Observation of light propagation across a 90 degrees corner in chains of microspheres on a patterned substrate

To demonstrate light-path manipulation in arbitrary shapes we fabricated coupled-resonator optical waveguides (CROWs) having a 90 degrees-corner structure on a lithographically patterned substrate. The spectra of propagation light within the CROWs were directly measured by guide-collection-mode near-field scanning optical microscopy. The spectra revealed that the propagation light through the CROWs has a larger transverse-magnetic polarization mode than a transverse-electric (TE) one. The most plausible cause of the lower intensity in the TE mode is that light leaks out to the Si substrate.     

An atomic force microscope study of vanadium-benzene sandwich clusters soft-landed on self-assembled monolayers

Multiple-decker vanadium-benzene sandwich clusters V_n(benzene)_n+1 produced by a laser-vaporization synthesis method were soft-landed onto self-assembled monolayers of alkanethiol (C₁₈H-SAM) and fluorinated alkanethiol (C₁₀F-SAM) at 200 K. Noncontact atomic force microscopy has been used to examine the resulting adsorption states of the clusters landed on the SAMs at room temperature. For each SAM substrate, the aggregates of the deposited clusters were observed at the vacancy islands and near the steps of the SAM surface. The result indicates that, at room temperature, the clusters landed on the SAM substrate thermally diffuse on the surface to form columnar-shape islands around the defect sites of the SAM surface.     

Search for the invisible decay of neutrons with KamLAND

The Kamioka Liquid scintillator Anti-Neutrino Detector is used in a search for single neutron or two-neutron intranuclear disappearance that would produce holes in the -shell energy level of (12)C nuclei. Such holes could be created as a result of nucleon decay into invisible modes (inv), e.g., n--> 3v or nn--> 2v. The deexcitation of the corresponding daughter nucleus results in a sequence of space and time-correlated events observable in the liquid scintillator detector. We report on new limits for one- and two-neutron disappearance: tau(n--> inv) > 5.8 x 10(29) years and tau (nn--> inv) > 1.4 x 10(30) years at 90% C.L. These results represent an improvement of factors of approximately 3 and >10(4) and over previous experiments.     

Optical second harmonic generation in ammonium tartrate

Second harmonic generation was observed in ammonium tartrate single crystals by a phase matching technique at the fundamental wavelength 1.153 μm. The nonlinear coefficients were found to be comparable in magnitude to those of KDP. The optical transmission and the refractive indices were also measured.     

A Variant of the ORTHOMIN(2) Method for Singular Linear Systems

For singular linear systems A x=b, ORTHOMIN(2) is known theoretically to attain the minimum residual min _xR nb–A x₂ under a certain condition. However, in the actual computation with finite precision arithmetic, the residual is often observed to be reduced further than the theoretically expected level. Therefore, we propose a variant of ORTHOMIN(2), which is mathematically equivalent to the original ORTHOMIN(2) method, but uses recurrence formulas that are different from those of ORTHOMIN(2); they contain alternative expressions for the auxiliary vector and the recurrence coefficients. Although our implementation has the same computational costs as ORTHOMIN(2), numerical experiments on singular systems show that our implementation is more accurate and less affected by rounding errors than ORTHOMIN(2).     

Lanthanide organometallic sandwich nanowires: formation mechanism

A molecular beam of europium-cyclooctatetraene sandwich nanowires Eu(n)()(COT)(m)() was produced by a laser vaporization synthesis method. The formation mechanism of the nanowires was quantitatively revealed by photoelectron and photoionization spectroscopies of the Eu-COT species, together with supporting theoretical calculations. From these results, it is confirmed that growth processes extending the length of Eu-COT nanowires involve a series of elementary reactions in which efficient charge transfer occurs at the terminal reaction sites. In every elementary step, the reaction proceeds between one reactant having low ionization energy and the other reactant having high electron affinity, probably via a "harpoon" mechanism.     

Precision measurement of cosmic-Ray antiproton spectrum

The energy spectrum of cosmic-ray antiprotons ( &pmacr;'s) has been measured in the range 0.18-3.56 GeV, based on 458 &pmacr;'s collected by BESS in a recent solar-minimum period. We have detected for the first time a characteristic peak at 2 GeV of &pmacr;'s originating from cosmic-ray interactions with the interstellar gas. The peak spectrum is reproduced by theoretical calculations, implying that the propagation models are basically correct and that different cosmic-ray species undergo a universal propagation. Future BESS data with still higher statistics will allow us to study the solar modulation and the propagation in detail and to search for primary &pmacr; components.     

Fluorescence high-performance liquid chromatography of trace microamounts of phosphate by oxidation of thiamine to thiochrome

Summary A highly sensitive fluorescence high-performance liquid chromatography, based on the fluorescence of thiochrome which is formed from oxidation of thiamine by the molybdoheteropoly acid of phosphate has been developed for the determination of trace microamounts of phosphate. The method permits the determination of phosphate in the range of 0.1 to 1.0 ng as P/10 l sample solution (3.23×10^–7 to 3.23×10^–6 mol l^–3 as P or PO₄), and it may be possible to apply the proposed method to the microanalysis of phosphate in various biological samples.

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Fluorescenz-HPLC von Spuren-Phosphat durch Oxidation von Thiamin zu Thiochrom

     

Deflation algorithm for the multiple roots of a system of nonlinear equations

T. Ojika, S. Watanabe, and T. Mitsui (in preparation) have been developing a subroutine package NAES (Nonlinear Algebraic Equations Solver) for the numerical solutions of the system of nonlinear equations. An algorithm, in the package, termed the deflation algorithm, for determining multiple roots for a system of nonlinear equations, is presented and its effectiveness is shown by solving a numerical example.     

High-performance liquid chromatography of membrane proteins

Various modes of high-performance liquid chromatography, gel filtration, ion-exchange chromatography, hydrophobic interaction chromatography, reversed-phase chromatography and metal chelate affinity chromatography, were investigated for the separation of membrane proteins. All were found applicable to membrane proteins, although the usefulness of each mode differed. For satisfactory results it was important to select appropriate elution conditions. The type and concentration of detergent was of special importance. The effects of other conditions, flow-rate, gradient steepness, type of buffer and salt, eluent pH, etc., were similar to those observed for soluble proteins.