Photoacoustics — A Novel Tool for the Study of Aquatic Photosynthesis

The photoacoustic method allows direct determination of the energy-storage efficiency of photosynthesis by relating the energy stored by it to the total light energy absorbed by the plant material (Canaani et al., 1988; Malkin & Cahen, 1979; Malkin et al., 1990). These authors applied the photoacoustic method to leaves in the gas phase, where brief pulses caused concomitant pulses of oxygen that caused a pressure transient detected by a microphone. This method is based on the conversion of absorbed light to heat. Depending on the efficiency of the photosynthetic system, a variable fraction of the absorbed light energy is stored, thereby affecting the heat evolved and the resulting photoacoustic signal. The higher the photosynthetic efficiency, the greater will be the difference between the stored energy with and without ongoing photosynthesis (Cha & Mauzerall, 1992). These authors collected microalgal cells onto a filter and studied them by an approach similar to that previously used with leaves. In both cases, the oxygen signal is combined with that of thermal expansion resulting from conversion of the fraction of the light energy in the pulse that is not stored by photochemistry

Structure and spatial distribution of Ge nanocrystals subjected to fast neutron irradiation

The influence of fast neutron irradiation on the structure and spatial distribution of Ge nanocrystals (NC) embedded in an amorphous SiO2 matrix has been studied. The investigation was conducted by means of laser Raman Scattering (RS), High Resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy (HR-TEM) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The irradiation of NC-Ge samples by a high dose of fast neutrons lead to a partial destruction of the nanocrystals. Full reconstruction of crystallinity was achieved after annealing the radiation damage at 800 deg. C, which resulted in full restoration of the RS spectrum. HR-TEM images show, however, that the spatial distributions of NC-Ge changed as a result of irradiation and annealing. A sharp decrease in NC distribution towards the SiO2 surface has been observed. This was accompanied by XPS detection of Ge oxides and elemental Ge within both the surface and subsurface region

Quantized State Simulation of Spiking Neural Networks

In this work, we explore the usage of quantized state system (QSS) methods in the simulation of networks of spiking neurons. We compare the simulation results obtained by these discrete-event algorithms with the results of the discrete time methods in use by the neuroscience community. We found that the computational costs of the QSS methods grow almost linearly with the size of the network, while they grows at least quadratically in the discrete time algorithms. We show that this advantage is mainly due to the fact that QSS methods only perform calculations in the components of the system that experience activity. © 2012, Simulation Councils Inc. All rights reserved.Fil: Grinblat, Guillermo Luis. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Rosario. Centro Internacional Franco Argentino de Ciencias de la Información y de Sistemas. Universidad Nacional de Rosario. Centro Internacional Franco Argentino de Ciencias de la Información y de Sistemas; ArgentinaFil: Ahumada, Hernán. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Rosario. Centro Internacional Franco Argentino de Ciencias de la Información y de Sistemas. Universidad Nacional de Rosario. Centro Internacional Franco Argentino de Ciencias de la Información y de Sistemas; ArgentinaFil: Kofman, Ernesto Javier. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Rosario. Centro Internacional Franco Argentino de Ciencias de la Información y de Sistemas. Universidad Nacional de Rosario. Centro Internacional Franco Argentino de Ciencias de la Información y de Sistemas; Argentin