The Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory (CLARREO) mission will provide a calibration laboratory in orbit for the purpose of accurately measuring and attributing climate change. CLARREO measurements establish new climate change benchmarks with high absolute radiometric accuracy and high statistical confidence across a wide range of essential climate variables. CLARREO's inherently high absolute accuracy will be verified and traceable on orbit to Système Internationale (SI) units. The benchmarks established by CLARREO will be critical for assessing changes in the Earth system and climate model predictive capabilities for decades into the future as society works to meet the challenge of optimizing strategies for mitigating and adapting to climate change. The CLARREO benchmarks are derived from measurements of the Earth's thermal infrared spectrum (5–50 μm), the spectrum of solar radiation reflected by the Earth and its atmosphere (320–2300 nm), and radio occultation refractivity from which accurate temperature profiles are derived. The mission has the ability to provide new spectral fingerprints of climate change, as well as to provide the first orbiting radiometer with accuracy sufficient to serve as the reference transfer standard for other space sensors, in essence serving as a “NIST [National Institute of Standards and Technology] in orbit.” CLARREO will greatly improve the accuracy and relevance of a wide range of space-borne instruments for decadal climate change. Finally, CLARREO has developed new metrics and methods for determining the accuracy requirements of climate observations for a wide range of climate variables and uncertainty sources. These methods should be useful for improving our understanding of observing requirements for most climate change observations

Dangerous organophosphorus (OP) compounds have been used as insecticides in agriculture and in chemical warfare. Because exposure to OP could create a danger for humans in the future, butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) has been developed for prophylaxis to these chemicals. Because it is impractical to obtain sufficient quantities of plasma BChE to treat humans exposed to OP agents, the production of recombinant BChE (rBChE) in milk of transgenic animals was investigated. Transgenic mice and goats were generated with human BChE cDNA under control of the goat ␤-casein promoter. Milk from transgenic animals contained 0.1-5 g/liter of active rBChE. The plasma half-life of PEGylated, goat-derived, purified rBChE in guinea pigs was 7-fold longer than non-PEGylated dimers. The rBChE from transgenic mice was inhibited by nerve agents at a 1:1 molar ratio. Transgenic goats produced active rBChE in milk sufficient for prophylaxis of humans at risk for exposure to OP agents.organophosphorus nerve agent ͉ recombinant protein expression ͉ transgenic production H uman plasma butyrylcholinesterase (huBChE) (EC 3.1.1.8) is a globular, tetrameric serine esterase with a molecular mass of Ϸ340 kDa that is stable in plasma with a half-life of Ϸ12 days (1, 2). Although the physiological function of huBChE is unclear, the enzyme prevents intoxication of animals exposed to organophosphorus (OP) compounds (3, 4). The huBChE enzyme also hydrolyzes many ester-containing drugs, such as cocaine and succinylcholine (5). The toxicity of OP agents is due to irreversible inhibition of acetylcholinesterase and the subsequent continuous stimulation of neurons by acetylcholine (6). Administration of exogenous huBChE, which irreversibly binds OP agents to prevent inactivation of acetylcholinesterase and continuous cholinergic stimulation, is a potential strategy for preventing toxicity from OP agents (4). Although huBChE has been obtained from human plasma by a large scale purification technique, this procedure is severely limited by the volume of human plasma needed (7). It is unlikely that a sufficient amount of enzyme could be purified commercially by this technique. Because of the 1:1 stoichiometry required for protection against exposure to OP agents (8), large quantities of huBChE are needed for effective prophylaxis and treatment of exposure. Compared with other potential enzymatic bioscavengers of OP agents, huBChE has a broad spectrum of activity, a relatively long half-life, and limited, if any, physiological side effects (9). Producing recombinant BChE (rBChE) is an alternative to purification of the enzyme from human plasma. Recombinant huBChE has been expressed in Escherichia coli (10), albeit in a nonfunctional form; mammalian 293T (11); and CHO (12) cells. However, these expression systems cannot economically produce sufficient quantities of rBChE with a residence time similar to native huBChE that would allow development of the enzyme as an agent for prophylaxis against OP poisoning.The production of recombinant proteins by the mammary g...

As a single-element nanomaterial, sulfur nanodots are emerging as a kind of heavy-metal-free nanomaterials which are believed to excel over traditional undesirable compound semiconductor nanocrystals in practical applications. Attaining their potential shall rest on the facile fabrication of high quality samples. Yet, so far the reported fabrication techniques for fluorescent sulfur nanodots have been time-consuming and cost-ineffective. Instead, we employed a strategy of hydrothermal reaction to synthesize sulfur nanodots, which reduces the synthesis time remarkably from generally required 125 h to 4 h. As-synthesized sulfur nanodots (without any post-treatment) manifest good monodispersity and a reasonable photoluminescence quantum yield up to 4.02%. The fission-aggregation mechanism has been proposed to account for the reaction dynamics in the formation of sulfur nanodots. Optical spectroscopic analysis indicates the existence of tail states in the electronic structures of sulfur nanodots, and the photoluminescence properties are governed by both the core and surface states of the sulfur nanodots, which may provide usable hints for manipulating and harnessing the luminescence properties. Besides the insight into both the synthesis and emission mechanism of luminescent sulfur nanodots, our findings pave the way to the bio-related expedite exploitation of these materials.

Carbon dots have attracted tremendous attention because of their intrinsic advantages that open up opportunities to replace traditional fluorescent materials in various application fields. However, until now, the emission mechanism from carbon dots has been controversial, substantially hindering the extensive exploitation of these materials. Here, we explore systematically the essential emission behavior of carbon dots by using polarization anisotropy spectroscopy, electric-field modulation spectroscopy, and time-resolved photoluminescence measurements. We probe the momentum evolution dynamics and evaluate the decay process of the photoexcited hot carriers, which manifest characteristics that are distinct from band edge emission. We provide clear evidence that carbon dot emission originates from radiative recombination of self-trapped excitons, where the mobilization of the carriers is largely impeded due to the existence of a strong local potential field and thus the relaxation of the hot carriers is strongly suppressed. Based on the self-trapped exciton model, all the optical properties of carbon dots inferred from both steady-state and time-resolved optical spectroscopy can be interpreted consistently. Our investigation provides an alternative insight into the emission mechanisms of carbon dots, which may improve our understanding of these novel materials.

Monodispersity and fast generation are innate advantages of microfluidic droplets. Other than the normally adopted simple Newtonian fluids such as a water/oil emulsion system, fluids with complex rheology, namely, non-Newtonian fluids, which are being widely adopted in industries and bioengineering, have gained increasing research interest on the microscale. However, challenges occur in controlling the dynamic behavior due to their complex properties. In this sense, the AC electric field with merits of fast response and easiness in fulfilling "Lab on a chip" has attracted our attention. We design and fabricate flow-focusing microchannels with non-contact types of electrodes for the investigation. We firstly compare the formation of a non-Newtonian droplet with that of a Newtonian one under an AC electric field and discover that viscoelasticity contributes to the discrepancies significantly. Then we explore the effect of AC electric fields on the filament thinning and droplet formation dynamics of one non-Newtonian fluid which has a similar rheological behavior to bio samples, such as DNA or blood samples. We investigate the dynamics of the thinning process of the non-Newtonian filament under the influence of an AC electric field and implement a systematic exploration of the non-Newtonian droplet generation influenced by parameters such as the flow conditions (flow rate Q, capillary number Ca), fluid property (Weissenberg number Wi), applied voltage (U) and frequency (f) of the AC electric field. We present the dependencies of the flow condition and electric field on the non-Newtonian droplet formation dynamics, and conclude with an operating diagram, taking into consideration all the above-mentioned parameters. Results show that the electric field plays a critical role in controlling the thinning process of the filament and the size of the generated droplet. Furthermore, for the first time, we quantitatively measure the flow field of the non-Newtonian droplet formation under the influence of an AC electric field, assisted by a high-speed micro particle imaging velocimetry (μPIV) system. The flow field distributions obtained using the correlation algorithm show that the electric field generated Maxwell stress deforms the interface, changes the flow recirculation pattern, stimulates the instability and hence reduces the size of the non-Newtonian droplet. Finally, we analyze the impact of Maxwell stress by means of the electric capillary number Ca. Our findings reveal the rich physics of non-Newtonian fluids and widen the applications of electric field in non-Newtonian environments, which could be critical for bioengineering.

This paper reports an interesting phenomenon that the velocity increases with increasing sodium chloride (NaCl) concentration in induced charge electroosmosis (ICEO) around a conducting cylinder measured by microparticle image velocimetry (μPIV). It is different from the widely reported velocity decay with increasing electrolyte concentration in AC electroosmosis (ACEO) [M. Z. Bazant et al., MicroTAS, 2007, 2875-2878] and induced charge electrophoresis (ICEP) of Janus particles [S. Gangwal et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., 2008, 100, 058302]. In addition, it is found that a reversed vortex flow emerges in deionized water. As the electric field increases or with a slight addition of NaCl, the ICEO vortex flow recovers. Different from the prediction of thin electric double layer (EDL) models, the observed ICEO flow is asymmetric with respect to the cylinder center. The asymmetry presents an electrolyte dependence, and it is intensified as the applied electric field increases. The ICEO flow obtains maximum values at certain electric field frequencies in NaCl and calcium chloride (CaCl) solutions. But it is surprisingly insensitive to the electric field frequency in sodium dodecyl sulfate (NaDS) solutions. The optimum electric field frequency varies as electrolyte species change. A linear relationship between ICEO velocity and electric field strength squared is observed in all the examined electrolyte solutions, while the slope varies with the changing electrolyte species.

BackgroundHuman butyrylcholinesterase (huBChE) has been shown to be an effective antidote against multiple LD50 of organophosphorus compounds. A prerequisite for such use of huBChE is a prolonged circulatory half-life. This study was undertaken to produce recombinant huBChE fused to human serum albumin (hSA) and characterize the fusion protein.ResultsSecretion level of the fusion protein produced in vitro in BHK cells was ~30 mg/liter. Transgenic mice and goats generated with the fusion constructs expressed in their milk a bioactive protein at concentrations of 0.04–1.1 g/liter. BChE activity gel staining and a size exclusion chromatography (SEC)-HPLC revealed that the fusion protein consisted of predominant dimers and some monomers. The protein was confirmed to have expected molecular mass of ~150 kDa by Western blot. The purified fusion protein produced in vitro was injected intravenously into juvenile pigs for pharmacokinetic study. Analysis of a series of blood samples using the Ellman assay revealed a substantial enhancement of the plasma half-life of the fusion protein (~32 h) when compared with a transgenically produced huBChE preparation containing >70% tetramer (~3 h). In vitro nerve agent binding and inhibition experiments indicated that the fusion protein in the milk of transgenic mice had similar inhibition characteristics compared to human plasma BChE against the nerve agents tested.ConclusionBoth the pharmacokinetic study and the in vitro nerve agent binding and inhibition assay suggested that a fusion protein retaining both properties of huBChE and hSA is produced in vitro and in vivo. The production of the fusion protein in the milk of transgenic goats provided further evidence that sufficient quantities of BChE/hSA can be produced to serve as a cost-effective and reliable source of BChE for prophylaxis and post-exposure treatment.

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