Rapid extra-/intracellular biosynthesis of gold nanoparticles by the fungus <Emphasis Type="Italic">Penicillium</Emphasis> sp.

In this work, the fungus Penicillium was used for rapid extra-/intracellular biosynthesis of gold nanoparticles. AuCl₄ ⁻ ions reacted with the cell filtrate of Penicillium sp. resulting in extracellular biosynthesis of gold nanoparticles within 1 min. Intracellular biosynthesis of gold nanoparticles was obtained by incubating AuCl₄ ⁻ solution with fungal biomass for 8 h. The gold nanoparticles were characterized by means of visual observation, UV–Vis absorption spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX). The extracellular nanoparticles exhibited maximum absorbance at 545 nm in UV–Vis spectroscopy. The XRD spectrum showed Bragg reflections corresponding to the gold nanocrystals. TEM exhibited the formed spherical gold nanoparticles in the size range from 30 to 50 nm with an average size of 45 nm. SEM and TEM revealed that the intracellular gold nanoparticles were well dispersed on the cell wall and within the cell, and they are mostly spherical in shape with an average diameter of 50 nm. The presence of gold was confirmed by EDX analysis.     

Improvement of <Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis>-ZnO/<Emphasis Type="Italic">p</Emphasis>-Si photodiodes by embedding of silver nanoparticles

The photo-current of n-ZnO/p-Si heterojunction photodiodes was improved by embedding Ag nanoparticles in the interface (ZnO/nano-P_Ag/p-Si), and the ratio between photo- and dark-current increased by about three orders more than that of a n-ZnO/p-Si specimen. The improvement in the photo-current resulted from the light scattering of embedded Ag nanoparticles. The I–V curve of n-ZnO/p-Si degraded after thermal treatment (A-ZnO/p-Si) because the silicon robbed the oxygen from ZnO to form amorphous silicon dioxide and left an oxygen vacancy. Notably, the properties of ZnO/nano-P_Ag/p-Si were better in the time-dependent photoresponse under 10 V bias. Ag nanoparticles (15–20 nm) scattered the UV light randomly and increased the probability for the absorption of ZnO to enhance the properties of the photodiode.     

The effects of nano-TiO<Subscript>2</Subscript> on seed germination,development and mitosis of root tip cells of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Vicia narbonensis</Emphasis> L. and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Zea mays</Emphasis> L

This study aimed to provide new information about phyto-toxicology of nano-TiO₂ on plant systems. To contribute to the evaluation of the potential harmful effects of the nanoparticles on monocots and dicots we considered their effects on seed germination and root elongation applying a concentration range from 0.2 to 4.0‰ in the plants Zea mays L. and Vicia narbonensis L. Moreover, we achieved a genotoxicity study at cytological level in root meristems by means of traditional cytogenetic approach, to evidence possible alterations in mitotic activity, chromosomal aberrations, and micronuclei release. From these analyses it comes out that nano-TiO₂ particles, after short-term exposure and under our experimental conditions, delayed germination progression for the first 24 h in both materials. Root elongation was affected only after treatment with the higher nano-TiO₂ concentration. Further significant effects were detected showing mitotic index reduction and concentration-dependent increase in the aberration emergence that evidenced a nano-TiO₂-induced genotoxic effect for both species.     

Physical properties,crystal and magnetic structure of layered Fe<Subscript>1.11</Subscript>Te<Subscript>1-</Subscript><Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">x</Emphasis></Subscript>Se<Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">x</Emphasis></Subscript> superconductors

The physical and structural properties of Fe_1.11Te and Fe_1.11Te_0.5Se_0.5 have been investigated by means of X-ray and neutron diffraction as well as physical property measurements. For the Fe_1.11Te compound, the structure distortion from a tetragonal to monoclinic phase takes place at 64 K accompanied with the onset of antiferromagnetic order upon cooling. The magnetic structure of the monoclinic phase was confirmed to be of antiferromagnetic configuration with a propagation vector k = (1/2, 0, 1/2) based on Rietveld refinement of neutron powder diffraction data. The structural/magnetic transitions are also clearly visible in magnetic, electronic and thermodynamic measurements. For superconducting Fe_1.11Te_0.5Se_0.5 compound, the superconducting transition with T _c = 13.4 K is observed in the resistivity and ac susceptibility measurements. The upper critical field H _c2 is obtained by measuring the resistivity under different magnetic fields. The Kim’s critical state model is adopted to analyze the temperature dependence of the ac susceptibility and the intergranular critical current density is calculated as a function of both field amplitude and temperature. Neutron diffraction results show that Fe_1.11Te_0.5Se_0.5 crystalizes in tetragonal structure at 300 K as in the parent compound Fe_1.11Te and no structural distortion is detected upon cooling to 2 K. However an anisotropic thermal expansion anomaly is observed around 100 K.     

Recent high-<Emphasis Type="Italic">p</Emphasis><Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">T</Emphasis></Subscript> results from STAR

We present selected recent results of multi-hadron correlation measurements in azimuth and pseudorapidity at intermediate and high p _T in Au+Au collisions at , from the STAR experiment at RHIC. At intermediate p _T , measurements are presented that attempt to determine the origin of the associated near-side (small Δφ) yield at large pseudo-rapidity difference Δη that is found to be present in heavy ion collisions. In addition, results are reported on new multi-hadron correlation measures at high-p _T that use di-hadron triggers and multi-hadron cluster triggers with the goal to constrain the underlying jet kinematics better than in the existing measurements of inclusive spectra and di-hadron correlations.     

Pion mass dependence of the <Emphasis Type="Italic">K</Emphasis><Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">l</Emphasis>3</Subscript> semileptonic scalar form factor within finite volume

We calculate the scalar semileptonic kaon decay in finite volume at the momentum transfer t _m =(m _K −m _π )², using chiral perturbation theory. At first we obtain the hadronic matrix element to be calculated in finite volume. We then evaluate the finite size effects for two volumes with L=1.83 fm and L=2.73 fm and find that the difference between the finite volume corrections of the two volumes are larger than the difference as quoted in Boyle et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett. 100:141601, 2008). It appears then that the pion masses used for the scalar form factor in ChPT are large which result in large finite volume corrections. If appropriate values for pion mass are used, we believe that the finite size effects estimated in this paper can be useful for lattice data to extrapolate at large lattice size.     

Anisotropy of amorphous nanogranular composites CoNbTa-SiO<Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis></Subscript> and CoFeB-SiO<Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis></Subscript>

A comparative investigation of the magnetic properties of amorphous nanogranular composites (Co₄₁Fe₃₉B₂₀) _x (SiO _n )_{100 − x} and (Co₈₆Nb₁₂Ta₂) _x (SiO _n )_{100 − x} has been performed in the subpercolation region at temperatures in the range 4.2–300 K. The thermomagnetic dependences in the range 4.2–300 K and the processes of magnetization reversal and remanent magnetization relaxation at liquid-helium temperatures have been studied. It has been established that the average anisotropy constants of amorphous nanograins are equal to 3.6–7.0 kJ/m³ for the (Co₄₁Fe₃₉B₂₀) _x (SiO _n )_{100 − x} composites and 5–8 kJ/m³ for the (Co₈₆Nb₁₂Ta₂) _x (SiO _n )_{100 − x} composites. The fundamental differences in the concentration dependences of the anisotropy constant K _eff and the coercive force H _C have been revealed for the two systems under investigation. It has been demonstrated that, as the concentration of the metal phase increases, the quantities K _eff and H _C increase for the (Co₈₆Nb₁₂Ta₂) _x (SiO _n )_{100 − x} composites and decrease for the (Co₄₁Fe₃₉B₂₀) _x (SiO _n )_{100 − x} composites.     

Radiative <Emphasis Type="Italic">K</Emphasis><Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">e</Emphasis>3</Subscript> decays revisited

Motivated by recent experimental results and ongoing measurements, we review the chiral perturbation theory prediction for decays. Special emphasis is given to the stability of the inner bremsstrahlung-dominated relative branching ratio versus the K _e3 form factors, and on the separation of the structure-dependent amplitude in differential distributions over the phase space. For the structure-dependent terms, an assessment of the order p ⁶ corrections is given, in particular, a full next-to-leading order calculation of the axial component is performed. The experimental analysis of the photon energy spectrum is discussed, and other potentially useful distributions are introduced.Received: 9 December 2004, Published online: 21 February 2005PACS: 13.20.Eb, 11.30.Rd, 12.39.Fe     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">B</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">B</Emphasis><Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">s</Emphasis></Subscript> decay constants from moments of finite energy sum rules in QCD

We use an appropriate combination of moments of finite energy sum rules in QCD in order to compute the B _q -meson decay constants f _B and . We perform the calculation using a two-loop computation of the imaginary part of the pseudoscalar two point function in terms of the running bottom quark mass. The results are stable against the so-called QCD duality threshold, and they are in agreement with the estimates obtained from Borel transform QCD sum rules and lattice computations.Received: 28 July 2004, Revised: 10 September 2004, Published online: 23 November 2004PACS: 12.38.Bx, 12.38.LgSupported by MCYT-FEDER under contract FPA2002-00612.     

Synthesis of silver and lithium sub-micro- and nanoparticles coated with derivatives of <Emphasis Type="Italic">p</Emphasis>-<Emphasis Type="Italic">tert</Emphasis>-butyl thiacalix[4]arenes

The effect of solvent nature and temperature on the formation of 3D-dimensional SAM (self-assembled monolayers on nanoparticles) based on synthetically available stereoisomers of p-tert-butyl thiacalix[4]arenes tetrasubstituted at the lower rim by pyrrolidide and octylamide groups (cone, partial cone, and 1,3-alternate) with lithium and silver nanoparticles were determined by dynamic light-scattering and transmission electron microscopy. It was found that the variation of the temperature of the system and the nature of the solvent leads to the formation discrete or extended particles (CH₂Cl₂) (98–110 nm), nanostructures (CH₃CN) (120–295 nm) or three-dimensional SAM (DMF) (1–13 nm; 46–622 nm).     

The isospin-symmetry-breaking effects in <Emphasis Type="Italic">K</Emphasis><Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">e</Emphasis>4</Subscript> decays

The final-state interaction of pions in K _e4 decay allows to obtain the value of the isospin and angular-momentum-zero ππ scattering length a ₀⁰.We take into account the electromagnetic interaction of pions and isospin-symmetry-breaking effects caused by different masses of neutral and charged pions and estimate the impact of these effects on the procedure of scattering-length extraction from K _e4 decays.     

Reconstruction of <Emphasis Type="Italic">f</Emphasis>(<Emphasis Type="Italic">T</Emphasis>) gravity according to holographic dark energy

We develop the reconstruction of the f(T) gravity model according to the holographic dark energy. T is the torsion scalar and its initial value from the teleparallel gravity is imposed for fitting the initial value of the function f(T). The evolutionary nature of the holographic dark energy is essentially based on two important parameters, Ω _V  and ω _V , respectively, the dimensionless dark energy and the parameter of the equation of state, related to the holographic dark energy. The result shows a polynomial function for f(T), and we also observe that, when Ω _V →1 at the future time, ω _V may cross −1 for some values of the input parameter b. Another interesting aspect of the obtained model is that it provides a unification scenario of dark matter with dark energy.     

Inclusive measure of |<Emphasis Type="Italic">V</Emphasis><Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">ub</Emphasis></Subscript>| with the analytic coupling model

By analyzing B→X _u ℓ ν _ℓ spectra with a model based on soft-gluon resummation and an analytic time-like QCD coupling, we obtain

Colossal resistive switching behavior and its physical mechanism of Pt/<Emphasis Type="Italic">p</Emphasis>-NiO/<Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis>-Mg<Subscript>0.6</Subscript>Zn<Subscript>0.4</Subscript>O/Pt thin films

A heterojunction structure of p-NiO/n-Mg_0.6Zn_0.4O with an aim to tuning or improving the resistive switching properties was fabricated on Pt/TiO₂/SiO₂/Si substrates by the sol-gel spin-coating technique. The Pt/NiO/Mg_0.6Zn_0.4O/Pt heterojunction thin-film device shows excellent resistive switching properties, such as a reduced threshold current of 1 μA for device initiation, a small dispersion of reset voltage ranging from 0.54 to 0.62 V, long retention time and a high resistance ratio of high-resistance state to low-resistance state about six orders of magnitude. These results indicate that the resistive switching properties can be greatly improved by constructing the p-NiO/n-Mg_0.6Zn_0.4O heterojunction for nonvolatile memory applications. The physical mechanism responsible for colossal resistive switching properties of the heterojunction was analyzed based on interfacial defect effect and formation and rapture of conductive filaments.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">K</Emphasis><Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">e</Emphasis>3</Subscript> decays and CKM unitarity

We present a detailed numerical study of the K_e3 decays to in chiral perturbation theory with virtual photons and leptons. We describe the extraction of the CKM matrix element |V_us| from the experimental K_e3 decay parameters. We propose a consistency check of the K ⁺ _e3 and K⁰_e3 data that is largely insensitive to the dominating theoretical uncertainties, in particular the contributions of . Our analysis is highly relevant in view of the recent high statistics measurement of the K ⁺ _e3 branching ratio by E865 at Brookhaven which does not indicate any significant deviation from CKM unitarity but rather a discrepancy with the present K⁰_e3 data.Received: 22 January 2004, Published online: 30 April 2004Work supported in part by IHP-RTN, Contract No. HPRN-CT2002-00311 (EURIDICE) and by Acciones Integradas, Project No. 19/2003 (Austria), HU2002-0044 (MCYT, Spain)     

On the Sutherland Spin Model of <Emphasis Type="Italic">B</Emphasis><Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">N</Emphasis></Subscript> Type and Its Associated Spin Chain

 The B _N hyperbolic Sutherland spin model is expressed in terms of a suitable set of commuting Dunkl operators. This fact is exploited to derive a complete family of commuting integrals of motion of the model, thus establishing its integrability. The Dunkl operators are shown to possess a common flag of invariant finite-dimensional linear spaces of smooth scalar functions. This implies that the Hamiltonian of the model preserves a corresponding flag of smooth spin functions. The discrete spectrum of the restriction of the Hamiltonian to this spin flag is explicitly computed by triangularization. The integrability of the hyperbolic Sutherland spin chain of B _N type associated with the dynamical model is proved using Polychronakos's ``freezing trick'. Received: 14 February 2002 / Accepted: 19 June 2002 Published online: 10 December 2002 RID="*" ID="*" Corresponding author. E-mail: artemio@fis.ucm.es RID="**" ID="**" On leave of absence from Institute of Mathematics, 3 Tereschenkivska St., 01601 Kyiv-4 Ukraine Communicated by L. Takhtajan     

a-Si/SiN<Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">x</Emphasis></Subscript> multilayered light absorber for solar cell

40 alternate a-Si/SiN _x multilayer are incorporated as an absorber layer in a p–i–n solar cell. The device is fabricated using hot-wire chemical vapor deposition (HWCVD) technique. The structure of the multilayer film is examined by high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM) which shows distinct formation of alternate a-Si and SiN _x layers. The a-Si and SiN _x layers have thickness of ~3.5 and 4 nm, respectively. The photoluminescence (PL) of multilayer film shows bandgap energy of ~2.52 eV, is larger than that of the c-Si and a-Si. Dark and illuminated current–voltage (I–V) characterization of the ML films shows that these ML are photosensitive. In the present work, it is seen that the p–i–n structure with i-layer as ML quantum well (QW) structures show photovoltaic effect with relatively high open-circuit voltage (V _OC). The increment of bandgap energy in PL and high V _OC of the device is attributed to the quantum confinement effect (QCE).     

Polynomial Realization of <Emphasis Type="Italic">s</Emphasis>l<Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">q</Emphasis></Subscript>(2) and Fusion Rules at Exceptional Values of <Emphasis Type="Italic">q</Emphasis>

Representations of the sℓ_q(2) algebra are constructed in the space of polynomials of real (complex) variable for q^N=1. The spin addition rule based on eigenvalues of Casimir operator is illustrated on few simplest cases and conjecture for general case is formulated.     

Ordering of nonstoichiometric hexagonal compounds <Emphasis Type="Italic">M</Emphasis><Subscript>2</Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">X</Emphasis>: A sequence of special figures

An ensemble of figures required for the analysis of the atomic-vacancy ordering in nonstoichiometric compounds M ₂ X _y (M ₂ X _y ▭_{1 − y} ) with an L′3 hexagonal structure has been determined by the order-parameter functional method. It has been demonstrated reasoning from the crystal lattice geometry that, in order to describe M ₂ X _y compounds with an L′3 structure, it is necessary to use the basis cluster in the form of a trigonal prism consisting of six sites of the nonmetal lattice with a metal atom at the center. The overlapping figures that, together with the basis cluster, form a sequence of special figures uniquely describing the L′3 structure have been found. The equilibrium conditions for disorder-order transformations in nonstoichiometric compounds M ₂ X _y have been determined in the general form.     

A Generalized Hypergeometric Function II. Asymptotics and <Emphasis Type="Italic">D</Emphasis><Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">4</Emphasis></Subscript> Symmetry

In previous work we introduced and studied a function that generalizes the hypergeometric function. In this paper we focus on a similarity-transformed function , with parameters ⁴ related to the couplings c⁴ by a shift depending on a ₊ , a _– . We show that the -function is invariant under all maps w(), with w in the Weyl group of type D ₄ . Choosing a ₊ , a _– positive and real, we obtain detailed information on the |Re v| asymptotics of the -function. In particular, we explicitly determine the leading asymptotics in terms of plane waves and the c-function that implements the similarity R.