Xanthomonas campestris pv. campestris race 1 is the main causal agent of black rot of Brassicas in Southern Mozambique

Severe outbreaks of bacterial black rot caused by Xanthomonas campestris pv. campestris (Xcc) were observed in Brassica production fields of Southern Mozambique. The causal agent of the disease in the Mahotas and Chòkwé districts was identified and characterised. In total, 83 Xanthomonas-like strains were isolated from seed samples and leaves of cabbage and tronchuda cole with typical symptoms of the disease. Forty-six out of the 83 strains were found to be putative Xcc in at least one of the tests used: Classical biochemical assays, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) with monoclonal antibodies, Biolog identification system, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with specific primers and pathogenicity tests. The ELISA tests were positive for 43 strains. Biolog identified 43 strains as Xanthomonas, but only 32 as Xcc. PCR tests with primers targeting a fragment of the hrpF gene were positive for all 46 strains tested. Three strains were not pathogenic or weakly pathogenic and all other strains caused typical black rot symptoms in brassicas. Race type differentiation tests revealed the Xcc strains from Mozambique as members of race 1. The prevalence of this pathogenic race of the Xcc pathogen in Mozambique should be considered when black rot resistant cultivars are evaluated or introduced into the production regions of this country

Slow-light enhanced optical detection in liquid-infiltrated photonic crystals

Slow-light enhanced optical detection in liquid-infiltrated photonic crystals is theoretically studied. Using a scattering-matrix approach and the Wigner-Smith delay time concept, we show that optical absorbance benefits both from slow-light phenomena as well as a high filling factor of the energy residing in the liquid. Utilizing strongly dispersive photonic crystal structures, we numerically demonstrate how liquid-infiltrated photonic crystals facilitate enhanced light-matter interactions, by potentially up to an order of magnitude. The proposed concept provides strong opportunities for improving existing miniaturized absorbance cells for optical detection in lab-on-a-chip systems.Comment: Paper accepted for the "Special Issue OWTNM 2007" edited by A. Lavrinenko and P. J. Robert

Observation of Three-dimensional Long-range Order in Smaller Ion Coulomb Crystals in an rf Trap

Three-dimensional long-range ordered structures in smaller and near-spherically symmetric Coulomb crystals of ^{40}Ca^+ ions confined in a linear rf Paul trap have been observed when the number of ions exceeds ~1000 ions. This result is unexpected from ground state molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, but found to be in agreement with MD simulations of metastable ion configurations. Previously, three-dimensional long-range ordered structures have only been reported in Penning traps in systems of ~50,000 ions or more.Comment: 5 pages; 4 figures; to appear in Phys. Rev. Lett.; changed content

Low-loss criterion and effective area considerations for photonic crystal fibers

We study the class of endlessly single-mode all-silica photonic crystal fibers with a triangular air-hole cladding. We consider the sensibility to longitudinal nonuniformities and the consequences and limitations for realizing low-loss large-mode area photonic crystal fibers. We also discuss the dominating scattering mechanism and experimentally we confirm that both macro and micro-bending can be the limiting factor.Comment: Accepted for Journal of Optics A - Pure and Applied Optic

Universality in edge-source diffusion dynamics

We show that in edge-source diffusion dynamics the integrated concentration N(t) has a universal dependence with a characteristic time-scale tau=(A/P)^2 pi/(4D), where D is the diffusion constant while A and P are the cross-sectional area and perimeter of the domain, respectively. For the short-time dynamics we find a universal square-root asymptotic dependence N(t)=N0 sqrt(t/tau) while in the long-time dynamics N(t) saturates exponentially at N0. The exponential saturation is a general feature while the associated coefficients are weakly geometry dependent.Comment: 4 pages including 4 figures. Minor changes. Accepted for PR

Transport coefficients for electrolytes in arbitrarily shaped nano and micro-fluidic channels

We consider laminar flow of incompressible electrolytes in long, straight channels driven by pressure and electro-osmosis. We use a Hilbert space eigenfunction expansion to address the general problem of an arbitrary cross section and obtain general results in linear-response theory for the hydraulic and electrical transport coefficients which satisfy Onsager relations. In the limit of non-overlapping Debye layers the transport coefficients are simply expressed in terms of parameters of the electrolyte as well as the geometrical correction factor for the Hagen-Poiseuille part of the problem. In particular, we consider the limits of thin non-overlapping as well as strongly overlapping Debye layers, respectively, and calculate the corrections to the hydraulic resistance due to electro-hydrodynamic interactions.Comment: 13 pages including 4 figures and 1 table. Typos corrected. Accepted for NJ

Bayesian Error Estimation in Density Functional Theory

We present a practical scheme for performing error estimates for Density Functional Theory calculations. The approach which is based on ideas from Bayesian statistics involves creating an ensemble of exchange-correlation functionals by comparing with an experimental database of binding energies for molecules and solids. Fluctuations within the ensemble can then be used to estimate errors relative to experiment on calculated quantities like binding energies, bond lengths, and vibrational frequencies. It is demonstrated that the error bars on energy differences may vary by orders of magnitude for different systems in good agreement with existing experience.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Liquid-infiltrated photonic crystals - enhanced light-matter interactions for lab-on-a-chip applications

Optical techniques are finding widespread use in analytical chemistry for chemical and bio-chemical analysis. During the past decade, there has been an increasing emphasis on miniaturization of chemical analysis systems and naturally this has stimulated a large effort in integrating microfluidics and optics in lab-on-a-chip microsystems. This development is partly defining the emerging field of optofluidics. Scaling analysis and experiments have demonstrated the advantage of micro-scale devices over their macroscopic counterparts for a number of chemical applications. However, from an optical point of view, miniaturized devices suffer dramatically from the reduced optical path compared to macroscale experiments, e.g. in a cuvette. Obviously, the reduced optical path complicates the application of optical techniques in lab-on-a-chip systems. In this paper we theoretically discuss how a strongly dispersive photonic crystal environment may be used to enhance the light-matter interactions, thus potentially compensating for the reduced optical path in lab-on-a-chip systems. Combining electromagnetic perturbation theory with full-wave electromagnetic simulations we address the prospects for achieving slow-light enhancement of Beer-Lambert-Bouguer absorption, photonic band-gap based refractometry, and high-Q cavity sensing.Comment: Invited paper accepted for the "Optofluidics" special issue to appear in Microfluidics and Nanofluidics (ed. Prof. David Erickson). 11 pages including 8 figure

Cooperative fluorescence from a strongly driven dilute cloud of atoms

We investigate cooperative fluorescence in a dilute cloud of strongly driven two-level emitters. Starting from the Heisenberg equations of motion, we compute the first-order scattering corrections to the saturation of the excited-state population and to the resonance-fluorescence spectrum, which both require going beyond the state-of-the-art linear-optics approach to describe collective phenomena. A dipole blockade is observed due to long range dipole-dipole coupling that vanishes at stronger driving fields. Furthermore, we compute the inelastic component of the light scattered by a cloud of many atoms and find that the Mollow triplet is affected by cooperativity. In a lobe around the forward direction, the inelastic Mollow triplet develops a spectral asymmetry, observable under experimental conditions.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, supplementary material available upon reques