Development of reference materials for microbiological analysis

The reliability of reference materials (RMs) depends on properties such as fitness, robustness, commutability, stability and homogeneity. The development of RMs for microbiological analysis is especially challenged through questions around the stabilisation and recovery of viable cells, the dispersion of precise numbers of cells, matrix effects and, when using molecular techniques, the presence of nucleic acids (e.g. DNA) of dead and live target organisms. However, RMs are indispensable tools for quality control in microbiological analysis. The Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements (IRMM), as part of the European Commission, concentrates its efforts on the development of RMs to support the development, implementation and monitoring of EU legislation. A special focus is given to highly precise RMs for presence/absence and enumeration tests in microbiological food and water analysis. Another group of new RMs certified by the IRMM comprise DNA-based materials to control the identity of micro-organisms in qualitative assays. All of these activities serve to improve quality control in microbiological analysis. Presented at ‘BERM-10’, April 2006, Charleston, SC, USA.     

Vibration analysis by means of digital shearography

Digital shearography, also called digital speckle pattern shearing interferometry, is described as a robust measuring method due to its simple optical setup and the relative insensitivity against ambient noise. It has been applied for nondestructive testing and strain measuring. This paper explores its possibilities for vibration analysis. The measuring device performing both continuous (time-average method) and stroboscopic illuminations is described. The selection of the illumination mode is made by adjusting a controller and performed simply by a computer. The real-time observation with refreshing reference frame technique and the quantitative evaluation with the phase shift technique are presented. The results show this measuring device is well suited for both qualitative and quantitative vibration analysis.     

Biotechnological production of two new 8,4′-oxynorneolignans by elicitation of Echinacea purpurea cell cultures

Two new 8,4′-oxynorneolignans were produced by elicitation of Echinacea purpurea cell suspension cultures with yeast elicitor. Their structures with an unusual (hydroxy)acetyl group were elucidated by spectroscopic methods including gas chromatography (GC) and electrospray ionization (ESI) mass spectrometry.     

Surface and bulk plasmon coupling observed in reflection electron energy loss spectra

Reflection electron energy loss spectra have been measured for a semiconductor and some metals (Si, Cu, Ag and Au). A novel procedure is presented to rigorously decompose the spectra into contributions corresponding to surface and volume excitations. The resulting distributions of energy losses in an individual surface loss are in good agreement with theory. In particular, the begrenzungs effect occurring at the boundary of a solid state plasma, i.e. the reduction of the intensity of bulk modes due to the coupling with surface modes, can be clearly observed in the retrieved energy loss distribution.     

Birkhoff-functions that are bounded on prescribed sets

We prove the existence of entire functions which are universal under translations and bounded on certain prescribed sets. It is also shown that the family of all these universal functions is a dense but not a G_δ-subset in the space of entire functions provided with a natural metric. Received: 24 November 2004; revised: 12 April 2005     

Initial stages of MnAs/GaAs(0 0 1) epitaxy studied by RHEED azimuthal scans

We study the nucleation phase of molecular beam epitaxy of (hexagonal) MnAs on (cubic) GaAs (0 0 1) using reflection high-energy electron diffraction (RHEED) azimuthal scans. The nucleation proceeds from a non-reconstructed initial stage through randomly oriented small nuclei and two orientation stages to the final single-phase epitaxial orientation. The fascinatingly complex nucleation process contains elements of both Volmer-Weber and Stranski-Krastanov growth. The measurement demonstrates the potential of high-resolution RHEED techniques to assess details of the surface structure during epitaxy.