950 research outputs found
Rocket Ships, Emotions, and Disgusting Wealth: The Emotional Significance of the Billionaire Space Race
Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College
Dual regimes of ion migration in high repetition rate femtosecond laser inscribed waveguides
Ion migration in high repetition rate femtosecond laser inscribed waveguides
is currently being reported in different optical glasses. For the first time we
discuss and experimentally demonstrate the presence of two regimes of ion
migration found in laser written waveguides. Regime-I, corresponds to the
initial waveguide formation mainly via light element migration (in our case
atomic weight < 31u), whereas regime-II majorly corresponds to the movement of
heavy elements. This behavior brings attention to a problem which has never
been analyzed before and that affects laser written active waveguides in which
active ions migrate changing their local spectroscopic properties. The
migration of active ions may in fact detune the pre-designed optimal values of
active photonic devices. This paper experimentally evidences this problem and
provides solutions to avert it.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure
Nitrate reductase 15N discrimination in Arabidopsis thaliana, Zea mays, Aspergillus niger, Pichea angusta, and Escherichia coli
Stable 15N isotopes have been used to examine movement of nitrogen (N) through various pools of the global N cycle. A central reaction in the cycle involves nitrate (NO3–) reduction to nitrite (NO2–) catalyzed via nitrate reductase (NR). Discrimination against 15N by NR is a major determinant of isotopic differences among N pools. Here, we measured in vitro 15N discrimination by several NRs purified from plants, fungi, and a bacterium to determine the intrinsic 15N discrimination by the enzyme and to evaluate the validity of measurements made using 15N-enriched NO3–. Observed NR isotope discrimination ranged from 22‰ to 32‰ (kinetic isotope effects of 1.022 to 1.032) among the different isozymes at natural abundance 15N (0.37%). As the fractional 15N content of substrate NO3– increased from natural abundance, the product 15N fraction deviated significantly from that expected based on substrate enrichment and 15N discrimination measured at natural abundance. Additionally, isotopic discrimination by denitrifying bacteria used to reduce NO3– and NO2– in some protocols became a greater source of error as 15N enrichment increased. We briefly discuss potential causes of artifactual results with enriched 15N and recommend against the use of highly enriched 15N tracers to study N discrimination in plants or soils
- …