Scattering states of a particle, with position-dependent mass, in a PT{\cal{PT}} symmetric heterojunction

The study of a particle with position-dependent effective mass (pdem), within a double heterojunction is extended into the complex domain --- when the region within the heterojunctions is described by a non Hermitian ${\cal{PT}}$ symmetric potential. After obtaining the exact analytical solutions, the reflection and transmission coefficients are calculated, and plotted as a function of the energy. It is observed that at least two of the characteristic features of non Hermitian ${\cal{PT}}$ symmetric systems --- viz., left / right asymmetry and anomalous behaviour at spectral singularity, are preserved even in the presence of pdem. The possibility of charge conservation is also discussed.Comment: 12 pages, including 6 figures; Journal of Physics A : Math. Theor. (2012

Identification of emulsifier potato peptides by bioinformatics: application to omega-3 delivery emulsions and release from potato industry side streams

We are grateful for the financial support from Innovation Fund Denmark (Grant nr: 7045-00021B, PROVIDE project). We also acknowledge K.M.C. amba (Brande, Denmark) and A.K.V. amba (Langholt, Denmark) for providing the potato samples used in this study.In this work, we developed a novel approach combining bioinformatics, testing of functionality and bottom-up proteomics to obtain peptide emulsifiers from potato side-streams. This is a significant advancement in the process to obtain emulsifier peptides and it is applicable to any type of protein. Our results indicated that structure at the interface is the major determining factor of the emulsifying activity of peptide emulsifiers. Fish oil-in-water emulsions with high physical stability were stabilized with peptides to be predicted to have facial amphiphilicity: (i) peptides with predominantly α-helix conformation at the interface and having 18–29 amino acids, and (ii) peptides with predominantly β-strand conformation at the interface and having 13–15 amino acids. In addition, high physically stable emulsions were obtained with peptides that were predicted to have axial hydrophobic/hydrophilic regions. Peptides containing the sequence FCLKVGV showed high in vitro antioxidant activity and led to emulsions with high oxidative stability. Peptide-level proteomics data and sequence analysis revealed the feasibility to obtain the potent emulsifier peptides found in this study (e.g. γ-1) by trypsin-based hydrolysis of different side streams in the potato industry.Innovation Fund Denmark 7045-00021

Carbonaceous matter in the Sariçiçek meteorite

As of today, the Sariçiçek (SC) meteorite is the newest howardite and the only confirmed fall among the 17 known howardites. In this study, we present isotopic, infrared, and Raman data on three distinct pieces of the SC meteorite. Our oxygen isotopic measurements show that Δ17O values of the pieces are close to each other, and are in good agreement with other howardites, eucrites, and diogenites. The carbon isotopic measurements, which were conducted by combusting terrestrial contamination selectively at temperatures lower than 500–600 °C, show the presence of indigenous carbon in the SC specimens. The matrix of these specimens, investigated via infrared microspectroscopy, appears to be dominated by clinopyroxene/orthopyroxene, forsterite, and fayalite, with minor contributions from ilmenite, plagioclase, and enstatite. Carbon‐rich regions were mapped and studied via Raman imaging microspectroscopy, which reveals that both amorphous and graphitic carbon exist in these samples. Synchrotron‐based infrared microspectroscopy data show the presence of very little aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons. The SC meteorite is suggested to be originating from the Antonia impact crater in the Rheasilvia impact basin on 4 Vesta (Unsalan et al. 2019). If this is in fact the case, then the carbon phases present in the SC samples might provide clues regarding the impactor material (e.g., carbonaceous chondrites)

How to Construct Nationally Representative Firm Level Data from the ORBIS Global Database

Firm-level data on productivity, financial activity and firms' international linkages have become essential for research in the fields of macro, international finance and growth. This paper describes the development of a firm-level global panel dataset for public and private companies based on the administrative micro-dataset ORBIS, provided commercially by Bureau van Dijk Electronic Publishing (BvD). The ORBIS database provides data on firms' financial and productive activities from balance sheets and income statements together with detailed information on firms' domestic and international ownership structure for over 130 million companies across the world. Researchers need to overcome several challenges before making the database usable for research. First, the database is not designed for large downloads that is essential for an econometric analysis. Second, there are several inherent biases in the database that affect the download process and lead to missing information. Third, the raw data may contain a number of irregularities which, if not dealt with, will result in data loss during a standard cleaning procedure. In combination, these issues cause minimal coverage of small firms, extensive missing data, and poor national representation. We give detailed instructions on the data gathering process from ORBIS in terms of downloading methodology and cleaning procedure so that a researcher can construct a database that is nationally representative with minimal missing information. We provide examples from several European countries to present the process and discuss the resulting dataset in detail