1,929 research outputs found
Extended x-ray absorption fine structure study of porous GaSb formed by ion implantation
Porous GaSb has been formed by Ga ion implantation into crystalline GaSb substrates at either room temperature or â180 °C. The morphology has been characterized using scanning electron microscopy and the atomic structure was determined using extended x-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy. Room-temperature implantation at low fluences leads to the formation of âŒ20-nm voids though the material remains crystalline. Higher fluences cause the microstructure to evolve into a network of amorphous GaSb rods âŒ15 nm in diameter. In contrast, implantation at â180 °C generates large, elongated voids but no rods. Upon exposure to air, the surface of the porous material is readily oxidized yielding GaâOâ and metallic Sb precipitates, the latter resulting from the reduction of unstable SbâOâ. We consider and discuss the atomic-scale mechanisms potentially operative during the concurrent crystalline-to-amorphous and continuous-to-porous transformations
Results of oral TRH test in the differentiation of compensated and decompensated autonomous thyroid nodules
Formation and structural characterization of Ni nanoparticles embedded in SiOâ
Face-centered cubic Ni nanoparticles were formed in SiOâ by ion implantation and thermal annealing. Small-angle x-ray scattering in conjunction with transmission electron microscopy was used to determine the nanoparticle size as a function of annealing temperature, whereas the local atomic structure was measured with x-ray absorption spectroscopy. The influence of finite-size effects on the nanoparticle structural properties was readily apparent and included a decrease in coordination number and bond length and an increase in structural disorder for decreasing nanoparticle size. Such results are consistent with the non-negligible surface-to-volume ratio characteristic of nanoparticles. In addition, temperature-dependent x-ray absorption spectroscopy measurements showed the mean vibrational frequency (as obtained from the Einstein temperature) decreased with decreasing nanoparticle size. This reduction was attributed to the greater influence of the loosely bound, under-coordinated surface atoms prevailing over the effects of capillary pressure, the former enhancing the low frequency modes of the vibrational density of statesThis work was financially supported by the Australian
Synchrotron and the Australian Research Council with access to equipment provided by the Australian Nanofabrication
Facility
Measurement of pharmacokinetic parameters in histologically graded invasive breast tumours using dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI
Dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) has demonstrated high sensitivity for detection of breast cancer. Analysis of correlation between quantitative DCE-MRI findings and prognostic factors (such as histological tumour grade) is
important for defining the role of this technique in the diagnosis of breast cancer as well as the monitoring of neoadjuvant therapies. This paper presents a practical clinical application of a quantitative pharmacokinetic model to study histologically confirmed and graded invasive human breast tumours. The hypothesis is that, given a
documented difference in capillary permeability between benign and malignant breast tumours, a relationship between permeability-related DCE-MRI parameters and tumour
aggressiveness persists within invasive breast carcinomas. In addition, it was hypothesized that pharmacokinetic parameters may demonstrate stronger correlation with prognostic factors than the more conventional black-box techniques, so a comparison was undertaken. Significant correlations were found between pharmacokinetic and black-box parameters in 59 invasive breast carcinomas. However,
statistically significant variation with tumour grade was demonstrated in only two permeability-related pharmacokinetic parameters: kep (p,0.05) and Ktrans (p,0.05), using one-way analysis of variance. Parameters kep and Ktrans were significantly higher in Grade 3 tumours than in low-grade tumours. None of the measured DCE-MRI parameters varied significantly between Grade 1 and Grade 2 tumours. Measurement of kep and Ktrans might therefore be used to monitor the effectiveness of neoadjuvant
treatment of high-grade invasive breast carcinomas, but is unlikely to demonstrate remission in low-grade tumours
Identification of roots from grass swards using PCR-RFLP and FFLP of the plastid trnL (UAA) intron
BACKGROUND: The specific associations between plant roots and the soil microbial community are key to understanding nutrient cycling in grasslands, but grass roots can be difficult to identify using morphology alone. A molecular technique to identify plant species from root DNA would greatly facilitate investigations of the root rhizosphere. RESULTS: We show that trnL PCR product length heterogeneity and a maximum of two restriction digests can separate 14 common grassland species. The RFLP key was used to identify root fragments at least to genus level in a field study of upland grassland community diversity. Roots which could not be matched to known types were putatively identified by comparison of the nuclear ribosomal ITS sequence to the GenBank database. Ten taxa were identified among almost 600 root fragments. Additionally, we have employed capillary electrophoresis of fluorescent trnL PCR products (fluorescent fragment length polymorphism, FFLP) to discriminate all taxa identified at the field site. CONCLUSION: We have developed a molecular database for the identification of some common grassland species based on PCR-RFLP of the plastid transfer RNA leucine (trnL) UAA gene intron. This technique will allow fine-scale studies of the rhizosphere, where root identification by morphology is unrealistic and high throughput is desirable
Formation of diluted IIIâV nitride thin films by N ion implantation
iluted IIIâNââVâËâ alloys were successfully synthesized by nitrogen implantation into GaAs,InP, and AlyGa1âyAs. In all three cases the fundamental band-gap energy for the ion beam synthesized IIIâNââVâËâ alloys was found to decrease with increasing N implantation dose in a manner similar to that observed in epitaxially grownGaNâAs1âx and InNâPâËâalloys. In GaNâAsâËâ the highest value of x (fraction of âactiveâ substitutional N on As sublattice) achieved was 0.006. It was observed that NAs is thermally unstable at temperatures higher than 850â°C. The highest value of x achieved in InNâPâËâ was higher, 0.012, and the NP was found to be stable to at least 850â°C. In addition, the N activation efficiency in implantedInNâPâËâ was at least a factor of 2 higher than that in GaNâAsâËâ under similar processing conditions. AlyGa1âyNâAsâËâ had not been made previously by epitaxial techniques. N implantation was successful in producing AlyGa1âyNâAsâËâalloys. Notably, the band gap of these alloys remains direct, even above the value of y (y>0.44) where the band gap of the host material is indirect.This work was supported by the ââPhotovoltaic Materials
Focus Areaââ in the DOE Center of Excellence for the Synthesis
and Processing of Advanced Materials, Office of Science,
Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials
Sciences under U.S. Department of Energy Contract No. DE-ACO3-76SF00098. The work at UCSD was partially supported
by Midwest Research Institute under subcontractor
No. AAD-9-18668-7 from NREL
Slowly Rotating Non-Abelian Black Holes
It is shown that the well-known non-Abelian static SU(2) black hole solutions
have rotating generalizations, provided that the hypothesis of linearization
stability is accepted. Surprisingly, this rotating branch has an asymptotically
Abelian gauge field with an electric charge that cannot vanish, although the
non-rotating limit is uncharged. We argue that this may be related to our
second finding, namely that there are no globally regular slowly rotating
excitations of the particle-like Bartnik-McKinnon solutions.Comment: 8 pages, LaTe
Does Good Mutation Help You Live Longer?
We study the dynamics of an age-structured population in which the life
expectancy of an offspring may be mutated with respect to that of its parent.
When advantageous mutation is favored, the average fitness of the population
grows linearly with time , while in the opposite case the average fitness is
constant. For no mutational bias, the average fitness grows as t^{2/3}. The
average age of the population remains finite in all cases and paradoxically is
a decreasing function of the overall population fitness.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, RevTeX revised version, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Let
Static Black Hole Solutions without Rotational Symmetry
We construct static black hole solutions that have no rotational symmetry.
These arise in theories, including the standard electroweak model, that include
charged vector mesons with mass . In such theories, a magnetically
charged Reissner-Nordstrom black hole with horizon radius less than a critical
value of the order of is classically unstable against the development
of a nonzero vector meson field just outside the horizon, indicating the
existence of static black hole solutions with vector meson hair. For the case
of unit magnetic charge, spherically symmetric solutions of this type have
previously been studied. For other values of the magnetic charge, general
arguments show that any new solution with hair cannot be spherically symmetric.
In this paper we develop and apply a perturbative scheme (which may have
applicability in other contexts) for constructing such solutions in the case
where the Reissner-Nordstrom solution is just barely unstable. For a few low
values of the magnetic charge the black holes retain a rotational symmetry
about a single axis, but this axial symmetry disappears for higher charges.
While the vector meson fields vanish exponentially fast at distances greater
than , the magnetic field and the metric have higher multipole
components that decrease only as powers of the distance from the black hole.Comment: 42 pages, phyzzx. 4 figures (PostScript, 1.7 MB when uncompressed)
available by email from the Authors on reques
- âŠ