Adsorption/desorption and electrically controlled flipping of ammonia molecules on graphene

In this paper, we evaluate of the adsorption/ desorption of ammonia molecules on a graphene surface by studying the Fermi level shift. Based on a physically plausible model, the adsorption and desorption rates of ammonia molecules on graphene have been extracted from the measured Fermi level shift as a function of exposure time. An electric field-induced flipping behavior of ammonia molecules on graphene is suggested, based on field effect transistor (FET) measurements

Extreme nonlinear electrodynamics in metamaterials with very small linear dielectric permittivity

We consider a sub-wavelength periodic layered medium whose slabs are filled by arbitrary linear metamaterials and standard nonlinear Kerr media and we show that the homogenized medium behaves as a Kerr medium whose parameters can assume values not available in standard materials. Exploiting such a parameter availability, we focus on the situation where the linear relative dielectric permittivity is very small thus allowing the observation of the extreme nonlinear regime where the nonlinear polarization is comparable with or even greater than the linear part of the overall dielectric response. The behavior of the electromagnetic field in the extreme nonlinear regime is very peculiar and characterized by novel features as, for example, the transverse power flow reversing. In order to probe the novel regime, we consider a class of fields (transverse magnetic nonlinear guided waves) admitting full analytical description and we show that these waves are allowed to propagate even in media with $\epsilon0$ since the nonlinear polarization produces a positive overall effective permittivity. The considered nonlinear waves exhibit, in addition to the mentioned features, a number of interesting properties like hyper-focusing induced by the phase difference between the field components.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure

A universal primer for isolation of fragments of a gene encoding phytoene desaturase for use in virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) studies

We have been using Virus-Induced Gene Silencing (VIGS) to test the function of genes that are candidates for involvement in floral senescence. Although VIGS is a powerful tool for assaying the effects of gene silencing in plants, relatively few taxa have been studied using this approach, and most that have are in the Solanaceae. We typically use silencing of phytoene desaturase (PDS) in preliminary tests of the feasibility of using VIGS. Silencing this gene, whose product is involved in carotene biosynthesis, results in a characteristic photobleaching phenotype in the leaves. We have found that efficient silencing requires the use of fragments that are more than 90% homologous to the target gene. To simplify testing the effectiveness of VIGS in a range of species, we designed a set of universal primers to a region of the PDS gene that is highly conserved among species, and that therefore allows an investigator to isolate a fragment of the homologous PDS gene from the species of interest. We report the sequences of these primers and the results of VIGS experiments in horticultural species from the Asteraceae, Leguminosae, Balsaminaceae and Solanaceae

High-Fidelity Archeointensity Results for the Late Neolithic Period From Central China

Archeomagnetism focuses on exploring high-resolution variations of the geomagnetic field over hundreds to thousands of years. In this study, we carried out a comprehensive study of chronology, absolute and relative paleointensity on a late Neolithic site in central China. Ages of the samples are constrained to be ~3,500–3,000 BCE, a period when available paleointensity data are sparse. We present a total of 64 high-fidelity absolute paleointensities, demonstrating the field varied quickly from ~55 to ~90 ZAm2 between ~3,500–3,000 BCE. Our results record a new archeomagnetic jerk around 3,300 BCE, which is probably non-dipolar origin. The new results provide robust constraints on global geomagnetic models. We calculated a revised Chinese archeointensity reference curve for future application. The variations of absolute and relative paleointensity versus depth show good consistency, reinforcing the reliability of our results. This new attempt of combining absolute and relative paleointenstiy provides a useful tool for future archeomagnetic research

Breathing oscillations of a trapped impurity in a Bose gas

Motivated by a recent experiment [J. Catani et al., arXiv:1106.0828v1 preprint, 2011], we study breathing oscillations in the width of a harmonically trapped impurity interacting with a separately trapped Bose gas. We provide an intuitive physical picture of such dynamics at zero temperature, using a time-dependent variational approach. In the Gross-Pitaevskii regime we obtain breathing oscillations whose amplitudes are suppressed by self trapping, due to interactions with the Bose gas. Introducing phonons in the Bose gas leads to the damping of breathing oscillations and non-Markovian dynamics of the width of the impurity, the degree of which can be engineered through controllable parameters. Our results reproduce the main features of the impurity dynamics observed by Catani et al. despite experimental thermal effects, and are supported by simulations of the system in the Gross-Pitaevskii regime. Moreover, we predict novel effects at lower temperatures due to self-trapping and the inhomogeneity of the trapped Bose gas.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure

Relationship between five-dimensional black holes and de Sitter spaces

We study a close relationship between the topological anti-de Sitter (TAdS)-black holes and topological de Sitter (TdS) spaces including the Schwarzschild-de Sitter (SdS) black hole in five-dimensions. We show that all thermal properties of the TdS spaces can be found from those of the TAdS black holes by replacing $k$ by $-k$. Also we find that all thermal information for the cosmological horizon of the SdS black hole is obtained from either the hyperbolic-AdS black hole or the Schwarzschild-TdS space by substituting $m$ with $-m$. For this purpose we calculate thermal quantities of bulk, (Euclidean) conformal field theory (ECFT) and moving domain wall by using the A(dS)/(E)CFT correspondences. Further we compute logarithmic corrections to the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy, Cardy-Verlinde formula and Friedmann equation due to thermal fluctuations. It implies that the cosmological horizon of the TdS spaces is nothing but the event horizon of the TAdS black holes and the dS/ECFT correspondence is valid for the TdS spaces in conjunction with the AdS/CFT correspondence for the TAdS black holes.Comment: 17 page