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Rice is an important crop throughout the world and is the staple food for about half the world's population. For better breeding and improved production, we need to know the function of rice molecules which facilitate their function through interactions with each other. The database of interacting proteins in Oryza sativa (DIPOS) provides comprehensive information of interacting proteins in rice, where the interactions are predicted using two computational methods, i.e., interologs and domain based methods. DIPOS contains 14 614 067 pairwise interactions among 27 746 proteins, covering about 41% of the whole Oryaza sativa proteome. Furthermore, each interaction is assigned a confidence score which further enables biologists to sort out the important proteins. Biological explanations of pathways and interactions are also provided based on the database. Public access to the DIPOS is available at and .

An optical transparent 3-D Integrated Microchannel-Electrode System (3-DIMES) has been developed to understand the particles' movement with electrokinetics in the microchannel. In this system, 40 multilayered electrodes are embedded at the 2 opposite sides along the 5 square cross-sections of the microchannel by using Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems technology in order to achieve the optical transparency at the other 2 opposite sides. The concept of the 3-DIMES is that the particles are driven by electrokinetic forces which are dielectrophoretic force, thermal buoyancy, electrothermal force, and electroosmotic force in a three-dimensional scope by selecting the excitation multilayered electrodes. As a first step to understand the particles' movement driven by electrokinetic forces in high conductive fluid (phosphate buffer saline (PBS)) with the 3-DIMES, the velocities of particles' movement with one pair of the electrodes are measured three dimensionally by Particle Image Velocimetry technique in PBS; meanwhile, low conductive fluid (deionized water) is used as a reference. Then, the particles' movement driven by the electrokinetic forces is discussed theoretically to estimate dominant forces exerting on the particles. Finally, from the theoretical estimation, the particles' movement mainly results from the dominant forces which are thermal buoyancy and electrothermal force, while the velocity vortex formed at the 2 edges of the electrodes is because of the electroosmotic force. The conclusions suggest that the 3-DIMES with PBS as high conductive fluid helps to understand the threedimensional advantageous flow structures for cell manipulation in biomedical applications. V C 2016 AIP Publishing LLC. [http://dx

A lab scale trickle bed reactor (TBR) has been employed to investigate the effect of particles and liquid flow rate on the phase distribution in TBR. The TBR module, made up of 100 mm inner diameter acrylic column, was randomly packed with inert porous alumina particles of different average diameters that are used in actual reactor. Water was fed from the top of the column by "point feed" and "homogenous feed" strategies and cross-sectional liquid distributions were captured at several axial positions from the top to the bottom of the column by employing electrical resistance tomography (ERT) technique. ERT is a non-invasive cross-sectional imaging technique that provides the cross-sectional conductivity distribution by injecting current and measuring voltages between the several electrodes (16 electrodes in our case) that are attached around the column. The cross-sectional conductivity thus obtained represents the liquid hold up and degree of maldistribution of the liquid. In the experiment, quicker and more homogenous distribution of liquid was obtained for the particles with smaller diameters. That is due to capillary force that cancels the randomness of packing. Electrical resistance tomography seems to be reliable non-invasive instrumentation technique to optimize the design and operations of the trickle bed reactors.

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