Discrete solitons in coupled active lasing cavities

We examine the existence and stability of discrete spatial solitons in coupled nonlinear lasing cavities (waveguide resonators), addressing the case of active defocusing media, where the gain exceeds damping in the low-amplitude limit. A new family of stable localized structures is found: these are bright and grey cavity solitons representing the connections between homogeneous and inhomogeneous states. Solitons of this type can be controlled by the discrete diffraction and are stable when the bistability of homogenous states is absent.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures, accepted to Optics Letters (October 2012

2D Molybdenum Carbide MXenes for Enhanced Selective Detection of Humidity in Air

2D transition metal carbides and nitrides (MXenes) open up novel opportunities in gas sensing with high sensitivity at room temperature. Herein, 2D Mo2CTx flakes with high aspect ratio are successfully synthesized. The chemiresistive effect in a sub-mu m MXene multilayer for different organic vapors and humidity at 10(1)-10(4) ppm in dry air is studied. Reasonably, the low-noise resistance signal allows the detection of H2O down to 10 ppm. Moreover, humidity suppresses the response of Mo2CTx to organic analytes due to the blocking of adsorption active sites. By measuring the impedance of MXene layers as a function of ac frequency in the 10(-2)-10(6) Hz range, it is shown that operation principle of the sensor is dominated by resistance change rather than capacitance variations. The sensor transfer function allows to conclude that the Mo2CTx chemiresistance is mainly originating from electron transport through interflake potential barriers with heights up to 0.2 eV. Density functional theory calculations, elucidating the Mo2C surface interaction with organic analytes and H2O, explain the experimental data as an energy shift of the density of states under the analyte's adsorption which induces increasing electrical resistance

Water uptake of subpollen aerosol particles: Hygroscopic growth, cloud condensation nuclei activation, and liquid-liquid phase separation

Pollen grains emitted from vegetation can release subpollen particles (SPPs) that contribute to the fine fraction of atmospheric aerosols and may act as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN), ice nuclei (IN), or aeroallergens. Here, we investigate and characterize the hygroscopic growth and CCN activation of birch, pine, and rapeseed SPPs. A high-humidity tandem differential mobility analyzer (HHTDMA) was used to measure particle restructuring and water uptake over a wide range of relative humidity (RH) from 2 % to 99.5 %, and a continuous flow CCN counter was used for size-resolved measurements of CCN activation at supersaturations (S) in the range of 0.2 % to 1.2 %. For both subsaturated and supersaturated conditions, effective hygroscopicity parameters, κ, were obtained by Köhler model calculations. Gravimetric and chemical analyses, electron microscopy, and dynamic light scattering measurements were performed to characterize further properties of SPPs from aqueous pollen extracts such as chemical composition (starch, proteins, DNA, and inorganic ions) and the hydrodynamic size distribution of water-insoluble material. All investigated SPP samples exhibited a sharp increase of water uptake and κ above ∼95 % RH, suggesting a liquid–liquid phase separation (LLPS). The HHTDMA measurements at RH >95 % enable closure between the CCN activation at water vapor supersaturation and hygroscopic growth at subsaturated conditions, which is often not achieved when hygroscopicity tandem differential mobility analyzer (HTDMA) measurements are performed at lower RH where the water uptake and effective hygroscopicity may be limited by the effects of LLPS. Such effects may be important not only for closure between hygroscopic growth and CCN activation but also for the chemical reactivity, allergenic potential, and related health effects of SPPs

The Formation and Development Trends of the Consulting Market in Russia

In the conditions of rapid growth of service industries and, above all, business services, the importance of advisory services (consulting) is steadily enhancing for the domestic economy and the growth of its competitiveness. The article analyzes the basic processes occurring in the modern Russian market of consulting services, the trends and patterns of its development, including the growing processes of concentration and centralization, the underdevelopment of market institutions, the lack of legislation regulating this market segment, structural defects associated with the excessive income growth of the management consulting. All this allowed us to draw some important conclusions about the unstable and contradictory nature of the development of the domestic market of consulting, the deformation of its structure and the absence of the state policy in the sphere of regulation of the consulting services market, and to develop recommendations for its stabilization, including the improvement of legislation in the field of intellectual property, the expansion and strengthening of the foreign economic positions of the consulting companies in Russia, the efficiency improvement of their participation in the international division of labor. The article is intended for students studying methods of conducting marketing research on the market of consulting services, teachers of the discipline "Marketing in services", "Consulting" as well as for marketing managers and managers of consulting companies elaborating strategies for their development. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n2s3p18

PFKFB3 overexpression in monocytes of patients with colon but not rectal cancer programs pro-tumor macrophages and is indicative for higher risk of tumor relapse

Introduction: Circulating monocytes are main source for tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) that control tumor growth, angiogenesis, metastasis and therapy resistance. We raised the questions how monocyte programming is affected by growing tumors localized in colon and rectal sections, and how treatment onsets affect monocyte programming in the circulation. Methods: Patients with rectal cancer and colon cancer were enrolled in the study. Peripheral blood monocytes were characterized by phenotypic analysis using flow cytometry, by transcriptomic analysis using RNA sequencing and by gene expression analysis using real-time RT-PCR. Phenotypic analysis was performed with IF/confocal microscopy. Spatial transcriptomic analysis was applied using GeoMX DSP-NGS. Results: In patients with rectal cancer, increased amount of CCR2+ monocytes was indicative for the absence of both lymphatic and hematogenous metastasis. In contrast, in patients with colon cancer CD163+ monocytes were indicative for LN metastasis. NGS analysis identified tumor-specific transcriptional programming of monocytes in all CRC patients compared to healthy individuals. The key transcriptional difference between monocytes of patients with colon and rectal cancer was increased expression of PFKFB3, activator of glycolysis that is currently considered as therapy target for major solid cancers. PFKFB3-expressing monocyte-derived macrophages massively infiltrated tumor in colon. Nanostring technology identified correlation of PFKFB3 with amount and tumor-promoting properties of TAMs in colon but not in rectal cancer. PFKFB3 was indicative for tumor relapse specifically in colon cancer. Discussion: Our findings provide essential argument towards CRC definition to cover two clinically distinct cancers – colon cancer and rectal cancer, that differentially interact with innate immunity

Radiative Leptonic B_c Decays in Effective Field Theory

The recent discovery of the B_c meson by the CDF collaboration and proposed new experiments at Fermilab and CERN motivate new theoretical studies of the B_c system. Here we investigate the radiative leptonic decay B_c -> gamma l nu. This process is an important background to the annihilation process B_c -> l nu, which will be used to extract the B_c decay constant. We perform a model-independent calculation, based on QCD, of the partial width and various kinematic distributions. We also examine the decay within the framework of NRQCD, an effective field theory of nonrelativistic quarks, generalizing the NRQCD Lagrangian to include external sources for the weak and electromagnetic currents. Finally, we comment on the role of the B_c* intermediate state for very soft photon energies.Comment: 15 pages, including 5 embedded postscript figures, uses REVTeX; various clarifications added, results and conclusions unchanged; version to appear in Phys. Rev.

Centrality evolution of the charged-particle pseudorapidity density over a broad pseudorapidity range in Pb-Pb collisions at root s(NN)=2.76TeV

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