1,535 research outputs found
Quartz crystal microbalance use in biological studies
Design, development, and applications of quartz crystal microbalance are discussed. Two types of crystals are used. One serves as reference and other senses changes in mass. Specific application to study of bacterial spores is described
Power assignment problems in wireless communication
A fundamental class of problems in wireless communication is concerned with the assignment of suitable transmission powers to wireless devices/stations such that the resulting communication graph satisfies certain desired properties and the overall energy consumed is minimized. Many concrete communication tasks in a wireless network like broadcast, multicast, point-to-point routing, creation of a communication backbone, etc. can be regarded as such a power assignment problem. This paper considers several problems of that kind; for example one problem studied before in (Vittorio Bil{\`o} et al: Geometric Clustering to Minimize the Sum of Cluster Sizes, ESA 2005) and (Helmut Alt et al.: Minimum-cost coverage of point sets by disks, SCG 2006) aims to select and assign powers to of the stations such that all other stations are within reach of at least one of the selected stations. We improve the running time for obtaining a -approximate solution for this problem from as reported by Bil{\`o} et al. (see Vittorio Bil{\`o} et al: Geometric Clustering to Minimize the Sum of Cluster Sizes, ESA 2005) to that is, we obtain a running time that is \emph{linear} in the network size. Further results include a constant approximation algorithm for the TSP problem under squared (non-metric!) edge costs, which can be employed to implement a novel data aggregation protocol, as well as efficient schemes to perform -hop multicasts
Time dependence of Bragg forward scattering and self-seeding of hard x-ray free-electron lasers
Free-electron lasers (FELs) can now generate temporally short, high power
x-ray pulses of unprecedented brightness, even though their longitudinal
coherence is relatively poor. The longitudinal coherence can be potentially
improved by employing narrow bandwidth x-ray crystal optics, in which case one
must also understand how the crystal affects the field profile in time and
space. We frame the dynamical theory of x-ray diffraction as a set of coupled
waves in order to derive analytic expressions for the spatiotemporal response
of Bragg scattering from temporally short incident pulses. We compute the
profiles of both the reflected and forward scattered x-ray pulses, showing that
the time delay of the wave is linked to its transverse spatial shift
through the simple relationship , where
is the grazing angle of incidence to the diffracting planes. Finally,
we apply our findings to obtain an analytic description of Bragg forward
scattering relevant to monochromatically seed hard x-ray FELs.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure
QCD matter within a quasi-particle model and the critical end point
We compare our quasi-particle model with recent lattice QCD results for the
equation of state at finite temperature and baryo-chemical potential. The
inclusion of the QCD critical end point into models is discussed. We propose a
family of equations of state to be employed in hydrodynamical calculations of
particle spectra at RHIC energies and compare with the differential azimuthal
anisotropy of strange and charm hadrons.Comment: talk at Quark Matter 2005, August 4 - 9, 2005, Budapest, Hungar
Heavy Flavor Probes of Quark Matter
A brief survey of the role of heavy flavors as a probe of the state of matter
produced by high energy heavy ion collisions is presented. Specific examples
include energy loss, initial state gluon saturation, thermalization and flow.
The formation of quarkonium bound states from interactions in which multiple
heavy quark-antiquark pairs are initially produced is examined in general.
Results from statistical hadronization and kinetic models are summarized. New
predictions from the kinetic model for J/Psi at RHIC are presented.Comment: Based on invited plenary talk at Strange Quark Matter 2004, Cape
Town, South Africa, September 15-20, 2004, references completed, published in
J. Phys. G: Nucl. Part. Phys. 31 (2005) S641-S64
K*(892)0 Production in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 130 GeV
Preliminary results on the K*(892)0 -> pi + K production using the
mixed-event technique are presented. The measurements are performed at
mid-rapidity by the STAR detector in sqrt(s_NN) = 130 GeV Au-Au collisions at
RHIC. The K*0 to negative hadron, kaon and phi ratios are obtained and compared
to the measurements in e+e-, pp and pbarp at various energies.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, proceedings of Strange Quarks in Matter
(SQM2001), Frankfurt am Main, Germany, to be published in J. Phys.
"Killing them softly" … challenges in the Bacillus subtilis spore inactivation by plasma sterilization
The elimination of bacterial endospores is absolutely essential in numerous fields, ranging from hospital hygiene, the food processing industry, all the way to the space industry. A major goal of space exploration is the search for signatures of life forms and biomolecules on other planetary bodies and moons in our solar system. The transfer of microorganisms or biomolecules of terrestrial origin to critical areas of exploration is of particular risk to impact the development and integrity of life-detection missions.1 Plasma sterilization is a promising alternative to conventional sterilization methods for spaceflight purposes. Due to their extraordinary resistance properties, spores of the Gram-positive bacterium Bacillus subtilis are used as biological indicators for decontamination studies to identify the relevant mechanism that leads to the rapid bacterial inactivation.1,3 Here, we present novel insights into the key factors involved in spore inactivation by low pressure plasma sterilization using a double inductively-coupled plasma reactor. (2,4)
In order to standardize the assessment of inactivation efficiencies by plasma discharges, an electrically driven spray deposition device was developed, allowing fast, reproducible, and homogeneous preparation of B. subtilis spore monolayers. We demonstrate that plasma discharges caused significant physical damage to spore surface structures as visualized by atomic force microscopy. A systematic analysis of B. subtilis spores lacking individual coat and crust layers - the first barrier to environmental influences – revealed the coat to be one of the contributing factors in the spore resistance to plasma sterilization. (2-4)
Furthermore, we identified spore-specific and general protection mechanisms and DNA repair pathways during spore germination and outgrowth after plasma treatment, leading to a better understanding of the complex molecular mechanisms involved in the inactivation by plasma sterilization processes
Nuclear suppression of heavy quark production at forward rapidities in relativistic heavy ion collisions
We calculate nuclear suppression of heavy quarks produced from the
initial fusion of partons in nucleus-nucleus collisions at RHIC and LHC
energies. We take the shadowing as well as the energy loss suffered by them
while passing through Quark Gluon Plasma into account. We obtain results for
charm and bottom quarks at several rapidities using different mechanisms for
energy loss, to see if we can distinguish between them.Comment: 21 pages including 13 figures. To appear in J. Phys.
Heavy-Quark Spectra at RHIC and Resonances in the QGP
Thermalization and collective flow of charm (c) and bottom (b) quarks are
evaluated from elastic parton scattering via "D"- and "B"-meson resonances in
an expanding, strongly interacting quark-gluon plasma at RHIC. Pertinent drag
and diffusion coefficients are implemented into a relativistic Langevin
simulation to compute transverse-momentum spectra and azimuthal flow
asymmetries (v_2) of c- and b-quarks. Upon hadronization (including coalescence
and fragmentation) and semileptonic D- and B-decays, the resulting electron
spectra (R_{AA} and v_2) are compared to recent RHIC data.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, proceedings for Quark Matter 2005; v2:
Acknowledgment adde
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