Thesis (M.S.)--Auburn University, 2008. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 166-174).

This thesis discusses the chemistry and physics of Cu and H2O on ZnO surfaces, based primarily on results from quantum chemical calculations. The underlying context is heterogeneous catalysis, where Cu/ZnO-mixtures are used in the industrial synthesis of methanol and in the water gas shift reaction. Electron transfer between small Cu clusters and ZnO is central to this thesis, as are the design and use of models that can describe realistic and very large-scale ZnO surface structures while still retaining the electronic nature of the system. Method and model enhancements as well as tests and validations constitute a large part of this thesis. The thesis demonstrates that the charges of small Cu clusters, adsorbed on the non-polar ZnO(10-10) surface, depend on whether the Cu clusters contain an even or odd number of atoms, and whether water is present (water can induce electron transfer from Cu to ZnO). On the polar Zn-terminated ZnO(0001) surface, Cu becomes negatively charged, which causes it to attract positively charged subsurface defects and to wet the ZnO(0001) surface at elevated temperatures. When a Cu cluster on a ZnO surface becomes positively charged, this happens because it donates an electron to the ZnO conduction band. Hence, it is necessary to use a method which describes the ZnO band gap correctly, and we show that a hybrid density functional, which includes a fraction of Hartree-Fock exchange, fulfills this requirement. When the ZnO conduction band becomes populated by electrons from Cu, band-filling occurs, which affects the adsorption energy. The band-filling correction is presented as a means to extrapolate the calculated adsorption energy under periodic boundary conditions to the zero coverage (isolated adsorbate, infinite supercell) limit. A part of this thesis concerns the parameterization of the computationally very efficient SCC-DFTB method (density functional based tight binding with self-consistent charges), in a multi-scale modeling approach. Our findings suggest that the SCC-DFTB method satisfactorily describes the interaction between ZnO surfaces and water, as well as the stabilities of different surface reconstructions (such as triangularly and hexagonally shaped pits) at the polar ZnO(0001) and ZnO(000-1) surfaces.

Thesis (M.S.)--Auburn University, 2008. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 207-212).

abstract: Process migration is a heavily studied research area and has a number of applications in distributed systems. Process migration means transferring a process running on one machine to another such that it resumes execution from the point at which it was suspended. The conventional approach to implement process migration is to move the entire state information of the process (including hardware context, virtual memory, files etc.) from one machine to another. Copying all the state information is costly. This thesis proposes and demonstrates a new approach of migrating a process between two cores of Intel Single Chip Cloud (SCC), an experimental 48-core processor by Intel, with each core running a separate instance of the operating system. In this method the amount of process state to be transferred from one core's memory to another is reduced by making use of special registers called Lookup tables (LUTs) present on each core of SCC. Thus this new approach is faster than the conventional method. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Computer Science 2013

La rhéologie du béton est un facteur d'influence direct sur la relation entre la pression de pompage et le débit. La rhéologie appliquée au béton est souvent caractérisée par une loi rhéologique à l'état stationnaire (indépendant du temps). Il s'agit d'un domaine assez pointu concernant principalement l'évolution de la contrainte de cisaillement en fonction du taux de cisaillement. Cette évolution du béton traditionnel est souvent caractérisée par le modèle de Bingham alors que pour un béton auto plaçant dont le rapport E/L est faible, l'évolution peut devenir non linéaire et peut suivre le modèle de Bingham modifié ou Herschel-Bulkley pour un fluide rhéo-épaississant. Pour ces modèles, on parle souvent d'un seuil de cisaillement au-delà duquel le béton commence à s'écouler, d'un indice de consistance (et un indice de puissance pour le cas d'une relation non linéaire) qui décrit l'intensité de l'évolution. En conséquence, la relation entre la pression et le débit peut être linéaire ou non linéaire en fonction du type du béton pompé. Comme les paramètres rhéologiques d'un béton participent directement à la prédiction de la pression de pompage, la mesure de ces paramètres fait l'objet un travail très exigeant au niveau de la précision.Comme les paramètres rhéologiques d'un béton ne sont pas des grandeurs physiques directement mesurables, les rhéomètres développés pour le béton frais ne sont capables de délivrer ces paramètres qu'à travers des mesures des autres grandeurs physiques de base comme la vitesse, le couple, la pression. Ensuite, plusieurs méthodes peuvent être appliquées pour reconvertir les grandeurs mesurées. Ces méthodes sont appelées la résolution du problème inverse. La méthode la plus efficace pour résoudre (ou confirmer la résolution du) le problème inverse concerne la calibration du rhéomètre avec des matériaux dont les propriétés rhéologiques sont connues. Plus le nombre de matériau utilisé pour la calibration est grand, plus la précision est meilleure. Cependant, pour les matériaux cimentaire, le nombre de matériau nécessaire pour bien couvrir les plages de valeurs des paramètres rhéologique est de l'ordre de quelques centaines de matériau. Cela demande un travail expérimental énorme et non rentable. Cependant, à la place de réaliser cette calibration expérimentalement, il est tout à fait possible de la réaliser en faisant des simulations numériques. Ces travaux numériques font partie du deuxième chapitre de la thèse.En complément de la rhéologie, la tribologie du béton est aussi un facteur déterminant du pompage. La tribologie permet de caractériser le comportement du béton à l'interface avec la paroi de la tuyauterie. Pour le cas de béton traditionnel dont le seuil de cisaillement est très important, l'écoulement du béton est dominé par l'effet de glissement du bloc de béton sur une couche limite de comportement lubrifiant. La couche limite est uniquement créée quand il y a une contrainte de cisaillement entre le béton et la paroi. Ce phénomène est présumé être la conséquence de la combinaison des trois phénomènes: l'effet géométrique de la paroi, la rupture structurelle interne et la ségrégation dynamique. Tous ces effets entrainent une diminution de la viscosité du matériau pompé sur une distance de quelques millimètres à la paroi. En conséquence, un écoulement non homogène est formé. Une vitesse de glissement à la paroi s'additionne à la vitesse engendrée par le cisaillement.Afin de caractériser le comportement du béton à la paroi, la tribométrie du béton voit le jour. Cela s'effectue avec les tribomètres qui simulent le mouvement relatif entre le béton et la paroi. Grace au mouvement, pour les bétons traditionnels dont le seuil de cisaillement est élevé, uniquement la couche limite est cisaillée mais pas le béton. Les paramètres délivrés sont un seuil d'interface, une constante visqueuse. Ces deux grandeurs permettent d'établir une relation linéaire entre la contrainte de cisaillement à l'interf / The rheological properties of concrete are significantly influencing the relation between pumping pressure and discharge rate. The concrete rheology is often characterized by a rheological law in stationary conditions (time independent), giving the evolution of shear stresses as a function of shear rate. In case of traditional concrete, this evolution is typically described by a Bingham model, while for a self-compacting concrete with low water/powder ratio, the evolution often becomes non-linear and can be described by a modified Bingham or Herschel-Bulkley model, considering shear-thickening. In these models, a critical shear stress is typically considered above which the concrete starts to flow. Furthermore, a consistency parameter is considered (and in case of non-linear behavior also an index) to describe the intensity of the evolution. As a consequence, the relation between pressure and discharge rate can be linear or non-linear, depending on the concrete pumped. As the rheological parameters of the concrete are directly relevant for the prediction of the pumping pressure, the accurate measurement of these parameters is a challenging task.As the rheological properties of concrete cannot be directly measured as a physical quantity, concrete rheometers can only be used to determine the rheological parameters in an indirect way, by measuring other physical values like speed, couple or pressure. Different methods can be applied in order to convert the measured physical values to obtain the rheological properties. The most direct method consist of calibrating the rheometers by testing materials with known rheological parameters. A higher precision in this approach can be obtained by testing a higher number of known materials. However, in order to cover the whole range of rheological properties of concrete, a very high number of known materials would have to be tested, which would thus become very cumbersome. Instead of performing this calibration in an experimental way, it can be done in a numerical way. This kind of numerical calibration is the topic of chapter 2 of the doctoral thesis.Besides the rheology of the concrete, tribology is also an important factor determining the pumping characteristics. Tribology enables to characterize the behavior of concrete in the interface with the surface of the pumping pipe. For traditional concrete with high yield stress, the flow of concrete in the pumping pipe is dominated by the slip layer or lubrication layer near the surface, while the bulk of the concrete is flowing as a plug. This slip layer can only be formed due to shear stresses in this area, and is considered to be the consequence of three phenomenons: geometrical wall effect, structural breakdown, and dynamic segregation. These phenomenons induce a reduction of the viscosity of the concrete within a layer of a few millimeter near the surface of the pumping pipe. As a result, a non-homogeneous flow is induced. Due to the occurrence of the slip layer, an additional speed component is added to the speed profile already induced by shear of the concrete.In order to characterize the concrete behavior near the surface, tribometers are being used, simulating the relative movement between concrete and the surface. In case of traditional concrete, with high yield stress, due to the relative movement only the slip layer is sheared, while the bulk concrete is not sheared. In this case, the use of tribometers results in a yield stress and a viscous constant of the slip layer. These two parameters enable to define a linear relation between shear stress and shear rate in the interface. Meanwhile, in case of self-compacting concrete, the concrete is also sheared, leading to very complicated tribology measurements. For this reason, it is very difficult to characterize the behavior of self-compacting concrete near the interface by means of a tribometer. This situations complicates the prediction of the relation between pumping pressure

The stress corrosion cracking (SCC) of components which are fabricated from austenitic stainless steel has been observed in the primary circuit of pressurised water reactors (PWR). In recent years it has become an increasing concern that cold work can induce susceptibility to SCC in these materials, even when exposed to good-quality flowing coolant. Laboratory studies which were launched in response to this observation have confirmed that SCC susceptibility is enhanced by cold work. The intention of this study is therefore to investigate the link between the effects of cold work on the material and the susceptibility to SCC. The investigation has been conducted on a grade 304 austenitic stainless steel. Characterisation of the microstructure and mechanical properties has been carried out in the annealed condition, and following cold rolling to a reduction in thickness of 20 %. The cold rolled material has then been subjected to SCC tests in simulated PWR primary circuit coolant. Two types of test were utilised: slow strain rate tests (SSRTs) were carried out in order to investigate the initiation of cracks from a smooth surface and constant load tests using pre-cracked specimens were used to investigate the crack propagation behaviour. In both types of test the SCC produced was predominantly intergranular. The SSRTs revealed that the most susceptible grain boundaries separated grains which had dissimilar deformation microstructures (one grain deformed heavily by planar bands, the other more homogenously). It was also observed that initiation could occur on a grain boundary which is adjacent to an annealing twin. In both microstructural configurations the susceptibility is likely to be due to the deformation incompatibility across the failed boundary, possible indicating that shear at the boundary is important for the initiation of cracking. The crack propagation behaviour of the rolled material was particularly anisotropic; regardless of the loading direction (specimens were manufactured to allow loading along the rolling, transverse and normal plate directions) cracking was observed to occur parallel to the rolling-transverse plane. The origin of this behaviour was explored in terms of preferential alignment of the deformation microstructure and the anisotropic mechanical properties of the rolled plate. Limited transgranular cracking was also observed, which occurred along oxidised deformation bands. The results overall indicate that heterogeneous deformation between different regions of the material, and preferential alignment of the deformation microstructure are important with respect to the SCC susceptibility of the rolled material.

Stress corrosion cracking (SCC) of alloy 600 is regarded as one of the most important challenges to nuclear power plant operation worldwide. This study investigates two heats of alloy 600 (forged control rod drive mechanismnozzle and rolled divider plate) in order to obtain a better understanding of the effects of the material parameter on the SCC phenomenon. The experimental approach was designed to determine the effect of the manufacturing process (forged vs. rolled), the cold-work (as-received vs. cold-worked) and the strain path (monotonic vs. complex) on SCC of alloy 600. Specimens with different strain paths have been produced from two materials representative of plant components and tested in high temperature (360°C) high pressure primary water environment. The manufacturing process has been proven to have a great effect on the stress corrosion cracking behaviour of alloy 600. Indeed, the SCC susceptibility assessment has demonstrated that the rolled materialis resistant to SCC even after cold work, whereas the forged material is susceptible in the as-received state. Microstructural characterisations have been undertaken to explain these differences in SCC behaviour. The carbide distribution is the main microstructural parameter influencing SCC but the misorientation, in synergy with the carbide distribution, has been proven to give a better representation of the materials SCC susceptibilities.

Le cancer spinocellulaire (CSC) est le cancer de la peau le plus fréquent chez l’homme. Son étiologie est liée à l'exposition aux rayonnements ultraviolets (UV). Le xeroderma pigmentosum C (XP-C) est une maladie génétique caractérisée par l’absence de la protéine XPC entrainant une déficience dans la réparation des lésions dans l’ADN induites par les UV. La persistance de ces lésions chez ces patients entraine l’apparition précoce de CSC particulièrement agressifs. Les fibroblastes cutanés XP-C présentent un phénotype ressemblant à celui des fibroblastes associés aux cellules cancéreuses, suggérant un rôle promoteur dans le développement précoce des CSC XP-C. Nous avons étudié les effets des fibroblastes XP-C sur l’invasion de cellules de carcinomes. Dans des cultures organotypiques de peau, les fibroblastes XP-C favorisent l'invasion des cellules de CSC. De plus, ex vivo, la cicatrisation des cellules CSC est plus rapide en présence de surnageants de culture de fibroblastes XP-C et est due à un effet mitogénique des fibroblastes XP-C qui augmente la proportion des cellules de CSC dans la phase G2-M du cycle. Les fibroblastes XP-C surexpriment le facteur de croissance HGF qui active le récepteur c-Met et les voies de signalisation p38 et JNK dans les cellules de CSC. Le blocage de HGF entraîne l’inactivation de c-Met, p38 et JNK et bloque l'invasion des cellules CSC. De plus, nous montrons que les fibroblastes XP-C jouent un rôle de cellules « leader » dans l’invasion des CSC. Les fibroblastes XP-C créent un microenvironnement permissif à l'invasion des CSC. Des thérapies ciblant les fibroblastes XP-C pourraient permettre le contrôle de l’invasion des CSC chez les XP. / Squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) is the most frequent metastatic skin cancer. His etiology is linked to exposure to ultraviolet radiation (UVR). Xeroderma pigmentosum C (XP-C) is a genetic disorder characterized by a severe susceptibility to aggressive SCCs following minimal exposure to UVR. XP-C cells are deficient in nucleotide excision repair (NER) of UV-induced DNA lesions. XP-C dermal fibroblasts expresse a phenotype resembling that of stromal fibroblasts associated to cancer cells with accumulation of reactive oxygen species and over expression of matrix metalloproteinase 1 (MMP1). We explored the effects of XP-C fibroblasts on migration and invasion of SCC cells. In organotypic skin cultures, XP-C fibroblasts promote the invasion of SCC cells. Also, scratch healing of SCC cells is enhanced with culture supernatants of XP-C fibroblasts through a mitogenic effect connected to increased ratio of SCC cells in the G2-M phase of the cell cycle. We show that XP-C fibroblasts overexpress the hepatocyte growth factor/scatter factor (HGF/SF) and activate the c-Met receptor and the p38 and JNK pathways in SCC cells. Blockage of HGF inhibits c-Met, p38 and JNK activation and prevented invasiveness of SCC cells within dermal equivalents. Spheroid assays show that XP-C fibroblasts lead SCC invasions. Our data indicate for the first time that XP-C fibroblasts are responsible for the formation of a permissive microenvironment towards SCC cells proliferation and invasion. Therapies targeting XP-C fibroblasts may be considered as a way to control aggressive cancer in XP-C patients.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(エネルギー科学) / 甲第21196号 / エネ博第370号 / 新制||エネ||72(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院エネルギー科学研究科エネルギー変換科学専攻 / (主査)教授 木村 晃彦, 教授 星出 敏彦, 教授 今谷 勝次 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Energy Science / Kyoto University / DFAM

Objective 1 was to investigate effects of heat stress and breed on milk and component yield for Holstein and Jersey cows on the same farm. Objective 2 was to determine the effects of breed on udder health as measured by somatic cell count (SCC) during times of heat stress. Data were collected from DHIA records of 142 Jersey cows and 586 Holstein cows from the University herd at Mississippi State University. During heat stress Jersey milk yield and 4% fat corrected milk (FCM) increased (P<0.01). Holstein milk yield and FCM decreased during heat stress (P<0.01). Heat stress affected somatic cell count (SCC) although effects varied by intensity of heat stress. Breed did not have an affect on SCC. Milk fat and protein percentages declined for both breeds in heat stress conditions. Milk fat but not milk protein of Jersey cows increased as stress increased from mild to severe.