The Effect of the Protein Synthesis Entropy Reduction on the Cell Size Regulation and Division Size of Unicellular Organisms

The underlying mechanism determining the size of a particular cell is one of the fundamental unknowns in cell biology. Here, using a new approach that could be used for most of unicellular species, we show that the protein synthesis and cell size are interconnected biophysically and that protein synthesis may be the chief mechanism in establishing size limitations of unicellular organisms. This result is obtained based on the free energy balance equation of protein synthesis and the second law of thermodynamics. Our calculations show that protein synthesis involves a considerable amount of entropy reduction due to polymerization of amino acids depending on the cytoplasmic volume of the cell. The amount of entropy reduction will increase with cell growth and eventually makes the free energy variations of the protein synthesis positive (that is, forbidden thermodynamically). Within the limits of the second law of thermodynamics we propose a framework to estimate the optimal cell size at division.     

Vacuum Domination in a Positively Curved Isotropic Universe

In this article we assume a universe in a vacuum domination era, possessing a constant equation of state and a constant positive curvature, elaborated by an isotropic FLRW metric. We investigate the correlations between the scale factor of this expanding universe, and the coordinate time.     

Energy Conservation for a Scalar Field in Linear Gravity

In this paper we derive a Gaussian flux integral for a metric in the weak field limit. We shall prove that the energy integral for an approximately linear metric due to a scalar field, will possess a same form for the Newtonian mass.     

Photoluminescence activity of Yang and Secco etched multicrystalline silicon material

Ultraviolet and blue-green photoluminescence (PL) was investigated on multicrystalline silicon (mc-Si) samples chemically etched by Secco and Yang solutions. The samples were characterized by dislocation density (10⁵-10⁶ cm⁻²). The form of etched pits is triangular with Yang etch and like a honeycomb with Secco etch as observed with a scanning electron microscope (SEM). These textures of mc-Si wafers give a PL activity similar to that obtained with nanostructures of porous silicon (PS) as reported in the literature. The ultraviolet PL spectra observed with Yang etch shift to the blue-green spectrum range when applying Secco etch. In our experiments we have observed 3-5 μm diameter macro pores separated by a high density of nanowalls. These observations suggest that the origin of the PL activity are quantum dots resulting from the silicon nanocrystallites obtained after few minutes of chemical etching.     

Surface energies of metals in both liquid and solid states

Although during the last years one has seen a number of systematic studies of the surface energies of metals, the aim and the scientific meaning of this research is to establish a simple and a straightforward theoretical model to calculate accurately the mechanical and the thermodynamic properties of metal surfaces due to their important application in materials processes and in the understanding of a wide range of surface phenomena. Through extensive theoretical calculations of the surface tension of most of the liquid metals, we found that the fraction of broken bonds in liquid metals (f) is constant which is equal to 0.287. Using our estimated f value, the surface tension (γ_m), surface energy (γ_SV), surface excess entropy (−dγ/dT), surface excess enthalpy (H_s), coefficient of thermal expansion (α_m and α_b), sound velocity (c_m) and its temperature coefficient (−dc/dT) have been calculated for more than sixty metals. The results of the calculated quantities agree well with available experimental data.     

Analysis and design of simple low-loss wide-angle waveguide bends

In this paper a simple low-loss planar waveguide wide-angle bend is proposed and analyzed. The waveguide bend of this work consists of a curved tapered angle such that its tapering can be adjusted for a minimum loss (maximum transmission coefficient) and small dimension of bend. The analysis is done using wide-angle BPM (beam propagation method) type Pade (4,4). The simulated results of different bends show that at the same transmission coefficient the area required for the proposed bends are smaller than those of the abrupt bends.     

Magnetoresistance due to domain wall bulging

The effect of bulging of domain wall (DW) on the magnetoresistance (MR) is investigated. With taking into account the auto-correlation between the points of the interface, one can formulate the mobility within the relaxation time approximation scheme. The results show that the bulging of DW, evaluated with the commonly accepted magnetic parameters for typical ferromagnetic materials of Co, Fe and Ni, has a countable role into the MR.     

Modified grating-based external cavity diode laser for simultaneous dual-wavelengths operation

We have reported a modified V-shaped external cavity, which is constructed around a commercial diode laser operating at a center wavelength of λ=785 nm by adding a new coated glass plate with about 50% reflectivity to the cavity. This allows simultaneous dual-wavelengths operation in the vicinity of Δν_min=0.18 THz to Δν_max=0.22 THz, which can be used as laser source for terahertz generation either for semiconductor devices or nonlinear schemes.     

Dual-channel spectral subtraction algorithms based speech enhancement dedicated to a bilateral cochlear implant

In this paper, two speech enhancement algorithms (SEAs) based on spectral subtraction (SS) principle have been evaluated for bilateral cochlear implant (BCI) users. Specifically, dual-channel noise power spectral estimation algorithm using power spectral densities (PSD) and cross power spectral density (CPSD) of the observed signals was studied. The enhanced speech signals were obtained using either Dual Channel Non Linear Spectral Subtraction ‘DC-NLSS’ or Dual-Channel Multi-Band Spectral Subtraction ‘DC-MBSS’ algorithms. For performance evaluation, some objective speech assessment tests relying on Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality (PESQ) score and speech Itakura-Saito (IS) distortion measurement were performed to fix the optimal number of frequency band needed in DC-MBSS algorithm. In order to evaluate the speech intelligibility, subjective listening tests were assessed with 50 normal hearing listeners using a specific BCI simulator and with three deafened BCI patients. Experimental results, obtained using French Lafon database corrupted by an additive babble noise at different Signal-to-Noise Ratios (SNR), showed that DC-MBSS algorithm improves speech understanding better than DC-NLSS algorithm for single and multiple interfering noise sources.