The Medicago genome provides insight into the evolution of rhizobial symbioses

Legumes (Fabaceae or Leguminosae) are unique among cultivated plants for their ability to carry out endosymbiotic nitrogen fixation with rhizobial bacteria, a process that takes place in a specialized structure known as the nodule. Legumes belong to one of the two main groups of eurosids, the Fabidae, which includes most species capable of endosymbiotic nitrogen fixation1. Legumes comprise several evolutionary lineages derived from a common ancestor 60 million years ago (Myr ago). Papilionoids are the largest clade, dating nearly to the origin of legumes and containing most cultivated species2. Medicago truncatula is a long-established model for the study of legume biology. Here we describe the draft sequence of the M. truncatula euchromatin based on a recently completed BAC assembly supplemented with Illumina shotgun sequence, together capturing ~94% of all M. truncatula genes. A whole-genome duplication (WGD) approximately 58 Myr ago had a major role in shaping the M. truncatula genome and thereby contributed to the evolution of endosymbiotic nitrogen fixation. Subsequent to the WGD, the M. truncatula genome experienced higher levels of rearrangement than two other sequenced legumes, Glycine max and Lotus japonicus. M. truncatula is a close relative of alfalfa (Medicago sativa), a widely cultivated crop with limited genomics tools and complex autotetraploid genetics. As such, the M. truncatula genome sequence provides significant opportunities to expand alfalfa’s genomic toolbo

Development of Uniform CdTe Pixel Detectors Based on Caltech ASIC

We have developed a large CdTe pixel detector with dimensions of 23.7 x 13.0 mm and a pixel size of 448 x 448 um^2. The detector is based on recent technologies of an uniform CdTe single crystal, a two-dimensional ASIC, and stud bump-bonding to connect pixel electrodes on the CdTe surface to the ASIC. Good spectra are obtained from 1051 pixels out of total 1056 pixels. When we operate the detector at -50 C, the energy resolution is 0.67 keV and 0.99 keV at 14 keV and 60 keV, respectively. Week-long stability of the detector is confirmed at operating temperatures of both -50 C and -20 C. The detector also shows high uniformity: the peak positions for all pixels agree to within 0.82%, and the average of the energy resolution is 1.04 keV at a temperature of -50 C. When we normalized the peak area by the total counts detected by each pixel, a variation of 2.1 % is obtained.Comment: 11pages, 17figures, accepted for publication in Proc. SPIE 200

A Kelvin-wave cascade on a vortex in superfluid 4^4He at a very low temperature

A study by computer simulation is reported of the behaviour of a quantized vortex line at a very low temperature when there is continuous excitation of low-frequency Kelvin waves. There is no dissipation except by phonon radiation at a very high frequency. It is shown that non-linear coupling leads to a net flow of energy to higher wavenumbers and to the development of a simple spectrum of Kelvin waves that is insensitive to the strength and frequency of the exciting drive. The results are likely to be relevant to the decay of turbulence in superfluid $^4$He at very low temperatures

Direction Finding Estimators of Cyclostationary Signals in Array Processing for Microwave Power Transmission

A solar power satellite is paid attention to as a clean, inexhaustible large- scale base-load power supply. The following technology related to beam control is used: A pilot signal is sent from the power receiving site and after direction of arrival estimation the beam is directed back to the earth by same direction. A novel direction-finding algorithm based on linear prediction technique for exploiting cyclostationary statistical information (spatial and temporal) is explored. Many modulated communication signals exhibit a cyclostationarity (or periodic correlation) property, corresponding to the underlying periodicity arising from carrier frequencies or baud rates. The problem was solved by using both cyclic second-order statistics and cyclic higher-order statistics. By evaluating the corresponding cyclic statistics of the received data at certain cycle frequencies, we can extract the cyclic correlations of only signals with the same cycle frequency and null out the cyclic correlations of stationary additive noise and all other co-channel interferences with different cycle frequencies. Thus, the signal detection capability can be significantly improved. The proposed algorithms employ cyclic higher-order statistics of the array output and suppress additive Gaussian noise of unknown spectral content, even when the noise shares common cycle frequencies with the non-Gaussian signals of interest. The proposed method completely exploits temporal information (multiple lag ), and also can correctly estimate direction of arrival of desired signals by suppressing undesired signals. Our approach was generalized over direction of arrival estimation of cyclostationary coherent signals. In this paper, we propose a new approach for exploiting cyclostationarity that seems to be more advanced in comparison with the other existing direction finding algorithms

Performance of a Low Noise Front-end ASIC for Si/CdTe Detectors in Compton Gamma-ray Telescope

Compton telescopes based on semiconductor technologies are being developed to explore the gamma-ray universe in an energy band 0.1--20 MeV, which is not well covered by the present or near-future gamma-ray telescopes. The key feature of such Compton telescopes is the high energy resolution that is crucial for high angular resolution and high background rejection capability. The energy resolution around 1 keV is required to approach physical limit of the angular resolution due to Doppler broadening. We have developed a low noise front-end ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit), VA32TA, to realize this goal for the readout of Double-sided Silicon Strip Detector (DSSD) and Cadmium Telluride (CdTe) pixel detector which are essential elements of the semiconductor Compton telescope. We report on the design and test results of the VA32TA. We have reached an energy resolution of 1.3 keV (FWHM) for 60 keV and 122 keV at 0 degree C with a DSSD and 1.7 keV (FWHM) with a CdTe detector.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures, IEEE style file, to appear in IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sc

Evidence for Insulating Behavior in the Electric Conduction of (NH3_3)K3_3C60_{60} Systems

Microwave study using cavity perturbation technique revealed that the conductivity of antiferromagnet (NH$_3$)K$_{3-x}$Rb$_x$C$_{60}$ at 200K is already 3-4 orders of magnitude smaller than those of superconductors, K$_3$C$_{60}$ and (NH$_3$)$_x$NaRb$_2$C$_{60}$, and that the antiferromagnetic compounds are {\it insulators} below 250K without metal-insulator transitions. The striking difference in the magnitude of the conductivity between these materials strongly suggests that the Mott-Hubbard transition in the ammoniated alkali fullerides is driven by a reduction of lattice symmetry from face-centered-cubic to face-centered-orthorhombic, rather than by the magnetic ordering.Comment: accepted for publication in PR

A Research of Basic Energy Reduction Approach Using PV Power Smoothing EV Storage System and LED Simple Circuit for Create Green Innovation

In general, Light Emitting Diode (LED) is low power consumption, and Photovoltaic (PV) generation of Renewable Energy is effective as energy creation. However, LED applications have a problem of LED Circuit Radiation Noise and PV generation applications have a problem of the Output Power fluctuation in the weather. This paper will be proposed as an especial approach of the energy reduction to contribute to the realization of the low carbon society in the world. In this research, without using Common Mode Choke (CMC) Noise Cut filter, the Radiation Noise reduction result in World Standard Guideline by the selection of a simple circuit of the most effective LED lighting of various power reduction methods have been confirmed by the examinations. Additionally, in order to investigate the lighting specification, the simple Lighting evaluation equipment has been developed. As an energy fluctuation reduction research, the new control system of the PV fluctuation electric power using EV battery charge-discharge electric power that is able to be easily connected with a Power Conditioning System (PCS) input is proposed. A simulation result using the actual PV generator output data is provided to confirm the effectiveness of Simple Moving Average (SMA) method. Moreover, the outline of a new large area monitoring control GIS system for the implementation of the PV generator power prognostication without the weather estimation is introduced.九工大・マレーシアプトラ大学国際合同シンポジウム: International Symposium on Applied Engineering and Sciences (SAES), September 30- October 1, 2013, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysi

Excitation Spectrum of One-dimensional Extended Ionic Hubbard Model

We use Perturbative Continuous Unitary Transformations (PCUT) to study the one dimensional Extended Ionic Hubbard Model (EIHM) at half-filling in the band insulator region. The extended ionic Hubbard model, in addition to the usual ionic Hubbard model, includes an inter-site nearest-neighbor (n.n.) repulsion, $V$. We consider the ionic potential as unperturbed part of the Hamiltonian, while the hopping and interaction (quartic) terms are treated as perturbation. We calculate total energy and ionicity in the ground state. Above the ground state, (i) we calculate the single particle excitation spectrum by adding an electron or a hole to the system. (ii) the coherence-length and spectrum of electron-hole excitation are obtained. Our calculations reveal that for V=0, there are two triplet bound state modes and three singlet modes, two anti-bound states and one bound state, while for finite values of $V$ there are four excitonic bound states corresponding to two singlet and two triplet modes. The major role of on-site Coulomb repulsion $U$ is to split singlet and triplet collective excitation branches, while $V$ tends to pull the singlet branches below the continuum to make them bound states.Comment: 10 eps figure

The early X-ray afterglows of optically bright and dark Gamma-Ray Bursts

A systematical study on the early X-ray afterglows of both optically bright and dark gamma-ray bursts (B-GRBs and D-GRBs) observed by Swift has been presented. Our sample includes 25 GRBs. Among them 13 are B-GRBs and 12 are D-GRBs. Our results show that the distributions of the X-ray afterglow fluxes ($F_{X}$), the gamma-ray fluxes ($S_{\gamma}$), and the ratio ($R_{\gamma, X}$) for both the D-GRBs and B-GRBs are similar. The differences of these distributions for the two kinds of GRBs should be statistical fluctuation. These results indicate that the progenitors of the two kinds of GRBs are the same population. Their total energy explosions are comparable. The suppression of the optical emissions from D-GRBs should results from circumburst but not their central engine.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, 1 table; accepted by ChJA