88,446 research outputs found
Biocompatible chitosan-functionalized upconverting nanocomposites
Simultaneous integration of photon emission and biocompatibility into nanoparticles is an interesting strategy to develop applications of advanced optical materials. In this work, we present the synthesis of biocompatible optical nanocomposites from the combination of near-infrared luminescent lanthanide nanoparticles and water-soluble chitosan. NaYF4:Yb,Er upconverting nanocrystal guests and water-soluble chitosan hosts are prepared and integrated together into biofunctional optical composites. The control of aqueous dissolution, gelation, assembly, and drying of NaYF4:Yb,Er nanocolloids and chitosan liquids allowed us to design novel optical structures of spongelike aerogels and beadlike microspheres. Well-defined shape and near-infrared response lead upconverting nanocrystals to serve as photon converters to couple with plasmonic gold (Au) nanoparticles. Biocompatible chitosan-stabilized Au/NaYF4:Yb,Er nanocomposites are prepared to show their potential use in biomedicine as we find them exhibiting a half-maximal effective concentration (EC50) of 0.58 mg mL–1 for chitosan-stabilized Au/NaYF4:Yb,Er nanorods versus 0.24 mg mL–1 for chitosan-stabilized NaYF4:Yb,Er after 24 h. As a result of their low cytotoxicity and upconverting response, these novel materials hold promise to be interesting for biomedicine, analytical sensing, and other applications
Electroweak Splitting Functions and High Energy Showering
We derive the electroweak (EW) collinear splitting functions for the Standard
Model, including the massive fermions, gauge bosons and the Higgs boson. We
first present the splitting functions in the limit of unbroken SU(2)xU(1) and
discuss their general features in the collinear and soft-collinear regimes. We
then systematically incorporate EW symmetry breaking (EWSB), which leads to the
emergence of additional "ultra-collinear" splitting phenomena and naive
violations of the Goldstone-boson Equivalence Theorem. We suggest a
particularly convenient choice of non-covariant gauge (dubbed "Goldstone
Equivalence Gauge") that disentangles the effects of Goldstone bosons and gauge
fields in the presence of EWSB, and allows trivial book-keeping of leading
power corrections in the VEV. We implement a comprehensive, practical EW
showering scheme based on these splitting functions using a Sudakov evolution
formalism. Novel features in the implementation include a complete accounting
of ultra-collinear effects, matching between shower and decay, kinematic
back-reaction corrections in multi-stage showers, and mixed-state evolution of
neutral bosons (gamma/Z/h) using density-matrices. We employ the EW showering
formalism to study a number of important physical processes at O(1-10 TeV)
energies. They include (a) electroweak partons in the initial state as the
basis for vector-boson-fusion; (b) the emergence of "weak jets" such as those
initiated by transverse gauge bosons, with individual splitting probabilities
as large as O(30%); (c) EW showers initiated by top quarks, including Higgs
bosons in the final state; (d) the occurrence of O(1) interference effects
within EW showers involving the neutral bosons; and (e) EW corrections to new
physics processes, as illustrated by production of a heavy vector boson (W')
and the subsequent showering of its decay products.Comment: 67 pages, 12 figures; v2, published in JHEP, some expanded
discussions and other minor revision
High-Energy emissions from the Pulsar/Be binary system PSR J2032+4127/MT91 213
PSR J2032+4127 is a radio-loud gamma-ray-emitting pulsar; it is orbiting
around a high-mass Be type star with a very long orbital period of 25-50years,
and is approaching periastron, which will occur in late 2017/early 2018. This
system comprises with a young pulsar and a Be type star, which is similar to
the so-called gamma-ray binary PSR~B1259-63/LS2883. It is expected therefore
that PSR J2032+4127 shows an enhancement of high-energy emission caused by the
interaction between the pulsar wind and Be wind/disk around periastron. Ho et
al. recently reported a rapid increase in the X-ray flux from this system. In
this paper, we also confirm a rapid increase in the X-ray flux along the orbit,
while the GeV flux shows no significant change. We discuss the high-energy
emissions from the shock caused by the pulsar wind and stellar wind interaction
and examine the properties of the pulsar wind in this binary system. We argue
that the rate of increase of the X-ray flux observed by Swift indicates (1) a
variation of the momentum ratio of the two-wind interaction region along the
orbit, or (2) an evolution of the magnetization parameter of the pulsar wind
with the radial distance from the pulsar. We also discuss the pulsar wind/Be
disk interaction at the periastron passage, and propose the possibility of
formation of an accretion disk around the pulsar. We model high-energy
emissions through the inverse-Compton scattering process of the
cold-relativistic pulsar wind off soft photons from the accretion disk.Comment: 18 pages, 23 figures, 1 Table, accepted for publication in Ap
Neutron-rich rare isotope production from projectile fission of heavy beams in the energy range of 20 MeV/nucleon
We investigate the possibilities of producing neutron-rich nuclides in
projectile fission of heavy beams in the energy range of 20 MeV/nucleon
expected from low-energy facilities. We report our efforts to theoretically
describe the reaction mechanism of projectile fission following a multinucleon
transfer collision at this energy range. Our calculations are mainly based on a
two-step approach: the dynamical stage of the collision is described with
either the phenomenological Deep-Inelastic Transfer model (DIT), or with the
microscopic Constrained Molecular Dynamics model (CoMD). The
deexcitation/fission of the hot heavy projectile fragments is performed with
the Statistical Mul- tifragmentation Model (SMM). We compared our model
calculations with our previous experimental projectile-fission data of 238U (20
MeV/nucleon)+208Pb and 197Au (20 MeV/nucleon)+197Au and found an overall
reasonable agreement. Our study suggests that projectile fission following
periph- eral heavy-ion collisions at this energy range offers an effective
route to access very neutron-rich rare isotopes toward and beyond the
astrophysical r-process path
Maars to calderas. End-members on a spectrum of explosive volcanic depressions
We discuss maar-diatremes and calderas as end-members on a spectrum of negative volcanic landforms (depressions) produced by explosive eruptions (note—we focus on calderas formed during explosive eruptions, recognizing that some caldera types are not related to such activity). The former are dominated by ejection of material during numerous discrete phreatomagmatic explosions, brecciation, and subsidence of diatreme fill, while the latter are dominated by subsidence over a partly evacuated magma chamber during sustained, magmatic volatile-driven discharge. Many examples share characteristics of both, including landforms that are identified as maars but preserve deposits from non-phreatomagmatic explosive activity, and ambiguous structures that appear to be coalesced maars but that also produced sustained explosive eruptions with likely magma reservoir subsidence. A convergence of research directions on issues related to magma-water interaction and shallow reservoir mechanics is an important avenue toward developing a unified picture of the maar-diatreme-caldera spectrum
Iterative Multiuser Detection and Decoding with Spatially Coupled Interleaving
Spatially coupled (SC) interleaving is proposed to improve the performance of
iterative multiuser detection and decoding (MUDD) for quasi-static fading
multiple-input multiple-output systems. The linear minimum mean-squared error
(LMMSE) demodulator is used to reduce the complexity and to avoid error
propagation. Furthermore, sliding window MUDD is proposed to circumvent an
increase of the decoding latency due to SC interleaving. Theoretical and
numerical analyses show that SC interleaving can improve the performance of the
iterative LMMSE MUDD for regular low-density parity-check codes.Comment: Long version of a paper submitted to IEEE Wireless Commun. Let
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