Surface characterization of a cross‐linked cytochrome c film on cysteamine‐modified gold electrodes

The aim of the present paper is to characterize a cross‐linked horse heart cytochrome c (HHC) film on cysteamine‐modified gold electrodes. The HHC film was deposited using 1‐ethyl‐3‐(3‐dimethylaminopropyl)‐carbodiimide (EDC) as a coupling agent. Attenuated total reflection infrared (ATR‐IR) spectroscopic analyses were performed to characterize the newly formed surface on a qualitative and conformational level. The film thickness was measured using a noncontact optical surface profiler, while quantitative data and information on the heterogeneity of the film were obtained by means of synchrotron radiation X‐ray micro fluorescence (SR micro‐XRF). Results indicate that, in addition to electrochemical studies, spectroscopic analysis methods are essential to gain insight in the effect of immobilization strategies on protein conformations. The latter is of relevance in the development and optimization of biosensors. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Induced solvent chirality: A VCD study of camphor in CDCl3

It is shown how the presence of a chiral compound in solution induces chirality in the surrounding solvent molecules. Using Vibrational Circular Dichroism on camphor dissolved in deuterated chloroform, it is found that the C–D stretch in the latter indeed becomes VCD active. The experimental results agree with ab initio computed spectra for 1:1 associations between the solvent and solute.     

Interface control of high-k gate dielectrics on Ge

Important progress has been made in the passivation of Ge/gate dielectric interfaces. One important approach is by thermally oxidized GeO₂ interface and ALD high-k layers, with an interface state density D_it ∼ 2 × 10¹¹ cm⁻² eV⁻¹. Another approach is with an epi-Si/SiO₂ interface, resulting in similar D_it. Hysteresis and V_th shift, however, are still not optimal. Extensive material characterization and theoretical insights help us understanding the root cause of these remaining issues and show the way to improved interface control.     

Measurement of flows around modern commercial ship models

To document the details of flow characteristics around modern commercial ships, global force, wave pattern, and local mean velocity components were measured in the towing tank. Three modern commercial hull models of a container ship (KRISO container ship = KCS) and of two very large crude-oil carriers (VLCCs) with the same forebody and slightly different afterbody (KVLCC and KVLCC2) having bow and stern bulbs were selected for the test. Uncertainty analysis was performed for the measured data using the procedure recommended by the ITTC. Obtained experimental data will provide a good opportunity to explore integrated flow phenomena around practical hull forms of today. Those can be also used as the validation data for the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code of both inviscid and viscous flow calculations. Received: 26 September 2000/Accepted: 22 May 2001     

Vowel identification and vowel masking patterns of hearing-impaired subjects

Confusion matrices for seven synthetic steady-state vowels were obtained from ten normal and three hearing-impaired subjects. The vowels were identified at greater than 96% accuracy by the normals, and less accurately by the impaired subjects. Shortened versions of selected vowels then were used as maskers, and vowel masking patterns (VMPs) consisting of forward-masked threshold for sinusoidal probes at all vowel masker harmonics were obtained from the impaired subjects and from one normal subject. Vowel-masked probe thresholds were transformed using growth-of-masking functions obtained with flat-spectrum noise. VMPs of the impaired subjects, relative to those of the normal, were characterized by smaller dynamic range, poorer peak resolution, and poorer preservation of the vowel formant structure. These VMP characteristics, however, did not necessarily coincide with inaccurate vowel recognition. Vowel identification appeared to be related primarily to VMP peak frequencies rather than to the levels at the peaks or to between-peak characteristics of the patterns.     

Valence and inner proton hole states in119in via the (d,3He) reaction

Proton holes states have been studied up toE _x=17 MeV andE _x=3.5 MeV in the¹¹⁹In nucleus via the¹²⁰Sn(d,³He)¹¹⁹In reaction respectively atE _d=108.4 MeV andE _d=51 MeV. DWBA analysis of angular distributions has allowedl attributions for a large number of new levels and the determination of valence and inner hole strength distributions. The first 1g _9/2, 2p _1/2 and 2p _3/2 levels only exhaust 40%, 60% and 32% of their respective sum rule limits. The missing strengths are shared among several low lying levels and significant higher lying contributions. The 1f strength, not identified in the previous experiments is spread fromE _x=1 MeV to about 17 MeV. The low lying levels aroundE _x=2.4 MeV could exhaust some 40% of the 1f _5/2 sum rule. The higher lying strength with a flat maximum aroundE _x=7.5 MeV could account for the 1f _7/2inner hole strength and the missing 1f _5/2 valence strength. The experimental strength functions compare rather well with the predictions of the quasiparticle-phonon model.     

Mixed parallel processors with interdependent blocking

This paper studies a system of parallel service facilities or processors with mixed exponential and non-exponential queues, a non-exponential finite source input and interdependent arrival as well as departure blocking such as due to a common pool or shared resource. A concrete invariance condition upon the blocking protocol is provided. Under this condition the stationary busy source distribution is shown to be of an insensitive product form. The result unifies and extends known product form results as will be illustrated by several examples.     

Ab initio calculation of the Young's modulus of α‐polyamides

In earlier works the supermolecule model has been applied to the calculation of the Young's modulus of crystalline polyethylene and polyamide‐6. In the supermolecule model a crystalline polymer is represented as a single finite chain divided into a head, body, and tail part. The body contains a number of monomer units and is representative for a polymer chain. In this article, this model has been used to study the geometric properties and the elastic moduli of the α form of other polyamides: polyamide‐2 (or polyglycine), polyamide‐3, polyamide‐4, polyamide‐11, and polyamide‐6,6. All calculations have been performed with a linearly constrained body. The results have been compared to other theoretical and experimental results if available. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.; DOI 10.1002/qua.2002;10121     

The influence of the conduction electrons on the EFG in amorphous intermetallic alloys

The quadrupole splitting in alloys is determined by the structural and electronic properties of the alloy. Only in cases where the density of states at the Fermi level is constant or known as a function of the concentration, relevant structural information can be obtained from the quadrupole splitting.