235 research outputs found
Temperature dependence of the ohmic conductivity and activation energy of Pb1+y(Zr0.3Ti0.7)O3 thin films
The ohmic conductivity of the sol-gel derived Pb1+y(Zr0.3Ti0.7)O3 thin films
(with the excess lead y=0.0 to 0.4) are investigated using low frequency small
signal alternate current (AC) and direct current (DC) methods. Its temperature
dependence shows two activation energies of 0.26 and 0.12 eV depending on
temperature range and excess Pb levels. The former is associated with Pb3+
acceptor centers, while the latter could be due to a different defect level yet
to be identified.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, PostScript. Submitted to Applied Physics Letter
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M2 macrophage-derived exosomes promote the c-KIT phenotype of vascular smooth muscle cells during vascular tissue repair after intravascular stent implantation.
Rationale: For intravascular stent implantation to be successful, the processes of vascular tissue repair and therapy are considered to be critical. However, the mechanisms underlying the eventual fate of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) during vascular tissue repair remains elusive. In this study, we hypothesized that M2 macrophage-derived exosomes to mediate cell-to-cell crosstalk and induce dedifferentiation phenotypes in VSMCs. Methods:In vivo, 316L bare metal stents (BMS) were implanted from the left iliac artery into the abdominal aorta of 12-week-old male Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats for 7 and 28 days. Hematoxylin and eosin (HE) were used to stain the neointimal lesions. En-face immunofluorescence staining of smooth muscle 22 alpha (SM22α) and CD68 showed the rat aorta smooth muscle cells (RASMCs) and macrophages. Immunohistochemical staining of total galactose-specific lectin 3 (MAC-2) and total chitinase 3-like 3 (YM-1) showed the total macrophages and M2 macrophages. In vitro, exosomes derived from IL-4+IL-13-treated macrophages (M2Es) were isolated by ultracentrifugation and characterized based on their specific morphology. Ki-67 staining was conducted to assess the effects of the M2Es on the proliferation of RASMCs. An atomic force microscope (AFM) was used to detect the stiffness of the VSMCs. GW4869 was used to inhibit exosome release. RNA-seq was performed to determine the mRNA profiles of the RASMCs and M2Es-treated RASMCs. Quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) analysis was conducted to detect the expression levels of the mRNAs. Western blotting was used to detect the candidate protein expression levels. T-5224 was used to inhibit the DNA binding activity of AP-1 in RASMCs. Results: M2Es promote c-KIT expression and softening of nearby VSMCs, hence accelerating the vascular tissue repair process. VSMCs co-cultured in vitro with M2 macrophages presented an increased capacity for de-differentiation and softening, which was exosome dependent. In addition, the isolated M2Es helped to promote VSMC dedifferentiation and softening. Furthermore, the M2Es enhanced vascular tissue repair potency by upregulation of VSMCs c-KIT expression via activation of the c-Jun/activator protein 1 (AP-1) signaling pathway.Conclusions: The findings of this study emphasize the prominent role of M2Es during VSMC dedifferentiation and vascular tissue repair via activation of the c-Jun/AP-1 signaling pathway, which has a profound impact on the therapeutic strategies of coronary stenting techniques
Joule-assisted silicidation for short-channel silicon nanowire devices
We report on a technique enabling electrical control of the contact
silicidation process in silicon nanowire devices. Undoped silicon nanowires
were contacted by pairs of nickel electrodes and each contact was selectively
silicided by means of the Joule effect. By a realtime monitoring of the
nanowire electrical resistance during the contact silicidation process we were
able to fabricate nickel-silicide/silicon/nickel- silicide devices with
controlled silicon channel length down to 8 nm.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure
Josephson Current in the Presence of a Precessing Spin
The Josephson current in the presence of a precessing spin between various
types of superconductors is studied. It is shown that the Josephson current
flowing between two spin-singlet pairing superconductors is not modulated by
the precession of the spin. When both superconductors have equal-spin-triplet
pairing state, the flowing Josephson current is modulated with twice of the
Larmor frequency by the precessing spin. It was also found that up to the
second tunneling matrix elements, no Josephson current can occur with only a
direct exchange interaction between the localized spin and the conduction
electrons, if the two superconductors have different spin-parity pairing
states.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figur
Quantum cellular automata quantum computing with endohedral fullerenes
We present a scheme to perform universal quantum computation using global
addressing techniques as applied to a physical system of endohedrally doped
fullerenes. The system consists of an ABAB linear array of Group V endohedrally
doped fullerenes. Each molecule spin site consists of a nuclear spin coupled
via a Hyperfine interaction to an electron spin. The electron spin of each
molecule is in a quartet ground state . Neighboring molecular electron
spins are coupled via a magnetic dipole interaction. We find that an
all-electron construction of a quantum cellular automata is frustrated due to
the degeneracy of the electronic transitions. However, we can construct a
quantum celluar automata quantum computing architecture using these molecules
by encoding the quantum information on the nuclear spins while using the
electron spins as a local bus. We deduce the NMR and ESR pulses required to
execute the basic cellular automata operation and obtain a rough figure of
merit for the the number of gate operations per decoherence time. We find that
this figure of merit compares well with other physical quantum computer
proposals. We argue that the proposed architecture meets well the first four
DiVincenzo criteria and we outline various routes towards meeting the fifth
criteria: qubit readout.Comment: 16 pages, Latex, 5 figures, See http://planck.thphys.may.ie/QIPDDF/
submitted to Phys. Rev.
Investigating the potential for students to contribute to climate data rescue: Introducing the Climate Data Rescue Africa project (CliDaR‐Africa)
The majority of available climate data in global digital archives consist of data only from the 1940s or 1950s onwards, and many of these series have gaps and/or are available for only a subset of the variables which were actually observed. However, there exist billions of historical weather observations from the 1700s, 1800s, and early 1900s that are still in hard- copy form and are at risk of being lost forever due to deterioration. An assessment of changes in climate extremes in several IPCC regions was not possible in IPCC AR6 WGI owing, in many cases, to the lack of available data. One such region is Africa, where the climate impact research and the ability to predict climate change impacts are hindered by the paucity of access to consistent good- quality historical observational data. The aim of this innovative project was to use classroom- based participatory learning to help transcribe some of the many meteorological observations from Africa that are thus far unavailable to researchers. This project transcribed quickly and ef-fectively station series by enrolling the help of second- year undergraduate stu-dents at Maynooth University in Ireland. The newly digitized African data will increase the temporal and spatial coverage of data in this important data- sparse
region. Students gained new skills while helping the global scientific community unearth new insight into past African climate. The project managed to transcribe 79 months of data at Andapa in Madagascar and 56 months of data for Macenta in Guinea. The digitized data will be openly and freely shared with the scientific and wider community via the Pangaea data repository, the C3S Climate Data Store, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) data centre in the US. The pro-ject model has the potential for a broader roll- out to other educational contexts and there is no shortage of data to be rescued. This paper provides details of the project, and all supporting information such as project guidelines and templates to enable other organizations to instigate similar programs
HATS-31B THROUGH HATS-35B: FIVE TRANSITING HOT JUPITERS DISCOVERED by the HATSOUTH SURVEY
We report the discovery of five new transiting hot-Jupiter planets discovered by the HATSouth survey, HATS-31b through HATS-35b. These planets orbit moderately bright stars with V magnitudes within the range of – mag while the planets span a range of masses of – and have somewhat inflated radii between and . These planets can be classified as typical hot Jupiters, with HATS-31b and HATS-35b being moderately inflated gas giant planets with radii of and , respectively, that can be used to constrain inflation mechanisms. All five systems present a higher Bayesian evidence for a fixed-circular-orbit model than for an eccentric orbit. The orbital periods range from day for HATS-35b) to day for HATS-31b. Additionally, HATS-35b orbits a relatively young F star with an age of Gyr. We discuss the analysis to derive the properties of these systems and compare them in the context of the sample of well-characterized transiting hot Jupiters known to date
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