65 research outputs found
Dual resonance mechanisms facilitating enhanced optical transmission in coaxial waveguide arrays
We experimentally and computationally demonstrate high transmission through arrays of coaxial apertures
with different geometries and arrangements in silver films. By studying both periodic and random arrangements
of apertures, we were able to isolate transmission enhancement phenomena owing to surface plasmon
effects from those owing to the excitation of cylindrical surface plasmons within the apertures themselves.This work was partially supported by the Office of
Naval Research. The support
of the Australian Research Council through its
Centers of Excellence, Federation Fellow, and Discovery
Programs is acknowledged
A review of existing model-based scenarios achieving SDGs: progress and challenges
In 2015, the United Nations articulated the ambition to move toward a prosperous, socially inclusive, and environmentally sustainable future for all by adopting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, little is known about the pathways that could lead to their concurrent achievement. We provide an overview of the current literature on quantitative pathways toward the SDGs, indicate the commonly used methods and indicators, and identify the most comprehensive pathways that have been published to date. Our results indicate that there is a need for more scenarios toward the full set of SDGs, using a wider range of underlying narratives.
Technical Summary
Quantitative goal-seeking scenario studies could help to explore the needed systems' transformations to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development by identifying enabling conditions and accounting for the synergies and trade-offs between the SDGs. Given that the SDGs were adopted some time ago, here, we review the existing global scenario literature to determine what it can offer in this context. We found only a few scenarios that address a large set of SDGs, while many more deal with specific clusters of 2–6 SDGs. We identified the most frequent clusters and compared the results of the most comprehensive sustainable development scenarios. The latter is complicated because of the diversity of methods, indicators, and assumptions used. Therefore, we suggest that an effort is needed to develop a wider set of scenarios that would achieve multiple SDGs, using a more standardized framework of targets and indicators.
Social Media Summary
This study reviews the current global pathways toward the SDGs and shows the need for a broader set of SDG scenarios
Probing Microsecond Time Scale Dynamics in Proteins by Methyl 1H Carr−Purcell−Meiboom−Gill Relaxation Dispersion NMR Measurements. Application to Activation of the Signaling Protein NtrCr
To study microsecond processes by relaxation dispersion NMR spectroscopy, low power deposition and short pulses are crucial and encourage the development of experiments that employ H-1 Carr-Purcell-Meiboom-Gill (CPMG) pulse trains. Herein, a method is described for the comprehensive study of microsecond to millisecond time scale dynamics of methyl groups in proteins, exploiting their high abundance and favorable relaxation properties. In our approach, protein samples are produced using [H-1, C-13]-D-glucose in similar to 100% D2O, which yields CHD2 methyl groups for alanine, valine, threonine, isoleucine, leucine, and methionine residues with high abundance, in an otherwise largely deuterated background. Methyl groups in such samples can be sequence-specifically assigned to near completion, using C-13 TOCSY NMR spectroscopy, as was recently demonstrated (Often, R.; et al. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2010, 132, 2952-2960). In this Article, NMR pulse schemes are presented to measure H-1 CPMG relaxation dispersion profiles for CHD2 methyl groups, in a vein similar to that of backbone relaxation experiments. Because of the high deuteration level of methyl-bearing side chains, artifacts arising from proton scalar coupling during the CPMG pulse train are negligible, with the exception of Ile-delta 1 and Thr-gamma 2 methyl groups, and a pulse scheme is described to remove the artifacts for those residues. Strong C-13 scalar coupling effects, observed for several leucine residues, are removed by alternative biochemical and NMR approaches. The methodology is applied to the transcriptional activator NtrC(r), for which an inactive/active state transition was previously measured and the motions in the microsecond time range were estimated through a combination of backbone N-15 CPMG dispersion NMR spectroscopy and a collection of experiments to determine the exchange-free component to the transverse relaxation rate. Exchange contributions to the H-1 line width were detected for 21 methyl groups, and these probes were found to collectively report on a local structural rearrangement around the phosphorylation site, with a rate constant of (15.5 +/- 0.5) x 10(3) per second (i.e., tau(ex) = 64.7 +/- 1.9 mu s). The affected methyl groups indicate that, already before phosphorylation, a substantial, transient rearrangement takes place between helices 3 and 4 and strands 4 and 5. This conformational equilibrium allows the protein to gain access to the active, signaling state in the absence of covalent modification through a shift in a pre-existing dynamic equilibrium. Moreover, the conformational switching maps exactly to the regions that differ between the solution NMR structures of the fully inactive and active states. These results demonstrate that a cost-effective and quantitative study of protein methyl group dynamics by H-1 CPMG relaxation dispersion NMR spectroscopy is possible and can be applied to study functional motions on the microsecond time scale that cannot be accessed by backbone N-15 relaxation dispersion NMR. The use of methyl groups as dynamics probes extends such applications also to larger proteins
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