REVIEW: High pressure NMR study of proteins – seeking roots for function,evolution, disease and food applications

NMR experiments at variable pressure reveal a wide range of conformation of a globular protein spanning from within the folded ensemble to the fully unfolded ensemble, herewith collectively called “high-energy conformers”. The observation of “high-energy conformers” in a wide variety of globular proteins has led to the “volume theorem”: the partial molar volume of a protein decreases with the decrease in its conformational order. Since “high-energy conformers” are intrinsically more reactive than the basic folded conformer, they could play decisive roles in all phenomena of proteins, namely function, environmental adaptation and misfolding. Based on the information on high-energy conformers and the rules on their partial volume in its monomeric state and amyloidosis, one may have a general view on what is happening on proteins under pressure. Moreover, one may even choose a high-energy conformer of a protein with pressure as variable for a particular purpose. Bridging “high-energy conformers” to macroscopic pressure effects could be a key to success in pressure application to biology, medicine, food technology and industry in the near future.     

Calculus demonstrations using MATLAB

The note discusses ways in which technology can be used in the calculus learning process. In particular, five MATLAB programs are detailed for use by instructors or students that demonstrate important concepts in introductory calculus: Newton's method, differentiation and integration. Two of the programs are animated. The programs and the graphical user interface have been specifically designed to help the student understand the processes behind these important introductory concepts. Each program has a series of demonstrations that show unusual, difficult or important cases.     

Finite difference approach to trigonometry

Two interrelated, finite difference and graph theoretic, approaches to trigonometry are developed by combining a generalization of the finite difference method first employed by Viète, with solution techniques, based on signal flow graphs, for finite difference equations with variable coefficients, and a scaling approach to trigonometry, based on the polygonometric identities.     

Continuous‐wave optical parametric oscillator based infrared spectroscopy for sensitive molecular gas sensing

Over the past 10 years, with the advent of new crystals designs and a new generation of pump lasers, continuous‐wave (cw) optical parametric oscillators (OPOs) have developed into mature monochromatic light sources. Nowadays, cw OPOs can fulfill a wide variety of criteria for sensitive molecular gas sensing. It can access the mid‐infrared wavelength region, where many molecules have their fundamental rotational‐vibrational transitions, with high power. This high power combined with wide wavelength tuning and narrow linewidth creates excellent conditions for sensitive, high‐resolution spectroscopy. OPOs combined with robust methods, such as photoacoustic spectroscopy and cavity‐enhanced spectroscopy, are well suited for field measurements and remote‐sensing applications. The wide tunability of cw OPOs allows detection of larger molecules with broad absorption band structures, and its fast scanning capabilities allow rapid detection of trace gases, the latter is a demand for life‐science applications. After a short introduction about the physical principle of cw OPOs, with its most recent physical developments, this review focuses on sensitive molecular gas sensing with a variety of spectroscopic applications in atmospheric and life sciences.     

Hydrides as materials for semiconductor electronics

Systematic studies using density functional theory have shown that some hydrides possess the features of semiconductors. These features include larger fundamental band gap, well dispersed bottom-most conduction band and/or top-most valence band, small electron/hole effective masses and small intrinsic carrier concentration. It is demonstrated that depending upon the composition, hydrides possess a wide range of band gap values and hence they can be regarded as materials for narrow to wide band gap semiconducting applications. The possibility of designing hydride-based p–n junctions, and also their advantages as well as deficiencies compared to existing oxide semiconductors, are discussed. Replacing oxide-based semiconductors by hydrides can help to avoid problems such as formation of an oxide layer, band offsets, large concentration of defect states at the interface between the oxide and semiconductor, etc. Moreover, hydrides can be regarded as an alternative to conventional semiconductors and hence can be used in future-generation electronic devices called “hydride electronics”.     

High Sensitivity Ring Resonator Gyroscopes

Abstract

A recent study discussing different ring-resonator- and fiber-based gyroscopes concluded that the performance of a single-loop resonant fiber-optical gyro exceeds that of more complex ring-resonator-based gyros. It is demonstrated here that this conclusion applies as well to a gyro that consists of a closed loop of coupled-ring resonators with internal feedback. While this device is more sensitive to rotation than other gyro structures with the same footprint and losses, a simpler alternative consisting of a resonant single ring with an area equal to complex gyro structures still displays a higher degree of sensitivity.     

Multi-location transshipment problem with capacitated production

We consider coordination among stocking locations through replenishment strategies that explicitly take into account lateral transshipments, i.e., transfer of a product among locations at the same echelon level. Our basic contribution is the incorporation of supply capacity into the traditional transshipment model. Our goal is to analyze the impact on system behavior and on stocking locations’ performance of the fact that the supplier may fail to fulfill all the replenishment orders. We therefore formulate the capacitated supply scenario as a network flow problem embedded in a stochastic optimization problem, which is solved through a sample average approximation method. We find that, depending on the production capacity, system behavior can vary drastically. Moreover, in a production-inventory system, we find evidence that either capacity flexibility (i.e., extra production) or transshipment flexibility (i.e., pooling) is required to maintain a desired level of service.     

Langmuir probe and spectroscopic studies of RF generated helium-nitrogen mixture plasma

This paper reports the effect of helium percentage variation in a capacitive RF helium-nitrogen mixture plasma on various plasma parameters and concentration of nitrogen active species (N₂(C³Π _u) and N₂ ⁺(B²Σ _u ⁺)). Langmuir probe is used for determination of electron energy distribution functions, effective electron temperature, plasma potential and electron density. Optical emission spectroscopy is used for determination of electron temperature from Boltzmann's plot of He–I lines and the relative changes in the concentration of active species by measuring the emission intensities of nitrogen (0-0) bands of the second positive and the first negative systems. The results demonstrate that electron temperature, electron density and concentration of active species increase significantly with increase in helium percentage in the mixture and RF power.     

Recurrence spectra and dynamical simulation of Rydberg hydrogen atom near a metal surface

By using the closed-orbit theory including the effect of Coulomb scattering together with an electrical image potential approach, the recurrence spectra and the dynamical behaviours of the Rydberg hydrogen atom near a metal surface are presented. Theoretical analysis and numerical simulation reveal that the impacts of the image potential contributing to the recurrence spectrum are qualitatively analogous to that of the parallel electrical and magnetic fields on the Rydberg atom. The recurrence spectra are computed for a few selected scaled energies and the results demonstrate that the scaled energy dominates the dynamical properties of system. With the increase of the scaled energy e from small to large, the whole trend of spectral structure is from simple to complex,and then simple.     

Melting behaviours of nickel nanorods

We report the synthesis and measurement of an ultra-precise and extremely stable optical frequency in the telecommunications window around 1543 nm. Using a fibre-based femtosecond frequency comb we have phase-stabilised a fibre laser at 194 THz to an optical frequency standard at 344 THz, thus transferring the properties of the optical frequency standard to another spectral region. Relative to the optical frequency standard, the synthesised frequency at 194 THz is determined to within 1 mHz and its fractional frequency instability is measured to be less than 2×10^-15 at 1 s, reaching 5× 10^-18 after 8000 s. We also measured the synthesised frequency against a caesium fountain clock: here the frequency comparison itself contributes less than 4 mHz (2×10^-17) to the uncertainty. Our results confirm the suitability of fibre based frequency comb technology for precision measurements and frequency synthesis, and enable long-distance comparison of optical clocks by using optical fibres to transmit the frequency information.