59 research outputs found
Identity crisis in pulmonary arterial hypertension
International audiencePulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) shares many hallmarks with cancer. Cancer cells acquire their hallmarks by a pathological Darwinian evolution process built on the so-called cancer cell ''identity crisis.'' Here we demonstrate that PAH shares the most striking features of the cancer identity crisis: the ectopic expression of normally silent tissue-specific genes
Phase mapping of aging process in InN nanostructures: oxygen incorporation and the role of the zincblende phase
Uncapped InN nanostructures undergo a deleterious natural aging process at
ambient conditions by oxygen incorporation. The phases involved in this process
and their localization is mapped by Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM)
related techniques. The parent wurtzite InN (InN-w) phase disappears from the
surface and gradually forms a highly textured cubic layer that completely wraps
up a InN-w nucleus which still remains from original single-crystalline quantum
dots. The good reticular relationships between the different crystals generate
low misfit strains and explain the apparent easiness for phase transformations
at room temperature and pressure conditions, but also disable the classical
methods to identify phases and grains from TEM images. The application of the
geometrical phase algorithm in order to form numerical moire mappings, and RGB
multilayered image reconstructions allows to discern among the different phases
and grains formed inside these nanostructures. Samples aged for shorter times
reveal the presence of metastable InN:O zincblende (zb) volumes, which acts as
the intermediate phase between the initial InN-w and the most stable cubic
In2O3 end phase. These cubic phases are highly twinned with a proportion of
50:50 between both orientations. We suggest that the existence of the
intermediate InN:O-zb phase should be seriously considered to understand the
reason of the widely scattered reported fundamental properties of thought to be
InN-w, as its bandgap or superconductivity.Comment: 18 pages 7 figure
Temperature-induced topological phase transition in HgTe quantum wells
We report a direct observation of temperature-induced topological phase
transition between trivial and topological insulator in HgTe quantum well. By
using a gated Hall bar device, we measure and represent Landau levels in fan
charts at different temperatures and we follow the temperature evolution of a
peculiar pair of "zero-mode" Landau levels, which split from the edge of
electron-like and hole-like subbands. Their crossing at critical magnetic field
is a characteristic of inverted band structure in the quantum well. By
measuring the temperature dependence of , we directly extract the critical
temperature , at which the bulk band-gap vanishes and the topological
phase transition occurs. Above this critical temperature, the opening of a
trivial gap is clearly observed.Comment: 5 pages + Supplemental Materials; Phys. Rev. Lett. (accepted
Temperature-driven single-valley Dirac fermions in HgTe quantum wells
We report on temperature-dependent magnetospectroscopy of two HgTe/CdHgTe
quantum wells below and above the critical well thickness . Our results,
obtained in magnetic fields up to 16 T and temperature range from 2 K to 150 K,
clearly indicate a change of the band-gap energy with temperature. The quantum
well wider than evidences a temperature-driven transition from
topological insulator to semiconductor phases. At the critical temperature of
90 K, the merging of inter- and intra-band transitions in weak magnetic fields
clearly specifies the formation of gapless state, revealing the appearance of
single-valley massless Dirac fermions with velocity of
ms. For both quantum wells, the energies extracted from
experimental data are in good agreement with calculations on the basis of the
8-band Kane Hamiltonian with temperature-dependent parameters.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures and Supplemental Materials (4 pages
Temperature-dependent magnetospectroscopy of HgTe quantum wells
We report on magnetospectroscopy of HgTe quantum wells in magnetic fields up
to 45 T in temperature range from 4.2 K up to 185 K. We observe intra- and
inter-band transitions from zero-mode Landau levels, which split from the
bottom conduction and upper valence subbands, and merge under the applied
magnetic field. To describe experimental results, realistic
temperature-dependent calculations of Landau levels have been performed. We
show that although our samples are topological insulators at low temperatures
only, the signature of such phase persists in optical transitions at high
temperatures and high magnetic fields. Our results demonstrate that
temperature-dependent magnetospectroscopy is a powerful tool to discriminate
trivial and topological insulator phases in HgTe quantum wells
Massless Dirac fermions in III-V semiconductor quantum wells
We report on the clear evidence of massless Dirac fermions in two-dimensional
system based on III-V semiconductors. Using a gated Hall bar made on a
three-layer InAs/GaSb/InAs quantum well, we restore the Landau levels fan chart
by magnetotransport and unequivocally demonstrate a gapless state in our
sample. Measurements of cyclotron resonance at different electron
concentrations directly indicate a linear band crossing at the point
of Brillouin zone. Analysis of experimental data within analytical Dirac-like
Hamiltonian allows us not only determing velocity m/s of
massless Dirac fermions but also demonstrating significant non-linear
dispersion at high energies.Comment: Main text and Supplemental Materials, 14 pages, 9 figure
FFAT motif phosphorylation controls formation and lipid transfer function of interâorganelle contacts
Organelles are physically connected in membrane contact sites. The endoplasmic reticulum possesses three major receptors, VAPâA, VAPâB, and MOSPD2, which interact with proteins at the surface of other organelles to build contacts. VAPâA, VAPâB, and MOSPD2 contain an MSP domain, which binds a motif named FFAT (two phenylalanines in an acidic tract). In this study, we identified a nonâconventional FFAT motif where a conserved acidic residue is replaced by a serine/threonine. We show that phosphorylation of this serine/threonine is critical for nonâconventional FFAT motifs (named PhosphoâFFAT) to be recognized by the MSP domain. Moreover, structural analyses of the MSP domain alone or in complex with conventional and PhosphoâFFAT peptides revealed new mechanisms of interaction. Based on these new insights, we produced a novel prediction algorithm, which expands the repertoire of candidate proteins with a PhosphoâFFAT that are able to create membrane contact sites. Using a prototypical tethering complex made by STARD3 and VAP, we showed that phosphorylation is instrumental for the formation of ERâendosome contacts, and their sterol transfer function. This study reveals that phosphorylation acts as a general switch for interâorganelle contacts
Natural Nuclear Reactor Oklo and Variation of Fundamental Constants Part 1: Computation of Neutronics of Fresh Core
Using modern methods of reactor physics we have performed full-scale
calculations of the natural reactor Oklo. For reliability we have used recent
version of two Monte Carlo codes: Russian code MCU REA and world wide known
code MCNP (USA). Both codes produce similar results. We have constructed a
computer model of the reactor Oklo zone RZ2 which takes into account all
details of design and composition. The calculations were performed for three
fresh cores with different uranium contents. Multiplication factors,
reactivities and neutron fluxes were calculated. We have estimated also the
temperature and void effects for the fresh core. As would be expected, we have
found for the fresh core a significant difference between reactor and Maxwell
spectra, which was used before for averaging cross sections in the Oklo
reactor. The averaged cross section of Sm-149 and its dependence on the shift
of resonance position (due to variation of fundamental constants) are
significantly different from previous results.
Contrary to results of some previous papers we find no evidence for the
change of the fine structure constant in the past and obtain new, most accurate
limits on its variation with time:
-4 10^{-17}year^{-1} < d alpha/dt/alpha < 3 10^{-17} year^{-1}
A further improvement in the accuracy of the limits can be achieved by taking
account of the core burnup. These calculations are in progress.Comment: 25 pages, 14 figures, 12 tables, minor corrections, typos correcte
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