The Influence of Short-Range Correlation on the Phonon Confinement of a Single ZnO Nanowire

Abstract Plenty of researches have been performed to probe the diverse properties of ZnO nanowires, but only a few have focused on the physical properties of a single nanowire since to analyze the optical confinement and their correlation lengths along a single nanowire is difficult. In this study, a single ZnO nanowire was synthesized using a Ti-assisted chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method to avoid the appearance of catalytic contamination. Confocal Raman spectroscopy is a powerful tool for probing the phonon confinement effect in a single ZnO nanowire. A confinement model was used to calculate the correlation lengths along the growth direction. The Raman mapping of ZnO nanowires was obtained by a confocal Raman spectrometer. A phonon confinement model was used to fit the Raman curves of the E2 mode and to obtain the correlation lengths along the growth direction of the ZnO nanowire. The correlation lengths are related to the phonon confined region by boundaries and/or defects

Proteresis of Core-Shell Nanocrystals: Investigation through Theoretical Simulation and Experimental Analysis

A study of proteresis (inverted hysteresis) in core-shell nanocrystals is presented. A core-shell anisotropic energy (CSAE) model is established to describe the observed proteretic behavior in Ni/NiO core-shell nanocrystals. The magnetic compositions of core-shell nanocrystals can be selected for ferromagnetic, antiferromagnetic, or paramagnetic materials where the exchange intercoupling between them results in both a large effective anisotropic energy and intercoupling energy. Simulation of the magnetization of core-shell nanocrystals reveals the existence of an exchange in the intercoupling energy between the interface of the core and shell moments that, surprisingly, is tuneable in both hysteresis and proteresis. Observations have shown a distinct proteresis, which is related to the spin-flip and exchange intercoupling energy between Ni and NiO. Our approach shows that the processing-dependent technology plays an important role when the grain size decreases to the order of nanometers and when the magnets are reduced from the single domain to core-shell domain. Integrated studies of process-dependent, theoretical modeling and core-shell nanocrystal fabrication technology will lead to more encouraging development in the overunity industry

Nitric oxide accelerates mycorrhizal effects on plant growth and root development of trifoliate orange

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) actively colonize plant roots and thus enhance plant growth through different mechanisms. In the present study, trifoliate orange (Poncirus trifoliata) seedlings inoculated with Diversispora versiformis were subjected to 0 and 0.2 mmol/L sodium nitroprusside (SNP, a nitric oxide donor) treatments. After eight weeks, exogenous SNP considerably increased root mycorrhizal colonization by 25%, showing a positive stimulating effect of NO on mycorrhizal formation. Mycorrhizal inoculation significantly increased plant growth performance (height, stem diameter, leaf number and shoot and root dry weight) and root traits (length, projected area, surface area, volume and number of 2nd and 3rd order lateral roots) than non-mycorrhizal treatment and NO (exogenous SNP treatment) heavily strengthened the mycorrhizal effects. Moreover, NO and mycorrhization induced more fine root (0-0.5 cm) formation. There was an opposite changed trend in root sucrose and leaf and root glucose contents by SNP in AMF versus non-AMF seedlings. All these results implied that NO plays important roles in mycorrhizal formation and development and also accelerates mycorrhizal effects on plant growth and root development of trifoliate orange

A Negative Feedback Regulation of Replanted Soil Microorganisms on Plant Growth and Soil Properties of Peach

Replant disease is one of the main growth limiting factors, interfering with plant growth and yield of stone fruit trees such as peach trees. The ecological feedback mechanisms by replanted soil microbes regulating peach growth and soil structure are rarely known. In our study, rhizosphere soils collected from 18-year-old peach trees were used to plant new peach seedlings, and all soil microbes (R) and soil microbes with the size of < 100 μm (R<100) and < 40 μm (R<40) were applied into peach rhizosphere. After 90 days of microbial inoculation, compared with no microbe treatment (R0), the treatments such as R, R<40, and R<100 reduced plant growth performance (biomass, leaf number, plant height, and stem diameter) and root morphology (total length, projected area, surface area, diameter, and volume), with treatment R being the most inhibition of all other treatments. Similar response of treatment R was observed on changes in concentrations of chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, and carotenoid. Interestingly, compared with R0 treatment, R<100 treatment produced a significant increase in glomalin-related soil protein (GRSP), percentage of water-stable aggregates in size of 0.25-0.5 mm, soil polyphenol oxidase activities and soil catalase activities. However, R treatment dramatically decreased the percentage of water-stable aggregates in size of 2-4 mm and soil peroxidase activities. Our results suggested that replanted soil microbes, especially with the size of < 100 μm, played a strong negative role on plant growth and rhizosphere biology of peach

Analysis on multi-domain cooperation for predicting protein-protein interactions

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Domains are the basic functional units of proteins. It is believed that protein-protein interactions are realized through domain interactions. Revealing multi-domain cooperation can provide deep insights into the essential mechanism of protein-protein interactions at the domain level and be further exploited to improve the accuracy of protein interaction prediction.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In this paper, we aim to identify cooperative domains for protein interactions by extending two-domain interactions to multi-domain interactions. Based on the high-throughput experimental data from multiple organisms with different reliabilities, the interactions of domains were inferred by a Linear Programming algorithm with Multi-domain pairs (LPM) and an Association Probabilistic Method with Multi-domain pairs (APMM). Experimental results demonstrate that our approach not only can find cooperative domains effectively but also has a higher accuracy for predicting protein interaction than the existing methods. Cooperative domains, including strongly cooperative domains and superdomains, were detected from major interaction databases MIPS and DIP, and many of them were verified by physical interactions from the crystal structures of protein complexes in PDB which provide intuitive evidences for such cooperation. Comparison experiments in terms of protein/domain interaction prediction justified the benefit of considering multi-domain cooperation.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>From the computational viewpoint, this paper gives a general framework to predict protein interactions in a more accurate manner by considering the information of both multi-domains and multiple organisms, which can also be applied to identify cooperative domains, to reconstruct large complexes and further to annotate functions of domains. Supplementary information and software are provided in <url>http://intelligent.eic.osaka-sandai.ac.jp/chenen/MDCinfer.htm</url> and <url>http://zhangroup.aporc.org/bioinfo/MDCinfer</url>.</p

Mechanical cooling at the bistable regime of a dissipative optomechanical cavity with a Kerr medium

In this paper, we study static bistability and mechanical cooling of a dissipative optomechanical cavity filled with a Kerr medium. The system exhibits optical bistability for a wide input-power range with the power threshold being greatly reduced, in contrast to the case of purely dissipative coupling. At the bistable regime, the membrane can be effectively cooled down to a few millikelvin from the room temperature under the unresolved sideband condition, where the effective mechanical temperature is a nonmonotonic function of intracavity intensity and reaches its minimum near the turning point of the upper stable branch. When the system is in the cryogenics environment, the effective mechanical temperature at the bistable regime shows a similar feature as in the room temperature case, but the optimal cooling appears at the monostable regime and approaches the mechanical ground state. Our results are of interest for further understanding bistable optomechanical systems, which have many applications in nonclassical state preparations and quantum information processing.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure

catena-Poly[[[diaqua­diformato­cobalt(II)]-μ-1,4-bis­(1H-benzimidazol-1-yl)benzene] dihydrate]

In the title coordination polymer, {[Co(CHO2)2(C20H14N4)(H2O)2]·2H2O}n, the CoII atom (site symmetry ) is coordinated by two formate O atoms, two water O atoms and two N atoms from two 1,4-bis­(1H-benzimidazol-1-yl)benzene ligands (L), resulting in a distorted trans-CoN2O4 octa­hedral coordin­ation environment. The complete L ligand is generated by crystallographic inversion symmetry and serves to bridge the cobalt ions into a chain propagating in [1 ]. The dihedral angle between the central benzene ring and the imidazole ring system is 38.48 (12)°. O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds involving both the coordinated and uncoordinated water mol­ecules occur and help to link the chains together

Voltammetric Behavior of o-Nitrophenol and Damage to DNA

The electrochemical behavior of o-nitrophenol was studied in detail with a glassy carbon electrode (GCE). The dependence of peak potential on pH indicated that equivalent electrons and protons were involved in the process of o-nitrophenol reduction. The interaction of o-nitrophenol with calf thymus DNA was investigated by adding DNA to the o-nitrophenol solution and by immobilizing DNA on GCE, respectively. The peak current decrement and peak potential shift in presence of DNA indicated that o-nitrophenol could interact with DNA. The result was demonstrated that the in situ DNA damage was detected by differential pulse voltammetry after the o-nitrophenol was electrochemically reduced