Cover Picture

The cover picture shows how thrombosis occurs in the deep veins of the lower limbs. Stasis, which results from slow and turbulent blood flow, combined with hypercoagulation, caused, for example, by a surgical procedure, may result in thrombus formation. The synthetic sulfated pentasaccharide shown in part is a potent antithrombotic compound that exerts its effect by activation of the plasma protein antithrombin III. Conformationally locked monosaccharides have now been synthesized to demonstrate that L-iduronic acid, one part of the pentasaccharide, must adopt an unusual distorted conformation to activate antithrombin III. Such conformational effects might be relevant in explaining the unique biological properties of glycosaminoglycans that contain L-iduronic acid. In the background of the picture, a flight of vampire bats is attracted by the pentasaccharide. Vampire was the name given to South American blood-sucking bats (Latin name: desmodus rotundus) in 1761 by the French naturalist Georges Louis Leclerc Comte de Buffon (1707-1788). These bats are known to attack cattle and, very rarely, sleeping human beings. Although their saliva has been shown to contain an anticoagulant compound, they would also be happy to benefit from the pentasaccharide mentioned above, to suck the blood out of the vein more easily. More details about this compound which would be helpful to vampire bats are reported by Petitou, Sina? et al. on p. 1670 ff.     

Rabi-Lorentzian profile of an atomic resonance obtained with Gaussian beams

We demonstrate that the interaction between atoms and a Gaussian beam changes the Lorentzian resonance into a so-called Rabi-Lorentzian resonance profile. The existence of such profiles is experimentally evidenced in a dark resonance situation for metastable (4) He, in the absence of any external perturbation. A topological mechanism is shown theoretically to account for the measured profiles. We observe a 3% systematic residual with respect to a pure Lorentzian profile, which could play a role in the search of high precision in the measurement of fundamental constants.     

Ferromagnetic hcp chromium in Cr/Ru(0001) superlattices

We report the first observation of a weak ferromagnetic state of Cr in Cr/Ru(0001) superlattices, based on magnetic hysteresis and corroborated by x-ray magnetic circular dichroism at the CrL(2,3) edges. In situ reflection high-energy electron diffraction, x-ray diffraction, and Cr K-edge polarized x-ray absorption investigations have shown that the Cr layers thinner than 8 angstroms adopt a slightly distorted hcp structure, accompanied by a large atomic volume expansion of up to 14% compared to the bcc packing volume. The expanded hcp structure clearly induces the observed ferromagnetism, in agreement with theory.     

Characterization of core-shell nanoparticles by small angle neutron scattering

The Ni₃Si-type nanoparticles dispersed in a mixture of H₂O/D₂O were characterised by SANS using the contrast variation method. The existence of a core-shell structure in the nanoparticles with a Ni₃Si(Al) core and amorphous SiO_x shell is confirmed by the SANS measurements. The nanoparticles were produced by extracting precipitates from a bulk Ni-13.3Si-2Al ( at. %) alloy using electrochemical phase separation technique and were pre-characterised by X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy. By comparing the precipitate morphology in the Ni-Si-Al alloy with the extracted nanoparticles in the SANS measurements, it is clearly established that the precipitates shape and size are unaffected by the extraction process and that the amorphous shell forms on top of the particle core. However, the present measurement could not confirm or exclude the presence of H atoms in the shell structure. PACS 61.12.Ex; 61.12.-q; 61.46.Df; 61.82.Rx     

Large intrinsic birefringence in zinc-blende based artificial semiconductors

A new attempt to solve the phase matching problem for semiconductor-based frequency conversion devices, based on the implementation of intrinsic birefringence in artificial materials, is discussed. The first results concerning the growth and characterization of ultrashort period superlattices are presented. To cite this article: J.-M. Jancu et al., C. R. Physique 8 (2007).     

Sur le nombre de points rationnels des variétés abéliennes et des Jacobiennes sur les corps finis

We give upper and lower bounds for the number of points on abelian and Jacobian varieties over finite fields. We also determine the values for the maximum and minimum number of points on Jacobian surfaces on a given finite field.     

Synthesis of cubic-BN using new flux-precursors: The fluoronitrides

Abstract

Instead of alkaline or alkaline-earth nitrides, fluoro-nitrides with mixed composition have been developed as flux-precursors for the elaboration process of c-BN. If the pressure and temperature conditions for the h-BN → c-BN conversion are sensibly reduced, the conversion rates are largely increased. On the other hand, such compounds are appropriate for growth of c-BN single crystal.     

A [Cyclentetrakis(methylene)]tetrakis[2‐hydroxybenzamide] Ligand That Complexes and Sensitizes Lanthanide(III) Ions

The synthesis of the cyclen derivative H₄ L ¹ ?2 HBr containing four 2‐hydroxybenzamide groups is described. The spectroscopic properties of the Ln^III conplexes of L ¹ (Ln=Gd, Tb, Yb, and Eu) reveal changes of the UV/VIS‐absorption, circular‐dichroism‐absorption, luminescence, and circularly polarized luminescence spectra. It is shown that at least two metal‐complex species are present in solution, whose relative amounts are pH dependent. At pH>8.0, an intense long‐lived emission is observed (for [Tb L ¹ ] and [Yb L ¹ ]), while at pH<8.0, a weaker, shorter‐lived species predominates. Unconventional Ln^III emitters (Pr, Nd, Sm, Dy, and Tm) were sensitized in basic solution, both in the VIS and in the near‐IR, to measure the emission of these ions.     

A combinatorial approach to jumping particles: The parallel TASEP

In this article, we continue the combinatorial study of models of particles jumping on a row of cells which we initiated with the standard totally asymmetric simple exclusion process or TASEP (Duchi and Schaeffer, Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A, 110(2005), 1–29). We consider here the parallel TASEP, in which particles can jump simultaneously. On the one hand, the interest in this process comes from highway traffic modeling: it is the only solvable special case of the Nagel‐Schreckenberg automaton, the most popular model in that context. On the other hand, the parallel TASEP is of some theoretical interest because the derivation of its stationary distribution, as appearing in the physics literature, is harder than that of the standard TASEP. We offer here an elementary derivation that extends the combinatorial approach we developed for the standard TASEP. In particular, we show that this stationary distribution can be expressed in terms of refinements of Catalan numbers. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Random Struct. Alg., 2008