Enhancement of water permeation across nanochannels by partial charges mimicked from biological channels

In biological water channel aquaporins （AQPs）, it is believed that the bipolar orientation of the single-file water molecules inside the channel blocks proton permeation but not water transport. In this paper, the water permeation and particularly the water-selective behaviour across a single-walled carbon nanotube （SWNT） with two partial charges adjacent to the wall of the SWNT are studied by molecular dynamics simulations, in which the distance between the two partial charges is varied from 0.14 nm to 0.5 nm and the charges each have a quantity of 0.5 e. The two partial charges are used to mimic the charge distribution of the conserved non-pseudoautosomal （NPA） （asparagine/proline/alanine） regions in AQPs. Compared with across the nanochannel in a system with one ＋1 ε charge, the water permeation across the nanochannel is greatly enhanced in a system with two ＋0.5 e charges when charges are close to the nanotube, i.e. the two partial charges permit more rapid water diffusion and maintain better bipolar order along the water file when the distance between the two charges and the wall of SWNT is smaller than about 0.05 nm. The bipolar orientation of the single-file water molecules is crucial for the exclusion of proton transfer. These findings may serve as guidelines for the future nanodevices by using charges to transport water and have biological implications because membrane water channels share a similar single-file water chain and positive charged region at centre and provide an insight into why two residues are necessitated in the central region of water channel protein.     

Study on the optical limiting properties of the mixed liquid of carbon black suspensions and green tea solution by multi-pulse laser

The optical limiting properties of the mixed liquid of carbon black suspensions (CBS) and green tea solution were studied by using an 8 ns laser pulse at 532\,nm. The optical limiting effects of the CBS and mixed liquid have been compared between 5 and 10\,Hz repetition frequencies with nanosecond laser pulse. The experimental results indicate that the optical limiting threshold of the sample with the incidence laser at 10\,Hz repetition frequency is lower than at 5\,Hz repetition frequency. The possible reasons for the influence of the repetition frequency on the samples are discussed. And by observing the optical radiant distributions when the laser pulse passing through different samples, a possible mechanism for the observed effects is suggested. At the same time, the result shows that the optical limiting of CBS is the dominant factor to optical limiting of the mixed liquid.     

铁基纳米晶合金的介观阻抗率及应用

提出了铁基纳米晶合金介观阻抗率的物理概念，用Maxwell方程组求得其计算公式ρ=-μ{A}/{t}/Δ×H，该式表明铁基纳米晶合金的介观阻抗率与材料内部的介观磁场强度H、介观磁矢势A和介观磁导率μ有关，磁矢势A是由介观结构引起的量子力学效应，是由合金的微观结构决定的.这个理论很好地解释了铁基纳米晶粉末、粉芯     

Canonical Brownian Motion on the Diffeomorphism Group of the Circle

For infinitesimal data given on the group of diffeomorphism of the circle with respect to the metric H^3/2, the associated Brownian motion has been constructed by Malliavin (C.R. Acad. Sci. Parist.329 (1999), 325-329). In this work, we shall give another approach and prove the invariance of heat measures under the adjoint action of S¹.     

On the Automorphism Groups of Cayley Graphs of Finite Simple Groups

Let G be a finite nonabelian simple group and let be a connectedundirected Cayley graph for G. The possible structures for thefull automorphism group Aut are specified. Then, for certainfinite simple groups G, a sufficient condition is given underwhich G is a normal subgroup of Aut. Finally, as an applicationof these results, several new half-transitive graphs are constructed.Some of these involve the sporadic simple groups G = J₁, J₄,Ly and BM, while others fall into two infinite families andinvolve the Ree simple groups and alternating groups. The twoinfinite families contain examples of half-transitive graphsof arbitrarily large valency.     

Centered -discrepancy of random sampling and Latin hypercube design, and construction of uniform designs

In this paper properties and construction of designs under a centered version of the -discrepancy are analyzed. The theoretic expectation and variance of this discrepancy are derived for random designs and Latin hypercube designs. The expectation and variance of Latin hypercube designs are significantly lower than that of random designs. While in dimension one the unique uniform design is also a set of equidistant points, low-discrepancy designs in higher dimension have to be generated by explicit optimization. Optimization is performed using the threshold accepting heuristic which produces low discrepancy designs compared to theoretic expectation and variance.

     

Determination of active ingredients of Rhododendron dauricum L. by capillary electrophoresis with electrochemical detection

High-performance capillary electrophoresis with electrochemical detection was employed to analyse active ingredients of Rhododendron dauricum L., an important crude herb frequently used in Chinese medicines. Farrerol, quercetin, syringic acid, vanillic acid, 4-hydroxybenzoic acid, protocatechuic acid are major important active ingredients. Operated in a wall-jet configuration, a 300-microm diameter carbon-disk electrode was used as the working electrode, which exhibits a good response at +950 mV (vs. saturated calomel electrodes) for six analytes. Under the optimum conditions, the analytes were baseline separated within 16 min in a borax buffer (pH 8.7). Notably, excellent linearity was obtained over two orders of magnitude with detection limits (S/N=3) ranged from 9 x 10(-7) to 3.0 x 10(-6) M for all analytes. This method was successfully used in the analysis of Rhododendron dauricum L. with relatively simple extraction procedures, and the assay results were satisfactory.     

2,7-Bis(1H-pyrrol-2-yl)ethynyl-1,8-naphthyridine: an ultrasensitive fluorescent probe for glucopyranoside

[structure: see text] A push-pull conjugated molecule, 2,7-bis(1H-pyrrol-2-yl)ethynyl-1,8-naphthyridine (BPN), has been designed to bind selectively with octyl glucopyranoside (OGU). The BPN/OGU quadruple hydrogen-bonding complex adopts a rigid BPN conformation in which the proton donor (d) and acceptor (a) relays (daad) are resonantly conjugated through the ethynyl bridge, inducing pi-electron delocalization, i.e., a charge transfer effect. The excellent photophysical properties make BPN a highly sensitive probe for monitoring glucopyranoside to a detection limit of approximately 100 pM.     

Observation of D+(s)K- and evidence for D+(s)pi- final states in neutral B decays

We report the first observation of a B meson decay that is not accessible by a direct spectator process. The channel B(0)-->D(+)(s)K- is found in a sample of 85 x 10(6) BB; events, collected with the Belle detector at KEKB, with a branching fraction B(B(0)-->D(+)(s)K-)=(4.6(+1.2)(-1.1)+/-1.3) x 10(-5). We also obtain evidence for the B0-->D(+)(s)pi(-) decay with branching fraction B(B0-->D(+)(s)pi(-))=(2.4(+1.0)(-0.8)+/-0.7) x 10(-5). This value may be used to extract a model-dependent value of |V(ub)|.     

Large enhancement of spontaneous emission rates of InAs quantum dots in GaAs microdisks

We have studied the enhancement of spontaneous emission rates for InAs quantum dots embedded in GaAs microdisks in a time-resolved photoluminescence experiment. Inhomogeneous broadening of the quantum dot energy levels and random spatial distribution of the quantum dots in a microdisk lead to a broad distribution of the spontaneous emission rates. Using a nonnegative least-norm algorithm, we extract the distribution of spontaneous emission rates from the temporal decay of emission intensity. The maximum spontaneous emission enhancement factor exceeds 10.