Toy Story 2 Woody Fixing

[Heather Mitchell]

Formany people, things bygone evoke a sentiment of nostalgia. We are rooted in habit, and for some, things have evolved too rapidly, and without warning. Being an auto body repair technician working on a woody is like helping bring a fragment of the past back to life.

When originally introduced, the woody was a work horse. It was essentially an extension of the horse-drawn carriage and was mainly used to transport people and luggage from train stations to their destinations. But eventually, the unique wooden cachet of the automobile seized the attention of the wealthier community and it became the preferred transport of the rural rich.

Of course, woodies are distinct because of their wood paneling. However, that use of wood made them unique in many other ways too. For example, the process of building a woody was highly labour intensive. Each car required 150 different sizes and shapes of wood that would have to be hand assembled. The wood would then have to be varnished and sanded multiple times. At one point, Ford even owned 400,000 acres of forest in Michigan so that it would have its own supply of wood.

In their heyday, woodies were status vehicles. They were extremely expensive to produce and expensive to buy. And despite their high price tag, it was difficult for automakers to actually make a profit off of them. That fact, combined with changing tastes and evolving safety regulations, mean that today the woody is a rarity. Thankfully, as an auto body repair technician you can do your part to help keep this piece of history alive!

After your auto body technician training, the opportunity to work on a woody is like having the opportunity to ride a flying unicorn over a full moon. It represents a professional, and sometimes even personal challenge. It is a test of aptitude.

Popular PostsCambridgeIn Automotive School? What to Know About the Exciting Honda CR-V Hybrid RacerATC NewsTop Cars by Decade: The 1910sATC News3 AI Applications to Watch During Your Hybrid and Electric Vehicle Mechanic Career

The aims of this research are to identify and describe a periphyton community of thermophilic microalgae in order to expand our knowledge on biodiversity of a particular environment. Conspicuous biomass of thermophilic microalgae (48 C) inhabits the cooling towers of the thermoelectric power plant of Villa de Reyes (Central Mexico). Aggregate samples or microalgal mats were taken in three different areas of the top of a cooling tower, for identification. According to the sequencing analysis of 16S and 18S rDNA genes, the community is dominated by 3 species of Cyanoprokaryota: Chlorogloeopsis fritschii, Arthronema africanum and Chroococcidiopsis sp., previously reported as thermophiles. Also, 2 species of the Chlorophyte or green algae Scenedesmus. Finally, 12 species of diatoms comprise the microalgal community; diatoms were only microscopically identified within the mats, suggesting that the mats constitute a suitable microenvironment in thermal ambiences. The identified species are of particular interest because their habitat represents an extreme and an artificial biotope. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of thermophilic communities of microalgae in Mexico from a power plant; also, this is the first report of A. africanum for the country.

Esta investigacin tiene por objetivo identificar y describir la comunidad periftica de microalgas termfilas, para expandir nuestro conocimiento de la biodiversidad en ambientes particulares, como las microalgas termfilas (48 C) que crecen de manera conspicua en la zona superior de la torre de enfriamiento de la central termoelctrica de Villa de Reyes (centro de Mxico). Se tomaron muestras de agregados o tapetes microalgales en 3 zonas distintas de la parte superior de una torre de enfriamiento, para su identificacin. Una vez realizada la amplificacin, la clonacin y el anlisis de los genes que codifican para las subunidades 16S y 18S del rDNA, se observ el predominio de 3 especies de Cyanoprokaryota: Chlorogloeopsis fritschii, Arthronema africanum y Chroococcidiopsis sp., especies descritas como termfilas en trabajos previos. Adems, se identificaron 2 especies de Chlorophyta (algas verdes) del gnero Scenedesmus y 12 especies de diatomeas; la identificacin de diatomeas se realiz a partir de observaciones por microscopia electrnica de barrido. Caractersticamente, las diatomeas solo se observaron dentro los densos tapetes algales que se conforman, sugiriendo que estos tapetes constituyen un microambiente conveniente en ambientes trmicos. Las especies identificadas son de particular inters, ya que su hbitat representa un biotopo extremo y artificial. Por lo que sabemos, este trabajo constituye el primer registro de microalgas termfilas que habitan en torres de enfriamiento y Arthronema africanum se documenta por primera vez para Mxico.

The importance of expanding our knowledge on biodiversity and identifying and characterizing microorganisms, from extreme environments, responds to the social, scientific and technological requirements worldwide (Connolly et al., 2011). This knowledge could serve to develop new and sustainable technologies to obtain food, nutritional supplements, medicines, biofuels, fibers, biopolymers, colorants or other biomaterial, and for bioremediation and biorestoration tasks.

Temperature is one of the main factors determining the distribution and abundance of species due to its effects on enzymatic activities (Aguilera, Souza-Egipsy, & Amils, 2012). Therefore, thermophilic algae have thermal tolerant molecules that constitute their cells, while their metabolism is based on thermostable enzymes (Singleton & Amelunxen, 1973). A good example of a biotechnological use of thermophilic algae is the bioethanol production (Li, Du, & Liu, 2008) and the obtaining of poly-β-hydroxybutyrate from Synechococcus spp., a compound used to degrade plastics (Nishioka et al., 2002), among other biorefinery products. Another interesting suggestion comes from Ramachandra, Mahapatra, and Gordon (2009): where thermophilic diatoms that harbor symbiotic nitrogen-fixing Cyanoprokaryota for use in solar panels subject to solar heating.

The cooling towers are used to remove the heat from water via their partial vaporizationthrough a heat-exchanger, via convective heat transfer with dry and cold air.Because the towers are exposed to solar radiation, their woody structures arecolonized by a vast biomass of thermophilic microalgae. The presence of microalgaeis also explained because the cooling systems are supplied with wastewater from thecity of San Luis Potos. The thermoelectric power plant aims to design a coolingpond for heat rejection as an algae bioreactor pond with the algae that inhabit thetop of the cooling towers (sensuLeffler, Bradshaw, Groll, & Garimella,2012), because (1) these algae are removed periodically in order toprevent clogging of filter systems of the water recycler; (2) the algae may fixCO2 from flue gases, and (3) they seek to use the biomass generated,as biofuel or biofertilizer. Therefore, the objective of this work was to identifythe thermophilic microalgae colonizing the top of a cooling tower, a thermal andhuman-made ambience. We are interested in these conspicuous microorganisms and areremoved periodically from the cooling towers, as they may be used in an algaebioreactor pond.

Figure 1 The cooling tower in the thermoelectric power plant of Villa de Reyes, San Luis Potos, Central Mexico (a). The samples of biofilms composed by microalgae were taken at the top of the tower (b). Floor of the cancels in the top of the tower with microalgal mats, showing the turbulence of the water (c).

The harvested samples were vacuum dried, frozen in liquid nitrogen, and ground to a fine powder using a mortar and pestle under liquid nitrogen. Total DNA extraction from microalgae was performed using harsh lyses method described by Gabor, de Fries, and Janssen (2003) and Casas-Flores, Gmez-Rodrguez, and Garca-Meza (2015) with minor modification. Samples were centrifuged at 3,000 rpm during 15 min, in order to concentrate the biomass. 150 μL of mat sample was suspended in 750 μL of lysis buffer (100 mM Tris pH 8.0, 100 mM EDTA pH 8.0, 1.5 M NaCl, 1% CTAB) containing 2.5 mg/mL of lysozyme, 1 mg/mL of proteinase K and 0.7 g of 0.1-mm-diameter zirconium beads; afterward, the suspension was incubated at 37 C for 8 min. Samples were mixed in a mini-bead beater at top speed for 8 min in the presence of 200 μL SDS at 20% (w/v), incubated at 65 C for 2 h mixing every 30 min. The obtained unique sample was centrifuged for 10 min, and the buttons were washed with 500 μL of lysis buffer, mixed, incubated at 65 C for 10 min and centrifuged; afterward, 24:1 chloroform: isoamyl alcohol was added, and the mixture was centrifuged for 10 min. Nucleic acids were precipitated from aqueous phase with 0.6 volume of isopropanol and incubated at 4 C overnight. The DNA pellet was then washed with 70% ethanol and suspended in TE buffer 1 (pH 8).

The phylogenetic relationships were determined by comparing their 16S or 18S rDNA sequences against those of NCBI ( ) database, using the BLAST program. The 16S rDNA sequences obtained from NCBI were aligned with those obtained in this work using the MEGA5 software (version 5.1) (Tamura, Stecher, Peterson, Filipsk, & Kumar, 2013) by the neighbor-joining method. Thus, the evolutionary history was inferred by using the maximum likelihood method based on the Saitou-Nei model (Saitou & Nei, 1987). The tree with the highest log likelihood (0.92306470) is shown. The tree is drawn to scale, with branch lengths in the same units as those of the evolutionary distances used to infer the phylogenetic tree. The evolutionary distances were computed using the Maximum Composite Likelihood method (Tamura, Nei, & Kumar, 2004) and are in the units of the number of base substitutions per site. The analysis involved 26 nucleotide sequences. Codon positions included were 1st + 2nd + 3rd + Noncoding. All positions containing gaps and missing data were eliminated. There were a total of 786 positions in the final dataset. Evolutionary analyses were conducted in MEGA6 (Tamura et al., 2013).

3a8082e126