Spin-resolved polarized transport through a quasi one-dimensional mesoscopic quantum ring-shaped conductor with local Rashba spin-orbit interaction

We propose a quasi one-dimensional quantum ring-shaped model associated with Rashba spin-orbit (SO) interaction and Aharomov-Bohm flux to study a spin-dependent quantum transport. It is a possible candidate for spintronic current modulators. By tuning SO coupling strength and Fermi energy, we find there is a broad energy range of small vanishing spin transmission in the resonance and antiresonance interferences. More interestingly, the large on/off spin-resolved polarized conductance ratios are robust even in the presence of strong random on-site Anderson-type disorder in devices, which suggests a potential application in the real system.     

High-temperature dielectric properties of Gd2CuO4 ceramics

A sample of Gd₂CuO₄ (GCO) has been prepared through the solid state reaction technique. Dielectric properties of this material have been measured in detail as functions of temperature (between 285 and 450 K) and frequency (20 Hz-10 MHz). A step-like increase below 330 K and a broad peak around 360 K were observed in the real part of the permittivity (ε′) which were found to be originated from the oxygen vacancy hopping motions that cause a dipolar relaxation, followed by a Maxwell-Wagner relaxation as the hopping carriers are blocked by the interfaces and surfaces of the sample.     

Structural and electronic properties of type-I and type-VIII Ba8Ga16Sn30 clathrates under compression

The total energy and electronic structures for type-I (β phase) and type-VIII (α phase) Ba₈Ga₁₆Sn₃₀ clathrates under hydrostatic pressure have been investigated using density functional theory (DFT) calculations. It was found that the type-VIII phase is more stable than the type-I one at ambient conditions and that β→α phase transition can not occur under hydrostatic pressure. The band structures show that the type-I and type-VIII Ba₈Ga₁₆Sn₃₀ are indirect semiconductors with band gaps of 0.24 eV and 0.19 eV, respectively. The results suggested that type-I clathrate Ba₈Ga₁₆Sn₃₀ has a larger value of the thermoelectric (TE) power than that of type-VIII clathrate. We found that pressure tuning changes the k-point of conduction band minimum (CBM) in the Brillouin zone for β-phase, but it is not the case for α-phase. Furthermore, the results show that the pressure can change the interaction between guest atoms and the host lattice, and consequently results in the decrease of the band gap of β-phase and the increase of the band gap of α-phase, indicating that the pressure effect can play an important role in the magnitude of the TE power.     

Real-time quantification of Staphylococcusaureus in liquid medium using infrared thermography

We previously showed that infrared thermography (IRT) could be used to quantify viable Escherichiacoli, a representative gram-negative bacterium, in liquid growth media. Here, we evaluated the ability of IRT to enumerate a viable representative gram-positive organism, Staphylococcusaureus. We found that the energy content (EC) of the media was strongly positively correlated (r = 0.999) to measured viable counts of S.aureus ranging from 85 colony-forming units (CFU)/ml to ∼4 × 10⁸ CFU/ml. The EC of S.aureus was ∼2-fold higher than that of E.coli at comparable cell concentrations suggesting that IRT may be used to distinguish genera.     

A three-dimensional in vitro culture model for primary neonatal rat ventricular myocytes

To overcome bad prognosis of patients with heart failure and the lack of organ donors, cardiac tissue engineering has developed as a biomimetic approach to repair, replace, and regenerate the damaged cardiac tissue. During the past decade years, researchers are devoted to find different natural and/or synthetic materials that can build appropriate physical structures to contain and organize implanted cells. In this study, we present a new method for primary neonatal rat cardiomyocytes culture in vitro using alginate/collagen/chitosan hydrogel. To investigate the feasibility of this material as scaffold for cardiac myocytes, neonatal rat ventricular myocytes were isolated and encapsulated in alginate-based beads cross-linked with calcium ion. The growth of cells was evaluated by staining with α-Sarcomeric actin (α-SCA) and Troponin T type 2 (TNNT2), and the viability of cardiomyocytes was studied in vitro by assessing the expression levels of several cardiac ion channels, including CACNL1A1, Connexin 43 and SCN5A. The results showed a significant increase in cardiac myocytes number, and the expression levels of CACNL1A1, Connexin 43 (Cx43) were up-regulated significantly except SCN5A, as compared with two-dimensional cultures. Moreover, extracellular matrix produced by the seeded cells themselves was observed by staining with fibronectin. Taken together, these findings indicate that this alginate/collagen/chitosan hydrogel bead is suitable for supporting the growth and retaining the morphologic and electrophysiologic characteristics of primary cultured rat cardiac muscle cells.     

利用紫外Mie散射激光雷达探测澳门地区沙尘暴事件

研制了一台工作波长为355nm的紫外高能Mie散射激光雷达,并利用该激光雷达在2010年一次沙尘暴事件期间对澳门上空的大气进行了探测,得到了澳门地区不同时刻的气溶胶消光系数垂直廓线。利用Fernald方法反演得到的气溶胶近地面消光系数随时间的变化与当地气象数据具有较好的一致性,气溶胶消光系数与当地可吸入颗粒物浓度的相关性达到了0.93。气溶胶垂直廓线显示,在沙尘暴来临期间存在明显的沙尘气溶胶凝集层。通过气溶胶轨迹倒推,分析了沙尘气溶胶的来源及路径。观测结果表明,该激光雷达可以在特殊天气条件下对澳门地区气溶胶进行有效探测,这将有助于深化对澳门上空气溶胶特性的研究。     

基于RBF神经网络的较低浓度下同步荧光光谱的溢油鉴别

针对海面溢油样品的含量难以确定,同时考虑到海水掺杂及风化等问题的影响,提出了在较低非线性浓度范围内采集溢油嫌疑样品的同步荧光光谱,获取其训练样本集,利用主成分分析法(Principal com-ponent analysis,PCA)提取其特征光谱,结合径向基函数(Radial basis function,RBF)神经网络对肇事样本和嫌疑样本进行模式识别的方法。通过对相近油源原油样品分类识别研究表明:该方法仅需单次对肇事样本同步光谱测量,再借助数据分析,就可以很好区分相近油源溢油样品,外扰对识别率影响也不大。RBF神经网络算法识别率在92%左右。该结论对海洋环境中溢油的实时检测及油指纹数据信息库的建立有重要意义。     

Full utilization of a mass spectrometer using on-demand sharing with multiple LC units

The applicability of liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC/MS) is often limited by throughput. The sharing of a mass spectrometer with multiple LCs significantly improves throughput; however, the reported systems have not been designed to fully utilize the MS duty cycle, and as a result to achieve maximum throughput. To fully utilize the mass spectrometer, the number of LC units that a MS will need to recruit is application dependent and could be significantly larger than the current commercial or published implementations. For the example of a single analyte, the number may approach the peak capacity to a first degree approximation. Here, the construction of a MS system that flexibly recruits any number of LC units demanded by the application is discussed, followed by the method to port a previously developed LC/MS method to the system to fully utilize a mass spectrometer. To demonstrate the performance and operation, a prototypical MS system of eight LC units was constructed. When 1-min chromatographic separations were performed in parallel on the eight LCs of the system, the average LC/MS analysis time per sample was 10.5 s when applied to the analysis of samples in 384-well plate format. This system has been successfully used to conduct large-volume biochemical assays with the analysis of a variety of molecular entities in support of drug discovery efforts. Allowing the recruitment of the number of LC units appropriate for a given application, this system has the potential to be a plug-and-play system to fully utilize a mass spectrometer. Copyright ? 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

MOCVD生长的GaN和GaN:Mg薄膜的拉曼散射

通过显微拉曼散射对用金属有机化学气相沉积(MOCVD)法在Al2O3衬底上生长的六方相CaN和掺Mg的P型GaN薄膜进行了研究。在两个样品的拉曼散射谱中同时观察到位于640,660cm^-1附近的两个峰。640cm^-1的峰归因于布里渊区边界(L点)最高声学声子的二倍频,而660cm^-1的峰为布里渊区边界的光学声子支或缺陷诱导的局域振动模。掺Mg的GaN在该处的峰型变宽是Mg诱导的缺陷引起的加宽或Mg的局域模与上述两峰叠加的结果。在掺Mg的样品中还观察到276,376cm^-1几个局域模并给予了解释。同时掺Mg的GaN中出现了应力弛豫的现象,掺Mg引起的失配位错和电子-声子相互作用都有可能对E2模的频率产生影响。