Preparation and some properties of cholesterol oxidase from Rhodococcus sp. R14-2

Rhodococcus sp. R14-2, isolated from Chinese Jin-hua ham, produces a novel extracellular cholesterol oxidase (COX). The enzyme was extracted from fermentation broth and purified 53.1-fold based on specific activity. The purified enzyme shows a single polypeptide band on SDS-PAGE with an estimated molecular weight of about 60 kDa, and has a pI of 8.5. The first 10 amino acid residues of the NH2-terminal sequence of the enzyme are A-P-P-V-A-S-C-R-Y-C, which differs from other known COXs. The enzyme is stable over a rather wide pH range of 4.0¿10.0. The optimum pH and temperature of the COX are pH 7.0 and 50°C, respectively. The COX rapidly oxidizes 3ß-hydroxysteroids such as cholesterol and phytosterols, but is inert toward 3¿-hydroxysteroids. Thus, the presence of a 3ß-hydroxyl group appears to be essential for substrate activity. The Michaelis constant (Km) for cholesterol is estimated at 55 ¿M; the COX activity was markedly inhibited by metal ions such as Hg2+ and Fe3+ and inhibitors such as p-chloromercuric benzoate, mercaptoethanol and fenpropimorph. Inhibition caused by p-chloromercuric benzoate, mercuric chloride, or silver nitrate was almost completely prevented by the addition of glutathione. These suggests that -SH groups may be involved in the catalytic activity of the present CO

Scale dependence of fNLf_{NL} in N-flation

Adopting the horizon-crossing approximation, we derive the spectral index of $f_{NL}$ in general N-flation model. Axion N-flation model is taken as a typical model for generating a large $f_{NL}$ which characterizes the size of local form bispectrum. We find that its tilt $n_{f_{NL}}$ is negligibly small when all inflatons have the same potential, but a negative detectable $n_{f_{NL}}$ can be achieved in the axion N-flation with different decay constants for different inflatons. The measurement of $n_{f_{NL}}$ can be used to support or falsify the axion N-flation in the near future.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures; a subsection with detectable scale dependence of f_NL added; more discussions added and version accepted for publication in JCA

The productions of the top-pions and top-Higgs associated with the charm quark at the hadron colliders

In the topcolor-assistant technicolor (TC2) model, the typical physical particles, top-pions and top-Higgs, are predicted and the existence of these particles could be regarded as the robust evidence of the model. These particles are accessible at the Tevatron and LHC, and furthermore the flavor-changing(FC) feature of the TC2 model can provide us a unique chance to probe them. In this paper, we study some interesting FC production processes of top-pions and top-Higgs at the Tevatron and LHC, i.e., $c\Pi_{t}^{-}$ and $c\Pi_{t}^{0}(h_{t}^{0})$ productions. We find that the light charged top-pions are not favorable by the Tevatron experiments and the Tevatron has a little capability to probe neutral top-pion and top-Higgs via these FC production processes. At the LHC, however, the cross section can reach the level of $10\sim 100$ pb for $c\Pi_t^-$ production and $10\sim 100$ fb for $c\Pi_t^0(h_t^0)$ production. So one can expect that enough signals could be produced at the LHC experiments. Furthermore, the SM background should be clean due to the FC feature of the processes and the FC decay modes $\Pi_t^-\to b\bar{c}, \Pi_t^0(h_t^0)\to t\bar{c}$ can provide us the typical signal to detect the top-pions and top-Higgs. Therefore, it is hopeful to find the signal of top-pions and top-Higgs with the running of the LHC via these FC processes.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure

Seasonal Variation of Atmospheric Composition of Water-Soluble Inorganic Species at Rural Background Site in Tanzania, East Africa

Samples of coarse, fine and PM10 aerosols were collected at a rural Morogoro sites, during the 2005 dry season and 2006 wet season campaigns using a “Gent” PM10 stacked filter unit sampler with sequential Nuclepore polycarbonate filters. A total of 80 aerosol samples were analyzed for water-soluble inorganic ions components using Ion Chromatography. The mean concentration for the anions Cl-, NO3 -, and SO4 2- and the cations Na+, NH4 +, K+, Mg2+, Ca2+, showed seasonal variation in all size fractions with higher levels during the 2005 dry season campaign than the 2006 wet season campaign. The mean concentrations and associated standard deviation of fine, coarse and PM10 mass were, 17±4, 52±27 and 69±29 μg/m3 during the 2005 dry season campaign and 13±5, 34±23 and 47±25 μg/m3 for the 2006 wet season campaign, respectively. Ca2+ was the most important cation and the SO4 2- was the main acidifying anionic component in PM10 while NH4 + was the most abundant cation in the fine fraction and Cl- the main anionic species in the coarse fraction. The ion balance ratios were all larger than 1.0; they range from 1.30 to 1.44 for the fine fraction and from 2.01 to 3.14 for the coarse fraction. The carbonates were not measured by Ion Chromatography therefore; these missing carbonates are thought to be largely responsible for the observed deviation from 1.0. The study suggests that primary sources such as soil dust dispersion and biomass burning made a significant contribution to the atmospheric particulate pollution in Morogoro.Keywords: Ion chromatography; Aerosol Characterization; coarse, fine and PM10 fractions; Meteorolog

The Price of Anarchy for Selfish Ring Routing is Two

We analyze the network congestion game with atomic players, asymmetric strategies, and the maximum latency among all players as social cost. This important social cost function is much less understood than the average latency. We show that the price of anarchy is at most two, when the network is a ring and the link latencies are linear. Our bound is tight. This is the first sharp bound for the maximum latency objective.Comment: Full version of WINE 2012 paper, 24 page

Domain Wall Resistance in Perpendicular (Ga,Mn)As: dependence on pinning

We have investigated the domain wall resistance for two types of domain walls in a (Ga,Mn)As Hall bar with perpendicular magnetization. A sizeable positive intrinsic DWR is inferred for domain walls that are pinned at an etching step, which is quite consistent with earlier observations. However, much lower intrinsic domain wall resistance is obtained when domain walls are formed by pinning lines in unetched material. This indicates that the spin transport across a domain wall is strongly influenced by the nature of the pinning.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure

Probing neutral top-pion via a flavor-changing process γγ→tcˉΠt0\gamma\gamma\to t\bar{c}\Pi_{t}^{0}

In the framework of topcolor-assisted-technicolor model(TC2), we study a flavor-changing neutral top-pion production process $\gamma\gamma\to t\bar{c}\Pi_{t}^{0}$. The study shows that there exists a resonance effect which can enhance the cross section up to a few fb even tens fb. For a yearly luminosity 100 $fb^{-1}$ at future linear colliders, there might be hundreds even thousands events to be produced. On the other hand, the background of such flavor-changing process is very clean due to the GIM mechanism in SM . With such sufficient events and clean background, neutral toppion could be detected at future linear colliders with high center of energy and luminosity. Our study provides a possible way to test TC2 model.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures,has been accepted by Phys.Rev.

Study of intercalation and deintercalation of Na_xCoO_2 yH_2O single crystals

Single crystals of NaxCoO2 with beta-phase (x=0.55, 0.60 and 0.65), alpha'-phase (x=0.75) and alpha-phase (x=0.9, 1.0) have been grown by the floating zone technique. The Na-extraction and hydration were carried out for the alpha'-sample to get superconducting phase of NaxCoO2.yH2O (x~0.3, y~1.3). Hydrated single crystals exhibit cracked layers perpendicular to the c-axis due to a large expansion when the water is inserted into the structure. A study of intercalation/deintercalation was performed to determine the stability of the hydrated phase and effects of hydration on the structure of the compound. X-ray diffraction and Thermogravimetric experiments are used to monitor the process of water molecules accommodated in and removed from the crystal lattice. The initial intercalation process takes place with two-water molecules corresponding to y=0.6) inserted in a formula unit, followed by a group of four (y=1.3) to form a cluster of Na(H2O)4. Thermogravimetric analysis suggests that the deintercalation occurs with the removal of the water molecules one by one from the hydrated cluster at elevated temperatures of approximately 50, 100, 200 and 300 C, respectively. Our investigations reveal that the hydration process is dynamic and that water molecule inter- and deintercalation follow different reaction paths in an irreversible way.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures, figures with higher resolution by email request from the corresponding autho

Entanglement capability of self-inverse Hamiltonian evolution

We determine the entanglement capability of self-inverse Hamiltonian evolution, which reduces to the known result for Ising Hamiltonian, and identify optimal input states for yielding the maximal entanglement rate. We introduce the concept of the operator entanglement rate, and find that the maximal operator entanglement rate gives a lower bound on the entanglement capability of a general Hamiltonian.Comment: 4 pages, no figures. Version 3: small change