A new vibrational level of the H2+_2^+ molecular ion

A new state of the H$_2^+$ molecular ion with binding energy of 1.09$\times10^{-9}$ a.u. below the first dissociation limit is predicted, using highly accurate numerical nonrelativistic quantum calculations. It is the first L=0 excited state, antisymmetric with respect to the exchange of the two protons. It manifests itself as a huge p-H scattering length of $a=750\pm 5$ Bohr radii.Comment: 6 pages + 3 figure

Micrometeorological processes driving snow ablation in an Alpine catchment

Mountain snow covers typically become patchy over the course of a melting season. The snow pattern during melt is mainly governed by the end of winter snow depth distribution and the local energy balance. The objective of this study is to investigate micrometeorological processes driving snow ablation in an Alpine catchment. For this purpose we combine a meteorological model (ARPS) with a fully distributed energy balance model (Alpine3D). Turbulent fluxes above melting snow are further investigated by using data from eddy-correlation systems. We compare modelled snow ablation to measured ablation rates as obtained from a series of Terrestrial Laser Scanning campaigns covering a complete ablation season. The measured ablation rates indicate that the advection of sensible heat causes locally increased ablation rates at the upwind edges of the snow patches. The effect, however, appears to be active over rather short distances except for very strong wind conditions. Neglecting this effect, the model is able to capture the mean ablation rates for early ablation periods but strongly overestimates snow ablation once the fraction of snow coverage is below a critical value. While radiation dominates snow ablation early in the season, the turbulent flux contribution becomes important late in the season. Simulation results indicate that the air temperatures appear to overestimate the local air temperature above snow patches once the snow coverage is below a critical value. Measured turbulent fluxes support these findings by suggesting a stable internal boundary layer close to the snow surface causing a strong decrease of the sensible heat flux towards the snow cover. Thus, the existence of a stable internal boundary layer above a patchy snow cover exerts a dominant control on the timing and magnitude of snow ablation for patchy snow covers.<br/

Chemical composition of a sample of bright solar-metallicity stars

We present a detailed analysis of seven young stars observed with the spectrograph SOPHIE at the Observatoire de Haute-Provence for which the chemical composition was incomplete or absent in the literature. For five stars, we derived the stellar parameters and chemical compositions using our automatic pipeline optimized for F, G, and K stars, while for the other two stars with high rotational velocity, we derived the stellar parameters by using other information (parallax), and performed a line-by-line analysis. Chromospheric emission-line fluxes from CaII are obtained for all targets. The stellar parameters we derive are generally in good agreement with what is available in the literature. We provide a chemical analysis of two of the stars for the first time. The star HIP 80124 shows a strong Li feature at 670.8 nm implying a high lithium abundance. Its chemical pattern is not consistent with it being a solar sibling, as has been suggested.Comment: To be published on A

ADDO: a comprehensive toolkit to detect, classify and visualise additive and non-additive Quantitative Trait Loci

MOTIVATION During the past decade, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have been used to map quantitative trait loci (QTLs) underlying complex traits. However, most GWAS focus on additive genetic effects while ignoring non-additive effects, on the assumption that most QTL act additively. Consequently, QTLs driven by dominance and other non-additive effects could be overlooked. RESULTS We developed ADDO, a highly-efficient tool to detect, classify and visualise quantitative trait loci (QTLs) with additive and non-additive effects. ADDO implements a mixed-model transformation to control for population structure and unequal relatedness that accounts for both additive and dominant genetic covariance among individuals, and decomposes single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) effects as either additive, partial dominant, dominant and over-dominant. A matrix multiplication approach is used to accelerate the computation: a genome scan on 13 million markers from 900 individuals takes about 5 hours with 10 CPUs. Analysis of simulated data confirms ADDO’s performance on traits with different additive and dominance genetic variance components. We showed two real examples in outbred rat where ADDO identified significant dominant QTL that were not detectable by an additive model. ADDO provides a systematic pipeline to characterize additive and non-additive QTL in whole genome sequence data, which complements current mainstream GWAS software for additive genetic effects. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION ADDO is customizable and convenient to install and provides extensive analytics and visualizations. The package is freely available online at https://github.com/LeileiCui/ADDO

Ocular infection of mice with an avirulent recombinant HSV-1 expressing IL-4 and an attenuated HSV-1 strain generates virulent recombinants in vivo

PurposeTo assess the relative impact of overexpression of interleukin 2 (IL-2), interleukin 4 (IL-4), and interferon gamma (IFN-γ) expressing recombinant herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) on altering immune responses in ocularly infected mice.MethodsBALB/c mice were co-infected ocularly with avirulent HSV-1 strain KOS and avirulent recombinant HSV-1 expressing murine IL-4 (HSV-IL-4). Controls mice were co-infected with KOS + HSV-IL-2 or KOS + HSV-IFNγ. Following ocular infection, virus replication in the eye, corneal scarring (CS), and survival were determined. We also isolated recombinant viruses from eye and trigeminal ganglia of KOS + HSV-IL-4 infected mice.ResultsIn this study we found that ocular infection of BALB/c mice with a mixture of HSV-IL-4 and KOS resulted in increased death and increased eye disease. In contrast, when mice were infected in one eye with KOS and the other eye with HSV-IL-4 no death or eye disease was seen. Intraperitoneal co-infection of mice with KOS and HSV-IL-4 also did not result in HSV-1 induced death. Interestingly, ocular infection of mice with a mixture of HSV-IL-2 and KOS did not have any effect on severity of the disease in infected mice. We isolated recombinant viruses from KOS + HSV-IL-4 infected mice eye and trigeminal ganglia. Some of the isolated viruses were more neurovirulent then either parental virus. Infection of macrophages with IL-4 expressing virus down-regulated IL-12 production by macrophages.ConclusionsThese results suggest a role for IL-4 in suppression of immune response and generation of virulent viruses in vivo

Pressure effects in the triangular layered cobaltites NaxCoO2

We have measured transport properties as a function of temperature and pressure up to 30GPa in the NaxCoO2 system. For the x=0.5 sample the transition temperature at 53K increases with pressure, while paradoxically the sample passes from an insulating to a metallic ground state. A similar transition is observed in the x=0.31 sample under pressure. Compression on the x=0.75 sample transforms the sample from a metallic to an insulating state. We discuss our results in terms of interactions between band structure effects and Na+ order.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figure

Enhanced spin Hall effect by tuning antidot potential: Proposal for a spin filter

We propose an efficient spin filter including an antidot fabricated on semiconductor heterostructures with strong spin-orbit interaction. The antidot creates a tunable potential on two-dimensional electron gas in the heterostructures, which may be attractive as well as repulsive. Our idea is based on the enhancement of extrinsic spin Hall effect by resonant scattering when the attractive potential is properly tuned. Numerical studies for three- and four-terminal devices indicate that the efficiency of the spin filter can be more than 50% by tuning the potential to the resonant condition.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figure

Long time deviation from exponential decay: non-integral power laws

Quantal systems are predicted to show a change-over from exponential decay to power law decay at very long times. Although most theoretical studies predict integer power-law exponents, recent measurements by Rothe et al. of decay luminescence of organic molecules in solution {Phys. Rev. Lett. 96 (2006) 163601} found non-integer exponents in most cases. We propose a physical mechanism, within the realm of scattering from potentials with long tails, which produces a continuous range of power law exponents. In the tractable case of the repulsive inverse square potential, we demonstrate a simple relation between the strength of the long range tail and the power law exponent. This system is amenable to experimental scrutiny

Spin-dependent electron-impurity scattering in two-dimensional electron systems

We present a theoretical study of elastic spin-dependent electron scattering caused by a charged impurity in the vicinity of a two-dimensional electron gas. We find that the symmetry properties of the spin-dependent differential scattering cross section are different for an impurity located in the plane of the electron gas and for one at a finite distance from the plane. We show that in the latter case asymmetric (`skew') scattering can arise if the polarization of the incident electron has a finite projection on the plane spanned by the normal vector of the two-dimensional electron gas and the initial propagation direction. In specially preparated samples this scattering mechanism may give rise to a Hall-like effect in the presence of an in-plane magnetic field.Comment: 4.1 pages, 2 figure

Variation of the density of states in amorphous GdSi at the metal-insulator transition

We performed detailed conductivity and tunneling mesurements on the amorphous, magnetically doped material $\alpha$-Gd$_x$Si$_{1-x}$ (GdSi), which can be driven through the metal-insulator transition by the application of an external magnetic field. Conductivity increases linearly with field near the transition and slightly slower on the metallic side. The tunneling conductance, proportional to the density of states $N(E)$, undergoes a gradual change with increasing field, from insulating, showing a soft gap at low bias, with a slightly weaker than parabolic energy dependence, i.e. $N(E) \sim E^c$, $c \lesssim 2$, towards metallic behavior, with $E^d$, $0.5 \lt d \lt 1$ energy dependence. The density of states at the Fermi level appears to be zero at low fields, as in an insulator, while the sample shows already small, but metal-like conductivity. We suggest a possible explanation to the observed effect.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure