An Activity-Based Nanosensor for Traumatic Brain Injury.

Currently, traumatic brain injury (TBI) is detected by medical imaging; however, medical imaging requires expensive capital equipment, is time- and resource-intensive, and is poor at predicting patient prognosis. To date, direct measurement of elevated protease activity has yet to be utilized to detect TBI. In this work, we engineered an activity-based nanosensor for TBI (TBI-ABN) that responds to increased protease activity initiated after brain injury. We establish that a calcium-sensitive protease, calpain-1, is active in the injured brain hours within injury. We then optimize the molecular weight of a nanoscale polymeric carrier to infiltrate into the injured brain tissue with minimal renal filtration. A calpain-1 substrate that generates a fluorescent signal upon cleavage was attached to this nanoscale polymeric carrier to generate an engineered TBI-ABN. When applied intravenously to a mouse model of TBI, our engineered sensor is observed to locally activate in the injured brain tissue. This TBI-ABN is the first demonstration of a sensor that responds to protease activity to detect TBI

Orientational Melting in Carbon Nanotube Ropes

Using Monte Carlo simulations, we investigate the possibility of an orientational melting transition within a "rope" of (10,10) carbon nanotubes. When twisting nanotubes bundle up during the synthesis, orientational dislocations or twistons arise from the competition between the anisotropic inter-tube interactions, which tend to align neighboring tubes, and the torsion rigidity that tends to keep individual tubes straight. We map the energetics of a rope containing twistons onto a lattice gas model and find that the onset of a free "diffusion" of twistons, corresponding to orientational melting, occurs at T_OM > 160 K.Comment: 4 page LaTeX file with 3 figures (10 PostScript files

Charge and Orbital Ordering and Spin State Transition Driven by Structural Distortion in YBaCo_2O_5

We have investigated electronic structures of antiferromagnetic YBaCo_2O_5 using the local spin-density approximation (LSDA) + U method. The charge and orbital ordered insulating ground state is correctly obtained with the strong on-site Coulomb interaction. Co^{2+} and Co^{3+} ions are found to be in the high spin (HS) and intermediate spin (IS) state, respectively. It is considered that the tetragonal to orthorhombic structural transition is responsible for the ordering phenomena and the spin states of Co ions. The large contribution of the orbital moment to the total magnetic moment indicates that the spin-orbit coupling is also important in YBaCo_2O_5.Comment: 4 pages including 4 figures, Submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Area spectra versus entropy spectra in black holes in topologically massive gravity

We consider the area and entropy spectra of black holes in topologically massive gravity with gravitational Chern-Simons term. The examples we consider are the BTZ black hole and the warped AdS black hole. For the non-rotating BTZ black hole, the area and entropy spectra are equally spaced and independent of the coupling constant \v of the Chern-Simons term. For the rotating BTZ black hole case, the spectra of the inner and outer horizon areas are not equally spaced in general and dependent of the coupling constant \v. However the entropy spectrum is equally spaced and independent of the coupling constant \v. For the warped AdS black holes for $\v >1$ by using the quasinormal modes obtained without imposing the boundary condition at radial infinity we find again that the entropy spectrum is equally spaced and independent of the coupling constant \v, while the spectra of the inner and outer horizon areas are not equally spaced and dependent of the coupling constant \v. Our result implies that the entropy spectrum has a universal behavior regardless of the presence of the gravitational Chern-Simons term, and therefore it implies that the entropy is more `fundamental' than the horizon area.Comment: 16 page

Metrological characterization of the pulsed Rb clock with optical detection

We report on the implementation and the metrological characterization of a vapor-cell Rb frequency standard working in pulsed regime. The three main parts that compose the clock, physics package, optics and electronics, are described in detail in the paper. The prototype is designed and optimized to detect the clock transition in the optical domain. Specifically, the reference atomic transition, excited with a Ramsey scheme, is detected by observing the interference pattern on a laser absorption signal. \ The metrological analysis includes the observation and characterization of the clock signal and the measurement of frequency stability and drift. In terms of Allan deviation, the measured frequency stability results as low as $1.7\times 10^{-13} \ \tau^{-1/2}$, $\tau$ being the averaging time, and reaches the value of few units of $10^{-15}$ for $\tau=10^{4}$ s, an unprecedent achievement for a vapor cell clock. We discuss in the paper the physical effects leading to this result with particular care to laser and microwave noises transferred to the clock signal. The frequency drift, probably related to the temperature, stays below $10^{-14}$ per day, and no evidence of flicker floor is observed. \ We also mention some possible improvements that in principle would lead to a clock stability below the $10^{-13}$ level at 1 s and to a drift of few units of $10^{-15}$ per day