On 2 December 2007, Science published a report on creating human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells from human somatic cells: "Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Lines Derived from Human Somatic Cells." This report came from a team of Madison, Wisconsin scientists: Junying Yu, Maxim A. Vodyanik, Kim Smuga-Otto, Jessica Antosiewicz-Bourget, Jennifer L. Frane, Shulan Tian, Jeff Nie, Gudrun A. Jonsdottir, Victor Ruotti, Ron Stewart, Igor I. Slukvin, and James A. Thomson. Earlier that year Shinya Yamanaka at Kyoto University, Japan published a similar paper,"Generation of Germline-Competent Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells," in Nature. Both papers independently identified four genes used to reprogram human somatic cells to pluripotent stem cells, which are cells that have the ability to develop into any specialized cell type making up the body. The reprogrammed somatic cells were referred to as iPS cells and they exhibit fundamental qualities of human embryonic stem (ES) cells.

John D. Gearhart is a renowned American developmental geneticist best known for leading the Johns Hopkins University research team that first identified and isolated human pluripotent stem cells from human primordial germ cells, the precursors of fully differentiated germ cells. Born in Western Pennsylvania, Gearhart lived on the family farm located in the Allegheny Mountains for the first six years of his life. After his coal-miner father died, Gearhart' s mother and younger brother stayed on the farm while he and his older brother were sent to Girard College, an all-male school for orphans located in inner city Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Gearhart remained at the college, where he was a mediocre student, for the next ten years-1950 to 1960-while receiving his first through twelfth-grade education. After completing secondary school, he entered Pennsylvania State University, pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Biological Science with dreams of becoming the world's best pomologist.

James Alexander Thomson, affectionately known as Jamie Thomson, is an American developmental biologist whose pioneering work in isolating and culturing non-human primate and human embryonic stem cells has made him one of the most prominent scientists in stem cell research. While growing up in Oak Park, Illinois, Thomson's rocket-scientist uncle inspired him to pursue science as a career. Born on 20 December 1958, Thomson entered the nearby University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign nineteen years later as a National Merit Scholar majoring in biophysics. He became fascinated with development via the encouragement and influence of Fred Meins, one of his undergraduate professors. After graduating as a Phi Beta Kappa scholar, Thomson took his interest in biology to the University of Pennsylvania where he earned two doctorate degrees: one in veterinary medicine, completed in 1985, and the other in molecular biology, completed in 1988. It was during his graduate years that Thomson began working with embryonic stem cells.

After becoming chief pathologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Wisconsin Regional Primate Center in 1995, James A. Thomson began his pioneering work in deriving embryonic stem cells from isolated embryos. That same year, Thomson published his first paper, "Isolation of a Primate Embryonic Stem Cell Line," in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, detailing the first derivation of primate embryonic stem cells. In the following years, Thomson and his team of scientists - Joseph Itskovitz-Eldor, Sander S. Shapiro, Michelle A. Waknitz, Jennifer J. Swiergiel, Vivienne S. Marshall, and Jeffry M. Jones - advanced their work with embryonic stem cells, eventually isolating and culturing human embryonic stem cells. Their work with human embryos was reported in the 1998 Nature article "Embryonic Stem Cell Lines Derived from Human Blastocysts."

Stem cells are undifferentiated cells that are capable of dividing for long periods of time and can give rise to specialized cells under particular conditions. Embryonic stem cells are a particular type of stem cell derived from embryos. According to US National Institutes of Health (NIH), in humans, the term "embryo" applies to a fertilized egg from the beginning of division up to the end of the eighth week of gestation, when the embryo becomes a fetus. Between fertilization and the eighth week of gestation, the embryo undergoes multiple cell divisions. At the eight-cell stage, roughly the third day of division, all eight cells are considered totipotent, which means the cell has the capability of becoming a fully developed human being. By day four, cells begin to separate and form a spherical layer which eventually becomes the placenta and tissue that support the development of the future fetus. A mass of about thirty cells, called the inner cell mass, forms at one end of the sphere and eventually becomes the body. When the sphere and inner cell mass are fully formed, around day 5, the pre-implantation embryo is referred to as a blastocyst. At this point the cells in the inner cell mass have not yet differentiated, but have the ability to develop into any specialized cell type that makes up the body. This property is known as pluripotency. As of 2009, embryonic stem cells refer to pluripotent cells that are generally derived from the inner cell mass of blastocysts.

In November 1998, two independent reports were published concerning the first isolation of pluripotent human stem cells, one of which was "Derivation of Pluripotent Stem Cells from Cultured Human Primordial Germ Cells." This paper, authored by John D. Gearhart and his research team - Michael J Shamblott, Joyce Axelman, Shunping Wang, Elizabeith M. Bugg, John W. Littlefield, Peter J. Donovan, Paul D. Blumenthal, and George R. Huggins - was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science soon after James A. Thomson and his research team published "Embryonic Stem Cell Lines Derived from Human Blastocysts" in Science. Gearhart 's paper suggested that pluripotent human stem cells, which have the ability to develop into all cell types that make up the body, could be derived from primordial germ cells, which are precursors of fully differentiated germ cells, isolated from embryos. At the time, Gearhart was a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. With a background in genetics, he had devoted the majority of his research to how genes regulate tissue and embryo formation. However, the successful isolation of mice embryonic stem cells encouraged Gearhart to pursue the isolation of similar cells in humans. The principal difference between human embryonic stem (ES) cells, which Thomson 's team derived, and human embryonic germ (EG) cells, which Gearhart 's team derived, is that human embryonic germ cells are derived from early germ cells. Nonetheless, they are thought to share similar properties to human embryonic stem cells.

According to the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the standard American source on stem cell research, three characteristics of stem cells differentiate them from other cell types: (1) they are unspecialized cells that (2) divide for long periods, renewing themselves and (3) can give rise to specialized cells, such as muscle and skin cells, under particular physiological and experimental conditions. When allowed to grow in particular environments, stem cells divide many times. This ability to proliferate can yield millions of stem cells over several months. As long as the stem cells remain unspecialized, meaning they lack tissue-specific structures, they are able to sustain long-term self-renewal.

The dynamics of a fluid flow inside 2D square and 3D cubic cavities

under various configurations were simulated and analyzed using a

spectral code I developed.

This code was validated against known studies in the 3D lid-driven

cavity. It was then used to explore the various dynamical behaviors

close to the onset of instability of the steady-state flow, and explain

in the process the mechanism underlying an intermittent bursting

previously observed. A fairly complete bifurcation picture emerged,

using a combination of computational tools such as selective

frequency damping, edge-state tracking and subspace restriction.

The code was then used to investigate the flow in a 2D square cavity

under stable temperature stratification, an idealized version of a lake

with warmer water at the surface compared to the bottom. The governing

equations are the Navier-Stokes equations under the Boussinesq approximation.

Simulations were done over a wide range of parameters of the problem quantifying

the driving velocity at the top (e.g. wind) and the strength of the stratification.

Particular attention was paid to the mechanisms associated with the onset of

instability of the base steady state, and the complex nontrivial dynamics

occurring beyond onset, where the presence of multiple states leads to a

rich spectrum of states, including homoclinic and heteroclinic chaos.

A third configuration investigates the flow dynamics of a fluid in a rapidly

rotating cube subjected to small amplitude modulations. The responses were

quantified by the global helicity and energy measures, and various peak

responses associated to resonances with intrinsic eigenmodes of the cavity

and/or internal retracing beams were clearly identified for the first time.

A novel approach to compute the eigenmodes is also described, making accessible

a whole catalog of these with various properties and dynamics. When the small

amplitude modulation does not align with the rotation axis (precession) we show

that a new set of eigenmodes are primarily excited as the angular velocity

increases, while triadic resonances may occur once the nonlinear regime kicks in.