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As the exponential growth of DNA sequence information in databases continues, the task of converting this deposited information into knowledge becomes more dependent on integrative sequence analysis and visualization tools. PANORAMA is an Internet-accessible software package that performs a variety of informatics analyses on a given DNA sequence and returns a visual and interactive representation of the results. Its design is modular, so that further sequence analysis tools can be integrated with minimal effort. The utility of PANORAMA is demonstrated in the analysis of 650 kb of human genomic DNA from chromosome region 3p21.3, a region of potential tumor suppressor genes involved in lung cancer, breast cancer, and other forms of cancer. PANORAMA aided in the discovery of genes and alternate splice forms of known exons, in the demarcation of intron-exon boundaries, and in the identification of promoter regions and polymorphisms, all of which contributed to a better understanding of the region. PANORAMA is available on the World Wide Web at http://atlas.swmed.edu.

The complex permittivity of various ceramics has been measured at elevated temperatures. The permittivity measurements were made using the cavity perturbation technique at a fixed frequency of 10.1 GHz. The temperature of the sample was varied from 800 to 1000 °C by independently heating the samples using a CO2 laser (up to 27 W) directed into the cavity. The samples were mounted in quartz micropipettes and illuminated through the quartz. The sample temperature was measured using an optical pyrometer. This method is valuable for measuring the microwave properties of solids that normally are exposed to microwave radiation at elevated temperatures such as high‐power microwave sources, components, and windows.

An adaptor for holding a micropipette in a spectrofluorimeter includes a base member for holding the micropipette and an optical system for linearly focusing visible or ultraviolet light onto a sample solution held in the micropipette. Specifically, the optical system includes a cylindrical lens which focuses collimated light from a light source into a line along the axis of the micropipette. The optical system also includes a cylindrical quartz lens which recollimates the light that emerges from the micropipette sample holder in a direction which is perpendicular to the direction of the incident light. A spectrometer is provided to receive the recollimated light for measuring the light absorption and light emission characteristics of the sample material held in the micropipette.

The loss flux to an azimuthally segmented limiter in the central cell of the cusp end cell stabilized, axisymmetric mirror machine, RFC-XX, shows that non-axisymmetric illumination by either ICH or ECH can induce azimuthal non-uniformities in the plasma. Measurements of the floating potential in the vicinity of the limiter and by the limiter itself suggest that a large stationary azimuthal electric field is induced which can convectively transport plasma across magnetic field lines. The local radial component of the electric drift velocity is as large as 7 × 104 cms−1. Examinatio n of the plasma end loss versus azimuth and probe measurements deep in the plasma show that the non-uniformities extend into the plasma and are not localized near the outer boundary. The data suggest that the RF fields are driving an anomalous radial loss.