Numerical and experimental investigations of dependence of photoacoustic signals from gold nanoparticles on the optical properties

Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) are used as a contrast agent of the photoacoustic (PA) imaging. The efficiency of AuNPs has been discussed with the absorption cross section. However, the effects of the scattering of the light by AuNPs and surrounding medium on the PA signal from AuNPs have not been discussed. The PA signals from the aqueous solution of AuNPs were examined in the numerical simulation and the experiment. In the numerical simulation, the absorption and scattering cross sections of spherical and polyhedral AuNPs were calculated by Mie theory and discrete dipole approximation. Monte Carlo simulation calculated the absorbed light energy in the aqueous solution of AuNPs. Based on the PA wave equation, the PA signals were simulated. In the experiment, the PA signal from the aqueous solution of AuNP was measured by use of a piezoelectric film and a Q-switched Nd:YAG laser operated at 532 nm. The results of the numerical simulation and the experiment agreed well. In the numerical simulation and the experiment, a single Au nanocube with 50-nm edge generated the peak value of the PA signal significantly. It was approximately 350 times and twice as large as the peak values of the spherical AuNPs with 10- and 50-nm diameters, respectively. The peak value of the PA signal depended on both the absorption and scattering coefficients of the AuNPs and the surrounding medium. The peak value increased with the scattering coefficient in a quadratic manner. The character of the temporal profile of the PA signal such as full width at half maximum depended on the scattering coefficient of the AuNPs.     

Evaluation of influence of anisotropic diffusion near a wall in near-field fluorescence correlation spectroscopy of nanoparticles

Fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) of colloidal nanoparticles using a near-field fiber probe was numerically simulated. The near-wall dynamics was simulated by accounting for the anisotropic mobility of nanoparticles owing to hydrodynamic interaction with a wall (Stokes viscous force). By comparing the simulation results with theoretical model calculations, we found that the influence of anisotropic diffusion is insignificant in near-field FCS autocorrelation analysis.     

High-Quality Protein Crystal Growth of Mouse Lipocalin-Type Prostaglandin D Synthase in Microgravity

Lipocalin-type prostaglandin (PG) D synthase (L-PGDS) catalyzes the isomerization of PGH(2) to PGD(2) and is involved in the regulation of pain and of nonrapid eye movement sleep and the differentiation of male genital organs and adipocytes, etc. L-PGDS is secreted into various body fluids and binds various lipophilic compounds with high affinities, acting also as an extracellular transporter. Mouse L-PGDS with a C65A mutation was previously crystallized with citrate or malonate as a precipitant, and the X-ray crystallographic structure was determined at 2.0 ? resolution. To obtain high-quality crystals, we tried, unsuccessfully, to crystallize the C65A mutant in microgravity under the same conditions used in the previous study. After further purifying the protein and changing the precipitant to polyethylene glycol (PEG) 8000, high-quality crystals were grown in microgravity. The precipitant solution was 40% (w/v) PEG 8000, 100 mM sodium chloride, and 100 mM HEPES-NaOH (pH 7.0). Crystals grew on board the International Space Station for 11 weeks in 2007, yielding single crystals of the wild-type L-PGDS and the C65A mutant, both of which diffracted at around 1.0 ? resolution. The crystal quality was markedly improved through the use of a high-viscosity precipitant solution in microgravity, in combination with the use of a highly purified protein.     

Observation of THz coherent transition radiation from single-bunch beam at KURRI-LINAC as an intense pulsed light source

A single-bunch beam has been generated using a developed high-speed avalanche-type pulser in KURRI-LINAC in order to lift restrictions of the spectral resolution in the spectroscopic study and the delay time in the time-resolved measurement. Both of the rise and fall times of the developed pulser are 110 ps. The observation of CTR has confirmed the single-bunch beam. The degree of impurity of single bunch has been estimated to be 1.5% by the analysis of the interferogram.     

Absorption spectroscopy using a coherent transition radiation millimeter wave light source

The characteristics and applicability of the absorption spectroscopy system using the coherent transition radiation light source have been investigated. The configurations of the system are relatively simple. The operational conditions of an electron linear accelerator have been evaluated. The stability of the light intensity has been within ±2–3% in a wavenumber range of 4–13 cm⁻¹. The light intensity has been found to be more than six orders of magnitude higher than that for the lowest limit for detection.