Measurement of Activity of Peroxidase Isoenzymes in Flax (\u3cem\u3eLinum usitatissimum\u3c/em\u3e)

Peroxidase isoenzynles may be separated on acrylamide gels and then detected by supplying the substrate in an appropriate reaction system. One such system frequently used contains guaiacol as the hydrogen donor, although this compound has certain drawbacks. Ways of circumventing these drawbacks are suggested, so that quantitative estimates of the activity of individual peroxidase isoenzymes may be obtained

Guiding chemical pulses through geometry: Y-junctions

We study computationally and experimentally the propagation of chemical pulses in complex geometries.The reaction of interest, CO oxidation, takes place on single crystal Pt(110) surfaces that are microlithographically patterned; they are also addressable through a focused laser beam, manipulated through galvanometer mirrors, capable of locally altering the crystal temperature and thus affecting pulse propagation. We focus on sudden changes in the domain shape (corners in a Y-junction geometry) that can affect the pulse dynamics; we also show how brief, localized temperature perturbations can be used to control reactive pulse propagation.The computational results are corroborated through experimental studies in which the pulses are visualized using Reflection Anisotropy Microscopy.Comment: submitted to Phys. Rev.

Spin-Coupled Local Distortions in Multiferroic Hexagonal HoMnO3

Local structural measurements have been performed on hexagonal HoMnO3 in order to ascertain the specific changes in bond distances which accompany magnetic ordering transitions. The transition from paramagnetic to the antiferromagetic (noncollinear) phase near ~70 K is dominated by changes in the a-b plane Mn-Mn bond distances. The spin rotation transition near ~40 K involves both Mn-Mn and nearest neighbor Ho-Mn interactions while the low temperature transition below 10 K involves all interactions, Mn-Mn, Ho-Mn (nearest and next nearest) and Ho-Ho correlations. These changes in bond distances reveal strong spin-lattice coupling. The similarity in magnitude of the change in J(Mn-Mn) and J(Ho-Mn) enhances the system frustration. The structural changes are interpreted in terms of a model of competing spin order and local structural distortions. Density functional calculations are used to estimate the energies associated with ionic displacements. The calculations also reveal asymmetric polarization of the charge density of Ho, O3 and O4 sites along the z-axis in the ferroelectric phase. This polarization facilitates coupling between Ho atoms on neighboring planes normal to the z-axis.Comment: 8 figure

Pressure effects on charge, spin, and metal-insulator transitions in narrow bandwidth manganite Pr1−x_{1-x}Cax_{x}MnO3_{3}

Pressure effects on the charge and spin states and the relation between the ferromagnetic and metallic states were explored on the small bandwidth manganite Pr$_{1-x}$Ca$_{x}$MnO$_{3}$ (x = 0.25, 0.3, 0.35). Under pressure, the charge ordering state is suppressed and a ferromagnetic metallic state is induced in all three samples. The metal-insulator transition temperature (T$_{MI}$) increases with pressure below a critical point P*, above which T$_{MI}$ decreases and the material becomes insulating as at the ambient pressure. The e$_{g}$ electron bandwidth and/or band-filling mediate the pressure effects on the metal-insulator transition and the magnetic transition. In the small bandwidth and low doping concentration compound (x = 0.25), the T$_{MI}$ and Curie temperature (T$_{C}$) change with pressure in a reverse way and do not couple under pressure. In the x = 0.3 compound, the relation of T$_{MI}$ and T$_{C}$ shows a critical behavior: They are coupled in the range of $\sim$0.8-5 GPa and decoupled outside of this range. In the x = 0.35 compound, T$_{MI}$ and T$_{C}$ are coupled in the measured pressure range where a ferromagnetic state is present

Influence of propulsion system size, shape, and location on supersonic aircraft design

The effects of various propulsion system parameters on the characteristics of a supersonic transport were investigated. The effects of arbitrarily scaling engine size on wave drag, friction drag, drag-due-to-lift, wing sizing, airplane balance, and airplane weight were studied. These evaluations were made for two families of nacelle shapes, resulting from typical turbojet and turbofan installations. Also examined were effects of nacelle location, and the wing camber plane deformations required to cancel the nacelle interference pressure field at cruise Mach number (2.7 M) were determined. The most drag-sensitive parameter is found to be nacelle shape. Similarly, wing deformation requirements are found to be primarily affected by nacelle shape. Effects of engine size variations are noted primarily in airplane gross weight

Searching For Integrated Sachs-Wolfe Effect Beyond Temperature Anisotropies: CMB E-mode Polarization-Galaxy Cross Correlation

The cross-correlation between cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropies and the large scale structure (LSS) traced by the galaxy distribution, or sources at different wavelengths, is now well known. This correlation results from the integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) effect in CMB anisotropies generated at late times due to the dark energy component of the Universe. In a reionized universe, the ISW quadrupole rescatters and contributes to the large-scale polarization signal. Thus, in principle, the large-scale polarization bump in the E-mode should also be correlated with the galaxy distribution. Unlike CMB temperature-LSS correlation that peaks for tracers at low redshifts this correlation peaks mostly at redshifts between 1 and 3. Under certain conditions, mostly involving a low optical depth to reionization, if the Universe reionized at a redshift around 6, the cross polarization-source signal is marginally detectable, though challenging as it requires all-sky maps of the large scale structure at redshifts between 1 and 3. If the Universe reionized at a redshift higher than 10, it is unlikely that this correlation will be detectable even with no instrumental noise all-sky maps. While our estimates do not guarantee a detection unknown physics related to the dark energy as well as still uncertain issues related to the large angular scale CMB and polarization anisotropies may motivate attempts to measure this correlation using upcoming CMB polarization E-mode maps.Comment: 13 pages; 3 figure panels, JCAP submitte

Localized Gradual Photomediated Brightness and Lifetime Increase of Superacid Treated Monolayer MoS2_2

Monolayer semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides (S-TMDs) have been extensively studied as materials for next-generation optoelectronic devices due to their direct band gap and high exciton binding energy at room temperature. Under a superacid treatment of bis(trifluoromethane)sulfonimide (TFSI), sulfur-based TMDs such as MoS$_2$ can emit strong photoluminescence (PL) with photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) approaching unity. However, the magnitude of PL enhancement varies by more than two orders of magnitude in published reports. A major culprit behind the discrepancy is sulfur-based TMD's sensitivity to above band-gap photostimulation. Here, we present a detailed study of how TFSI-treated MoS$_2$ reacts to photostimulation with increasing PL occurring hours after constant or pulsed laser exposure. The PL of TFSI-treated MoS$_2$ is enhanced up to 74 times its initial intensity after 5 hours of continuous exposure to 532nm laser light. Photostimulation also enhances the PL of untreated MoS$_2$ but with a much smaller enhancement. Caution should be taken when probing MoS$_2$ PL spectra as above-bandgap light can alter the resulting intensity and peak wavelength of the emission over time. The presence of air is verified to play a key role in the photostimulated enhancement effect. Additionally, the rise of PL intensity is mirrored by an increase in measured carrier lifetime of up to ~400ps consistent with the suppression of non-radiative pathways. This work demonstrates why variations in PL intensity are observed across samples and provides an understanding of the changes in carrier lifetimes to better engineer next-generation optoelectronic devices.Comment: Main document: 15 pages, 4 figures. Supplemental document: 12 pages, 7 figure

Towards Precision LSST Weak-Lensing Measurement - I: Impacts of Atmospheric Turbulence and Optical Aberration

The weak-lensing science of the LSST project drives the need to carefully model and separate the instrumental artifacts from the intrinsic lensing signal. The dominant source of the systematics for all ground based telescopes is the spatial correlation of the PSF modulated by both atmospheric turbulence and optical aberrations. In this paper, we present a full FOV simulation of the LSST images by modeling both the atmosphere and the telescope optics with the most current data for the telescope specifications and the environment. To simulate the effects of atmospheric turbulence, we generated six-layer phase screens with the parameters estimated from the on-site measurements. For the optics, we combined the ray-tracing tool ZEMAX and our simulated focal plane data to introduce realistic aberrations and focal plane height fluctuations. Although this expected flatness deviation for LSST is small compared with that of other existing cameras, the fast f-ratio of the LSST optics makes this focal plane flatness variation and the resulting PSF discontinuities across the CCD boundaries significant challenges in our removal of the systematics. We resolve this complication by performing PCA CCD-by-CCD, and interpolating the basis functions using conventional polynomials. We demonstrate that this PSF correction scheme reduces the residual PSF ellipticity correlation below 10^-7 over the cosmologically interesting scale. From a null test using HST/UDF galaxy images without input shear, we verify that the amplitude of the galaxy ellipticity correlation function, after the PSF correction, is consistent with the shot noise set by the finite number of objects. Therefore, we conclude that the current optical design and specification for the accuracy in the focal plane assembly are sufficient to enable the control of the PSF systematics required for weak-lensing science with the LSST.Comment: Accepted to PASP. High-resolution version is available at http://dls.physics.ucdavis.edu/~mkjee/LSST_weak_lensing_simulation.pd

Temporal variability and statistics of the Strehl ratio in adaptive-optics images

We have investigated the temporal variability and statistics of the "instantaneous" Strehl ratio. The observations were carried out with the 3.63-m AEOS telescope equipped with a high-order adaptive optics system. In this paper Strehl ratio is defined as the peak intensity of a single short exposure. We have also studied the behaviour of the phase variance computed on the reconstructed wavefronts. We tested the Marechal approximation and used it to explain the observed negative skewness of the Strehl ratio distribution. The estimate of the phase variance is shown to fit a three-parameter Gamma distribution model. We show that simple scaling of the reconstructed wavefronts has a large impact on the shape of the Strehl ratio distribution.Comment: submitted to PAS