730 research outputs found

    Characterisation of spin coated engineered <i>Escherichia coli</i> biofilms using atomic force microscopy

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    The ability of biofilms to withstand chemical and physical extremes gives them the potential to be developed as robust biocatalysts. Critical to this issue is their capacity to withstand the physical environment within a bioreactor; in order to assess this capability knowledge of their surface properties and adhesive strength is required. Novel atomic force microscopy experiments conducted under growth conditions (30° C) were used to characterise Escherichia coli biofilms, which were generated by a recently developed spin-coating method onto a poly-L-lysine coated glass substrate. High-resolution topographical images were obtained throughout the course of biofilm development, quantifying the tip-cell interaction force during the 10 day maturation process. Strikingly, the adhesion force between the Si AFM tip and the biofilm surface increased from 0.8 nN to 40 nN within 3 days. This was most likely due to the production of extracellular polymer substance (EPS), over the maturation period, which was also observed by electron microscopy. At later stages of maturation, multiple retraction events were also identified corresponding to biofilm surface features thought to be EPS components. The spin coated biofilms were shown to have stronger surface adhesion than an equivalent conventionally grown biofilm on the same glass substrate

    A Fresh Variational-Analysis Look at the Positive Semidefinite Matrices World

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    International audienceEngineering sciences and applications of mathematics show unambiguously that positive semidefiniteness of matrices is the most important generalization of non-negative real num- bers. This notion of non-negativity for matrices has been well-studied in the literature; it has been the subject of review papers and entire chapters of books. This paper reviews some of the nice, useful properties of positive (semi)definite matrices, and insists in particular on (i) characterizations of positive (semi)definiteness and (ii) the geometrical properties of the set of positive semidefinite matrices. Some properties that turn out to be less well-known have here a special treatment. The use of these properties in optimization, as well as various references to applications, are spread all the way through. The "raison d'être" of this paper is essentially pedagogical; it adopts the viewpoint of variational analysis, shedding new light on the topic. Important, fruitful, and subtle, the positive semidefinite world is a good place to start with this domain of applied mathematics

    Measurement of the azimuthal anisotropy of Y(1S) and Y(2S) mesons in PbPb collisions at √S^{S}NN = 5.02 TeV

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    The second-order Fourier coefficients (υ2_{2}) characterizing the azimuthal distributions of Υ(1S) and Υ(2S) mesons produced in PbPb collisions at sNN\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 5.02 TeV are studied. The Υmesons are reconstructed in their dimuon decay channel, as measured by the CMS detector. The collected data set corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 1.7 nb1^{-1}. The scalar product method is used to extract the υ2_{2} coefficients of the azimuthal distributions. Results are reported for the rapidity range |y| < 2.4, in the transverse momentum interval 0 < pT_{T} < 50 GeV/c, and in three centrality ranges of 10–30%, 30–50% and 50–90%. In contrast to the J/ψ mesons, the measured υ2_{2} values for the Υ mesons are found to be consistent with zero

    Production of Λ⁺c_{c} baryons in proton-proton and lead-lead collisions at √S^{S}NN = 5.02 TeV

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    Search for MSSM Higgs bosons decaying to μ⁺μ⁻ in proton-proton collisions at √s = 13 TeV

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    Search for light pseudoscalar boson pairs produced from decays of the 125 GeV Higgs boson in final states with two muons and two nearby tracks in pp collisions at √s = 13 TeV

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    Measurement of prompt D0^{0} and D\overline{D}0^{0} meson azimuthal anisotropy and search for strong electric fields in PbPb collisions at root SNN\sqrt{S_{NN}} = 5.02 TeV

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    The strong Coulomb field created in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions is expected to produce a rapiditydependent difference (Av2) in the second Fourier coefficient of the azimuthal distribution (elliptic flow, v2) between D0 (uc) and D0 (uc) mesons. Motivated by the search for evidence of this field, the CMS detector at the LHC is used to perform the first measurement of Av2. The rapidity-averaged value is found to be (Av2) = 0.001 ? 0.001 (stat)? 0.003 (syst) in PbPb collisions at ?sNN = 5.02 TeV. In addition, the influence of the collision geometry is explored by measuring the D0 and D0mesons v2 and triangular flow coefficient (v3) as functions of rapidity, transverse momentum (pT), and event centrality (a measure of the overlap of the two Pb nuclei). A clear centrality dependence of prompt D0 meson v2 values is observed, while the v3 is largely independent of centrality. These trends are consistent with expectations of flow driven by the initial-state geometry. ? 2021 The Author. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY licens

    Search for Higgs and Z boson decays to J/ψ or Y pairs in the four-muon final state in proton-proton collisions at √s = 13 TeV

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