Time-resolved fluorescence study of the single tryptophan in thiocyanate and azide derivatives of horseradish peroxidase: Implication for a p H-induced conformational change in the heme cavity

Detailed pH-dependent steady state and picosecond time-resolved tryptophan fluorescence studies on thiocyanate and azide complexes of horseradish peroxidase have been carried out. The fluorescence decay of the single tryptophan in these species was fitted to a discrete three exponential model. Maximum entropy method analysis also gave three distinct regions of lifetime distributions. The fast subnanosecond lifetime component was found to have > 97% amplitude contribution while other two longer lifetime components have small contributions. Small contributions from the nanosecond lifetime components possibly arise from apoprotein impurity or some small amount of disordered heme conformer of the protein. pH dependence of the fast picosecond lifetime components was found to show a systematic behavior which has been interpreted in the light of obligatory conformation change associated with activation of the enzyme at low pH.     

Exact solutions of a nonlinear sigma-model in a curved space and the theory of magnetically ordered media with variable saturation magnetization

Stationary solitons are found to occur in two-dimensional media with a variable saturation magnetization whose square is a harmonic function of the coordinates. It is shown in this case that the Landau-Lifshits equation can be reduced to the integrable O(3) sigma-model in curved space. Some properties of the solutions obtained are discussed. Bibliography: 15 titles. Translated by V. D. Lipovskii.     

Theoretical and experimental investigation of the linear optical response of YBa2Cu4O8 The relevance of LDA calculations

We report results of ellipsometric measurements of the dielectric tensor of YBa₂Cu₄O₈ as well as calculations employing density functional theory in the local density approximation (LDA). For the computation of the one-electron eigenvalues and states the linear-muffin-tin-orbital method (LMTO) was used. Measured and calculated results show good agreement. In particular, the calculation predicts different band structures for YBa₂Cu₃O₇ and YBa₂Cu₄O₈ in the vicinity of the Fermi energy which lead to significant differences in the optical spectra. One such difference is a region of small ε₂ in the near infrared which is a fingerprint of the high (relative to the top of the highest fully occupied band) Fermi energy as compared to the situation in YBa₂Cu₃O₇. Our experimental results confirm the theoretical findings.     

Unoccupied electronic states of epitaxial iron layers on Cu(100)

Inverse photoemission spectra were taken for thin epitaxial iron films on Cu(100). For a film thickness of eight monolayers the observed electronic states are characteristic for a fcc(100) surface. Thed-bands of iron show a ferromagnetic exchange splitting of 1.1 eV, considerably smaller than the bulk value of 1.8 eV, which we observe for film thicknesses above 18 monolayers.     

Phase diagram of multilayer magnetic structures

Multilayer ferromagnet-layered antiferromagnet (Fe/Cr) structures frustrated because of roughness of interlayer boundaries were studied by mathematical modeling methods. The phase diagram of a three-layer system (plotted as film thickness versus the degree of roughness of the interfaces) was obtained, and the order parameter distributions in each phase were determined. The character of phase transitions in this system was studied. The applicability range of the Slonczewski magnetic proximity model was determined.     

Ablation of an optically homogeneous absorbing medium by scattered pulsed laser radiation

We have studied the ablation of an aqueous CuCl₂ solution in a pulsed Nd:YAG laser field featuring a speckle-patterned structure characterized by spatial radiation energy fluence fluctuations. This leads to a nonuniform distribution of the energy absorbed in the bulk of the sample being irradiated and causes local overheating centers to form, wherein ablation is observed to take place at laser energy fluences below the threshold value found in experiments with a homogeneous laser beam. This effect should be manifest in the laser irradiation of biotissues which, as a rule, scatter light strongly.     

Influence of layer and anisotropic fluctuations of the refractive index on the beyond-the-horizon SHF propagation in the troposphere over the sea when there is an evaporation duct

On the basis of the invariant imbedding method the disturbance theory for complex constants of propagation is proposed. This approach allows us to consider the influence of layer and anisotropic fluctuations of refractive index on the beyond-the-horizon propagation in the adiabatic approximation with the existence of an evaporation duct. Finally, the authors consider some examples of the calculations and investigate stochastic effects connected with the interaction between fluctuating and regular waveguides.     

Nonparametric decision-making models for large samples

Translated from Izvestiya Vysshikh Uchebnykh Zavedenii, Fizika, No. 9, pp. 79–83, September, 1995.     

Positive solutions and dynamics of a finite difference reaction–diffusion system

We investigate the dynamics and methods of computation for some nonlinear finite difference systems that are the discretized equations of a time-dependent and a steady-state reaction–diffusion problem. The formulation of the discrete equations for the time-dependent problem is based on the implicit method for parabolic equations, and the computational algorithm is based on the method of monotone iterations using upper and lower solutions as the initial iterations. The monotone iterative method yields improved upper and lower bounds of the solution in each iteration, and the sequence of iterations converges monotonically to a solution for both the time-dependent and the steady-state problems. An important consequence of this method is that it leads to a bifurcation point that determines the dynamic behavior of the time-dependent problem in relation to the corresponding steady-state problem. This bifurcation point also determines whether the steady-state problem has one or two non-negative solutions, and is explicitly given in terms of the physical parameters of the system and the type of boundary conditions. Numerical results are presented for both the time-dependent and the steady-state problems under various boundary conditions, including a test problem with known analytical solution. These numerical results exhibit the predicted dynamic behavior of the time-dependent solution given by the theoretical analysis. Also discussed are the numerical stability of the computational algorithm and the convergence of the finite difference solution to the corresponding continuous solution of the reaction–diffusion problem. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.