Heterostructure injection lasers

A new family of semiconductor injection lasers with high efficiencies and low threshold currents has recently shown promise for use in a wide range of applications. The heterostructure lasers are described here and the reasons for their improved performance are discussed.     

The matching of electrostatic extrema: A useful method in drug design? A study of phosphodiesterase III inhibitors

Summary Ligands which bind to a specific protein binding site are often expected to have a similar electrostatic environment which complements that of the binding site. One method of assessing molecular electrostatic similarity is to examine the possible overlay of the maxima and minima in the electrostatic potential outside the molecules and thereby match the regions where strong electrostatic interactions, including hydrogen bonds, with the residues of the binding site may be possible. This approach is validated with accurate calculations of the electrostatic potential, derived from a distributed multipole analysis of an ab initio charge density of the molecule, so that the effects of lone pair and -electron density are correctly included. We have applied this method to the phosphodiesterase (PDE) III substrate adenosine-3,5-cyclic monophosphate (cAMP) and a range of nonspecific and specific PDE III inhibitors. Despite the structural variation between cAMP and the inhibitors, it is possible to match three or four extrema to produce relative orientations in which the inhibitors are sufficiently sterically and electrostatically similar to the natural substrate to account for their affinity for PDE III. This matching of extrema is more apparent using the accurate electrostatic models than it was when this approach was first applied, using semiempirical point charge models. These results reinforce the hypothesis of electrostatic similarity and give weight to the technique of extrema matching as a useful tool in drug design.     

Decomposing the complete graph into cycles of many lengths

For all oddv 3 the complete graph onvK _v vertices can be decomposed intov – 2 edge disjoint cycles whose lengths are 3, 3, 4, 5,...,v – 1. Also, for all oddv 7,K _v can be decomposed intov – 3 edge disjoint cycles whose lengths are 3, 4,...,v – 4,v – 2,v – 1,v. Research supported by Australian Research Council grant A49130102     

Microstructural evolution of ZnS during sintering monitored by optical and positron annihilation techniques

Positron lifetime and optical absorption techniques were employed to track the microstructural evolution of polycrystalline ZnS grown by Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD). As grown material and material treated with Hot Isostatic Pressure (HIP) was sintered at temperatures ranging from 400 to 1000°C for 2–18 h. A 290 ps defect lifetime could be resolved in all samples, while an additional longer lifetime (=430 ps) was found only in samples annealed at low temperatures. This component gradually disappeared during annealing at 800°C. Associated with the disappearance of the long-lived component, the apparent bulk lifetime of the material changed from 235 to 215 ps. A 215±2 ps bulk parameter was also found for HIP-treated material annealed at temperatures greater than 400°C and hence is taken to represent the delocalized state of the positrons in ZnS. Optical absorption measurements showed that annealing at 800°C also caused the absorption profiles of the CVD and HIP samples to converge. The rate of the bulk lifetime transition correlates with the absorption changes. The observed sharpening of the absorption profile is attributed to a decrease in scattering from grain boundaries and voids, and a decrease in absorption from point defects. The 430 ps lifetime is believed to be due to trapping at voids and grain boundaries, while the 290 ps lifetime likely is due to a monovacancy stabilized as a small complex.Paper presented at the 132nd WE-Heraeus-Seminr on Positron Studies of Semiconductor Defects, Halle, Germany, 29 August to 2 September 1994     

Error estimates in the determination of rigid body displacements in protein crystals

We report the estimation of random errors in the refinement of the rigid body displacements of the -helices of the enzyme 6-phosphogluconate dehydrogenase. Least-squares refinement of the TLS parameters of the helices has been carried out using X-ray reflection data of 2.1 Å resolution, resulting in anR-factor of 19.5%. Standard deviations were estimated from the normal matrix. The results show that the translational mean-square displacements of nearly all the helices are significant at this resolution. However the libration parameters are only significant when the helices have at least four turns. Screw-rotation tensor values cannot be determined at this resolution.