Emodin-Containing MCM-41 Type Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticle Drug Delivery System

Theoretical and Experimental Chemistry - With the aim of developing drug delivery systems, it was shown that nanoparticles of mesoporous silica molecular sieve MCM-41 with average size 100-150 nm...     

Effects of pre-treatment on the nitrogen isotope composition of Japanese black pine (Pinus thunbergii) tree-rings as affected by high N input

Temporal changes in the acquisition of nitrogen (N) are recorded in tree-rings together with unique N isotopic values. Some debate continues regarding the importance of wood pre-treatment in isotope analysis and, thus, this study focuses on the removal of labile components to determine the intrinsic nature of N in tree-rings. The total concentration and stable isotopic value of N in annual tree-rings were determined for two cores from Japanese black pine (Pinus thunbergii) from areas colonized by black cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo). One core sample was also collected from a control site, without cormorants. Sharp increases in tree-ring δ(15)N values associated with migration of the cormorant population indicate positive incorporation of N from soils, whereas a less pronounced trend was observed for ring samples for periods without or substantially less migration, and for those obtained from the control site. All labile N components were removed by repeated extraction with toluene/ethanol (1:1) solution. Radial translocation of labile N is limited in tree-rings from Japanese black pine, providing intrinsic records on N acquisition. The difference in N isotopic values (up to 7.0‰) following pre-treatment was statistically significant for trees affected by the avian colony, whereas the pre-treatment of the control samples did not influence N values. The implication is that in agreement with previous studies pre-treatment is not necessary when trees are exposed to natural N concentrations in the soil but the removal of enriched δ(15)N labile components is necessary when woody plants are exposed to unusually high inputs of N into soils. However, the temporal trend in tree-ring δ(15)N series of the avian N affected trees did not change. Thus, if the priority is not the value but the trend then pre-treatment is not necessary.     

Mobile computing technology at Vindigo

Developing widely useful mobile computing applications presents difficult challenges. On one hand, mobile users demand intuitive user interfaces, fast response times, and deep relevant content. On the other hand, mobile devices have limited processing, storage, power, display, and communication resources. Vindigo has taken a technology-intensive approach to meeting these challenges and has created personal navigation tools that many people find useful in their everyday lives. Vindigo's Palm OS application, introduced in March 2000, has hundreds of thousands of users and continues to attract new users rapidly. This article presents some of the technology behind Vindigo. To provide context, it first gives an overview of a typical user session. It then discusses special demands and constraints placed on mobile applications, and enumerates design principles drawn from these considerations. The rest of the article describes technology developed at Vindigo according to those principles. Throughout, it emphasizes techniques that have proven effective in delivering location-based services on today's handheld devices.     

Interaction of polar molecules with a resonant RF electric field: strong deflection of a NO molecular beam

Deflection of a cold supersonic NO beam seeded in He has been observed when these molecules interact with both static and a resonant oscillating electric field. The NO beam splits into two beams each one deflecting about 0.5° towards the positive and negative direction of the Stark field when the employed resonant frequency between the two Stark levels of the NO molecule is 1515 kHz. This deflection angle is about four orders of magnitude higher than the value one would expect from the NO dipole moment and the employed RF field gradient. This phenomenon suggests the possibility of a significant translational motion perpendicular to the beam axis, which is induced by the resonant RF electric field on the cold and high-density supersonic beam.     

Efficient policies for carrying Web traffic over flow-switchednetworks

To efficiently transfer diverse traffic over high-speed links, modern integrated networks require more efficient packet-switching techniques that can capitalize on the advances in switch hardware. Several promising approaches attempt to improve the performance by creating dedicated “shortcut” connections for long-lived traffic flows, at the expense of the network overhead for establishing and maintaining these shortcuts. The network can balance these cost-performance tradeoffs through three tunable parameters: the granularity of flow end-point addresses, the timeout for grouping related packets into flows, and the trigger for migrating a long-lived flow to a shortcut connection. Drawing on a continuous one-week trace of Internet traffic, we evaluate the processor and switch overheads for transferring HTTP server traffic through a flow-switched network. In contrast to previous work, we focus on the full probability distributions of flow sizes and cost-performance metrics to highlight the subtle influence of the HTTP protocol and user behavior on the performance of flow switching. We find that moderate levels of aggregation and triggering yield significant reductions in overhead with a negligible reduction in performance. The traffic characterization results further suggest schemes for limiting shortcut overhead by temporarily delaying the creation of shortcuts during peak load and by aggregating related packets that share a portion of their routes through the network     

Spin-alignment and g-factor measurement of the I^{\pi} = 12+ isomer in 192Pb produced in the relativistic-energy fragmentation of a 238U beam

Reactions of a 16.8 MeV ⁶He beam with a ⁹Be target have been investigated using highly segmented detector setup covering a large solid angle. Data on elastic and quasi-free scattering, as well as two-neutron transfer, are reported. The results for elastic scattering are fairly well reproduced by a CDCC calculation, in agreement with the interpretation of a breakup effect already observed for the scattering of ⁶He on other light targets. Exotic quasi-free scattering of ⁶He on $ \alpha$ -cluster in ⁹Be is clearly observed. Inclusive and coincident events were used to extract information on the two-neutron transfer reaction ⁹Be(⁶He, $ \alpha$ )¹¹Be . Sequential decay of the ¹¹Be state at the excitation energy $\ensuremath E_x = 10.6$ MeV through different channels is discussed.     

Differential response of two Pinus spp. to avian nitrogen input as revealed by nitrogen isotope analysis for tree rings

Temporal variations in N concentration and δ¹⁵N value of annual tree rings (1 year of time resolution) of two Japanese Black Pine (Pinus thunbergii) and three Japanese Red Pine (Pinus densiflora) trees under current breeding activity of the Great Cormorant (Pharacrocorax carbo) and the Black-tailed Gull (Larus crassirostris), respectively, in central and northeastern Japan were studied. Both species from control sites where no avian input occurs show negative values (δ¹⁵N = around?4 ‰ to?2 ‰) which are common among higher plants growing under high rainfall regimes. The δ¹⁵N values of P. densiflora show uniformly positive values several years before and after the breeding event, indicating N translocation that moved the absorbed N of a given growth year to tree rings of the previous year while a clear historical value of soil N dynamics was kept intact in the annual rings of P. thunbergii. Long-term N trends inferred from tree rings must take into account tree species with limited translocation rates that can retain actual N annual acquisition.     

Nitrogen isotope pattern in Mongolian larch stands at the southern Eurasian boreal forest boundary

ABSTRACT

In the last decades a drastic increase in air temperature but a stable precipitation regime in Mongolia has led to gradual drying conditions. Thus, we evaluated the effect of spatial and climatic characteristics on the soil–plant nitrogen dynamics in three representative larch stands (Larix sibirica) with different geographical and climatic conditions using stable nitrogen isotopes. The results showed significant differences in the soil inorganic N content among sites and consequently a different isotopic composition in the plant–soil system. Litter, bark and wood had the lowest δ¹⁵N values for all sites, slightly higher δ¹⁵N values for needles, while the highest δ¹⁵N values were observed for roots and soil. These differences could be the result of the larch stands age themselves, but were in agreement with the spatial and climatic characteristics of the sites. Based on the δ¹⁵N value a higher reliance on ectomycorrhizal fungi (ECMF) was observed in the warmest and driest site, while lower dependency was shown in the cooler northern site with higher soil inorganic N content. In both sites, the rate of air temperature increase has been similar in the last decades; however, their soil–plant N dynamics showed different characteristics.     

Interaction of a supersonic beam of toluene with a resonant RF electric field

Deflection of a cold supersonic toluene beam seeded in He has been observed when these molecules interact with both a static and a resonant oscillating electric field. The toluene beam splits into two beams each one peaking at a deflection angle of 1 degree towards the positive and negative direction of the Stark field when the employed resonant frequency between the two Stark levels of the toluene molecule is 1411 kHz. This deflection angle is about four orders of magnitude higher than the value one would expect from the toluene dipole moment and the employed RF field gradient. Different hypothesis are suggested to explain the observed strong beam splitting including the possibility of transverse beam interferences induced by both the resonant RF field and the transverse uniform electric field. A theoretical model is presented based on molecular beam interferences induced by the resonant RF field which seems to account satisfactorily for the present observations.     

Measurement and analysis of IP network usage and behavior

Traffic, usage, and performance measurements are crucial to the design, operation and control of Internet protocol networks. This article describes a prototype infrastructure for the measurement, storage, and correlation of network data of different types and origins from AT&T's commercial IP network. We focus first on some novel aspects of the measurement infrastructure, then describe analyses that illustrate the power of joining different measured data sets for network planning and design