A Two-Moment Inequality with Applications to Rényi Entropy and Mutual Information

This paper explores some applications of a two-moment inequality for the integral of the rth power of a function, where 0<r<1. The first contribution is an upper bound on the Rényi entropy of a random vector in terms of the two different moments. When one of the moments is the zeroth moment, these bounds recover previous results based on maximum entropy distributions under a single moment constraint. More generally, evaluation of the bound with two carefully chosen nonzero moments can lead to significant improvements with a modest increase in complexity. The second contribution is a method for upper bounding mutual information in terms of certain integrals with respect to the variance of the conditional density. The bounds have a number of useful properties arising from the connection with variance decompositions.     

Lovastatin biosynthesis in Aspergillus terreus: characterization of blocked mutants, enzyme activities and a multifunctional polyketide synthase gene.

BACKGROUND: Lovastatin, an HMG-CoA reductase inhibitor produced by the fungus Aspergillus terreus, is composed of two polyketide chains. One is a nonaketide that undergoes cyclization to a hexahydronaphthalene ring system and the other is a simple diketide, 2-methylbutyrate. Fungal polyketide synthase (PKS) systems are of great interest and their genetic manipulation should lead to novel compounds. RESULTS: An A. terreus mutant (BX102) was isolated that could not synthesize the nonaketide portion of lovastatin and was missing a approximately 250 kDa polypeptide normally present under conditions of lovastatin production. Other mutants produced lovastatin intermediates without the methylbutyryl sidechain and were missing a polypeptide of approximately 220 kDa. The PKS inhibitor cerulenin reacted covalently with both polypeptides. Antiserum raised against the approximately 250 kDa polypeptide was used to isolate the corresponding gene, which complemented the BX102 mutation. The gene encodes a polypeptide of 269 kDa containing catalytic domains typical of vertebrate fatty acid and fungal PKSs, plus two additional domains not previously seen in PKSs: a centrally located methyltransferase domain and a peptide synthetase elongation domain at the carboxyl terminus. CONCLUSIONS: The results show that the nonaketide and diketide portions of lovastatin are synthesized by separate large multifunctional PKSs. Elucidation of the primary structure of the PKS that forms the lovastatin nonaketide, as well as characterization of blocked mutants, provides new details of lovastatin biosynthesis.     

Unsteady three-dimensional compressible vortex flows generated during shock wave diffraction

The results of an experimental and numerical investigation into the behaviour of the spiral vortex generated by shock wave diffraction over edges yawed to the incident shock wave are presented. Three-dimensional numerical simulations reveal significant distortion and bending of the free vortex in regions near the boundary of the flow domain, so as to meet it at a right angle. The results of numerical simulations were found to mimic the experimentally obtained photographs very well. The numerical results are used to explain the various features of the resultant flow fields, with particular emphasis placed on the behaviour and properties of the spiral vortex, as it evolves with time. The effects of bending on the structure of the vortex are examined. The rate of circulation production for the three-dimensional shock diffraction cases was calculated, and the trends observed correlated with those for the much published two-dimensional diffraction case.     

Photoluminescence behavior of ZnO nanorods produced by eclipse PLD from a Zn metal target

In this work, arrays of one-dimensional ZnO nanostructures were deposited on c-axis sapphire by standard and eclipse pulsed laser deposition (EPLD) using a metallic Zn target. One reference sample was grown by standard PLD and nine were grown by EPLD using a 16 by 16 mm² square shadow mask. Three shadow mask positions were used, with three depositions at varying oxygen pressures for each mask position. The oxygen partial pressure was between 100 and 200 mTorr for all growth procedures with a substrate temperature of 600 C.SEM reveals that arrays of nanorods are formed when growing by standard PLD. When grown by EPLD the rods tend to clump together with ordering on the micron scale. Low temperature photoluminescence was carried out as a function of position over several of the samples with 1 or 2 mm spacing. In general, it was found that the luminescence intensity is maximum in the center of the samples and falls off toward the edges while the shape stays roughly the same. Free exciton emission was resolved in most samples along with several other emission peaks from donor-bound excitons. The integrated PL intensity for all the EPLD samples is an order of magnitude higher than for the standard PLD sample. Linewidths are significantly reduced as well. Hence, the EPLD grown samples have superior optical quality and this growth technique shows promise for growth of high quality ZnO nanostructures.     

An Improved Heuristic for the Quadratic Assignment Problem

A technique is described whereby the computational efficiency of the Lashkari-Jaisingh heuristic for the quadratic assignment problem is greatly enhanced. Results for the modified heuristic are presented which demonstrate that it provides solutions of consistently high quality at relatively small computational cost.     

Target excitations and the optical potential for protons scattering from nuclei

We calculate the contributions to the optical potential for 30 MeV protons due to inelastic excitations of the target nucleus. The scattering due to this non-local potential is calculated exactly and some of the results subjected to conventional optical model analysis. When only one excited state is included, a resonant dependence on the excitation energy is observed. Even with ten excited states, the position of a single one can strongly influence the scattering. It is possible to account for about $\text{3}\text{4}$ of the observed absorption in ⁴⁰Ca and ²⁰⁸Pb, but only by postulating unobserved states which exhaust the remainder of the experimental sum rules at somewhat unreasonably low energies. It was not possible to find simple local potentials which gave the same scattering because of the strong L-dependence of the absorption. The constructed potentials concentrate the absorption at too small radii. It is suggested that rearrangement (pick-up) processes contribute a substantial amount of absorption at larger radii, while compound formation will give rise to a volume term in the imaginary potential.     

New Lyotropic nematic phases with unusual anisotropies of magnetic susceptibility: Type I DM and type II CM

Two lyotropic mesophases of opposite signs of susceptibility anisotropy have been found, one a quaternary and the other a ternary phase. Conclusive evidence is presented that the disk-micelle mesophase has positive diamagnetic anisotropy and the rod-like micelle phase has negative anisotropy. These have been named type I DM and type II CM mesophases respectively to conform with the notation previously introduced for mesophases based on aliphatic chain surfactants.