Growth of graphene on 6H-SiC by molecular dynamics simulation

Classical molecular-dynamics simulations were carried out to study epitaxial growth of graphene on 6H-SiC(0001) substrate. It was found that there exists a threshold annealing temperature above which we observe formation of graphitic structure on the substrate. To check the sensitivity of the simulation results, we tested two empirical potentials and evaluated their reliability by the calculated characteristics of graphene, its carbon-carbon bond-length, pair correlation function, and binding energy.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure

Coronavirus mRNA synthesis: identification of novel transcription initiation signals which are differentially regulated by different leader sequences.

The mRNA synthesis of mouse hepatitis virus (MHV) has been proposed to be the result of interaction between the leader RNA and the intergenic sites. Previously, we have identified a transcription initiation site (for mRNA 2-1), which is more efficiently transcribed by viruses containing two copies of UCUAA sequence in the leader RNA than by those with three copies. In this study, we have identified several sites which are regulated in the opposite way, namely, they are efficiently transcribed by the leader RNA with three UCUAA copies but not by those with two copies. These sites were characterized by primer extension and amplification by polymerase chain reaction. One of these sites is in the gene 3 region of a recombinant virus between A59 and JHM strains of MHV. Another is in the gene 2 region of MHV-1 strain. Both of these sites have a sequence similar to but different from the consensus transcription initiation signal (UCUAAUCUAUC and UUUAAUCUU, as opposed to UCUAAAC). These two novel intergenic sequences are not present in the genome of the JHM strain, consistent with the absence of these mRNAs in the JHM-infected cells. The discovery of this type of transcription initiation site provides additional evidence for the importance of the leader RNA in the transcription initiation of MHV mRNAs

Biosynthesis, structure, and biological activities of envelope protein gp65 of murine coronavirus.

We have previously shown that gp65 (E3) is a virion structural protein which varies widely in quantity among different strains of mouse hepatitis virus (MHV). In this study, the biosynthetic pathway and possible biological activities of this protein were examined. The glycosylation of gp65 in virus-infected cells was inhibited by tunicamycin but not by monensin, suggesting that it contains an N-glycosidic linkage. Glycosylation is cotranslational and appears to be complete before the glycoprotein reaches the Golgi complex. Pulse-chase experiments showed that this protein decreased in size after 30 min of chase, suggesting that the carbohydrate chains of gp65 undergo trimming during its transport across the Golgi. This interpretation is supported by the endoglycosidase treatment of gp65, which showed that the peptide backbone of gp65 did not decrease in size after pulse-chase periods. This maturation pathway is distinct from that of the E1 or E2 glycoproteins. Partial endoglycosidase treatment indicated that gp65 contains 9 to 10 carbohydrate side chains; thus, almost all of the potential glycosylation sites of gp65 were glycosylated. In vitro translation studies coupled with protease digestion suggest that gp65 is an integral membrane protein. The presence of gp65 in the virion is correlated with the presence of an acetylesterase activity. No hemagglutinin activity was detected

Effect of the stimulation level on the refractory behavior of the electrically stimulated auditory nerve

The refractory behavior of the electrically stimulated auditory nerve can be described by the recovery function, which plots the ECAP amplitude in response to a masker/probe stimulus pair as a function of the time interval (Masker Probe Interval, MPI) between the two stimuli. The recovery function is characterized by two time intervals or periods: In the first interval (the Absolute Refractory Period, ARP), typically lasting for 300 to 400us, the neurons stimulated by the masker are in absolute refractory and unable to respond to the probe stimulus. As the MPI is gradually increased beyond the ARP, the stimulated neural population is increasingly able to respond to the probe stimulus (i.e. relative refractory) as the inhibitory effects of the masker diminishes. This second interval (the Relative Refractory Period, RRP) can be characterized by the time constant of an asymptotically increasing exponential function (Morsnowski et al. 2006). This recovery time constant provides an indication of the neurons’ temporal characteristics. Previous reports (e.g. Battmer et al. 2004) suggest that this time constant is affected by the stimulation level used to determine the recovery function. Such a dependency would make it difficult to characterize the refractory behavior of the stimulated neurons using the recovery function. In this study, the refractory behavior of the electrically stimulated auditory nerve with respect to stimulation level was examined retrospectively. It was expected that increasing the stimulation level would result in more deterministic behavior

Melody contour identification and instrument recognition using semitone mapping in Nucleus Cochlear Implant recipients

Cochlear implants (CIs) were originally aimed at restoring speech perception for patients with profound hearing loss. Many postlingually deafened CI patients report that music is not well perceived while others enjoy it. Music consists of complex sounds composed of tones with harmonic structure of overtones and temporal fine structure. The harmonic structure is not preserved by the current standard (Std) ACE (advanced combination encoders) mapping and the temporal fine structure is not well encoded. The mapping is believed to produce distortion due to compression oin the low frequency range. In 2008 we proposed two new semitone (Smt) mappings (Smt-LF and Smt-MF) in two frequency ranges (130-1502 Hz and 440-5040 Hz) respectively (Omran et al. 2008). Smt mapping is expected to preserve the harmonic structure representation of overtones and this may improve melody recognition with CIs. In this paper two psychoacoustic experiments (melody contour identification (MCI) (Galvin et al. 2007) and instrument recognition (IR)) were conducted with three different conditions (Std, Smt-MF and Smt-LF mappings) with CI recipients by streaming processed stimuli directly to the implant. The MCI test included five patterns (rising - rising falling - flat - falling rising – falling). Each pattern consisted of five tones; each tone had a fundamental frequency and four overtones. The lowest fundamental frequency of each pattern is called “root”. Signals had two different roots A3 (220 Hz) and A4 (440 Hz). Proposed nine patterns with three roots (A3, A4 and A5) by Galvin et al. (2007) were examined in a pilot test. This test took a long time and the preliminary results showed a possibility to reduce the number of patterns to five and eliminate the fifth octave root (A5). In the IR test, four pairs of instruments (Trumpet and Trombone, Flute and Clarinet, Violin and Cello, Guitar and Piano) from four groups (Brass, Woodwind, Struck and String instruments) respectively were used. MCI and IR tests were conducted with 8 CI recipients. Results from MCI tests showed an improvement with Smt mapping in respect to Std mapping or at least similar results. However, wrong identification occurred with notes having filtered out partials. CI recipients showed an increase in identifying melody contour patterns with Smt mappings. Instrument identification performance decreased with semitone mappings

Measurement Invariance of the Internet Addiction Test Among Hong Kong, Japanese, and Malaysian Adolescents

There has been increased research examining the psychometric properties on the Internet Addiction Test across different ages and populations. This population-based study examined the psychometric properties using Confirmatory Factory Analysis and measurement invariance using Item Response Theory (IRT) of the IAT in adolescents from three Asian countries. In the Asian Adolescent Risk Behavior Survey (AARBS), 2,535 secondary school students (55.91% girls) in Grade 7 to Grade 13 (Mean age = 15.61 years; SD=1.56) from Hong Kong (n=844), Japan (n=744), and Malaysia (n=947) completed a survey on their Internet use that incorporated the IAT scale. A nested hierarchy of hypotheses concerning IAT cross-country invariance was tested using multi-group confirmatory factor analysis. Replicating past finding in Hong Kong adolescents, the construct of IAT is best represented by a second-order three-factor structure in Malaysian and Japanese adolescents. Configural, metric, scalar, and partial strict factorial invariance was established across the three samples. No cross-country differences on Internet addiction were detected at latent mean level. This study provided empirical support to the IAT as a reliable and factorially stable instrument, and valid to be used across Asian adolescent populations

Calculation of HELAS amplitudes for QCD processes using graphics processing unit (GPU)

We use a graphics processing unit (GPU) for fast calculations of helicity amplitudes of quark and gluon scattering processes in massless QCD. New HEGET ({\bf H}ELAS {\bf E}valuation with {\bf G}PU {\bf E}nhanced {\bf T}echnology) codes for gluon self-interactions are introduced, and a C++ program to convert the MadGraph generated FORTRAN codes into HEGET codes in CUDA (a C-platform for general purpose computing on GPU) is created. Because of the proliferation of the number of Feynman diagrams and the number of independent color amplitudes, the maximum number of final state jets we can evaluate on a GPU is limited to 4 for pure gluon processes ($gg\to 4g$), or 5 for processes with one or more quark lines such as $q\bar{q}\to 5g$ and $qq\to qq+3g$. Compared with the usual CPU-based programs, we obtain 60-100 times better performance on the GPU, except for 5-jet production processes and the $gg\to 4g$ processes for which the GPU gain over the CPU is about 20