Study of Segregation Effects and Fusion Between Lipid Vesicles by Combined Scanning Dilatometric and Calorimetric Measurements

Abstract

Scanning dilatometric and calorimetric measurements were performed in order to obtain information on correlations between various phenomena involving a lipid vesicle. Scanning dilatometry has been shown to be a fast and reliable tool which gives complementary information to that obtained using differential scanning calorimetry and also, provides a means with which to follow dynamic processes without the introduction of perturbing probes into the lipid matrix. The systems examined were vesicles built up from mixtures of neutral and charged lipids in the presence of mono- and divalent inorganic cations. The studied processes were the gel-liquid crystal transition, lateral phase separation in mixed lipid vesicles and fusion between vesicles.     

Are Collapse Models Testable via Flavor Oscillations?

Collapse models predict the spontaneous collapse of the wave function, in order to avoid the emergence of macroscopic superpositions. In their mass-dependent formulation, they claim that the collapse of any system’s wave function depends on its mass. Neutral K, D, B mesons are oscillating systems that are given by Nature as superposition of two distinct mass eigenstates. Thus they are unique laboratory for testing collapse models that are sensitive to the mass. In this paper we derive—for the single mesons and bipartite entangled mesons—the effect of the mass-proportional CSL (Continuous Spontaneous Localization) collapse model on the dynamics on neutral mesons. We compare the theoretical prediction with experimental data from different accelerator facilities.     

Neurofibrillary tangles and plaques are not accompanied by white matter pathology in aged triple transgenic-Alzheimer disease mice

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that is the most common cause of dementia in aging populations. Although senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles are well-established hallmarks of AD, changes in cerebral white matter correlate with cognitive decline and may increase the risk of the development of dementia. We used the triple transgenic (3xTg)-AD mouse model of AD, previously used to show that white matter changes precede plaque formation, to test the hypothesis that MRI detectable changes occur in the corpus callosum, external capsule and the fornix. T₂-weighted and diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging and histological stains were employed to assess white matter in older (11–17 months) 3xTg-AD mice and controls. We found no statistically significant changes in white matter between 3xTg-AD mice and controls, despite well-developed neurofibrillary tangles and beta amyloid immunoreactive plaques. Myelin staining was normal in affected mice. These data suggest that the 3xTg-AD mouse model does not develop MRI detectable white matter changes at the ages we examined.     

Robust clustering around regression lines with high density regions

Robust methods are needed to fit regression lines when outliers are present. In a clustering framework, outliers can be extreme observations, high leverage points, but also data points which lie among the groups. Outliers are also of paramount importance in the analysis of international trade data, which motivate our work, because they may provide information about anomalies like fraudulent transactions. In this paper we show that robust techniques can fail when a large proportion of non-contaminated observations fall in a small region, which is a likely occurrence in many international trade data sets. In such instances, the effect of a high-density region is so strong that it can override the benefits of trimming and other robust devices. We propose to solve the problem by sampling a much smaller subset of observations which preserves the cluster structure and retains the main outliers of the original data set. This goal is achieved by defining the retention probability of each point as an inverse function of the estimated density function for the whole data set. We motivate our proposal as a thinning operation on a point pattern generated by different components. We then apply robust clustering methods to the thinned data set for the purposes of classification and outlier detection. We show the advantages of our method both in empirical applications to international trade examples and through a simulation study.     

Colourings of cubic graphs inducing isomorphic monochromatic subgraphs

A -bisection of a bridgeless cubic graph is a -colouring of its vertex set such that the colour classes have the same cardinality and all connected components in the two subgraphs induced by the colour classes ( monochromatic components in what follows) have order at most . Ban and Linial Conjectured that every bridgeless cubic graph admits a -bisection except for the Petersen graph. A similar problem for the edge set of cubic graphs has been studied: Wormald conjectured that every cubic graph with has a -edge colouring such that the two monochromatic subgraphs are isomorphic linear forests (ie, a forest whose components are paths). Finally, Ando conjectured that every cubic graph admits a bisection such that the two induced monochromatic subgraphs are isomorphic. In this paper, we provide evidence of a strong relation of the conjectures of Ban-Linial and Wormald with Ando's Conjecture. Furthermore, we also give computational and theoretical evidence in their support. As a result, we pose some open problems stronger than the above-mentioned conjectures. Moreover, we prove Ban-Linial's Conjecture for cubic-cycle permutation graphs. As a by-product of studying -edge colourings of cubic graphs having linear forests as monochromatic components, we also give a negative answer to a problem posed by Jackson and Wormald about certain decompositions of cubic graphs into linear forests.     

Copper(II) complexes with pyridoxal dithiocarbazate and thiosemicarbazone ligands: crystal structure,spectroscopic analysis and cytotoxic activity

Transition Metal Chemistry - The present study reports the synthesis and crystal structures of Cu(II) complexes with pyridoxal S-allyldithiocarbazate (H2L1) and pyridoxal thiosemicarbazones...     

Ultra-stable microwave generation with a diode-pumped solid-state laser in the 1.5-μm range

We demonstrate the first ultra-stable microwave generation based on a 1.5-μm diode-pumped solid-state laser (DPSSL) frequency comb. Our system relies on optical-to-microwave frequency division from a planar-waveguide external cavity laser referenced to an ultra-stable Fabry–Perot cavity. The evaluation of the microwave signal at ~10 GHz uses the transportable ultra-low-instability signal source ULISS^®, which employs a cryo-cooled sapphire oscillator. With the DPSSL comb, we measured ?125 dBc/Hz phase noise at 1 kHz offset frequency, likely limited by the photo-detection shot-noise or by the noise floor of the reference cryo-cooled sapphire oscillator. For comparison, we also generated low-noise microwave using a commercial Er:fiber comb stabilized in similar conditions and observed >20 dB lower phase noise in the microwave generated from the DPSSL comb. Our results confirm the high potential of the DPSSL technology for low-noise comb applications.