Edge states in Open Antiferromagnetic Heisenberg Chains

In this letter we report our results in investigating edge effects of open antiferromagnetic Heisenberg spin chains with spin magnitudes $S=1/2, 1,3/2,2$ using the density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method initiated by White. For integer spin chains, we find that edge states with spin magnitude $S_{edge}=S/2$ exist, in agreement with Valence-Bond-Solid model picture. For half-integer spin chains, we find that no edge states exist for $S=1/2$ spin chain, but edge state exists in $S=3/2$ spin chain with $S_{edge}=1/2$, in agreement with previous conjecture by Ng. Strong finite size effects associated with spin dimmerization in half-integer spin chains will also be discussed.Comment: 4 pages, RevTeX 3.0, 5 figures in a separate uuencoded postscript file. Replaced once to enlarge the acknowlegement

Nanoparticle-stabilized microemulsions for enhanced oil recovery from heterogeneous rocks

Surfactant-stabilized microemulsions (MEs) are often used to reduce the capillary forces responsible for trapping residual oil inside rocks. Recent studies showed that the presence of nanoparticles (NPs) in ME could enhance oil recovery, however their interfacial interactions and the impact of rock characteristics is still unclear. The objective of this study was to understand the effect of microemulsions stabilized by nanoparticles (MENP) on pore-scale fluid displacement mechanisms in a heterogeneous rock such as Arkose. A novel method was developed to synthesize silicon oxide in-situ in a ME. These nanoparticles had less tendency to agglomerate compared to nanopowders and promoted the formation of Pickering emulsions. The impact of ME and MENP on oil displacement in Arkose was examined using microtomography integrated with miniature core flooding. Aged cores were subjected to flooding with different aqueous solutions to investigate the effectiveness of ME and MENP in enhancing oil recovery. We found that ME promoted oil mobilization by reducing IFT and enhancing emulsification. The ability of ME to solubilize adsorbed oil layers contributed to a wettability alteration from oil-wet to weakly water-wet. Therefore, ME could remove 20.0% of additional oil after waterflooding. The incremental oil removal with MENP compared to waterflooding (34.3%) was higher than that of ME due to the emulsification of oil into even smaller droplets where NPs and surfactants synergistically interacted at the interface. The small oil droplets could penetrate small capillary elements of the rock that were inaccessible to ME, leading to stronger wettability alteration especially in carbonate cement

Pore-scale dynamics of nanofluid-enhanced NAPL displacement in carbonate rock

This study presents a pore-scale investigation of two-phase flow dynamics during nanofluid flooding in subsurface formations containing non-aqueous phase liquids (NAPLs) such as crude oils. The goal was to gain fundamental understanding of the dominant displacement mechanisms of NAPL at different stages of nanofluid injection in a carbonate rock using x-ray microtomography integrated with a miniature core-flooding system. The nanofluid consisted of surfactant-based microemulsions with in-situ synthesized silica nanoparticles. After establishing its initial wettability state, the carbonate core sample was subjected to various pore volumes (PV) of nanofluid flooding (from 0.5 to 10) to examine the impact on NAPL flow dynamics. We found that most NAPL mobilization occurred within the first PV of injection, removing nearly 50% of NAPL from the rock. The nanofluid invaded into larger pores first due to a sharp decrease in NAPL/brine interfacial tension (from 14 to 0.5 mN/m) and contact angle (from 140 to 88°). With higher amount of nanofluid delivered into the pores through advection, over 90% of NAPL droplets were emulsified and their size decreased from 9 to 3 μm. Subsequent nanofluid injection could further remove NAPL from the smaller pores by altering the thickness of NAPL layers adsorbed on the rock. This dynamic solubilization process reached equilibrium after 5 PV of injection, leading to a reduced layer thickness (from 12 to 0.2 μm), a narrower in-situ contact angle distribution around 81°, and an additional 16% of NAPL removal

PDZK1 inhibits the development and progression of renal cell carcinoma by suppression of SHP-1 phosphorylation

Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is one of the most aggressive urologic cancers, however, the mechanism on supporting RCC carcinogenesis is still not clear. By using gene expression profile analysis and functional clustering, PDZ domain-containing 1 (PDZK1) was revealed to be downregulated in human clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) samples, which was also verified in several independent public ccRCC data sets. Using PDZK1 overexpression and knockdown models in ccRCC cell lines, we demonstrated that PDZK1 inhibited cell proliferation, cell cycle G1/S phase transition, cell migration and invasion, indicating a tumor-suppressor role in the development and progression of ccRCC. Our study further demonstrated that PDZK1 inhibited cell proliferation and migration of ccRCC via targeting SHP-1. PDZK1 was further identified to suppress cell proliferation by blocking SHP-1 phosphorylation at Tyr536 via inhibition of the association between SHP-1 and PLCβ3, and then retarding Akt phosphorylation and promoting STAT5 phosphorylation in ccRCC cells. Moreover, the inhibitive effects of PDZK1 on SHP-1 phosphorylation and the tumor growth were verified in vivo by xenograft tumor studies. Accordingly, PDZK1 expression was negatively correlated with SHP-1 activation and phosphorylation, advanced pathologic stage, tumor weight and size, and prognosis of ccRCC patients. These findings have provided first lines of evidences that PDZK1 expression is negatively correlated with SHP-1 activation and poor clinical outcomes in ccRCC. PDZK1 was identified as a novel tumor suppressor in ccRCC by negating SHP-1 activity

A Stem Cell-Based Tool for Small Molecule Screening in Adipogenesis

Techniques for small molecule screening are widely used in biological mechanism study and drug discovery. Here, we reported a novel adipocyte differentiation assay for small molecule selection, based on human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) transduced with fluorescence reporter gene driven by adipogenic specific promoter - adipocyte Protein 2 (aP2; also namely Fatty Acid Binding Protein 4, FABP4). During normal adipogenic induction as well as adipogenic inhibition by Ly294002, we confirmed that the intensity of green fluorescence protein corresponded well to the expression level of aP2 gene. Furthermore, this variation of green fluorescence protein intensity can be read simply through fluorescence spectrophotometer. By testing another two small molecules in adipogenesis –Troglitazone and CHIR99021, we proved that this is a simple and sensitive method, which could be applied in adipocyte biology, drug discovery and toxicological study in the future

On the security of arbitrated quantum signature schemes

Due to potential capability of providing unconditional security, arbitrated quantum signature (AQS) schemes, whose implementation depends on the participation of a trusted third party, received intense attention in the past decade. Recently, some typical AQS schemes were cryptanalyzed and improved. In this paper, we analyze security property of some AQS schemes and show that all the previous AQS schemes, no matter original or improved, are still insecure in the sense that the messages and the corresponding signatures can be exchanged among different receivers, allowing the receivers to deny accepting the signature of an appointed message. Some further improvement methods on the AQS schemes are also discussed.Comment: 4 pages, no figure

Quantitative analysis of powder mixtures by raman spectrometry : the influence of particle size and its correction

Particle size distribution and compactness have significant confounding effects on Raman signals of powder mixtures, which cannot be effectively modeled or corrected by traditional multivariate linear calibration methods such as partial least-squares (PLS), and therefore greatly deteriorate the predictive abilities of Raman calibration models for powder mixtures. The ability to obtain directly quantitative information from Raman signals of powder mixtures with varying particle size distribution and compactness is, therefore, of considerable interest In this study, an advanced quantitative Raman calibration model was developed to explicitly account for the confounding effects of particle size distribution and compactness on Raman signals of powder mixtures. Under the theoretical guidance of the proposed Raman calibration model, an advanced dual calibration strategy was adopted to separate the Raman contributions caused by the changes in mass fractions of the constituents in powder mixtures from those induced by the variations in the physical properties of samples, and hence achieve accurate quantitative determination for powder mixture samples. The proposed Raman calibration model was applied to the quantitative analysis of backscatter Raman measurements of a proof-of-concept model system of powder mixtures consisting of barium nitrate and potassium chromate. The average relative prediction error of prediction obtained by the proposed Raman calibration model was less than one-third of the corresponding value of the best performing PLS model for mass fractions of barium nitrate in powder mixtures with variations in particle size distribution, as well as compactness

Density-Matrix Renormalization-Group Analysis of Quantum Critical Points: I. Quantum Spin Chains

We present a simple method, combining the density-matrix renormalization-group (DMRG) algorithm with finite-size scaling, which permits the study of critical behavior in quantum spin chains. Spin moments and dimerization are induced by boundary conditions at the chain ends and these exhibit power-law decay at critical points. Results are presented for the spin-1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet; an analytic calculation shows that logarithmic corrections to scaling can sometimes be avoided. We also examine the spin-1 chain at the critical point separating the Haldane gap and dimerized phases. Exponents for the dimer-dimer and the spin-spin correlation functions are consistent with results obtained from bosonization.Comment: 21 pages, 12 figures, new results and added references, to appear in PR

The transcriptional repressor bs69 is a conserved target of the e1a proteins from several human adenovirus species

Early region 1A (E1A) is the first viral protein produced upon human adenovirus (HAdV) infection. This multifunctional protein transcriptionally activates other HAdV early genes and reprograms gene expression in host cells to support productive infection. E1A functions by interacting with key cellular regulatory proteins through short linear motifs (SLiMs). In this study, the molecular determinants of interaction between E1A and BS69, a cellular repressor that negatively regulates E1A transactivation, were systematically defined by mutagenesis experiments. We found that a minimal sequence comprised of MPNLVPEV, which contains a conserved PXLXP motif and spans residues 112–119 in HAdV-C5 E1A, was necessary and sufficient in binding to the myeloid, Nervy, and DEAF-1 (MYND) domain of BS69. Our study also identified residues P113 and L115 as critical for this interaction. Furthermore, the HAdV-C5 and-A12 E1A proteins from species C and A bound BS69, but those of HAdV-B3,-E4,-D9,-F40, and-G52 from species B, E, D, F, and G, respectively, did not. In addition, BS69 functioned as a repressor of E1A-mediated transactivation, but only for HAdV-C5 and HAdV-A12 E1A. Thus, the PXLXP motif present in a subset of HAdV E1A proteins confers interaction with BS69, which serves as a negative regulator of E1A mediated transcriptional activation

KxFe2-ySe2 single crystals: Floating-zone growth, Transport and Structural properties

Single crystals of superconducting KxFe2-ySe2 have been grown with the optical floating-zone technique under application of 8 bar of argon pressure. We found that large and high quality single crystals with dimensions of ~\varnothing6 \times 10 mm could be obtained at the termination of the grown ingot through quenching, while the remaining part of the ingot decomposed. As-grown single crystals commonly represent an intergrowth of two sets of the c-axis characterized by slightly different lattice constants. Single crystal of K0.80Fe1.81Se2 shows a superconducting transition at Tc = 31.6 K, leading to a near 100% expulsion of the external magnetic field in magnetization measurements. On the other hand, neutron-diffraction data indicate that superconductivity in the sample coexists with a iron-vacancy superstructure and static antiferromagnetic order. The anisotropic ratio of the upper critical field Hc2 for both H//c and H//ab configurations is \sim3.46