Surface modification of polystyrene with the bovine serum albumin-Tween 80 complex and a forecast of biocompatibility

The surface of polystyrene was modified with the bovine serum albumin-Tween 80 complex. The adsorption of the complex and the formation of films on the surface of polystyrene were studied using the piezoelectric weighing method. The state of the modified surface was evaluated by contact angle measurements. The stability of the modifying layer was determined based on the critical interfacial energy values of the surface equilibrated with water. A conclusion was drawn that the complex can be effectively used to enhance the biocompatibility of polymer materials.     

Microstructural assessment of InN-on-GaN films grown by plasma-assisted MBE

The structural properties of InN thin films, grown by rf plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy on Ga-face GaN/Al₂O₃(0001) substrates, were investigated by means of conventional and high resolution electron microscopy. Our observations showed that a uniform InN film of total thickness up to 1 μm could be readily grown on GaN without any indication of columnar growth. A clear epitaxial orientation relationship of , was determined. The quality of the InN film was rather good, having threading dislocations as the dominant structural defect with a density in the range of 10⁹–10¹⁰ cm⁻². The crystal lattice parameters of wurtzite InN were estimated by electron diffraction analysis to be a=0.354 nm and c=0.569 nm, using Al₂O₃ as the reference crystal. Heteroepitaxial growth of InN on GaN was accomplished by the introduction of a network of three regularly spaced misfit dislocation arrays at the atomically flat interface plane. The experimentally measured distance of misfit dislocations was 2.72 nm. This is in good agreement with the theoretical value derived from the in-plane lattice mismatch of InN and GaN, which indicated that nearly full relaxation of the interfacial strain between the two crystal lattices was achieved.     

Nondispersive two-electron wave packets in driven helium

We provide a detailed quantum treatment of the spectral characteristics and of the dynamics of nondispersive two-electron wave packets along the periodically driven, collinear frozen planet configuration of helium. These highly correlated, long-lived wave packets arise as a quantum manifestation of regular islands in a mixed classical phase space, which are induced by nonlinear resonances between the external driving and the unperturbed dynamics of the frozen-planet configuration. Particular emphasis is given to the dependence of the ionization rates of the wave packet states on the driving field parameters and on the quantum mechanical phase space resolution, preceded by a comparison of 1D and 3D life times of the unperturbed frozen planet. Furthermore, we study the effect of a superimposed static electric field component, which, on the grounds of classical considerations, is expected to stabilize the real 3D dynamics against large (and possibly ionizing) deviations from collinearity. Received 7 November 2002 / Received in final form 2 December 2002 Published online 28 January 2003     

De Sitter universes and the emerging landscape in string theory

We discuss a recent proposal to construct de Sitter vacua in string theory. It is based on flux compactifications in string theory where all the moduli are stabilised and supersymmetry is broken with control. The resulting picture is that of a complicated landscape with many vacua of widely varying values for the cosmological constant.     

1/f Noise in dye-sensitized solar cells and NIR photon detectors

All electronic devices are plagued with 1/f noise originating from many causes. The most important factors contributing to 1/f noise in a semiconductor is believed to be recombination of carriers and their trapping at defects and impurity sites. Adsorption of moisture and electron acceptor molecules enhances the intensity of 1/f noise. Amazingly, some molecular species that strongly chelate to the semiconductor surface, suppress 1/f noise owing to passivation of the recombination sites. Thus in addition to sensitization, the dye adsorbed on the nanocrystallites plays a key role in mitigation of recombinations. For this reason dye-sensitized heterojunctions could also find application as low noise NIR photon detectors. Experiments conducted with oxide semiconductors (TiO₂, ZnO, SnO₂) indicate that the mode of binding of dyes at specific sites determines the extent to which the recombination and 1/f noise are suppressed. The transport of electrons in a nanocrystalline matrix is diffusive with a diffusion coefficient D depending on the trapping and detrapping processes. Thus passivation of trapping sites by the adsorbed dye is expected to increase the response time which can be expressed as τ  L²/D, where L = thickness of the nanocrystalline film. Measurement techniques and construction of a dye-sensitized NIR photon detector will be discussed.     

Speed of adaptation in structured populations

Adaptation of populations takes place with the occurrence and subsequent fixation of mutations that confer some selective advantage to the individuals which acquire it. For this reason, the study of the process of fixation of advantageous mutations has a long history in the population genetics literature. Particularly, the previous investigations aimed to find out the main evolutionary forces affecting the strength of natural selection in the populations. In the current work, we investigate the dynamics of fixation of beneficial mutations in a subdivided population. The subpopulations (demes) can exchange migrants among their neighbors, in a migration network which is assumed to have either a random graph or a scale-free topology. We have observed that the migration rate drastically affects the dynamics of mutation fixation, despite of the fact that the probability of fixation is invariant on the migration rate, accordingly to Maruyama's conjecture. In addition, we have noticed a topological dependence of the adaptive evolution of the population when clonal interference becomes effective.     

Molecular Complexes of Crown Ethers in Crystals and Solutions

A review of the experimental and theoretical studies of the crown ether complexes with polar molecules in their crystals, solutions, and in a gas phase is given. The type of the molecular bonds in the complexes, their stoichiometry, and the change in the macrocycle conformation during complex formation are considered, as well as the effect of the macrocycle structure and the nature of the medium on the efficiency of the molecular bonding. New data are given on the enthalpies of transfer of the crown ethers from tetrachloromethane into solvents capable of forming hydrogen bonds. The enthalpies of specific interactions of macrocycles with the molecules of the solvents in the medium of the same solvents are characterized. The conformations of the crown ethers in the media under study are discussed.     

Determination of 3-Chloro-4-(Dichloromethyl)-5-Hydroxy-2(5H)-Furanone (Toxicant MX) in Drinking Water by Chromatography–Tandem Mass Spectrometry

It is shown that toxicant MX can be reliably identified and determined quantitatively by ion-trap tandem mass spectrometry with an accuracy as high as that for high-resolution mass spectrometry.     

Studies on Rare-Earth/Iron and Actinide/Iron Multilayers

Hyperfine Interactions - Multilayers of Ce/Fe and U/Fe were fabricated by sputtering and studied by X-ray diffraction and reflectivity, Mössbauer spectroscopy and polarised neutron...     

Quantum information processing in optical images

Optical images can be used to transport, store and process information in a parallel way. We discuss different results obtained in the domain of ‘quantum imaging’, aiming at exploiting at the same time the quantum properties of optical images and their intrinsic parallelism. We define the notion of standard quantum limit (SQL) in optical resolution, set by the quantum noise of usual coherent light, and show that it can be much lower than the diffraction limit. We also prove that this limit can be circumvented by especially designed nonclassical and multimode light. We present an experiment showing that OPOs oscillating inside an exactly confocal cavity actually produce such transverse multimode nonclassical light. We finally describe another experiment which has surpassed the SQL in the case of beam positioning, both in the 1D and 2D cases.