Ultrafast electron probes are powerful tools, complementary to x-ray free-electron lasers, used to study structural dynamics in material, chemical, and biological sciences. High brightness, relativistic electron beams with femtosecond pulse duration can resolve details of the dynamic processes on atomic time and length scales. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory recently launched the Ultrafast Electron Diffraction (UED) and microscopy Initiative aiming at developing the next generation ultrafast electron scattering instruments. As the first stage of the Initiative, a mega-electron-volt (MeV) UED system has been constructed and commissioned to serve ultrafast science experiments and instrumentation development. The system operates at 120-Hz repetition rate with outstanding performance. In this paper, we report on the SLAC MeV UED system and its performance, including the reciprocal space resolution, temporal resolution, and machine stability. C 2015 AIP Publishing LLC. [http://dx

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The aim of the study was to determine which cholinergic muscarinic receptor subtype is responsible for the endothelium-dependent vasodilatation evoked by acetylcholine (ACh) in mouse arteries. Endothelium-dependent relaxations were evaluated using isometric tension measurement of ring from femoral and aortic artery of M1, M2, and M3 knockout (KO) mice. Rings of femoral and aortic artery from M3 KO mice did not exhibit relaxation at the opposite of rings from M1+M2 KO and wild-type (WT) mice, which were relaxed by ACh. The proportion of endothelial cells responsive to ACh, as manifested by an increase in cytosolic free calcium ([Ca]i), was also observed on the intima of aorta wall in vitro by using laser line confocal microscopy. Of the cells from M3 KO mice and M1+M2 KO mice, 4% and 23%, respectively, responded to ACh in comparison with 20 % in WT mice. These results show that in the endothelium from femoral and aortic artery, the larger proportion of cells that express M3 receptor is responsible for the specificity of the M3 receptor subtype for endothelium-dependent relaxation caused by ACh.

A detailed analysis of natural frequencies of laminated composite plates using the meshfree moving Kriging interpolation method is presented. The present formulation is based on the classical plate theory while the moving Kriging interpolation satisfying the delta property is employed to construct the shape functions. Since the advantage of the interpolation functions, the method is more convenient and no special techniques are needed in enforcing the essential boundary conditions. Numerical examples with different shapes of plates are presented and the achieved results are compared with reference solutions available in the literature. Several aspects of the model involving relevant parameters, fiber orientations, lay-up number, length-to-length, stiffness ratios, etc. affected on frequency are analyzed numerically in details. The convergence of the method on the natural frequency is also given. As a consequence, the applicability and the effectiveness of the present method for accurately computing natural frequencies of generally shaped laminates are demonstrated.

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Further application of an efficient novel meshfree technique based on the moving kriging (MK) interpolation for static and dynamic analyses of two-dimensional piezoelectric structures is presented. The MK scheme is used for constructing the shape functions which satisfy the Kronecker delta property. Hence, the burdensome task of enforcing the essential boundary conditions as in the moving least-squares approximation is avoided. The mechanical displacements, electric potential and natural frequencies of structures are investigated in detail through a series of numerical examples that are to demonstrate the applicability and the efficiency of the proposed method. The results obtained are then compared with those of other available reference solutions with very good agreement.

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