninfected host cells.

This paper presents a numerical study of water displacing oil by combined co-current / counter-current spontaneous imbibition (SI) of water displacing oil from a water-wet matrix block exposed to water at one side and oil at the other. Counter-current flows can induce a stronger viscous coupling than during co-current flows leading to deceleration of the phases. Even as water displaces oil co-currently the saturation gradient in the block induces counter-current capillary diffusion. The extent of counter-current flow may dominate the domain of the matrix block near the water-exposed surfaces, while co-current imbibition may dominate the domain near the oil-exposed surfaces implying that one unique effective relative permeability curve for each phase does not adequately represent the system. As relative permeabilities are routinely measured co-currently it is an open question whether the imbibition rates in the reservoir (depending on a variety of flow regimes and parameters) will in fact be correctly predicted. We present a generalized two phase flow model based on momentum equations from mixture theory that can account dynamically for viscous coupling between the phases and the porous media due to fluid-rock interaction (friction) and fluid-fluid interaction (drag). These momentum equations effectively replace and generalize Darcy's law. The model is parameterized using experimental data from the literature. We consider a water-wet matrix block in 1D that is exposed to oil on one side and water on the other side. This setup favors co-current SI. We also account for the fact that oil produced counter-currently into water must overcome the socalled capillary back pressure, which represents a resistance for oil to be produced as droplets. This parameter can thus influence the extent of counter-current production and hence, viscous coupling. This complex mixture of flow regimes implies that it is not straightforward to model the system by a single set of relative permeabilities, but rather relies on a generalized momentum equation model that couples the two phases. In particular, directly applying co-currently measured relative permeability curves gives significantly different predictions than the generalized model. It is seen that at high water-to-oil mobility ratios, viscous coupling can lower the imbibition rate and shift the production from less counter-current to more co-current as compared to conventional modelling. Although the viscous coupling effects are triggered by counter-current flow, reducing or eliminating counter-current production via the capillary back pressure does not eliminate the effects of viscous coupling that take place inside the core, which effectively lower the mobility of the system. It was further seen that viscous coupling can increase the remaining oil saturation in standard co-current imbibition setups.

In this study, a series of well-defined liquid crystalline molecular brushes with dual “jacketing” effects, polynorbornene-g-poly{2,5-bis[(4-methoxyhenyl)oxycarbonyl] styrene} (PNb-g-PMPCS), were synthesized by the “grafting through” method from ring opening metathesis polymerization of α-norbornenyl-terminated PMPCS. The rigid PMPCS side chain was synthesized by Cu(I)-catalyzed atom transfer radical polymerization initiated by N-[(2-bromo-2-methylpropanoyl)ethyl]-cis-5-norbornene-exo-2,3-dicarboximide. The chemical structures of the molecular brushes were confirmed by 1H NMR and gel permeation chromatography (GPC), and the thermal properties were studied by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). GPC results reveal that the molecular brushes have relatively narrow polydispersities. TGA results show that the molecular brushes have excellent thermal stabilities. The PMPCS side chains in all the molecular brushes form the columnar nematic liquid crystalline phase, which is a little different from the behavior of linear PMPCS possibly due to the confinement or other effects of the brush architecture which leads to decreased order. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2015, 53, 2116–2123

We synthesized a coil-g-rod polymer brush, poly{styrene-alt-(maleimide-g-poly{2,5-bis[(4-methoxyphenyl)oxycarbonyl]styrene})}(P{St-alt-(MI-g-PMPCS)}), by alternating copolymerization of styrene (St) and maleimide-terminated poly{2,5-bis[(4-methoxyphenyl)oxycarbonyl]styrene} (MI-PMPCS) with the “grafting through” strategy. MI-PMPCS was synthesized by using the protection strategy in which the initiator protected by Diels–Alder reaction with furan was used to initiate atom transfer radical polymerization of 2,5-bis[(4-methoxyphenyl)oxycarbonyl]styrene (MPCS), and then furan was deprotected by retro-Diels–Alder reaction. 1H NMR, gel permeation chromatography (GPC), and GPC coupled with multiangle laser light scattering were used to determine the chemical structures and molecular weights of the polymer brushes. The highest degree of polymerization (DP) of the main chain is 103, which is significantly large for polymer brushes with rigid side chains. The main-chain length increases with increasing feeding rati...

Homografts and synthetic grafts are used in surgery for congenital heart disease (CHD). Determining these materials' mechanical properties will aid in understanding tissue behavior when subjected to abnormal CHD hemodynamics. Homograft tissue samples from anterior/posterior aspects, of ascending/descending aorta (AA, DA), innominate artery (IA), left subclavian artery (LScA), left common carotid artery (LCCA), main/left/right pulmonary artery (MPA, LPA, RPA), and synthetic vascular grafts, were obtained in three orientations: circumferential, diagonal (45 deg relative to circumferential direction), and longitudinal. Samples were subjected to uniaxial tensile testing (UTT). True strain-Cauchy stress curves were individually fitted for each orientation to calibrate Fung model. Then, they were used to calibrate anisotropic Holzapfel–Gasser model (R2 > 0.95). Most samples demonstrated a nonlinear hyperelastic strain–stress response to UTT. Stiffness (measured by tangent modulus at different strains) in all orientations were compared and shown as contour plots. For each vessel segment at all strain levels, stiffness was not significantly different among aspects and orientations. For synthetic grafts, stiffness was significantly different among orientations (p

It is well known that relative permeabilities (RPs) can vary depending on the flow configuration and are lower during counter-current flow as compared to co-current flow. In this paper we use a novel two-phase momentum-equation approach to generate effective RPs where this dependence (and others) is well captured whereby the fluids transfer momentum due to fluid-rock interaction and fluid-fluid interaction. During co-current flow the faster moving fluid accelerates the slow fluid, but is itself decelerated, while for counter-current flow they are both decelerated. We investigate recovery of oil from a matrix block surrounded by water due to a combination of gravity drainage (GD) and spontaneous imbibition (SI), relevant for fractured reservoirs. In capillary-dominated systems the flow is counter-current and viscous coupling can result in increased time scale of the recovery process. During gravity-dominated flow it is more co-current and applying co-currently measured relative permeabilities from the lab becomes a better assumption. Using one set of parameters the momentum-equation approach is thus able to model the behavior of blocks of different operating at different Bond numbers in the reservoir.

We synthesized a new series of MJLCPs with a polynorbornene main chain, PNbnPT (n = 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, which is the number of carbons in the side-chain alkyl tails), through ring-opening metathesis polymerization and investigated their phase behaviors. The monomers were facilely synthesized in satisfactory yields through a key intermediate, N-(2,5-dicarboxylphenyl)-cis-5-norbornene-exo-2,3-dicarboximide. Differential scanning calorimetry, polarized light microscopy, and wide-angle X-ray diffraction results demonstrate that the phase behavior of PNbnPT is strongly dependent on the alkyl-tail length. Polymers with relatively short alkyl tails, PNb8PT and PNb10PT, are amorphous in the whole temperature range before degradation. When the alkyl-tail length increases, PNbnPTs (n = 12, 14, 16, 18) develop into the smectic A phase, and the degree of order increases with increasing alkyl-tail length. The synthetic pathway for MJLCPs with a polynorbornene main chain in this work is more robust and greener than ...

Two series of surfactants based on glycine and serine were synthesized with aproic acid, octanoic acid, decanoic acid, dodecanoic acid, tetradecanoic acid and hexadecanoic acid. All the surfactants were characterized by MS and 1H NMR, the structures of the synthesized surfactants are correct and the signals in MS and 1H NMR can be explained. The reaction conditions, surface properties and foam properties were studied. For the two series of surfactants, critical micelle concentration (CMC) and γ CMC (surface tension at CMC) decrease and surface activity is enhanced as the length of carbon chain increases. The surfactants with tetradecanoyl and hexadecanoyl groups show a good foaming property and especially, the long-chain acyl-serine performs better. These are all related to the hydromethyl group in the serine.

Genome-wide comparisons across 10 species from algae Guillardia theta to mammal human indicated that Caenorhabditis elegans and Caenorhabditis briggsae were highly enriched for glycine-rich secreted peptides (GRSPs) (110 GRSPs in C. elegans and 93 in C. briggsae) in this study. Chromosomal mapping showed that most GRSPs were clustered on the two nematode genomes [103 (93.64%) in C. elegans and 82 (88.17%) in C. briggsae], which could be divided into 18 cluster units in C. elegans and 13 in C. briggsae, respectively. Except for four C. elegans GRSPs clusters without matching clusters in C. briggsae, all other GRSPs clusters had paired synteny block between the two nematode genomes. Analyzing transcriptome datasets quantified by microarray indicated extensive genome-wide co-expression of GRSPs clusters after C. elegans infections. Highly homologous coding sequences and conserved exon-intron structures indicated that GRSPs tight clusters were likely derived from local DNA duplications. Phylogenetic conservation of synteny blocks between their genomes, co-expression of GRSPs clusters after C. elegans infections, and strong purifying selections of coding sequences may indicate evolutionary constraints acting on C. elegans to guarantee that C. elegans could mount rapid systematic responses to infections by co-expression, co-regulation, and co-functionality of GRSPs clusters.

Cold-drawing of multimaterial fibres consisting of a brittle core embedded in a ductile polymer cladding results in controllable fragmentation of the core to produce uniformly sized rods parallel to the drawing direction for cylindrical geometries and narrow, parallel strips perpendicular to the drawing direction for flat geometries. Polymer fibres such as nylon and polyester are often formed by cold-drawing, whereby the raw, brittle plastic is put under tensile stress and pulled — or 'drawn' — into thinner fibres. In a study of cold-drawing in the context of multimaterial structures consisting of a brittle core clad in a polymeric fibre or film, Ayman Abouraddy and colleagues have observed a surprising phenomenon that could be exploited to produce novel nanomaterials. They show that as the 'shoulder' between the thicker intact fibre and the thinner 'neck' region of the fibre propagates, the brittle core fragments evenly and predictably to form a train of equally spaced fragments within the polymer fibre, which can, if desired, be dissolved to leave only the core material. The phenomenon occurs regardless of core cross-section or material — silicon, germanium, gold, silk, polystyrene and even ice behave in this way — and both fibres and sheets can be cold-drawn to the same effect. Polymer cold-drawing1,2,3,4 is a process in which tensile stress reduces the diameter of a drawn fibre (or thickness of a drawn film) and orients the polymeric chains. Cold-drawing has long been used in industrial applications5,6,7, including the production of flexible fibres with high tensile strength such as polyester and nylon8,9. However, cold-drawing of a composite structure has been less studied. Here we show that in a multimaterial fibre10,11 composed of a brittle core embedded in a ductile polymer cladding, cold-drawing results in a surprising phenomenon: controllable and sequential fragmentation of the core to produce uniformly sized rods along metres of fibre, rather than the expected random or chaotic fragmentation. These embedded structures arise from mechanical–geometric instabilities associated with ‘neck’ propagation2,3. Embedded, structured multimaterial threads with complex transverse geometry are thus fragmented into a periodic train of rods held stationary in the polymer cladding. These rods can then be easily extracted via selective dissolution of the cladding, or can self-heal by thermal restoration to re-form the brittle thread. Our method is also applicable to composites with flat rather than cylindrical geometries, in which case cold-drawing leads to the break-up of an embedded or coated brittle film into narrow parallel strips that are aligned normally to the drawing axis. A range of materials was explored to establish the universality of this effect, including silicon, germanium, gold, glasses, silk, polystyrene, biodegradable polymers and ice. We observe, and verify through nonlinear finite-element simulations, a linear relationship between the smallest transverse scale and the longitudinal break-up period. These results may lead to the development of dynamical and thermoreversible camouflaging via a nanoscale Venetian-blind effect, and the fabrication of large-area structured surfaces that facilitate high-sensitivity bio-detection.