Host range, purification, and genetic variability in Sweet potato chlorotic fleck virus

Sweet potato chlorotic fleck virus (SPCFV) has recently been classified as a putative new member of the genus Carlavirus (family Flexiviridae) on the basis of its molecular properties. In this study, SPCFV was characterized in terms of host range, physical and biological characteristics, and genetic variability. In addition to sweet potato, SPCFV infected some plant species in the families Convolvulaceae, Chenopodiaceae, and Solanaceae. Limited numbers of virus particles were observed in the assimilation parenchyma cells of infected plant tissues; some cells had a distorted and enlarged endoplasmic reticulum though without any cytoplasmic and amorphous inclusions. The normal length of SPCFV particles was determined to be approximately 800 nm. In enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays, polyclonal antibodies raised against purified SPCFV virions were able to detect the virus in infected sweet potato and indicator plant tissues. In immunoelectron microscopy, SPCFV particles were all strongly decorated when reacted with homologous antiserum. Comparison of the 3′ terminal part of the genome of a range of geographically diverse isolates revealed a high level of genetic diversity. The amino acid sequence identity in the coat protein and the nucleic acid binding protein ranged from 89 to 99.7% and from 75.9 to 99.2%, respectively. Phylogenetic analysis of both proteins showed a geographically associated clustering into two genogroups

Evidence of slow-light effects from rotary drag of structured beams

Self-pumped slow light, typically observed within laser gain media, is created by an intense pump field. By observing the rotation of a structured laser beam upon transmission through a spinning ruby window, we show that the slowing effect applies equally to both the dark and bright regions of the incident beam. This result is incompatible with slow-light models based on simple pulse-reshaping arising from optical bleaching. Instead, the slow-light effect arises from the long upper-state lifetime of the ruby and a saturation of the absorption, from which the Kramers–Kronig relation gives a highly dispersive phase index and a correspondingly high group index

A compact holographic optical tweezers instrument

Holographic optical tweezers have found many applications including the construction of complex micron-scale 3D structures and the control of tools and probes for position, force, and viscosity measurement. We have developed a compact, stable, holographic optical tweezers instrument which can be easily transported and is compatible with a wide range of microscopy techniques, making it a valuable tool for collaborative research. The instrument measures approximately 30×30×35 cm and is designed around a custom inverted microscope, incorporating a fibre laser operating at 1070 nm. We designed the control software to be easily accessible for the non-specialist, and have further improved its ease of use with a multi-touch iPad interface. A high-speed camera allows multiple trapped objects to be tracked simultaneously. We demonstrate that the compact instrument is stable to 0.5 nm for a 10 s measurement time by plotting the Allan variance of the measured position of a trapped 2 μm silica bead. We also present a range of objects that have been successfully manipulated

Optical trapping at gigapascal pressures

Diamond anvil cells allow the behavior of materials to be studied at pressures up to hundreds of gigapascals in a small and convenient instrument. However, physical access to the sample is impossible once it is pressurized. We show that optical tweezers can be used to hold and manipulate particles in such a cell, confining micron-sized transparent beads in the focus of a laser beam. Here, we use a modified optical tweezers geometry, allowing us to trap through an objective lens with a higher working distance, overcoming the constraints imposed by the limited angular acceptance of the anvil cell. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the technique by measuring water’s viscosity at pressures of up to 1.3 GPa. In contrast to previous viscosity measurements in anvil cells, our technique measures absolute viscosity and does not require scaling to the accepted value at atmospheric pressure. This method could also measure the frequency dependence of viscosity as well as being sensitive to anisotropy in the medium’s viscosity

Efficient Recursion Method for Inverting Overlap Matrix

A new O(N) algorithm based on a recursion method, in which the computational effort is proportional to the number of atoms N, is presented for calculating the inverse of an overlap matrix which is needed in electronic structure calculations with the the non-orthogonal localized basis set. This efficient inverting method can be incorporated in several O(N) methods for diagonalization of a generalized secular equation. By studying convergence properties of the 1-norm of an error matrix for diamond and fcc Al, this method is compared to three other O(N) methods (the divide method, Taylor expansion method, and Hotelling's method) with regard to computational accuracy and efficiency within the density functional theory. The test calculations show that the new method is about one-hundred times faster than the divide method in computational time to achieve the same convergence for both diamond and fcc Al, while the Taylor expansion method and Hotelling's method suffer from numerical instabilities in most cases.Comment: 17 pages and 4 figure

Measurement of the Bs0→J/ψKS0B_s^0\to J/\psi K_S^0 branching fraction

The $B_s^0\to J/\psi K_S^0$ branching fraction is measured in a data sample corresponding to 0.41$fb^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity collected with the LHCb detector at the LHC. This channel is sensitive to the penguin contributions affecting the sin2$\beta$ measurement from $B^0\to J/\psi K_S^0$ The time-integrated branching fraction is measured to be $BF(B_s^0\to J/\psi K_S^0)=(1.83\pm0.28)\times10^{-5}$. This is the most precise measurement to date

Model-independent search for CP violation in D0→K−K+π−π+ and D0→π−π+π+π− decays

A search for CP violation in the phase-space structures of D0 and View the MathML source decays to the final states K−K+π−π+ and π−π+π+π− is presented. The search is carried out with a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.0 fb−1 collected in 2011 by the LHCb experiment in pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV. For the K−K+π−π+ final state, the four-body phase space is divided into 32 bins, each bin with approximately 1800 decays. The p-value under the hypothesis of no CP violation is 9.1%, and in no bin is a CP asymmetry greater than 6.5% observed. The phase space of the π−π+π+π− final state is partitioned into 128 bins, each bin with approximately 2500 decays. The p-value under the hypothesis of no CP violation is 41%, and in no bin is a CP asymmetry greater than 5.5% observed. All results are consistent with the hypothesis of no CP violation at the current sensitivity

Measurement of the CP-violating phase \phi s in Bs->J/\psi\pi+\pi- decays

Measurement of the mixing-induced CP-violating phase phi_s in Bs decays is of prime importance in probing new physics. Here 7421 +/- 105 signal events from the dominantly CP-odd final state J/\psi pi+ pi- are selected in 1/fb of pp collision data collected at sqrt{s} = 7 TeV with the LHCb detector. A time-dependent fit to the data yields a value of phi_s=-0.019^{+0.173+0.004}_{-0.174-0.003} rad, consistent with the Standard Model expectation. No evidence of direct CP violation is found.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures; minor revisions on May 23, 201