81,888 research outputs found
Phonon-phason coupling in icosahedral quasicrystals
From relaxation simulations of decoration-based quasicrystal structure models
using microscopically based interatomic pair potentials, we have calculated the
(usually neglected) phonon-phason coupling constant. Its sign is opposite for
the two alloys studied, i-AlMn and i-(Al,Cu)Li; a dimensionless measure of its
magnitude relative to the phonon and phason elastic constants is of order 1/10,
suggesting its effects are small but detectable. We also give a criterion for
when phonon-phason effects are noticeable in diffuse tails of Bragg peaks.Comment: 7 pages, LaTeX, uses Europhys Lett macros (included
A rapid staining-assisted wood sampling method for PCR-based detection of pine wood nematode Bursaphelenchus xylophilus in Pinus massoniana wood tissue
For reasons of unequal distribution of more than one nematode species in wood, and limited
availability of wood samples required for the PCR-based method for detecting pinewood nematodes in
wood tissue of Pinus massoniana, a rapid staining-assisted wood sampling method aiding PCR-based
detection of the pine wood nematode Bursaphelenchus xylophilus (Bx) in small wood samples of P.
massoniana was developed in this study. This comprised a series of new techniques: sampling, mass
estimations of nematodes using staining techniques, and lowest limit Bx nematode mass determination
for PCR detection. The procedure was undertaken on three adjoining 5-mg wood cross-sections, of
0.5 · 0.5 · 0.015 cm dimension, that were cut from a wood sample of 0.5 · 0.5 · 0.5 cm initially, then
the larger wood sample was stained by acid fuchsin, from which two 5-mg wood cross-sections (that
adjoined the three 5-mg wood cross-sections, mentioned above) were cut. Nematode-staining-spots
(NSSs) in each of the two stained sections were counted under a microscope at 100· magnification. If
there were eight or more NSSs present, the adjoining three sections were used for PCR assays. The
B. xylophilus – specific amplicon of 403 bp (DQ855275) was generated by PCR assay from 100.00% of
5-mg wood cross-sections that contained more than eight Bx NSSs by the PCR assay. The entire
sampling procedure took only 10 min indicating that it is suitable for the fast estimation of nematode
numbers in the wood of P. massonina as the prelimary sample selections for other more expensive
Bx-detection methods such as PCR assay
Polarizing primordial gravitational waves by parity violation
We study primordial gravitational waves (PGWs) in the Horava-Lifshitz (HL)
theory of quantum gravity, in which high-order spatial derivative operators,
including the ones violating parity, generically appear in order for the theory
to be power-counting renormalizable and ultraviolet (UV) complete. Because of
both parity violation and non-adiabatic evolution of the modes due to a
modified dispersion relationship, a large polarization of PGWs becomes
possible, and it could be well within the range of detection of the BB, TB and
EB power spectra of the forthcoming cosmic microwave background (CMB)
observations.Comment: revtex4, 3 figures. Phys. Rev. D87, 103512 (2013
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