2,219 research outputs found
Adsorption and desorption of hydrogen at nonpolar GaN(1-100) surfaces: Kinetics and impact on surface vibrational and electronic properties
The adsorption of hydrogen at nonpolar GaN(1-100) surfaces and its impact on
the electronic and vibrational properties is investigated using surface
electron spectroscopy in combination with density functional theory (DFT)
calculations. For the surface mediated dissociation of H2 and the subsequent
adsorption of H, an energy barrier of 0.55 eV has to be overcome. The
calculated kinetic surface phase diagram indicates that the reaction is
kinetically hindered at low pressures and low temperatures. At higher
temperatures ab-initio thermodynamics show, that the H-free surface is
energetically favored. To validate these theoretical predictions experiments at
room temperature and under ultrahigh vacuum conditions were performed. They
reveal that molecular hydrogen does not dissociatively adsorb at the GaN(1-100)
surface. Only activated atomic hydrogen atoms attach to the surface. At
temperatures above 820 K, the attached hydrogen gets desorbed. The adsorbed
hydrogen atoms saturate the dangling bonds of the gallium and nitrogen surface
atoms and result in an inversion of the Ga-N surface dimer buckling. The
signatures of the Ga-H and N-H vibrational modes on the H-covered surface have
experimentally been identified and are in good agreement with the DFT
calculations of the surface phonon modes. Both theory and experiment show that
H adsorption results in a removal of occupied and unoccupied intragap electron
states of the clean GaN(1-100) surface and a reduction of the surface upward
band bending by 0.4 eV. The latter mechanism largely reduces surface electron
depletion
Stem cells and fluid flow drive cyst formation in an invertebrate excretory organ.
Cystic kidney diseases (CKDs) affect millions of people worldwide. The defining pathological features are fluid-filled cysts developing from nephric tubules due to defective flow sensing, cell proliferation and differentiation. The underlying molecular mechanisms, however, remain poorly understood, and the derived excretory systems of established invertebrate models (Caenorhabditis elegans and Drosophila melanogaster) are unsuitable to model CKDs. Systematic structure/function comparisons revealed that the combination of ultrafiltration and flow-associated filtrate modification that is central to CKD etiology is remarkably conserved between the planarian excretory system and the vertebrate nephron. Consistently, both RNA-mediated genetic interference (RNAi) of planarian orthologues of human CKD genes and inhibition of tubule flow led to tubular cystogenesis that share many features with vertebrate CKDs, suggesting deep mechanistic conservation. Our results demonstrate a common evolutionary origin of animal excretory systems and establish planarians as a novel and experimentally accessible invertebrate model for the study of human kidney pathologies
Vortices on Hyperbolic Surfaces
It is shown that abelian Higgs vortices on a hyperbolic surface can be
constructed geometrically from holomorphic maps , where is also
a hyperbolic surface. The fields depend on and on the metrics of and
. The vortex centres are the ramification points, where the derivative of
vanishes. The magnitude of the Higgs field measures the extent to which
is locally an isometry.
Witten's construction of vortices on the hyperbolic plane is rederived, and
new examples of vortices on compact surfaces and on hyperbolic surfaces of
revolution are obtained. The interpretation of these solutions as
SO(3)-invariant, self-dual SU(2) Yang--Mills fields on is also given.Comment: Revised version: new section on four-dimensional interpretation of
hyperbolic vortices added
S-adenosyl-L-methionine: (S)-scoulerine 9-O-methyltransferase, a highly stereo- and regio-specific enzyme in tetrahydroprotoberberine biosynthesis
Suspension cultures of Berberis species are useful sources for the detection and isolation of a new enzyme which transfers the methyl group from S-adenosyl-L-methionine specifically to the 9-position of the (S)-enantiomer of scoulerine, producing (S)-tetrahydrocolumbamine. The enzyme was enriched 27-fold; it is not particle bound, has a pH optimum of 8.9, a molecular weight of 63 000 and shows a high degree of substrate specificity
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