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An Activity-Based Nanosensor for Traumatic Brain Injury.
Currently, traumatic brain injury (TBI) is detected by medical imaging; however, medical imaging requires expensive capital equipment, is time- and resource-intensive, and is poor at predicting patient prognosis. To date, direct measurement of elevated protease activity has yet to be utilized to detect TBI. In this work, we engineered an activity-based nanosensor for TBI (TBI-ABN) that responds to increased protease activity initiated after brain injury. We establish that a calcium-sensitive protease, calpain-1, is active in the injured brain hours within injury. We then optimize the molecular weight of a nanoscale polymeric carrier to infiltrate into the injured brain tissue with minimal renal filtration. A calpain-1 substrate that generates a fluorescent signal upon cleavage was attached to this nanoscale polymeric carrier to generate an engineered TBI-ABN. When applied intravenously to a mouse model of TBI, our engineered sensor is observed to locally activate in the injured brain tissue. This TBI-ABN is the first demonstration of a sensor that responds to protease activity to detect TBI
Orientational Melting in Carbon Nanotube Ropes
Using Monte Carlo simulations, we investigate the possibility of an
orientational melting transition within a "rope" of (10,10) carbon nanotubes.
When twisting nanotubes bundle up during the synthesis, orientational
dislocations or twistons arise from the competition between the anisotropic
inter-tube interactions, which tend to align neighboring tubes, and the torsion
rigidity that tends to keep individual tubes straight. We map the energetics of
a rope containing twistons onto a lattice gas model and find that the onset of
a free "diffusion" of twistons, corresponding to orientational melting, occurs
at T_OM > 160 K.Comment: 4 page LaTeX file with 3 figures (10 PostScript files
Charge and Orbital Ordering and Spin State Transition Driven by Structural Distortion in YBaCo_2O_5
We have investigated electronic structures of antiferromagnetic YBaCo_2O_5
using the local spin-density approximation (LSDA) + U method. The charge and
orbital ordered insulating ground state is correctly obtained with the strong
on-site Coulomb interaction. Co^{2+} and Co^{3+} ions are found to be in the
high spin (HS) and intermediate spin (IS) state, respectively. It is considered
that the tetragonal to orthorhombic structural transition is responsible for
the ordering phenomena and the spin states of Co ions. The large contribution
of the orbital moment to the total magnetic moment indicates that the
spin-orbit coupling is also important in YBaCo_2O_5.Comment: 4 pages including 4 figures, Submitted to Phys. Rev. Let
Area spectra versus entropy spectra in black holes in topologically massive gravity
We consider the area and entropy spectra of black holes in topologically
massive gravity with gravitational Chern-Simons term. The examples we consider
are the BTZ black hole and the warped AdS black hole. For the non-rotating BTZ
black hole, the area and entropy spectra are equally spaced and independent of
the coupling constant \v of the Chern-Simons term. For the rotating BTZ black
hole case, the spectra of the inner and outer horizon areas are not equally
spaced in general and dependent of the coupling constant \v. However the
entropy spectrum is equally spaced and independent of the coupling constant
\v. For the warped AdS black holes for by using the quasinormal modes
obtained without imposing the boundary condition at radial infinity we find
again that the entropy spectrum is equally spaced and independent of the
coupling constant \v, while the spectra of the inner and outer horizon areas
are not equally spaced and dependent of the coupling constant \v. Our result
implies that the entropy spectrum has a universal behavior regardless of the
presence of the gravitational Chern-Simons term, and therefore it implies that
the entropy is more `fundamental' than the horizon area.Comment: 16 page
Metrological characterization of the pulsed Rb clock with optical detection
We report on the implementation and the metrological characterization of a
vapor-cell Rb frequency standard working in pulsed regime. The three main parts
that compose the clock, physics package, optics and electronics, are described
in detail in the paper. The prototype is designed and optimized to detect the
clock transition in the optical domain. Specifically, the reference atomic
transition, excited with a Ramsey scheme, is detected by observing the
interference pattern on a laser absorption signal.
\ The metrological analysis includes the observation and characterization of
the clock signal and the measurement of frequency stability and drift. In terms
of Allan deviation, the measured frequency stability results as low as
, being the averaging time, and
reaches the value of few units of for s, an
unprecedent achievement for a vapor cell clock. We discuss in the paper the
physical effects leading to this result with particular care to laser and
microwave noises transferred to the clock signal. The frequency drift, probably
related to the temperature, stays below per day, and no evidence of
flicker floor is observed.
\ We also mention some possible improvements that in principle would lead to
a clock stability below the level at 1 s and to a drift of few units
of per day
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