Imaging Lipid Metabolism in Live Caenorhabditis elegans Using Fingerprint Vibrations

Quantitation of lipid storage, unsaturation, and oxidation in live C. elegans has been a long‐standing obstacle. The combination of hyperspectral stimulated Raman scattering imaging and multivariate analysis in the fingerprint vibration region represents a platform that allows the quantitative mapping of fat distribution, degree of fat unsaturation, lipid oxidation, and cholesterol storage in vivo in the whole worm. Our results reveal for the first time that lysosome‐related organelles in intestinal cells are sites for storage of cholesterol in C. elegans.     

Fabrication of polystyrene hollow microspheres as laser fusion targets by optimized density-matched emulsion technique and characterization

Inertial confinement fusion, frequently referred to as ICF, inertial fusion, or laser fusion, is a means of producing energy by imploding small hollow microspheres containing thermonuclear fusion fuel. Polymer microspheres, which are used as fuel containers, can be produced by solution-based micro-encapsulation technique better known as density-matched emulsion technique. The specifications of these microspheres are very rigorous, and various aspects of the emulsion hydrodynamics associated with their production are important in controlling the final product. This paper describes about the optimization of various parameters associated with density-matched emulsion method in order to improve the surface smoothness, wall thickness uniformity and sphericity of hollow polymer microspheres. These polymer microshells have been successfully fabricated in our lab, with 3–30 μm wall thickness and 50–1600 μm diameters. The sphericity and wall thickness uniformity are better than 99%. Elimination of vacuoles and high yield rate has been achieved by adopting the step-wise heating of W₁/O/W₂ emulsion for solvent removal.     

High spin spectroscopy of 139Pr

The high spin states in N=80 ¹³⁹Pr have been investigated by in-beam γ-spectroscopic techniques following the reaction ¹³⁰Te (¹⁴N, 5n) reaction at E=75 MeV, using a gamma detector array, consisting of seven 23% compton-suppressed high purity germanium detectors and a multiplicity ball of fourteen bismuth germanate elements. Based on γ-γ coincidence data, the level scheme of ¹³⁹Pr has been considerably extended up to 7.2 MeV excitation. Tentative spin-parity assignments are done for the newly proposed levels on the basis of the DCO ratios corresponding to strong gates and the available information from the earlier light ion experiments.     

AutoDock4 and AutoDockTools4: Automated docking with selective receptor flexibility

We describe the testing and release of AutoDock4 and the accompanying graphical user interface AutoDockTools. AutoDock4 incorporates limited flexibility in the receptor. Several tests are reported here, including a redocking experiment with 188 diverse ligand‐protein complexes and a cross‐docking experiment using flexible sidechains in 87 HIV protease complexes. We also report its utility in analysis of covalently bound ligands, using both a grid‐based docking method and a modification of the flexible sidechain technique. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Comput Chem, 2009     

Relativistic nonlinearity and wave-guide propagation of rippled laser beam in plasma

In the present paper we have investigated the self-focusing behaviour of radially symmetrical rippled Gaussian laser beam propagating in a plasma. Considering the nonlinearity to arise from relativistic phenomena and following the approach of Akhmanov et al, which is based on the WKB and paraxial-ray approximation, the self-focusing behaviour has been investigated in some detail. The effect of the position and width of the ripple on the self-focusing of laser beam has been studied for arbitrary large magnitude of nonlinearity. Results indicate that the medium behaves as an oscillatory wave-guide. The self-focusing is found to depend on the position parameter of ripple as well as on the beam width. Values of critical power has been calculated for different values of the position parameter of ripple. Effects of axially and radially inhomogeneous plasma on self-focusing behaviour have been investigated and presented here.     

Level structures of 95,97Mo — A comparative study

High-spin states of ^95,97Mo (Z=42, N=53,55) nuclei have been investigated through ⁸²Se(¹⁸O, xn) reaction at Eb=60 MeV. The level scheme in ⁹⁵Mo has been observed upto ≏ 10 MeV in the present experiment. The level structure shows mainly single particle character. In ⁹⁷Mo, the ground state level sequence has been extended to ≏ 4.5 MeV while the previous information had been up to 2.4 MeV. A negative parity band built on 1437 keV (11/2⁻) excited state has been extended to 5.5 MeV. The structure seems to show a coexistence of single particle and collective modes of excitation. Properties of both the nuclei have been compared with shell model calculations using OXBASH.     

High spin rotational bands in 65Zn

The nucleus ₃₀ ⁶⁵ Zn was studied using the ⁵²Cr(¹⁶O, 2pn)⁶⁵Zn reaction at a beam energy of 65 MeV. The level scheme is extended up to an excitation energy of 10.57 MeV for spin-parity (41/2?) with several newly observed transitions placed in it.     

Semileptonic (Λ b → Λcev) decay in a field theoretic quark model

The semileptonic decay width of heavy baryons such as (Λ _b → Λcev) has been estimated in the framework of a nonrelativistic field theoretic quark model where four component quark field operators along with a harmonic oscillator wave function are used to describe translationally invariant hadronic states. The present estimation does not make an explicit use of heavy quark symmetry and has a reasonable agreement with the experimentally measured decay width, polarisation ratio and form factors with the harmonic oscillator radii and quark momentum distribution inside the hadron as free parameters.