Ti-TiOx-Pt Metal-Oxide-Metal Diodes Fabricated via a Simple Oxidation Technique

This work presents the successful production, via a simple oxidation process, of Ti-TiOx-Pt Metal-Oxide-Metal diodes with excellent electrical asymmetry. TEM analysis has been used to verify the oxide thickness. A thicker layer produces better diodes, although they are of a less uniform nature. The conduction mechanism in these diodes is still under investigation

ppGpp negatively impacts ribosome assembly affecting growth and antimicrobial tolerance in Gram-positive bacteria

The stringent response is a survival mechanism used by bacteria to deal with stress. It is coordinated by the nucleotides guanosine tetraphosphate and pentaphosphate [(p)ppGpp], which interact with target proteins to promote bacterial survival. Although this response has been well characterized in proteobacteria, very little is known about the effectors of this signaling system in Gram-positive species. Here, we report on the identification of seven target proteins for the stringent response nucleotides in the Gram-positive bacterium Staphylococcus aureus. We demonstrate that the GTP synthesis enzymes HprT and Gmk bind with a high affinity, leading to an inhibition of GTP production. In addition, we identified five putative GTPases—RsgA, RbgA, Era, HflX, and ObgE—as (p)ppGpp target proteins. We show that RsgA, RbgA, Era, and HflX are functional GTPases and that their activity is promoted in the presence of ribosomes but strongly inhibited by the stringent response nucleotides. By characterizing the function of RsgA in vivo, we ascertain that this protein is involved in ribosome assembly, with an rsgA deletion strain, or a strain inactivated for GTPase activity, displaying decreased growth, a decrease in the amount of mature 70S ribosomes, and an increased level of tolerance to antimicrobials. We additionally demonstrate that the interaction of ppGpp with cellular GTPases is not unique to the staphylococci, as homologs from Bacillus subtilis and Enterococcus faecalis retain this ability. Taken together, this study reveals ribosome inactivation as a previously unidentified mechanism through which the stringent response functions in Gram-positive bacteria

The static and dynamic response of SU-8 electrothermal microgrippers of varying thickness

This work presents an investigation into the effect on dynamic response of SU-8 microgrippers due to varying thickness, and subsequent validation via COMSOL Multiphysics simulations and thermal camera profiling during actuation. The tweezer-like microgrippers can easily manipulate, with a high degree of control, cells and particles with diameters as small as 10 μm, without using an impractical operating voltage or generating excessive heat. However, in order to fully exploit the versatility of the devices, their response characteristics must be fully understood as material and/or dimension parameters change. Therefore an investigation took place to determine the effects of device thickness on functionality of the device, including the drive current required to actuate the gripper and the speed of actuation. Furthermore, an infrared camera was used to characterise the thermal response of the device. Finally, a simulation of the temperature profile and deflection dimension has been developed in order to verify the findings and further investigate and predict the effects of design variations

Recent Developments in Few-Nucleon Systems

N-d elastic scattering is studied at different energies using one of the modern NN interactions, the Argonne v_{18} which explicitly includes the magnetic moment interaction between two nucleons. This interaction, which has been often neglected in the description of the few-nucleon continuum, produces sizable modifications in some elastic observables. Its effects, as well as those produced by the Coulomb potential, are analyzed as a function of energy. The magnetic moment interaction produces appreciable effects in $p-d$ scattering at low energies butthey are very small above 10 MeV. Above 65 MeV Coulomb effects can be observed only in specific observables as for example $T_{21}$.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, invited talk at the 17th International IUPAP Conference on Few-Body problems in Physics, June 5-10, 2003, Durham (USA

A grid-enabled problem solving environment for parallel computational engineering design

This paper describes the development and application of a piece of engineering software that provides a problem solving environment (PSE) capable of launching, and interfacing with, computational jobs executing on remote resources on a computational grid. In particular it is demonstrated how a complex, serial, engineering optimisation code may be efficiently parallelised, grid-enabled and embedded within a PSE. The environment is highly flexible, allowing remote users from different sites to collaborate, and permitting computational tasks to be executed in parallel across multiple grid resources, each of which may be a parallel architecture. A full working prototype has been built and successfully applied to a computationally demanding engineering optimisation problem. This particular problem stems from elastohydrodynamic lubrication and involves optimising the computational model for a lubricant based on the match between simulation results and experimentally observed data

Nanoparticles of palladium supported on bacterial biomass : new re-usable heterogeneous catalyst with comparable activity to homogeneous colloidal Pd in the Heck reaction

AbstractThe Heck coupling of iodobenzene with ethyl acrylate or styrene was used to assess the catalytic properties of biogenic nanoparticles of palladium supported upon the surface of bacterial biomass (bioPd), this approach combining advantages of both homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts. The biomaterial was comparably active or superior to colloidal Pd in the Heck reaction, giving a final conversion of 85% halide and initial rate of 0.17mmol/min for the coupling of styrene and iodobenzene compared to a final conversion of 70% and initial rate of 0.15mmol/min for a colloidal Pd catalyst under the same reaction conditions at 0.5mol.% catalyst loading. It was easily separated from the products under gravity or by filtration for reuse with low loss or agglomeration. When compared to two alternative palladium catalysts, commercial 5% Pd/C and tetraalkylammonium-stabilised palladium clusters, the bioPd was successfully reused in six sequential alkylations with only slight decreases in the rate of reaction as compared to virgin catalyst (initial rate normalised for g Pd decreased by 5% by the 6th run with bioPd catalyst cf. a decrease of 95% for Pd/C). A re-usable Pd-catalyst made cheaply from bacteria left over from other processes would impact on both conservation of primary sources via reduced metal losses in industrial application and the large environmental demand of primary processing from ores

Genetic determinants of cellular addiction to DNA polymerase theta

Polymerase theta (Pol θ, gene name Polq) is a widely conserved DNA polymerase that mediates a microhomology-mediated, error-prone, double strand break (DSB) repair pathway, referred to as Theta Mediated End Joining (TMEJ). Cells with homologous recombination deficiency are reliant on TMEJ for DSB repair. It is unknown whether deficiencies in other components of the DNA damage response (DDR) also result in Pol θ addiction. Here we use a CRISPR genetic screen to uncover 140 Polq synthetic lethal (PolqSL) genes, the majority of which were previously unknown. Functional analyses indicate that Pol θ/TMEJ addiction is associated with increased levels of replication-associated DSBs, regardless of the initial source of damage. We further demonstrate that approximately 30% of TCGA breast cancers have genetic alterations in PolqSL genes and exhibit genomic scars of Pol θ/TMEJ hyperactivity, thereby substantially expanding the subset of human cancers for which Pol θ inhibition represents a promising therapeutic strategy

Dark Matter signals from Draco and Willman 1: Prospects for MAGIC II and CTA

The next generation of ground-based Imaging Air Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) will play an important role in indirect dark matter searches. In this article, we consider two particularly promising candidate sources for dark matter annihilation signals, the nearby dwarf galaxies Draco and Willman 1, and study the prospects of detecting such a signal for the soon-operating MAGIC II telescope system as well as for the planned installation of CTA, taking special care of describing the experimental features that affect the detectional prospects. For the first time in such a study, we fully take into account the effect of internal bremsstrahlung, which has recently been shown to considerably enhance, in some cases, the gamma-ray flux at the high energies where Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes operate, thus leading to significantly harder annihilation spectra than traditionally considered. While the detection of the spectral features introduced by internal bremsstrahlung would constitute a smoking gun signature for dark matter annihilation, we find that for most models the overall flux still remains at a level that will be challenging to detect unless one adopts rather (though by no means overly) optimistic astrophysical assumptions about the distribution of dark matter in the dwarfs.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, minor changes, matches the published version (JCAP

Electromagnetic Probes

A review is presented of dilepton and real photon measurements in relativistic heavy ion collisions over a very broad energy range from the low energies of the BEVALAC up to the highest energies available at RHIC. The dileptons cover the invariant mass range \mll = 0 - 2.5 GeV/c$^2$, i.e. the continuum at low and intermediate masses and the light vector mesons, $\rho, \omega, \phi$. The review includes also measurements of the light vector mesons in elementary reactions.Comment: To be published in Landolt-Boernstein Volume 1-23A; 40 pages, 24 figures. Final version updated with small changes to the text, updated references and updated figure