Comprehensive Profiling by Non-targeted Stable Isotope Tracing Capillary Electrophoresis-Mass Spectrometry: A New Tool Complementing Metabolomic Analyses of Polar Metabolites

Mass spectrometry (MS) driven metabolomics is a frequently used tool in various areas of life sciences; however, the analysis of polar metabolites is less commonly included. In general, metabolomic analyses lead to the detection of the total amount of all covered metabolites. This is currently a major limitation with respect to metabolites showing high turnover rates, but no changes in their concentration. Such metabolites and pathways could be crucial metabolic nodes (e.g., potential drug targets in cancer metabolism). A stable-isotope tracing capillary electrophoresis–mass spectrometry (CE-MS) metabolomic approach was developed to cover both polar metabolites and isotopologues in a non-targeted way. An in-house developed software enables high throughput processing of complex multidimensional data. The practicability is demonstrated analyzing [U-¹³C]-glucose exposed prostate cancer and non-cancer cells. This CE-MS-driven analytical strategy complements polar metabolite profiles through isotopologue labeling patterns, thereby improving not only the metabolomic coverage, but also the understanding of metabolism.     

Compact spreads and compact translation planes over locally compact fields

We prove that a spread S over a locally compact nondlscrete field F defines a topological translation plane if and only if the spread is compact. For F=R, this is implicit in Breuning's thesis [Bre], cf. [B 2]. For the proof, we describe the point set of the projective translation plane as a quotient space of some projective space, with identifications taking place in one hyperplane. This is new even for F=R.     

Finite Element Solution of Conical Diffraction Problems

This paper is devoted to the numerical study of diffraction by periodic structures of plane waves under oblique incidence. For this situation Maxwell's equations can be reduced to a system of two Helmholtz equations in R ² coupled via quasiperiodic transmission conditions on the piecewise smooth interfaces between different materials. The numerical analysis is based on a strongly elliptic variational formulation of the differential problem in a bounded periodic cell involving nonlocal boundary operators. We obtain existence and uniqueness results for discrete solutions and provide the corresponding error analysis.     

Microwave-accelerated Claisen rearrangements of allyl tetronates and tetramates

[3,3]-Sigmatropic rearrangements of allyl tetronates and allyl tetramates to give 3-allyltetronic or -tetramic acids, respectively, proceed within 20-60 min under microwave irradiation (300 W, 130-190 °C). Consecutive (homo)sigmatropic [1,5] H-shifts such as oxa-ene reactions are promoted less effectively, which allows the isolation of Claisen intermediates of sigmatropic domino sequences, in contrast to conventional heating.     

Picosecond photodiffraction in semiconductor multiquantum wells and microcavities

We study the transient gratings photogenerated in the picosecond regime in three families of structures, namely : - structures of thickness in the order of one micron, including quantum wells (GaAs/GaAlAs, CdTe/ CdZnTe). A transmission modulation due to the electric field has been observed. We show that, in accordance with our calculations, this modulation is screened faster than 10 ps at a fluence of a few µJ/cm2. - A structure including GalnAs/GalnAsP MQWS in a cavity. This structure shows a top diffraction efficiency of 2.5 × 10-² at 1.55 µm for an energy of excitation in the order of 100 µJ/cm2. The diffraction efficiency exhibits several oscillations due to Fabry-Pårot effects. By introducing cavity effects in our model, we show that the diffraction efficiency is amplified by more than a factor 2 with respect to the no-cavity case. Calculations show that the diffraction efficiency may reach 6 × 10-² around 1.625 µm, for a front mirror reflectivity of 90 %. - Structures including bulk GaAs microcavities. The risetime is lower or in the order of 1 ps while the diffraction efficiency attains 1 %, with an average power of 4 mW (i.e. an energy of 2 µJ/cm²/pulse), compatible with a commutation of packets at 80 MHz.     

Chern numbers for two families of noncommutative Hopf fibrations

We consider noncommutative line bundles associated with the Hopf fibrations of SU_q(2) over all Podle? spheres and with a locally trivial Hopf fibration of S³_pq. These bundles are given as finitely generated projective modules associated via 1-dimensional representations of U(1) with Galois-type extensions encoding the principal fibrations of SU_q(2) and S³_pq. We show that the Chern numbers of these modules coincide with the winding numbers of representations defining them. To cite this article: P.M. Hajac et al., C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, Ser. I 336 (2003).     

First Results of Ion Trapping in the Dresden EBIT II

Hyperfine Interactions - It is well known that many reinforced concrete structures are at risk of deterioration due to chloride ion contamination of the concrete or atmospheric carbon dioxide...     

Soliton chaos and lengthscale competition in nonlinear dynamics

Perturbing soliton-bearing completely integrable dynamics can give rise to rich and fascinating behaviour. If the perturbation introduces a lengthscale which is large compared to the spatial extent of the solitons present in the system, the solitons move like particles in an effective potential. Taking into account two-soliton interaction can result in chaotic behaviour called ‘soliton chaos’. In the opposite limit of a small-lengthscale perturbation the solitons acquire a dressing which effectively shields them from the perturbation. If the resulting ‘dressed solitons’ are subject to an additional long-wavelength perturbation they move like renormalised particles. Furthermore they can scatter nearly elastically. If the perturbation contains lengthscales which are comparable to one of the soliton's typical lengthscales then lengthscale competition can occur. Neither the particle approximation nor the dressed-particle approximation for the soliton is valid and complicated spatio-temporal behaviour is observed. We illustrate this scenario by means of the perturbed nonlinear Schrödinger equation. The perturbed sine-Gordon equation and the Ablowitz-Ladik equation are also discussed.