A Far-Red Emitting Fluorescent Chemogenetic Reporter for In Vivo Molecular Imaging

Far-red emitting fluorescent labels are highly desirable for spectral multiplexing and deep tissue imaging. Here, we describe the generation of frFAST (far-red Fluorescence Activating and absorption Shifting Tag), a 14-kDa monomeric protein that forms a bright far-red fluorescent assembly with (4-hydroxy-3-methoxy-phenyl)allylidene rhodanine (HPAR-3OM). As HPAR-3OM is essentially non-fluorescent in solution and in cells, frFAST can be imaged with high contrast in presence of free HPAR-3OM, which allowed the rapid and efficient imaging of frFAST fusions in live cells, zebrafish embryo/larvae, and chicken embryos. Beyond enabling the genetic encoding of far-red fluorescence, frFAST allowed the design of a far-red chemogenetic reporter of protein–protein interactions, demonstrating its great potential for the design of innovative far-red emitting biosensors.     

Collective Tunnelling of Strongly Interacting Cold Atoms in a Double-Well Potential

It is known that under resonance conditions, a group of strongly interacting bosonic atoms, trapped in a double-well potential, mimics a single particle, performing Rabi oscillations between the wells. By implication, all atoms need to tunnel at roughly the same time, even though the Bose–Hubbard Hamiltonian accounts only for one-atom-at-a-time transfers. The mechanism of this collective behavior is analyzed, the Rabi frequencies in the process are evaluated, and the limitation of this simple picture is discussed. In particular, it is shown that the small rapid oscillations superimposed on the slow Rabi cycle result from splitting the transferred cluster at the sudden onset of tunnelling, and disappear if tunnelling is turned on gradually.     

The plus construction, Postnikov towers and universal central module extensions

Given a connected spaceX, we consider the effect of Quillen’s plus construction on the homotopy groups ofX in terms of its Postnikov decomposition. Specifically, using universal properties of the fibration sequenceAX→X→X ⁺, we explain the contribution of π _n X to π _n X ⁺, π _n+1 X ⁺ and π _n AX, π _n+1 AX explicitly in terms of the low dimensional homology of π _n X regarded as a module over π₁ X. Key ingredients developed here for this purpose are universal II-central fibrations and a theory of universal central extensions of modules, analogous to universal central extensions of perfect groups. Research partially supported by NSERC of Canada.     

An improved On-Surface Radiation Condition for acoustic scattering problems in the high-frequency spectrum

This Note addresses the derivation of an improved On-Surface Radiation Condition for the numerical solution of the exterior Helmholtz equation at high-frequencies. This condition is built as an approximation of the Neumann-to-Dirichlet map by using a local regularization of its principal classical symbol in the gliding zone for modelling the creeping waves. The numerical simulation of this pseudodifferential operator is efficiently realized with a linear cost according to the dimension of the boundary element approximation space using suitable complex Padé approximants. A numerical example is provided. To cite this article: X. Antoine et al., C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, Ser. I 340 (2005).     

Decay of neutron-rich Ga isotopes near N = 50 at PARRNe

The PARRNe facility has been used to produce neutron-rich isotopes ^83,84Gaby the ISOL method. Their decay has been studied, and β-γ coincidence and γ-γ coincidence data were collected as a function of time. The first two excited levels in ⁸³Ge and the first excited level in ⁸⁴Ge have been measured for the first time.     

On the structure of complete simply connected embedded minimal surfaces

The helicoid and the plane are the only known complete simply connected minimal surfaces without self-intersections. In this paper we make an analytic study of this class of surfaces by first deforming them continuously into surfaces with self-intersections. Next, we study the (backward) time evolution of the set of self-intersections and see what geometric conditions must prevail in order for the self-intersections to rush off to infinity in finite time. As a result of this program it is shown that any surface of the type considered above has to satisfy at least one of five geometric possibilities. The first two of these alternatives are pathological, the third one is satisfied by the plane, and the next two are satisfied by the helicoid.     

Common Tangents to Spheres in ℝ3

We prove that four spheres in ℝ³ have infinitely many real common tangents if and only if they have aligned centers and at least one real common tangent.     

Du discret au continu pour des modèles de réseaux aléatoires d'atomes

We study in this Note the continuum (macroscopic) limit for some atomistic models for crystals. The purpose is to derive densities of mechanical energies from microscopic models. In contrast to the setting of a previous study, where the microscopic structure was assumed to be periodic, it is modelled here by a stochastic lattice, which enjoys some stationarity and ergodicity properties, following notions previously introduced elsewhere. To cite this article: X. Blanc et al., C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, Ser. I 342 (2006).     

Scattering from infinite rough tubular surfaces

We study the Helmholtz equation in the exterior of an infinite perturbed cylinder with a Dirichlet boundary condition. Existence and uniqueness of solutions are established using the variational technique introduced (SIAM J. Math. Anal. 2005; 37 (2):598–618). We also provide stability estimates with explicit dependence of the constants in terms of the frequency and the perturbed cylinder thickness. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.