3,619 research outputs found
Formation of lipid bilayer membrane in a poly(dimethylsiloxane) microchip integrated with a stacked polycarbonate membrane support and an on-site nanoinjector
This paper describes a new and facile approach for the formation of pore-spanning bilayer lipid membranes (BLMs) within a poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) microfluidic device. Commercially, readily available polycarbonate (PC) membranes are employed for the support of BLMs. PC sheets with 5 mu m, 2 mu m, and 0.4 mu m pore diameters, respectively, are thermally bonded into a multilayer-stack, reducing the pore density of 0.4 mu m-pore PC by a factor of 200. The BLMs on this support are considerably stable (a mean lifetime: 17 h). This multilayer-stack PC (MSPC) membrane is integrated into the PDMS chip by an epoxy bonding method developed to secure durable bonding under the use of organic solvents. The microchip has a special channel for guiding a micropipette in the proximity of the MSPC support. With this on-site injection technique, tens to hundreds of nanoliters of solutions can be directly dispensed to the support. Incorporating gramicidin ion channels into BLMs on the MSPC support has confirmed the formation of single BLMs, which is based on the observation from current signals of 20 pS conductance that is typical to single channel opening. Based on the bilayer capacitance (1.4 pF), about 15% of through pores across the MSPC membrane are estimated to be covered with BLMs. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.open110sciescopu
Testing AutoTrace: A Machine-learning Approach to Automated Tongue Contour Data Extraction
The Programme and Abstract booklet can be viewed at: http://www.qmu.ac.uk/casl/conf/ultrafest_2013/docs/Ultrafest%20abstract%20booklet.pdfOral Presentationpublished_or_final_versio
KACC: An identification and characterization for microbial resources in Korea
Korean Agricultural Culture Collection (KACC) is an authorized organizer and the official depository for microbial resources in Korea. The KACC has developed a web-based database system to provide integrated information about microbial resources. It includes not only simple text information onindividual microbe but also morphological images and DNA sequence data for the strain. The KACC now provides the characterization information which maintains 7,433 cultures of microorganisms including 2,687 strains of bacteria, 3535 fungi, 476 actinomycetes, 64 yeasts, and 671 others (mushrooms, gene clones, etc)
Electroweak corrections to W-boson pair production at the LHC
Vector-boson pair production ranks among the most important Standard-Model
benchmark processes at the LHC, not only in view of on-going Higgs analyses.
These processes may also help to gain a deeper understanding of the electroweak
interaction in general, and to test the validity of the Standard Model at
highest energies. In this work, the first calculation of the full one-loop
electroweak corrections to on-shell W-boson pair production at hadron colliders
is presented. We discuss the impact of the corrections on the total cross
section as well as on relevant differential distributions. We observe that
corrections due to photon-induced channels can be amazingly large at energies
accessible at the LHC, while radiation of additional massive vector bosons does
not influence the results significantly.Comment: 29 pages, 15 figures, 4 tables; some references and comments on
\gamma\gamma -> WW added; matches version published in JHE
Towards an Accurate Identification of Pyloric Neuron Activity with VSDi
Voltage-sensitive dye imaging (VSDi) which enables simultaneous optical recording of many neurons in the pyloric circuit of the stomatogastric ganglion is an important technique to supplement electrophysiological recordings. However, utilising the technique to identify pyloric neurons directly is a computationally exacting task that requires the development of sophisticated signal processing procedures to analyse the tri-phasic pyloric patterns generated by these neurons. This paper presents our work towards commissioning such procedures. The results achieved to date are most encouraging
Genetic and biochemical analyses of chromosome and plasmid gene homologues encoding ICL and ArCP domains in Vibrioanguillarum strain 775
Anguibactin, the siderophore produced by Vibrio anguillarum 775 is synthesized from 2,3-dihydroxybenzoic acid (DHBA), cysteine and hydroxyhistamine via a nonribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS) mechanism. Most of the genes encoding anguibactin biosynthetic proteins are harbored by the pJM1 plasmid. In this work we report the identification of a homologue of the plasmid-encoded angB on the chromosome of strain 775. The product of both genes harbor an isochorismate lyase (ICL) domain that converts isochorismic acid to 2,3-dihydro-2,3-dihydroxybenzoic acid, one of the steps of DHBA synthesis. We show in this work that both ICL domains are functional in the production of DHBA in V. anguillarum as well as in E. coli. Substitution by alanine of the aspartic acid residue in the active site of both ICL domains completely abolishes their isochorismate lyase activity in vivo. The two proteins also carry an aryl carrier protein (ArCP) domain. In contrast with the ICL domains only the plasmid encoded ArCP can participate in anguibactin production as determined by complementation analyses and site-directed mutagenesis in the active site of the plasmid encoded protein, S248A. The site-directed mutants, D37A in the ICL domain and S248A in the ArCP domain of the plasmid encoded AngB were also tested in vitro and clearly show the importance of each residue for the domain function and that each domain operates independently.
Implementation of electroweak corrections in the POWHEG BOX: single W production
We present a fully consistent implementation of electroweak and strong
radiative corrections to single W hadroproduction in the POWHEG BOX framework,
treating soft and collinear photon emissions on the same ground as coloured
parton emissions. This framework can be easily extended to more complex
electroweak processes. We describe how next-to-leading order (NLO) electroweak
corrections are combined with the NLO QCD calculation, and show how they are
interfaced to QCD and QED shower Monte Carlo. The resulting tool fills a gap in
the literature and allows to study comprehensively the interplay of QCD and
electroweak effects to W production using a single computational framework.
Numerical comparisons with the predictions of the electroweak generator HORACE,
as well as with existing results on the combination of electroweak and QCD
corrections to W production, are shown for the LHC energies, to validate the
reliability and accuracy of the approachComment: 31 pages, 7 figures. Minor corrections, references added and updated.
Final version to appear in JHE
NLO QCD corrections to off-shell top-antitop production with leptonic decays at hadron colliders
We present details of a calculation of the cross section for hadronic
top-antitop production in next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD, including the decays
of the top and antitop into bottom quarks and leptons. This calculation is
based on matrix elements for \nu e e+ \mu- \bar{\nu}_{\mu}b\bar{b} production
and includes all non-resonant diagrams, interferences, and off-shell effects of
the top quarks. Such contributions are formally suppressed by the top-quark
width and turn out to be small in the inclusive cross section. However, they
can be strongly enhanced in exclusive observables that play an important role
in Higgs and new-physics searches. Also non-resonant and off-shell effects due
to the finite W-boson width are investigated in detail, but their impact is
much smaller than naively expected. We also introduce a matching approach to
improve NLO calculations involving intermediate unstable particles. Using a
fixed QCD scale leads to perturbative instabilities in the high-energy tails of
distributions, but an appropriate dynamical scale stabilises NLO predictions.
Numerical results for the total cross section, several distributions, and
asymmetries are presented for Tevatron and the LHC at 7 TeV, 8 TeV, and 14 TeV.Comment: 61 pp. Matches version published in JHEP; one more reference adde
SUSY QCD corrections to electroweak gauge boson production with an associated jet at the LHC
We study the stability of the neutral- and charged-current Drell-Yan process
in association with a jet as a standard candle at the LHC under the inclusion
of O(alpha_s) supersymmetric QCD (SQCD) corrections within the MSSM. We include
the decay of the electroweak gauge boson into dileptons, i.e. we consider the
production of charged lepton--anti-lepton or lepton-neutrino final states with
one hard jet. We find that the SQCD corrections are negligible for the
integrated cross section. Only at high lepton transverse momentum can they
induce effects of the percent level.Comment: 21 pages, 9 figures, 2 table
NLO QCD bottom corrections to Higgs boson production in the MSSM
We present a calculation of the two-loop bottom-sbottom-gluino contributions
to Higgs boson production via gluon fusion in the MSSM. The calculation is
based on an asymptotic expansion in the masses of the supersymmetric particles,
which are assumed to be much heavier than the bottom quark and the Higgs
bosons. We obtain explicit analytic results that allow for a straightforward
identification of the dominant contributions in the NLO bottom corrections. We
emphasize the interplay between the calculations of the masses and the
production cross sections of the Higgs bosons, discussing sensible choices of
renormalization scheme for the parameters in the bottom/sbottom sector.Comment: 25 pages, 4 figures. v2: references and two figures added, version
published in JHE
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