Heavy neutrinos and lepton number violation in ?p colliders

We discuss the prospects of studying lepton number violating processes in order to identify Majorana neutrinos from low scale seesaw mechanisms at lepton-proton colliders. In particular, we consider the scenarios of colliding electrons with LHC energy protons and, motivated by the efforts towards the construction of a muon collider, the prospects of muon-proton collisions. We find that present constraints on the mixing of the Majorana neutrinos still allow for a detectable signal at these kind of facilities given the smallness of the Standard Model background. We discuss possible cuts in order to further increase the signal over background ratio and the prospects of reconstructing the neutrino mass from the kinematics of the final state particles.     

Second‐Generation Fluorescent Quadracyclic Adenine Analogues: Environment‐Responsive Probes with Enhanced Brightness

Fluorescent base analogues comprise a group of increasingly important molecules for the investigation of nucleic acid structure, dynamics, and interactions with other molecules. Herein, we report on the quantum chemical calculation aided design, synthesis, and characterization of four new putative quadracyclic adenine analogues. The compounds were efficiently synthesized from a common intermediate through a two‐step pathway with the Suzuki–Miyaura coupling as the key step. Two of the compounds, qAN1 and qAN4, display brightnesses (εΦ_F) of 1700 and 2300, respectively, in water and behave as wavelength‐ratiometric pH probes under acidic conditions. The other two, qAN2 and qAN3, display lower brightnesses but exhibit polarity‐sensitive dual‐band emissions that could prove useful to investigate DNA structural changes induced by DNA–protein or –drug interactions. The four qANs are very promising microenvironment‐sensitive fluorescent adenine analogues that display considerable brightness for such compounds.     

Charge‐Transfer State and Large First Hyperpolarizability Constant in a Highly Electronically Coupled Zinc and Gold Porphyrin Dyad

We report the synthesis and the characterizations of a novel dyad composed of a zinc porphyrin (ZnP) linked to a gold porphyrin (AuP) through an ethynyl spacer. The UV/Vis absorption spectrum and the electrochemical properties clearly reveal that this dyad exhibits a strong electronic coupling in the ground state as evidenced by shifted redox potentials and the appearance of an intense charge‐transfer band localized at λ=739 nm in dichloromethane. A spectroelectrochemical study of the dyad along with the parent homometallic system (i.e., ZnP–ZnP and AuP–AuP) was undertaken to determine the spectra of the reduced and oxidized porphyrin units. Femtosecond transient absorption spectroscopic analysis showed that the photoexcitation of the heterometallic dyad leads to an ultrafast formation of a charge‐separated state (⁺ZnP–AuP^.) that displays a particularly long lifetime (τ=4 ns in toluene) for such a short separation distance. The molecular orbitals of the dyad were determined by DFT quantum‐chemical calculations. This theoretical study confirms that the observed intense band at λ=739 nm corresponds to an interporphyrin charge‐transfer transition from the HOMO orbital localized on the zinc porphyrin to LUMO orbitals localized on the gold porphyrin. Finally, a Hyper–Rayleigh scattering study shows that the dyad possesses a large first molecular hyperpolarizability coefficient (β=2100×10^?30 esu at λ=1064 nm), thus highlighting the valuable nonlinear optical properties of this new type of push–pull porphyrin system.     

Envelope Functions: Unifications and Further Properties

Forward–backward and Douglas–Rachford splitting are methods for structured nonsmooth optimization. With the aim to use smooth optimization techniques for nonsmooth problems, the forward–backward and Douglas–Rachford envelopes where recently proposed. Under specific problem assumptions, these envelope functions have favorable smoothness and convexity properties and their stationary points coincide with the fixed-points of the underlying algorithm operators. This allows for solving such nonsmooth optimization problems by minimizing the corresponding smooth convex envelope function. In this paper, we present a general envelope function that unifies and generalizes existing ones. We provide properties of the general envelope function that sharpen corresponding known results for the special cases. We also present a new interpretation of the underlying methods as being majorization–minimization algorithms applied to their respective envelope functions.     

Sparse Partially Collapsed MCMC for Parallel Inference in Topic Models

Topic models, and more specifically the class of latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA), are widely used for probabilistic modeling of text. Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling from the posterior distribution is typically performed using a collapsed Gibbs sampler. We propose a parallel sparse partially collapsed Gibbs sampler and compare its speed and efficiency to state-of-the-art samplers for topic models on five well-known text corpora of differing sizes and properties. In particular, we propose and compare two different strategies for sampling the parameter block with latent topic indicators. The experiments show that the increase in statistical inefficiency from only partial collapsing is smaller than commonly assumed, and can be more than compensated by the speedup from parallelization and sparsity on larger corpora. We also prove that the partially collapsed samplers scale well with the size of the corpus. The proposed algorithm is fast, efficient, exact, and can be used in more modeling situations than the ordinary collapsed sampler. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.     

Structural characterization of lanthanum aluminosilicate glasses by 29Si solid-state NMR

We investigate the network structures of LaSiAlO glasses by ²⁹Si magic-angle-spinning (MAS) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). Their compositions span most of the glass-forming region of the ternary La₂O₃Al₂O₃SiO₂ system at 1600 °C. The ²⁹Si NMR resonances narrow and become progressively deshielded when Al substitutes for Si in the network, as well as for increasing La-content of the glass, which leads to network depolymerization. We compare experimental and calculated center of gravities of the ²⁹Si NMR peaks, the latter generated from different simplified models for the distributions of Al and Si as well as bridging oxygen (BO) and non-bridging oxygen (NBO) atoms over the networks. The data do not permit accurate quantifications and may only be interpreted in limiting scenarios. However, they indicate that both distributions are essentially randomized, implying a clear deviation of the Al/Si ordering from that according to a Loewenstein Al-avoidance, coupled with a nearly uniform partitioning of the NBO atoms between Al and Si tetrahedra.     

Controlled drug release from gels using lipophilic interactions of charged substances with surfactants and polymers

The aim of this article was to study interactions between different gel forming polymers and amphiphilic drugs and surfactants with the intention of finding interactions that can be used for designing controlled release formulations. The release from gels was measured by detecting the UV-absorbance of drugs released from 6 mL gel into 250 mL release medium in a dissolution bath. The rheological behavior of gels was characterized using a controlled rate rheometer. The diffusion coefficient of alprenolol was 6.3 x 10(-6) cm(2)/s when formulated in a 1% poly(acrylic acid) gel (PAA) and 2.8 x 10(-6) cm(2)/s in a lipophilically modified gel (LM-PAA). The addition of alprenolol to 1% LM-PAA increased the elasticity, G', from 123 to 182 Pa. Increased gel strength was also observed for a number of other amphiphilic drugs. The addition of 1% Brij 58 to LM-PAA decreased the diffusion coefficient of alprenolol to 2.3 x 10(-6) cm(2)/s. It was possible to sustain the release of charged drugs with high log P by adding surfactant micelles. However, the effect was small and only useful for drugs with adequate lipophilicity. The interaction between LM-PAA and amphiphilic drugs could be seen using rheology and was used for designing controlled release gel formulations. In this way surfactants can be avoided, thus decreasing toxicity problems.     

Identification of the major tautomer for an etheno adduct of 2,6-diaminopurine by determination of the sign of (n)J(H,C)

The major of two solution-state tautomers observed for an etheno product of 2,6-diaminopurine was identified as the tautomer H-1 on the basis of the recognition of the two-bond coupling between the NH proton and C-9a and the three-bond coupling between the NH proton and C-3a. The couplings were distinguished as being over two- or three bonds by determination of the sign of the coupling using two-dimensional heteronuclear NMR, negative in the former case and positive in the latter case. [structure: see text]     

Helicobacter pylori determination in non-municipal drinking water and epidemiological findings

BACKGROUND: Studies conducted in Europe as well as in North and South America have tried to link Helicobacter pylori colonization with the drinking water supply, especially since H. pylori is known to survive quite well in water. METHODS: In 2000, a cohort of 1884 grade-two children from two rural counties surrounding the city of Leipzig, Germany (77.4% of the 1991/1992 birth cohort) were tested for H. pylori colonization using the [13C]urea breath test. A parent-completed questionnaire elicited details on living conditions and lifestyle habits including questions on the children's drinking water from sources other than public water supplies, swimming in natural waters, etc. In a second independent study, samples of well water, taken from 157 private wells still used in the two counties, were being tested for the presence of H. pylori, using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method to determine relevant target DNA fragments of H. pylori. RESULTS: In county I, 5.7% of the children and in county II 6.6% tested H. pylori-positive. Cluster analyses of the questionnaire data in both counties pointed to 'drinking water from other than municipal sources', as the closest H. pylori-associated cluster variable. The cluster estimations were supported by odds ratio (OR) calculations with an OR=16.4 (95% confidence interval (CI) 3.1,...,88.5) for county I and OR=4.0 (95% CI 1.3,...,12.4) for county II. The PCR analyses showed H. pylori DNA fragments in 10.8% of the wells in county I and 9.2% in county II. The detection limit was set at 10 DNA copies corresponding to 125 bacteria/L, the average infestation of these wells was 931 bacteria/L. CONCLUSION: Despite the fact that the microbiological and epidemiological data do not correspond except that both studies were conducted in the same geographical areas, the independent findings of H. pylori in well water in the same general areas where children do seem to drink water other than from the public water supply suggests that water may be an important source of H. pylori infection.