Three-dimensional tracking of the ciliate Tetrahymena reveals the mechanism of ciliary stroke-driven helical swimming

Helical swimming in free-space is a common behavior among microorganisms, such as ciliates that are covered with thousands hair-like motile cilia, and is thought to be essential for cells to orient directly to an external stimulus. However, a direct quantification of their three-dimensional (3D) helical trajectories has not been reported, in part due to difficulty in tracking 3D swimming behavior of ciliates, especially Tetrahymena with a small, transparent cell body. Here, we conducted 3D tracking of fluorescent microbeads within a cell to directly visualize the helical swimming exhibited by Tetrahymena. Our technique showed that Tetrahymena swims along a right-handed helical path with right-handed rolling of its cell body. Using the Tetrahymena cell permeabilized with detergent treatment, we also observed that influx of Ca2+ into cilia changed the 3D-trajectory patterns of Tetrahymena swimming, indicating that the beating pattern of cilia is the determining factor in its swimming behavior.

Visualization and measurement of turbulent flow inside a Submerged Entry Nozzle and off the ports

This work describes a visualization technique that allows to register and analyze flow inside a Submerged Entry Nozzle (SEN) model. The internal flow has a swirling pattern that produces characteristic flow conditions that can be used in efficiently supplying liquid steel from the tundish to the mold in the continuous casting process. The visualization method is a first step in analyzing the characteristics of the internal flow and hence in designing new SENs. A LED light source is employed to illuminate the SEN which reduces the reflections in the images. To enhance visualizations and measurements, a transparent cell consisting of a cubic volume with reduced dimensions was used to capture images from the high-speed camera and to record the flow pattern within the SEN. The SEN model consists of a vertical, constant diameter tube with two rounded exit ports located at the bottom with a downward angle of 15° each. The working fluid is water and reaches Re=10,000 within the cell. We also use the laser illuminated Particle Imaging Velocimetry (PIV) to calculate the velocity of fluid within the SEN and close to the exit ports. We confirm previously reported formation of three vortexes that interact with each other altering the swirl motion of the exit flow. Experimental results were compared with numerical simulations. The comparisons contribute to the validation of findings of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Smoothed-Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) results. Qualitative and quantitative similarities were found. Both physical and numerical results display a high turbulent flow behavior at the lower zone of the SEN. Experimental and numerical methods may be used together as a development method to measure and evaluate the characteristics of the flow behavior inside and outside the SEN model in order to design a better SEN to increase the quality of the steel slab.

Aquimonospora tratensis gen. et sp. nov. (Diaporthomycetidae, Sordariomycetes), a new lineage from a freshwater habitat in Thailand

An interesting hyphomycetous taxon was collected on submerged wood in a freshwater stream in Trat Province, Thailand. It is morphologically similar to endophragmiella-like taxa, characterized by macronematous, mononematous conidiophores, monoblastic, enteroblastic conidiogenous cells and clavate to obovoid, septate brown conidia. The unique feature of this taxon is that the mature conidium often bears a young new conidial primordium which develops percurrently from a lower semi-transparent cell and they secede simultaneously. Phylogenetic analyses of a combined LSU, SSU and RPB2 sequence data support the placement of this fungus together with Platytrachelon and close to the family Papulosaceae within Diaporthomycetidae, Sordariomycetes. A new genus is introduced to accommodate the new taxon as Aquimonospora. The novel species Aquimonospora tratensis is described and illustrated and is compared with other morphologically similar taxa.

Absolute accuracy and sensitivity analysis of OP-FTIR retrievals of CO₂, CH₄ and CO over concentrations representative of "clean air" and "polluted plumes"

When compared to established point-sampling methods, Open-Path Fourier Transform Infrared (OP-FTIR) spectroscopy can provide path-integrated concentrations of multiple gases simultaneously, in situ and near-continuously. The trace gas pathlength amounts can be retrieved from the measured IR spectra using a forward model coupled to a non-linear least squares fitting procedure, without requiring "background" spectral measurements unaffected by the gases of interest. However, few studies have investigated the accuracy of such retrievals for CO2, CH4 and CO, particularly across broad concentration ranges covering those characteristic of ambient to highly polluted air (e.g. from biomass burning or industrial plumes). Here we perform such an assessment using data collected by a field-portable FTIR spectrometer. The FTIR was positioned to view a fixed IR source placed at the other end of an IR-transparent cell filled with the gases of interest, whose target concentrations were varied by more than two orders of magnitude. Retrievals made using the model are complicated by absorption line pressure broadening, the effects of temperature on absorption band shape, and by convolution of the gas absorption lines and the instrument line shape (ILS). Despite this, with careful model parameterisation (i.e. the optimum wavenumber range, ILS, and assumed gas temperature and pressure for the retrieval), concentrations for all target gases were able to be retrieved to within 5%. Sensitivity to the aforementioned model inputs was also investigated. CO retrievals were shown to be most sensitive to the ILS (a function of the assumed instrument field-of-view), which is due to the narrow nature of CO absorption lines and their consequent sensitivity to convolution with the ILS. Conversely, CO2 retrievals were most sensitive to assumed atmospheric parameters, particularly gas temperature. Our findings provide confidence that FTIR-derived trace gas retrievals of CO2, CH4 and CO based on modeling can yield results with high accuracies, even over very large (many order of magnitude) concentration ranges that can prove difficult to retrieve via standard classical least squares (CLS) techniques. With the methods employed here, we suggest that errors in the retrieved trace gas concentrations should remain well below 10%, even with the uncertainties in atmospheric pressure and temperature that might arise when studying plumes in more difficult field situations (e.g. at uncertain altitudes or temperatures).