Photoreflectance spectroscopy of BiOCl epitaxial thin films

We have observed a new optical transition in the photoreflectance spectra of indirect-gap BiOCl thin films, which were grown on SrTiO$_3$ substrates. The position of this transition is close in energy to its bulk critical point energy. Moreover, these are significantly lower than a higher-lying direct-type critical point from an energetic point of view. The spectral line shape analysis for our observed signal suggests the presence of an excitonic effect of this compound. We determined its dependence of the optical anomaly on temperature ranging from 80 K to room temperature. We adopted the Varshni model for this analysis. At last, we compared phononic properties of BiOCl with those of an element and binary semiconductors.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Jpn. J. Appl. Phy

Mechanism of Anomalous Tunneling in Condensed Bose System

We clarify the origin of anomalous tunneling [Yu. Kagan et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 90 (2003) 130402] i.e. the perfect transmission at low energy limit of tunneling of phonon excitations across the potential barrier separating two Bose condensates. The perfect transmission is a consequence of the coincidence of the wave function of the excited state at low energy limit and the macroscopic wave function of the condensate. We show that the perfect transmission at low energy occurs even at finite temperatures within the scheme of Popov approximation.Comment: 4 pages 1 figur

Robust circadian clocks from coupled protein modification and transcription-translation cycles

The cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus uses both a protein phosphorylation cycle and a transcription-translation cycle to generate circadian rhythms that are highly robust against biochemical noise. We use stochastic simulations to analyze how these cycles interact to generate stable rhythms in growing, dividing cells. We find that a protein phosphorylation cycle by itself is robust when protein turnover is low. For high decay or dilution rates (and co mpensating synthesis rate), however, the phosphorylation-based oscillator loses its integrity. Circadian rhythms thus cannot be generated with a phosphorylation cycle alone when the growth rate, and consequently the rate of protein dilution, is high enough; in practice, a purely post-translational clock ceases to function well when the cell doubling time drops below the 24 hour clock period. At higher growth rates, a transcription-translation cycle becomes essential for generating robust circadian rhythms. Interestingly, while a transcription-translation cycle is necessary to sustain a phosphorylation cycle at high growth rates, a phosphorylation cycle can dramatically enhance the robustness of a transcription-translation cycle at lower protein decay or dilution rates. Our analysis thus predicts that both cycles are required to generate robust circadian rhythms over the full range of growth conditions.Comment: main text: 7 pages including 5 figures, supplementary information: 13 pages including 9 figure

Flat Dielectric Grating Reflectors with High Focusing Power

Sub-wavelength dielectric gratings (SWG) have emerged recently as a promising alternative to distributed-Bragg-reflection (DBR) dielectric stacks for broadband, high-reflectivity filtering applications. A SWG structure composed of a single dielectric layer with the appropriate patterning can sometimes perform as well as thirty or forty dielectric DBR layers, while providing new functionalities such as polarization control and near-field amplification. In this paper, we introduce a remarkable property of grating mirrors that cannot be realized by their DBR counterpart: we show that a non-periodic patterning of the grating surface can give full control over the phase front of reflected light while maintaining a high reflectivity. This new feature of dielectric gratings could have a substantial impact on a number of applications that depend on low-cost, compact optical components, from laser cavities to CD/DVD read/write heads.Comment: submitted to Nature Photonic

Constraining Bosonic Supersymmetry from Higgs results and 8 TeV ATLAS multi-jets plus missing energy data

The collider phenomenology of models with Universal Extra Dimensions (UED) is surprisingly similar to that of supersymmetric (SUSY) scenarios. For each level-1 bosonic (fermionic) Kaluza-Klein (KK) state, there is a fermionic (bosonic) analog in SUSY and thus UED scenarios are often known as bosonic supersymmetry. The minimal version of UED (mUED) gives rise to a quasi-degenerate particle spectrum at each KK-level and thus, can not explain the enhanced Higgs to diphoton decay rate hinted by the ATLAS collaboration of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment. However, in the non-minimal version of the UED (nmUED) model, the enhanced Higgs to diphoton decay rate can be easily explained via the suitable choice of boundary localized kinetic (BLK) terms for higher dimensional fermions and gauge bosons. BLK terms remove the degeneracy in the KK mass spectrum and thus, pair production of level-1 quarks and gluons at the LHC gives rise to hard jets, leptons and large missing energy in the final state. These final states are studied in details by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations in the context of SUSY scenarios. We find that the absence of any significant deviation of the data from the Standard Model (SM) prediction puts a lower bound of about 2.1 TeV on equal mass excited quarks and gluons.Comment: 19 page

Comparação de métodos de detecção de indivíduos vegetais da Caatinga a partir de dados LiDAR aerotransportado.

Por realizar levantamentos de dados de forma rápida e eficiente, o sistema de varredura a laser tem sido bastante aplicado para diversas finalidades. Na aplicação florestal, muitos estudos utilizam dados de LiDAR para estimar dados de inventários florestais. O presente estudo visa estimar o número de árvores e suas respectivas alturas totais, usando diferentes algoritmos com o intuito de comparar a eficiência dos mesmos. Em campo, foram contabilizados indivíduos com DAP ? 3 cm. Os dados LiDAR foram obtidos na plataforma do Projeto Pernambuco Tridimensional ? PE3D e processados em software R. A detecção de indivíduos foi feita a partir das nuvens de pontos e do CHM, ambas por meio da aplicação do Filtro Local Máximo com janela de tamanho variável baseada na relação entre o diâmetro da copa e a altura total do indivíduo. Na geração do CHM, foram utilizados dois diferentes algoritmos (point-to-raster e pitfree), em diferentes resoluções (0,5 e 1 em point-to-raster e 0,5 em pitfree) e suavizações com um filtro de mediana aplicado nos CHMs criados pelo algoritmo point-to-raster, totalizando seis tipos diferentes de CHM. O uso de nuvens de baixa densidade de pontos para detecção de indivíduos demonstrou-se inferior comparado ao uso de CHM, mesmo em relação ao CHM com poços. O método de suavização com resolução de 0,5 m apresentou melhor resposta na identificação das árvores dentre os métodos analisados, contrastando com a técnica usada para remover os poços (pitfree), que revelou baixa precisão, no entanto, obteve resultados significativos na estimativa de altura das árvore

How good is probabilistic record linkage to reconstruct reproductive histories? Results from the Aberdeen children of the 1950s study

BACKGROUND: Probabilistic record linkage is widely used in epidemiology, but studies of its validity are rare. Our aim was to validate its use to identify births to a cohort of women, being drawn from a large cohort of people born in Scotland in the early 1950s. METHODS: The Children of the 1950s cohort includes 5868 females born in Aberdeen 1950–56 who were in primary schools in the city in 1962. In 2001 a postal questionnaire was sent to the cohort members resident in the UK requesting information on offspring. Probabilistic record linkage (based on surname, maiden name, initials, date of birth and postcode) was used to link the females in the cohort to birth records held by the Scottish Maternity Record System (SMR 2). RESULTS: We attempted to mail a total of 5540 women; 3752 (68%) returned a completed questionnaire. Of these 86% reported having had at least one birth. Linkage to SMR 2 was attempted for 5634 women, one or more maternity records were found for 3743. There were 2604 women who reported at least one birth in the questionnaire and who were linked to one or more SMR 2 records. When judged against the questionnaire information, the linkage correctly identified 4930 births and missed 601 others. These mostly occurred outside of Scotland (147) or prior to full coverage by SMR 2 (454). There were 134 births incorrectly linked to SMR 2. CONCLUSION: Probabilistic record linkage to routine maternity records applied to population-based cohort, using name, date of birth and place of residence, can have high specificity, and as such may be reliably used in epidemiological research

Coupling of a Core Post-Translational Pacemaker to a Slave Transcription/Translation Feedback Loop in a Circadian System

Analysis of the cyanobacterial circadian biological clock reveals a complex interdependence between a transcription/translation feedback loop and a biochemical oscillator

Hepatopathy following consumption of a commercially available blue-green algae dietary supplement in a dog

BACKGROUND: Dietary supplement use in both human and animals to augment overall health continues to increase and represents a potential health risk due to the lack of safety regulations imposed on the manufacturers. Because there are no requirements for demonstrating safety and efficacy prior to marketing, dietary supplements may contain potentially toxic contaminants such as hepatotoxic microcystins produced by several species of blue-green algae. CASE PRESENTATION: An 11-year-old female spayed 8.95 kg Pug dog was initially presented for poor appetite, lethargy polyuria, polydipsia, and an inability to get comfortable. Markedly increased liver enzyme activities were detected with no corresponding abnormalities evident on abdominal ultrasound. A few days later the liver enzyme activities were persistently increased and the dog was coagulopathic indicating substantial liver dysfunction. The dog was hospitalized for further care consisting of oral S-adenosylmethionine, silybin, vitamin K, and ursodeoxycholic acid, as well as intravenous ampicillin sodium/sulbactam sodium, dolasetron, N-acetylcysteine, metoclopramide, and intravenous fluids. Improvement of the hepatopathy and the dog’s clinical status was noted over the next three days. Assessment of the dog’s diet revealed the use of a commercially available blue-green algae dietary supplement for three-and-a-half weeks prior to hospitalization. The supplement was submitted for toxicology testing and revealed the presence of hepatotoxic microcystins (MCs), MC-LR and MC-LA. Use of the supplement was discontinued and follow-up evaluation over the next few weeks revealed a complete resolution of the hepatopathy. CONCLUSIONS: To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first case report of microcystin intoxication in a dog after using a commercially available blue-green algae dietary supplement. Veterinarians should recognize the potential harm that these supplements may cause and know that with intervention, recovery is possible. In addition, more prudent oversight of dietary supplement use is recommended for our companion animals to prevent adverse events/intoxications