356 research outputs found
Polarization control of metal-enhanced fluorescence in hybrid assemblies of photosynthetic complexes and gold nanorods
Fluorescence imaging of hybrid nanostructures composed of a bacterial light-harvesting complex LH2 and Au nanorods with controlled coupling strength is employed to study the spectral dependence of the plasmon-induced fluorescence enhancement. Perfect matching of the plasmon resonances in the nanorods with the absorption bands of the LH2 complexes facilitates a direct comparison of the enhancement factors for longitudinal and transverse plasmon frequencies of the nanorods. We find that the fluorescence enhancement due to excitation of longitudinal resonance can be up to five-fold stronger than for the transverse one. We attribute this result, which is important for designing plasmonic functional systems, to a very different distribution of the enhancement of the electric field due to the excitation of the two characteristic plasmon modes in nanorods
Pro-sociality without empathy
Empathy, the capacity to recognize and share feelings experienced by another individual, is an important trait in humans, but is not the same as pro-sociality, the tendency to behave so as to benefit another individual. Given the importance of understanding empathy's evolutionary emergence, it is unsurprising that many studies attempt to find evidence for it in other species. To address the question of what should constitute evidence for empathy, we offer a critical comparison of two recent studies of rescuing behaviour that report similar phenomena but are interpreted very differently by their authors. In one of the studies, rescue behaviour in rats was interpreted as providing evidence for empathy, whereas in the other, rescue behaviour in ants was interpreted without reference to sharing of emotions. Evidence for empathy requires showing that actor individuals possess a representation of the receiver's emotional state and are driven by the psychological goal of improving its wellbeing. Proving psychological goal-directedness by current standards involves goal-devaluation and causal sensitivity protocols, which, in our view, have not been implemented in available publications. Empathy has profound significance not only for cognitive and behavioural sciences but also for philosophy and ethics and, in our view, remains unproven outside humans.M.V. was funded by a Post-doctoral Fellowship (SFRH/BPD/79311/2011) awarded by the Portuguese Foundationfor Science and Technolog
Nanodust detection near 1 AU from spectral analysis of Cassini/RPWS radio data
Nanodust grains of a few nanometer in size are produced near the Sun by
collisional break-up of larger grains and picked-up by the magnetized solar
wind. They have so far been detected at 1 AU by only the two STEREO spacecraft.
Here we analyze the spectra measured by the radio and plasma wave instrument
onboard Cassini during the cruise phase close to Earth orbit; they exhibit
bursty signatures similar to those observed by the same instrument in
association to nanodust stream impacts on Cassini near Jupiter. The observed
wave level and spectral shape reveal impacts of nanoparticles at about 300
km/s, with an average flux compatible with that observed by the radio and
plasma wave instrument onboard STEREO and with the interplanetary flux models
Ants, Cataglyphis cursor, Use Precisely Directed Rescue Behavior to Free Entrapped Relatives
Although helping behavior is ubiquitous throughout the animal kingdom, actual rescue activity is particularly rare. Nonetheless, here we report the first experimental evidence that ants, Cataglyphis cursor, use precisely directed rescue behavior to free entrapped victims; equally important, they carefully discriminate between individuals in distress, offering aid only to nestmates. Our experiments simulate a natural situation, which we often observed in the field when collecting Catagyphis ants, causing sand to collapse in the process. Using a novel experimental technique that binds victims experimentally, we observed the behavior of separate, randomly chosen groups of 5 C. cursor nestmates under one of six conditions. In five of these conditions, a test stimulus (the âvictimâ) was ensnared with nylon thread and held partially beneath the sand. The test stimulus was either (1) an individual from the same colony; (2) an individual from a different colony of C cursor; (3) an ant from a different ant species; (4) a common prey item; or, (5) a motionless (chilled) nestmate. In the final condition, the test stimulus (6) consisted of the empty snare apparatus. Our results demonstrate that ants are able to recognize what, exactly, holds their relative in place and direct their behavior to that object, the snare, in particular. They begin by excavating sand, which exposes the nylon snare, transporting sand away from it, and then biting at the snare itself. Snare biting, a behavior never before reported in the literature, demonstrates that rescue behavior is far more sophisticated, exact and complexly organized than the simple forms of helping behavior already known, namely limb pulling and sand digging. That is, limb pulling and sand digging could be released directly by a chemical call for help and thus result from a very simple mechanism. However, it's difficult to see how this same releasing mechanism could guide rescuers to the precise location of the nylon thread, and enable them to target their bites to the thread itself
GASPS observations of Herbig Ae/Be stars with PACS/Herschel. The atomic and molecular content of their protoplanetary discs
We observed a sample of 20 representative Herbig Ae/Be stars and five A-type
debris discs with PACS onboard of Herschel. The observations were done in
spectroscopic mode, and cover far-IR lines of [OI], [CII], CO, CH+, H2O and OH.
We have a [OI]63 micron detection rate of 100% for the Herbig Ae/Be and 0% for
the debris discs. [OI]145 micron is only detected in 25%, CO J=18-17 in 45%
(and less for higher J transitions) of the Herbig Ae/Be stars and for [CII] 157
micron, we often found spatially variable background contamination. We show the
first detection of water in a Herbig Ae disc, HD 163296, which has a settled
disc. Hydroxyl is detected as well in this disc. CH+, first seen in HD 100546,
is now detected for the second time in a Herbig Ae star, HD 97048. We report
fluxes for each line and use the observations as line diagnostics of the gas
properties. Furthermore, we look for correlations between the strength of the
emission lines and stellar or disc parameters, such as stellar luminosity, UV
and X-ray flux, accretion rate, PAH band strength, and flaring. We find that
the stellar UV flux is the dominant excitation mechanism of [OI]63 micron, with
the highest line fluxes found in those objects with a large amount of flaring
and greatest PAH strength. Neither the amount of accretion nor the X-ray
luminosity has an influence on the line strength. We find correlations between
the line flux of [OI]63 micron and [OI]145 micron, CO J = 18-17 and [OI]6300
\AA, and between the continuum flux at 63 micron and at 1.3 mm, while we find
weak correlations between the line flux of [OI]63 micron and the PAH
luminosity, the line flux of CO J = 3-2, the continuum flux at 63 micron, the
stellar effective temperature and the Brgamma luminosity. (Abbreviated version)Comment: 20 pages, 29 figures, accepted by Astronomy and Astrophysic
XIM: X-Ray Inspection Module for Automatic High Speed Inspection of Turbine Blades and Automated Flaw Detection and Classification
Under military manufacturing technology funding, a production prototype X-ray Inspection Module (XIM) has been established at General Electric Corporate Research and Development (GE-CRD) and delivered to Quality Technology (QT), General Electric Aircraft Engine Business Group (GE-AEBG). A company funded production unit has been built by GE-AEBG and delivered to the GE-AEBG manufacturing facility in Madisonville, Kentucky where it is in use in production. Computerized tomography (CT) and digital fluoroscopy (DF) images are produced with the system. The CT images provide an image cross-section, and the DF images are much like chest X-rays.The system was designed to automatically inspect and analyze flaws present in turbine blades. It was applied to two flaw types; each type in a different turbine blade. The image processing is performed on complex gray scale images with varying background. The XIM system may be used either automatically or in a manual mode with a trained operator to interpret the images and make quality decisions
A Powerful Method for Transcriptional Profiling of Specific Cell Types in Eukaryotes: Laser-Assisted Microdissection and RNA Sequencing
The acquisition of distinct cell fates is central to the development of multicellular organisms and is largely mediated by gene expression patterns specific to individual cells and tissues. A spatially and temporally resolved analysis of gene expression facilitates the elucidation of transcriptional networks linked to cellular identity and function. We present an approach that allows cell type-specific transcriptional profiling of distinct target cells, which are rare and difficult to access, with unprecedented sensitivity and resolution. We combined laser-assisted microdissection (LAM), linear amplification starting from <1 ng of total RNA, and RNA-sequencing (RNA-Seq). As a model we used the central cell of the Arabidopsis thaliana female gametophyte, one of the female gametes harbored in the reproductive organs of the flower. We estimated the number of expressed genes to be more than twice the number reported previously in a study using LAM and ATH1 microarrays, and identified several classes of genes that were systematically underrepresented in the transcriptome measured with the ATH1 microarray. Among them are many genes that are likely to be important for developmental processes and specific cellular functions. In addition, we identified several intergenic regions, which are likely to be transcribed, and describe a considerable fraction of reads mapping to introns and regions flanking annotated loci, which may represent alternative transcript isoforms. Finally, we performed a de novo assembly of the transcriptome and show that the method is suitable for studying individual cell types of organisms lacking reference sequence information, demonstrating that this approach can be applied to most eukaryotic organisms
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