25,479 research outputs found
Apparatus enables automatic microanalysis of body fluids
Apparatus will automatically and quantitatively determine body fluid constituents which are amenable to analysis by fluorometry or colorimetry. The results of the tests are displayed as percentages of full scale deflection on a strip-chart recorder. The apparatus can also be adapted for microanalysis of various other fluids
Facile syntheses of building blocks for the construction of phosphotyrosine mimetics
The copper-catalysed zinc phosphonate chemistry described by Yokomatsu and Shibuya can be used to enter the classical organometallic coupling repertoire via Stille and SuzukiâMiyaura couplings. 1,4-Diiodobenzene underwent coupling with the organozinc reagent derived from diethyl bromodifluoromethylphosphonate with copper(I) catalysis to afford diethyl (4-iodophenyl)difluoromethylphosphonate. Higher yielding couplings were run with (4-trifluoromethylsulfonyloxy)- and (4-nonafluorobutylsulfonyloxy)-iodobenzenes. The iodide and the triflate coupled under palladium-catalysed conditions with a range of stannanes and boronic acids in moderate to excellent yields. ShibuyaâYokomatsu couplings were also successful with more functionalised iodoarenes and heteroarenes presenting the important phosphate mimic on a range of scaffolds
Controlled Nanoparticle Formation by Diffusion Limited Coalescence
Polymeric nanoparticles (NPs) have a great application potential in science
and technology. Their functionality strongly depends on their size. We present
a theory for the size of NPs formed by precipitation of polymers into a bad
solvent in the presence of a stabilizing surfactant. The analytical theory is
based upon diffusion-limited coalescence kinetics of the polymers.
Two relevant time scales, a mixing and a coalescence time, are identified and
their ratio is shown to determine the final NP diameter. The size is found to
scale in a universal manner and is predominantly sensitive to the mixing time
and the polymer concentration if the surfactant concentration is sufficiently
high. The model predictions are in good agreement with experimental data. Hence
the theory provides a solid framework for tailoring nanoparticles with a priori
determined size.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
In vivo whole-cell recording from morphologically identified mouse superior colliculus neurons
In vivo whole-cell recording when combined with morphological
characterization after biocytin labeling is a powerful technique to study
subthreshold synaptic processing in cell-type-identified neuronal populations.
Here, we provide a step-by-step procedure for performing whole-cell recordings
in the superior colliculus of urethane-anesthetized mice, a major visual
processing region in the rodent brain. Two types of visual stimulation methods
are described. While we focus on superior colliculus neurons, this protocol is
applicable to other brain areas.Comment: 29 pages including 4 figure
Astrometric Discovery of GJ 164B
We discovered a low-mass companion to the M-dwarf GJ 164 with the CCD-based
imaging system of the Stellar Planet Survey (STEPS) astrometric program. The
existence of GJ 164B was confirmed with Hubble Space Telescope NICMOS imaging
observations. A high-dispersion spectral observation in V sets a lower limit of
delta m> 2.2 mag between the two components of the system. Based upon our
parallax value of 0.082 +/- 0.008, we derive the following orbital parameters:
P = 2.04 +/- 0.03 y, a = 1.03 +/- 0.03 AU, and Mtotal = 0.265 +/- 0.020 MSun.
The component masses are MA = 0.170 +/- 0.015 MSun and MB = 0.095 +/- 0.015
MSun. Based on its mass, colors, and spectral properties, GJ 164B has spectral
type M6-8 V.Comment: pdf file 14 pages with 6 fig
Prospects for Redshifted 21-cm observations of quasar HII regions
The introduction of low-frequency radio arrays over the coming decade is
expected to revolutionize the study of the reionization epoch. Observation of
the contrast in redshifted 21cm emission between a large HII region and the
surrounding neutral IGM will be the simplest and most easily interpreted
signature. We find that an instrument like the planned Mileura Widefield Array
Low-Frequency Demonstrator (LFD) will be able to obtain good signal to noise on
HII regions around the most luminous quasars, and determine some gross
geometric properties, e.g. whether the HII region is spherical or conical. A
hypothetical follow-up instrument with 10 times the collecting area of the LFD
(MWA-5000) will be capable of mapping the detailed geometry of HII regions,
while SKA will be capable of detecting very narrow spectral features as well as
the sharpness of the HII region boundary. The MWA-5000 will discover
serendipitous HII regions in widefield observations. We estimate the number of
HII regions which are expected to be generated by quasars. Assuming a late
reionization at z~6 we find that there should be several tens of quasar HII
regions larger than 4Mpc at z~6-8 per field of view. Identification of HII
regions in forthcoming 21cm surveys can guide a search for bright galaxies in
the middle of these regions. Most of the discovered galaxies would be the
massive hosts of dormant quasars that left behind fossil HII cavities that
persisted long after the quasar emission ended, owing to the long recombination
time of intergalactic hydrogen. A snap-shot survey of candidate HII regions
selected in redshifted 21cm image cubes may prove to be the most efficient
method for finding very high redshift quasars and galaxies.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures. Submitted to Ap
Improved Moving Puncture Gauge Conditions for Compact Binary Evolutions
Robust gauge conditions are critically important to the stability and
accuracy of numerical relativity (NR) simulations involving compact objects.
Most of the NR community use the highly robust---though
decade-old---moving-puncture (MP) gauge conditions for such simulations. It has
been argued that in binary black hole (BBH) evolutions adopting this gauge,
noise generated near adaptive-mesh-refinement (AMR) boundaries does not
converge away cleanly with increasing resolution, severely limiting
gravitational waveform accuracy at computationally feasible resolutions. We
link this noise to a sharp (short-wavelength), initial outgoing gauge wave
crossing into progressively lower resolution AMR grids, and present
improvements to the standard MP gauge conditions that focus on stretching,
smoothing, and more rapidly settling this outgoing wave. Our best gauge choice
greatly reduces gravitational waveform noise during inspiral, yielding less
fluctuation in convergence order and lower waveform phase and
amplitude errors at typical resolutions. Noise in other physical quantities of
interest is also reduced, and constraint violations drop by more than an order
of magnitude. We expect these improvements will carry over to simulations of
all types of compact binary systems, as well as other +1 formulations of
gravity for which MP-like gauge conditions can be chosen.Comment: 25 pages, 16 figures, 2 tables. Matches published versio
An all-optical buffer based on temporal cavity solitons operating at 10 Gb/s
We demonstrate the operation of an all-optical buffer based on temporal
cavity solitons stored in a nonlinear passive fiber ring resonator. Unwanted
acoustic interactions between neighboring solitons are suppressed by modulating
the phase of the external laser driving the cavity. A new locking scheme is
presented that allows the buffer to operate with an arbitrarily large number of
cavity solitons in the loop. Experimentally, we are able to demonstrate the
storage of 4536 bits of data, written all-optically into the fiber ring at 10
Gb/s, for 1 minute.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Acoustic characterization of crack damage evolution in sandstone deformed under conventional and true triaxial loading
We thank the Associate Editor, Michelle Cooke, and the reviewers, Ze'ev Reches and Yves Guéguen, for useful comments which helped to improve the manuscript. We thank J.G. Van Munster for providing access to the true triaxial apparatus at KSEPL and for technical support during the experimental program. We thank R. Pricci for assistance with technical drawings of the apparatus. This work was partly funded by NERC award NE/N002938/1 and by a NERC Doctoral Studentship, which we gratefully acknowledge. Supporting data are included in a supporting information file; any additional data may be obtained from J.B. (e-mail: [email protected]).Peer reviewedPublisher PD
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