Photometric method for the determination of nitrite in aqueous solutions and in blood

Summary The sensitivity of the hitherto known determinations of nitrite by formation of azo dyes and photometric measurement in aqueous solution is limited by the concentration of nitrite. In the method described here the azo compound formed is extracted into toluene and trichloroacetic acid is added to the extract. Immediately after addition of the latter the colour intensity reaches its maximum and is measured at 560 nm. In this way the sensitivity is made independent of the nitrite concentration in the aqueous solution and is limited only by the sample volume available.This study was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.     

Search for ΔS = 2 decays of neutral Ξ-hyperons

A search for the decay Ξ⁰→pπ^? has been performed in a neutral hyperon beam derived from the 24 GeV/c external proton beam at CERN. The experiment gives as a 90% confidence upper limit for the branching ratio $\text{Γ(Ξ}{}^0\text{→pπ}{}^{\mathrm{?}}\text{)}\text{Γ(Ξ}{}^0\text{→Λπ}{}^0\text{)<3.6×10}{}^{\mathrm{?5}}$.     

Optimal control of coupled spin dynamics: design of NMR pulse sequences by gradient ascent algorithms

In this paper, we introduce optimal control algorithm for the design of pulse sequences in NMR spectroscopy. This methodology is used for designing pulse sequences that maximize the coherence transfer between coupled spins in a given specified time, minimize the relaxation effects in a given coherence transfer step or minimize the time required to produce a given unitary propagator, as desired. The application of these pulse engineering methods to design pulse sequences that are robust to experimentally important parameter variations, such as chemical shift dispersion or radiofrequency (rf) variations due to imperfections such as rf inhomogeneity is also explained.     

Construction of universal rotations from point-to-point transformations

For a desired range of offsets, universal rotations of arbitrary flip angle can be constructed based on point-to-point rotations of I(y) with half the flip angle. This approach allows, for example, creation of broadband or bandselective refocusing pulses from broadband or bandselective excitation pulses. Furthermore, universal rotations about any axis can be obtained from point-to-point transformations that can easily be optimized using optimal control algorithms. The construction procedure is demonstrated on the examples of a broadband refocusing pulse, a broadband 120(x) degrees rotation and a z-rotation with offset pattern.     

Recovery of spectral features readout with frequency-chirped laser fields

A data-processing technique is proposed for use with conventional frequency-chirped absorption spectroscopy to ensure accurate mapping of spectral features into time-domain signatures with arbitrarily fast readout chirp rates. This technique recovers the spectrum from a signal that is distorted owing to the fast chirp rate and therefore facilitates fast measurement of the spectral features over a broad spectral range with high resolution. Both numerical simulations and experimental results are presented.     

Optimized hole injection with strong electron acceptors at organic-metal interfaces

The energy-level alignment at interfaces between three electroactive conjugated organic materials and Au was systematically varied by adjusting the precoverage of the metal substrate with the electron acceptor tetrafluoro-tetracyanoquinodimethane (F4-TCNQ). Photoelectron spectroscopy revealed that electron transfer from Au to adsorbed F4-TCNQ was responsible for lowering the hole-injection barrier by as much as 1.2 eV. This novel interface modification scheme is independent of the charge transfer complex formation ability of the organic materials with the electron acceptor.     

Charmed-meson decay constants in three-flavor lattice QCD

We present the first lattice QCD calculation with realistic sea quark content of the D+-meson decay constant f(D+). We use the MILC Collaboration's publicly available ensembles of lattice gauge fields, which have a quark sea with two flavors (up and down) much lighter than a third (strange). We obtain f(D+)=201+/-3+/-17 MeV, where the errors are statistical and a combination of systematic errors. We also obtain f(Ds)=249+/-3+/-16 MeV for the Ds meson.     

Variation of the conformal radius

We study the change of the conformal radiusr(U) of a simply connected planar domainU versus the subdomainU _ε consisting of the points of distance at least ε to ∂U. We show that the smallest exponent λ such thatr(U)-r(U _t)=0(e ^λ) satisfies 0.59<λ<0.91. We also show that a well-known conjecture implies . Partially supported by NSF Grant DMS-9970398.     

Test by NMR of the phase coherence of electromagnetically induced transparency

Electromagnetically induced transparency is an effect observed in atomic systems, originating from quantum interference, in which electromagnetic transitions to and from a certain quantum state become suppressed. This dark state is also characterized by a quantum phase, relative to other states, which theoretically should stop evolving, but remain phase coherent, during transparency. We test this theoretical prediction using techniques developed for liquid-state nuclear magnetic resonance quantum computation, applied to a spin-7/2 nuclear spin system. A sequence of quantum operations is applied to create the dark state, and during transparency its phase evolution is measured relative to a reference state using Ramsey interferometry. Experimental measurements of the fringe visibility are in excellent agreement with theoretical expectations, taking into account measured decoherence rates.