The asteroidal belt and Kirkwood gaps—I. A statistical study

In this paper we have made a spectral analysis study of matter distribution in the asteroidal belt. We have Fourier analysed this distribution and obtained the autocorrelation and power spectrum, and have identified the ratios from the resonance theory. We have shown that the Kirkwood gaps cannot be satisfactorily interpreted as due to mere resonance between the asteroid and Jupiter orbital motions. We propose that they may be regarded as a consequence of density waves generated in the gas dise in the ecliptic plane in the neighbourhood of the Sun. We have also shown that the process is non-Marcovian and hence cannot be subjected to a hydrodynamical analysis.     

Surface tensions and stress tensors of liquid and solid clusters by molecular dynamics

Surface tension and pressure (stress) tensors of Lennard-Jones clusters, in the size range 200 ~ 2700 atoms/cluster, formed from evaporating liquid droplets were calculated in a Molecular Dynamics simulation. Icosahedral clusters have a much larger surface tension than decahedral, fcc, and hcp ones, meanwhile asymmetric icosahedral clusters have a lower surface tension. Fcc and hcp clusters have a very small surface tension. Decahedral clusters have a surface tension closer to that of fcc and hcp ones than to that of icosahedral ones, though both icosahedral and decahedral structures have five fold symmetry axis. Binary component clusters have a higher surface tension than single component ones.     

The direct and indirect roles of fundamental frequency in vowel perception

Several experiments have found that changing the intrinsic f0 of a vowel can have an effect on perceived vowel quality. It has been suggested that these shifts may occur because f0 is involved in the specification of vowel quality in the same way as the formant frequencies. Another possibility is that f0 affects vowel quality indirectly, by changing a listener's assumptions about characteristics of a speaker who is likely to have uttered the vowel. In the experiment outlined here, participants were asked to listen to vowels differing in terms of f0 and their formant frequencies and report vowel quality and the apparent speaker's gender and size on a trial-by-trial basis. The results presented here suggest that f0 affects vowel quality mainly indirectly via its effects on the apparent-speaker characteristics; however, f0 may also have some residual direct effects on vowel quality. Furthermore, the formant frequencies were also found to have significant indirect effects on vowel quality by way of their strong influence on the apparent speaker.     

Oblique interaction of electrostatic nonlinear structures in relativistically degenerate dense magnetoplasmas

We have investigated the interaction of obliquely propagating ion acoustic solitary waves in a magnetoplasma with relativistically degenerate electrons. Using the quantum hydrodynamics model and by employing the extended Poincaré–Lighthill–Kuo technique, we have derived a set of Korteweg de Vries equations for two solitons. We have observed that the system under consideration allows the formation of only compressive solitons and their velocities remain in the sub-acoustic limit. Furthermore, phase shifts of solitons as a result of their interaction have been calculated. The phase shifts have been observed to be dependent on the obliqueness and the physical parameters of plasma. It has also been noticed that phase shifts remain negative for the whole range of parameters generally found in white dwarf stars. We have observed that the phase shifts enhance with the enhancement in number density, however, the converse happens when the magnetic field is enhanced. It has also been observed that the phase shift is slightly greater for the solitons that are less oblique as compared to their more oblique counterparts. Furthermore, we have estimated the spatial scales of interaction of solitons using the parameters found in white dwarf stars.     

The asteroidal belt and Kirkwood gaps—II. Kinematical theory

We have developed a kinematical theory for the asteroidal belt and Kirkwood gaps from the point of view of stellar dynamics. We have generated the potential that would produce these gaps and have made a spectral analysis study. We have shown that these gaps could be due to spiral tubes of matter in the ecliptic plane as a consequence of differential rotation and spatial interference of density waves. We have also shown that this mechanism could account for depletion of matter from this region.     

A Mössbauer study of the chemical stability of iron oxide nanoparticles in PMMA and PVB beads

We have prepared magnetic beads consisting of iron oxide nanoparticles in a polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) and a polyvinyl butyral (PVB) matrix. High-field Mössbauer studies show that the particles have an almost perfect collinear spin structure and magnetization measurements show that they are superparamagnetic at room temperature at a time scale of seconds. We have followed the oxidation of the particles, which initially have a stoichiometry close to magnetite. The oxidation is fast during the first 2–3 weeks and then continues slowly such that even after 30 weeks the particles have not completely transformed to maghemite. The PVB beads are hydrophilic and biocompatible and are therefore well suited for applications in medicine and biology.     

Stress-strain fluctuations in non-linear hydrodynamics

Two different formulations of hydrodynamic fluctuations in the non-linear regime have been proposed. One of these involves a stress-strain fluctuation term of multiplicative type, and consequently this formulation was criticized by Fox three years ago. Recently, Saarloos, Bedeaux and Mazur have proposed such a formulation again, and have criticized Fox's original criticism. In the present paper, it is again shown that multiplicative stress-strain fluctuations lead to unphysical divergences, and that Saarloos, Bedeaux and Mazur have failed to observe that a stochastic quantity, x?, may have zero mean, <x?>=0, but a divergent second moment 〈(x?)²〉=∞. In addition, they have failed to note the limitations of time reversal invariance arguments in macroscopic physics, and they have overlooked important distinctions regarding transverse and longitudinal modes in hydrodynamics. These issues are elucidated in this paper.     

Raman scattering as a probe of the tensile strain distribution in GaAs grown on Si(111) by molecular beam epitaxy

Epitaxial layers of GaAs grown on Si substrates, where the layer thickness greatly exceeds any critical thickness based on mismatch in lattice constant alone, have been shown to be under tensile strain for temperature at or below 300 K. This "thermal" strain arises from the difference in thermal expansion coefficients between GaAs and Si. We have performed Raman experiments on GaAs layers grown on both Si (001) and Si (111) substrates. We have observed a shift in the optical modes towards lower frequencies which is indicative of tensile strain in the GaAs layers, this is greater in the (111) growth direction than in the (001) one. In order to investigate the strain distribution as a function of distance from the GaAs/Si interface we have measured Raman spectra after successive removing of the epitaxial layer by chemical etching. We have found out that the strain decreases with increasing distance from the interface. We have developed the theory of Cerdeira et al. (1) to determine quantitatively the strain present in the heteroepitaxial layers. We have used, for the first time, polarization selection rules to separate the various components of the optical phonon modes. According to the theory we have observed that the doubly degenerate TO phonon line exhibits both a splitting and shift with strain, while only a shift is observed for the LO phonon line. In conformity with Cerdeira we have remarked that the strain dependence of the LO phonon is equal to that of the TO phonon mode observed in crossed polarization configuration.     

Scaling properties of percolation models for multifragmentation

We have used scaling properties of nuclear multifragmentation, which have been observed with emulsion data, to investigate the properties of some approaches based on percolation. We have studied different percolation models on a cubic lattice and shown that they can rather well reproduce the data except for binary break up. We have described what the mean field approximation would give in this context and showed that it cannot reproduce the experimental results. Most of the paper is focused on the restructured aggregation model introduced earlier which allows to well reproduce the scaling properties observed experimentally. This model has been studied in details and extended to take account of bonds breaking. It is shown that, in some cases, a nucleus can break up in two pieces. This process cannot be obtained in conventional percolation or aggregation but is observed experimentally in the emulsion data. Other features like the dimensionality of the aggregation model, the restructuration of the clusters and a schematic constraint in momentum space have also been investigated.     

A novel scheme to generate dark-RZ pulse and study on its transmission performance

We have proposed and experimentally demonstrated a novel and simple configuration to generate a dark-RZ pulse by a Mach-Zehnder delayed line interferometer. We have also compared the transmission performance between the dark-RZ and bright-RZ pulse in the pre-dispersion compensation and post-dispersion compensation systems. Our experimental results have shown that the dark-RZ is more sensitivity to nonlinear effects than the bright-RZ pulse, and the power penalty will also be larger than that of the bright-RZ at the same BER. The experiment results have also shown that the dark-RZ pulse is not suitable for the signal transmission with pre-dispersion compensation.     

Thermodynamic characteristics of a biological organism: Information value of a gene and of a protein as a measure of the efficiency and as an index of selective pressure

Summary For the treatment of the information exchanged by the biological system and the external world, the concept of information amount is not sufficient because of their remoteness from equilibrium states. Further explanations are, in fact, necessary about the effects of the reception of the message,i.e. its information value that is then necessary to define for each case. We have, therefore, defined the information value of a gene and of a protein and analysed a sample of about hundred genes looking for some significative regularity in the frequency of usage of codons and amino acids allowing us to individualize the salient characteristics of a translated sequence of codons. We have found that the most used amino acids have, on the average, a low information value and, for each amino acid type, the most used codons have a lower information value. Moreover, we can say that the composition in amino acids or in codons of a sequence useful for the biological systems is such that more frequent mutations cause the smaller variation in the phenotype. All that shows that our definitions well describe the system of transmission and reception of the information value in a biological organism and that they can be considered as an index of its efficiency,i.e. of its ability to minimize the effects of the mutation of the genotype on the phenotype. To speed up publication, the authors of this paper have agreed to not receive the proofs for correction.     

执教六十年的回顾

文章概述了作者于1946-2006年期间在中央大学-南京大学物理系执教的经历，漫谈了教书、读书和写书的一些体会，介绍了在科学研究、人才培养和教材建设方面的若干成果。     

Trapping an intensely bright, stable sonoluminescing bubble

Previous works on single bubble sonoluminescence in sulfuric acid solutions have stressed the fact that the sonoluminescence (SL) emissions are the highest ever found, but at the same time the bubble moves in orbits. We have fixed the SL bubble spatially and at the same time we have reached higher SL emissions using another harmonic acoustic signal to produce the acoustic excitation. Multiple harmonic excitation produces up to a fourfold increase in SL emissions, reaching the peak value of about 40 microW for a moving bubble and 15 microW for a nonmoving bubble. The ability to have a bright stationary bubble also opens new research opportunities. In particular, we develop a new method to measure the absolute radius evolution of the bubble that exploits this stability.     

Pressure induces major changes in the nature of Americium's 5f electrons

Americium occupies a pivotal position in the actinide series with regard to the behavior of 5f electrons. High-pressure techniques together with synchrotron radiation have been used to determine the structural behavior up to 100 GPa. We have resolved earlier controversial findings regarding americium and find that our experimental results are in discord with recent theoretical predictions. We have two new findings: (1) that there exists a critical, new structural link between americium under pressure and its near neighbor, plutonium; and (2) that the 5f electron delocalization in americium occurs in two rather than one step.     

Fluorescence Spectroscopic and Calorimetry Based Approaches to Characterize the Mode of Interaction of Small Molecules with DNA

Ethidium bromide displacement assay by fluorescence is frequently used as a diagnostic tool to identify the intercalation ability of DNA binding small molecules. Here we have demonstrated that the method has pitfalls. We have employed fluorescence, absorbance and label free technique such as isothermal titration calorimetry to probe the limitations. Ethidium bromide, a non-specific intercalator, netropsin, a (A-T) specific minor groove binder, and sanguinarine, a (G-C) specific intercalator, have been used in our experiments to study the association of a ligand with DNA in presence of a competing ligand. Here we have shown that netropsin quenches the fluorescence intensity of an equilibrium mixture of ethidium bromide - calf thymus DNA via displacement of ethidium bromide. Isothermal titration calorimetry results question the accepted interpretation of the observed decrease in fluorescence of bound ethidium bromide in terms of competitive binding of two ligands to DNA. Furthermore, isothermal titration calorimetry experiments and absorbance measurements indicate that the fluorescence change might be due to formation of ternary complex and not displacement of one ligand by another.     

The R2PI Spectroscopy of Tyrosine: A Vibronic Analysis

Based on an infrared spectrum in an atlas, and on a Raman spectrum that we acquired ourselves, we have made a frequency assignment for the vibrational modes of tyrosine. This assignment was aided by the results of a GAUSSIAN frequency calculation that we performed at the Hartree-Fock level, using the 3-21G basis set. We have made a vibronic assignment of the bands in a jet-cooled LD-R2PI spectrum that we obtained for tyrosine, using the aforementioned ground-state analysis as a guide. By UV hole burning, we have verified which of the low-frequency R2PI peaks are origins, assigning the others as torsions. We have assigned the various origin bands, with their associated bands to higher energy, to configurations in which the amino acid backbone is either gauche or anti to the ring.     

Analysis of a gained nonlinear directional coupler pulse switch

We have investigated the switching performance of a gained (nonlinear directional coupler) NLDC switch in the presence of both 2nd and 4th order gain nonlinearities. In this system, we have achieved a nearly complete pulse switching at half beat length of the coupler which implies about 40% reduction in the switching length as compared to the switching length reported in Trillo et al. (1988). We have shown that at the half beat length the output energy of each branch is equal to that of the input energy and hence the gained NLDC switches have ability to be cascaded. Our initial investigations reveal that this gained NLDC switch has remarkable performance and potential to be used in ultra-fast optical communication systems.     

Real-time increase in depth of field of an uncooled thermal camera using several phase-mask technologies

Imaging systems that combine a phase mask in the pupil and digital postprocessing may have better performance than conventional ones. We have built such a system to enhance the depth of field of an uncooled thermal camera. The phase masks are binary, their structures are optimized thanks to an image quality criterion, and they have been realized with three different technologies that give equivalent results. The deconvolution postprocessing is performed in real time with a graphics processing unit. A significant increase of the depth of field of a factor 3 has been obtained.     

Modifying a graphene layer by a thymine or a uracil nucleobase: DFT studies

The hybridizations of a graphene layer by a thymine and a uracil nucleobase have been investigated by performing density functional theory (DFT) calculations. The isolated and hybrid structures have been firstly stabilized to reach the minimum energy and the electronic properties have been subsequently evaluated for the optimized structures. The structural and atomic scale parameters indicated that the tip of graphene is important in determining the properties of new hybrids. Moreover, different effects of thymine and uracil nucleobases have been identified in the hybrid structures. Quadrupole coupling constants have been evaluated to characterize the atomic scale properties, in which the most notable effects of hybridizations have been observed for the atoms close to the linking regions whereas negligible effects have been seen for other atoms.