Search

Here we describe the design and evaluation of a fluidic device for the automatic processing of microarrays, called microarray processing station or MPS. The microarray processing station once installed on a commercial microarrayer allows automating the washing, and drying steps, which are often performed manually. The substrate where the assay occurs remains on place during the microarray printing, incubation and processing steps, therefore the addressing of nL volumes of the distinct immunoassay reagents such as capture and detection antibodies and samples can be performed on the same coordinate of the substrate with a perfect alignment without requiring any additional mechanical or optical re-alignment methods. This allows the performance of independent immunoassays in a single microarray spot.

Simulations predict that galaxies grow primarily through the accretion of gas that has not gone through an accretion shock near the virial radius and that this cold gas flows towards the central galaxy along dense filaments and streams. There is, however, little observational evidence for the existence of these cold flows. We use a large, cosmological, hydrodynamical simulation that has been post‐processed with radiative transfer to study the contribution of cold flows to the observed z= 3 column density distribution of neutral hydrogen, which our simulation reproduces. We find that nearly all of the H I absorption arises in gas that has remained colder than 105.5 K, at least while it was extragalactic. In addition, the majority of the H I is falling rapidly towards a nearby galaxy, with non‐negligible contributions from outflowing and static gas. Above a column density of Graphic cm−2, most of the absorbers reside inside haloes, but the interstellar medium only dominates for Graphic cm−2. Haloes with total mass below 1010 M⊙ dominate the absorption for Graphic cm−2, but the average halo mass increases sharply for higher column densities. Although very little of the H I in absorbers with Graphic cm−2 resides inside galaxies, systems with Graphic cm−2 are closely related to star formation: most of their H I either will become part of the interstellar medium before z= 2 or has been ejected from a galaxy at z > 3. Cold accretion flows are critical for the success of our simulation in reproducing the observed rate of incidence of damped Lyman‐α and particularly that of Lyman limit systems. We therefore conclude that cold accretion flows exist and have already been detected in the form of high column density H I absorbers.

Fragility curves indicate the probability of structural damage caused by earthquakes as a function of ground motion indices such as peak ground acceleration (PGA), peak ground velocity (PGV), spectral acceleration (Sa), and spectral displacement (Sd). This study examines the fragility curves of a reinforced concrete building subjected to different natural ground motions. For this purpose, a representative high-rise reinforced concrete building located in Istanbul was selected. In order to assess the seismic performance of the existing building, some natural earthquake records with different characteristics were used. The ground motion records were classified according to their PGA to PGV ratios (a/v ratios). Based on a/v ratio, three sets of natural ground motions were considered i.e. low, intermediate, and high. Then, nonlinear time history analyses were carried out to provide the structural response of the existing building. Using a probabilistic seismic demand model obtained by regression analysis on the simulated damage data, the individual fragility curves for slight, moderate, major, and collapse damage states were constructed. Thus, the fragility curves of the existing building were achieved for three different classifications of a/v ratio. As a result, it was observed that the variations in the characteristic of the ground motion had pronounced effect on the developed fragility curves (or probability of vulnerability) of the building.