Notes on the Diatom Cylindrotheca gracilis (Breh. ex Kutz) Grun: Its Ecology and Distribution

The diatom Cylindrotheca gracilis (Breb. ex Kutz) Grun., considered by some as a Brackish water species, was found as a massive growth in isolated pools along Dugout Creek, Dickinson County, Iowa. Chemical analyses show the water to be high in S04, Mg., Ca., and low in Cl ions. Comparative data from other waters in the United States containing this species shows similar pattern of high conductivity suggesting that factors other than chlorides might be more critical for growth. United States distribution for this diatom includes: Maryland (brackish water), Ohio (fresh water) and Iowa (fresh water)

Some Thoughts about the Conservation of Scanning Electron Microscopic Preparations of Diatoms in a Museum Repository

The Scanning electron microscope (SEM) is now an indispensable tool for the study and the description of diatoms. Many new species have been described from SEM preparations and problems now arise with the preservation of designated types and other comparative material. Moisture contributes to the deterioration of diatom stubs. Special care must be taken to store stubs in vacuum desiccators in order to keep heavy metal coatings from peeling from the siliceous surfaces of diatoms. One alternative is to mount the designated type on a coverglass so that it can be inverted, mounted in Hyrax and preserved indefinitely for light microscopic observation. It is recommended that additional prepared slides and dried material be deposited in a museum repository, along with the designated type, so that it may be used for future SEM study

The H.E.S.S. multi-messenger program

Based on fundamental particle physics processes like the production and subsequent decay of pions in interactions of high-energy particles, close connections exist between the acceleration sites of high-energy cosmic rays and the emission of high-energy gamma rays and high-energy neutrinos. In most cases these connections provide both spatial and temporal correlations of the different emitted particles. The combination of the complementary information provided by these messengers allows to lift ambiguities in the interpretation of the data and enables novel and highly sensitive analyses. In this contribution the H.E.S.S. multi-messenger program is introduced and described. The current core of this newly installed program is the combination of high-energy neutrinos and high-energy gamma rays. The search for gamma-ray emission following gravitational wave triggers is also discussed. Furthermore, the existing program for following triggers in the electromagnetic regime was extended by the search for gamma-ray emission from Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs). An overview over current and planned analyses is given and recent results are presented.Comment: In Proceedings of the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2015), The Hague, The Netherland

Tuning the exciton g-factor in single InAs/InP quantum dots

Photoluminescence data from single, self-assembled InAs/InP quantum dots in magnetic fields up to 7 T are presented. Exciton g-factors are obtained for dots of varying height, corresponding to ground state emission energies ranging from 780 meV to 1100 meV. A monotonic increase of the g-factor from -2 to +1.2 is observed as the dot height decreases. The trend is well reproduced by sp3 tight binding calculations, which show that the hole g-factor is sensitive to confinement effects through orbital angular momentum mixing between the light-hole and heavy-hole valence bands. We demonstrate tunability of the exciton g-factor by manipulating the quantum dot dimensions using pyramidal InP nanotemplates

Fermi-LAT limits on the γ-ray opacity of the Universe

The Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) has provided us with a rich sample of extragalactic sources, among which γ-ray blazars with redshift up to z ∼ 3 and Gamma-Ray Bursts with redshift up to z ∼ 4.3, that we have used to probe the interaction via pair production of γ-ray photons above 10GeV with low-energy photons from the Extragalactic Background Light (EBL). The EBL from the infrared to the ultraviolet is difficult to measure directly, but can be constrained with a variety of methods. In this paper we report the method applied to evaluate the EBL attenuation of γ-ray fluxes by comparing the measured energy spectrum of the source and the unabsorbed spectrum above 10 GeV. We place upper limits on the γ-ray opacity of the Universe at various energies and redshifts, and compare this with predictions from well-known EBL models. We find that EBL intensities at optical-UV wavelengths as large as those predicted by the “baseline” and “fast evolution” models can be ruled out with high confidence. The ensuing upper limits to the EBL opacity are presented

The Origin of the Extragalactic Gamma-Ray Background and Implications for Dark-Matter Annihilation

The origin of the extragalactic $\gamma$-ray background (EGB) has been debated for some time. { The EGB comprises the $\gamma$-ray emission from resolved and unresolved extragalactic sources, such as blazars, star-forming galaxies and radio galaxies, as well as radiation from truly diffuse processes.} This letter focuses on the blazar source class, the most numerous detected population, and presents an updated luminosity function and spectral energy distribution model consistent with the blazar observations performed by the {\it Fermi} Large Area Telescope (LAT). We show that blazars account for 50$^{+12}_{-11}$\,\% of the EGB photons ($>$0.1\,GeV), and that {\it Fermi}-LAT has already resolved $\sim$70\,\% of this contribution. Blazars, and in particular low-luminosity hard-spectrum nearby sources like BL Lacs, are responsible for most of the EGB emission above 100\,GeV. We find that the extragalactic background light, which attenuates blazars' high-energy emission, is responsible for the high-energy cut-off observed in the EGB spectrum. Finally, we show that blazars, star-forming galaxies and radio galaxies can naturally account for the amplitude and spectral shape of the background in the 0.1--820\,GeV range, leaving only modest room for other contributions. This allows us to set competitive constraints on the dark-matter annihilation cross section.Comment: On behalf of the Fermi-LAT collaboration. Contact authors: M. Ajello, D. Gasparrini, M. Sanchez-Conde, G. Zaharijas, M. Gustafsson. Accepted for publication on ApJ

Selective nitrogen adsorption via backbonding in a metal-organic framework with exposed vanadium sites.

Industrial processes prominently feature π-acidic gases, and an adsorbent capable of selectively interacting with these molecules could enable important chemical separations1-4. Biological systems use accessible, reducing metal centres to bind and activate weakly π-acidic species, such as N2, through backbonding interactions5-7, and incorporating analogous moieties into a porous material should give rise to a similar adsorption mechanism for these gaseous substrates8. Here, we report a metal-organic framework featuring exposed vanadium(II) centres capable of back-donating electron density to weak π acids to successfully target π acidity for separation applications. This adsorption mechanism, together with a high concentration of available adsorption sites, results in record N2 capacities and selectivities for the removal of N2 from mixtures with CH4, while further enabling olefin/paraffin separations at elevated temperatures. Ultimately, incorporating such π-basic metal centres into porous materials offers a handle for capturing and activating key molecular species within next-generation adsorbents

Parton energy loss limits and shadowing in Drell-Yan dimuon production

A precise measurement of the ratios of the Drell-Yan cross section per nucleon for an 800 GeV/c proton beam incident on Be, Fe and W targets is reported. The behavior of the Drell-Yan ratios at small target parton momentum fraction is well described by an existing fit to the shadowing observed in deep-inelastic scattering. The cross section ratios as a function of the incident parton momentum fraction set tight limits on the energy loss of quarks passing through a cold nucleus