ULTRA-LOCAL TEMPERATURE MAPPING WITH AN INTRINSIC THERMOCOUPLE

Submitted on behalf of EDA Publishing Association (http://irevues.inist.fr/handle/2042/5920)International audienceWe report on a set-up derived from an Electrostatic Force Microscope (EFM) allowing us to probe temperature with a high spatial resolution. The system uses the well-known Seebeck effect through an intrinsic thermocouple made from an EFM conducting tip put in contact with a conducting sample. The contact radius between tip and sample is currently estimated to be in the 50 to 100 nm range depending on the elastic or the plastic deformation. The contact area can be assimilated to the electrical and thermal contact areas. In those conditions, the issue of heat conduction in air is solved. The thermal measurement is related to the Seebeck junction effect : it will therefore not be sensitive to buried materials or impurities

Entanglement of Dirac fields in non-inertial frames

We analyze the entanglement between two modes of a free Dirac field as seen by two relatively accelerated parties. The entanglement is degraded by the Unruh effect and asymptotically reaches a non-vanishing minimum value in the infinite acceleration limit. This means that the state always remains entangled to a degree and can be used in quantum information tasks, such as teleportation, between parties in relative uniform acceleration. We analyze our results from the point of view afforded by the phenomenon of entanglement sharing and in terms of recent results in the area of multi-qubit complementarity.Comment: 15 pages, with 8 figures (Mar 2006); accepted to Physical Review A, July 2006 - slightly revise

Temperature Measurement of Microsystems by Scanning Thermal Microscopy

Submitted on behalf of EDA Publishing Association (http://irevues.inist.fr/handle/2042/5920)International audienceSurface temperature measurements were performed with a Scanning Thermal Microscope. We aim at proving an eventual sub-micrometric resolution of this metrology when using a wollaston wire probe of micrometric size. A dedicated CMOS device was designed with arrays of lines 0.35mm in size with 0.8 mm and 10mm periods. Integrated Circuits with or without a passivition layer were tested. To enhance sensitivity, the IC heat source was excited with an AC current. We show that the passivation layer spreads heat so that the lines are not distinguishable. Removing this layer allows us to distinguish the lines in the case of the 10mm period

Un colloque sur la pluridisciplinariaté dans les problèmes d'environnement : quelques enseignements et orientations pour l'avenir

International audienceAn experiment has been carried out in Rennes (Brittany, West of France) in June 2000 to estimate atrazine and alachlor volatilisation fluxes after application over a maize crop. Fluxes were calculated using the classical aerodynamic micrometeorological method from vertical gradients of pesticide concentrations, temperature and wind speed. Volatilisation fluxes showed a diurnal pattern of the order of few ng/m2/s for atrazine and the order of a few 10 ng/m2/s for alachlor, leading to cumulated losses of approximately 0.1% of the theoretical application dose for atrazine and several-fold of that in the case of alachlor

Theory and simulation of short-range models of globular protein solutions

We report theoretical and simulation studies of phase coexistence in model globular protein solutions, based on short-range, central, pair potential representations of the interaction among macro-particles. After reviewing our previous investigations of hard-core Yukawa and generalised Lennard-Jones potentials, we report more recent results obtained within a DLVO-like description of lysozyme solutions in water and added salt. We show that a one-parameter fit of this model based on Static Light Scattering and Self-Interaction Chromatography data in the dilute protein regime, yields demixing and crystallization curves in good agreement with experimental protein-rich/protein-poor and solubility envelopes. The dependence of cloud and solubility points temperature of the model on the ionic strength is also investigated. Our findings highlight the minimal assumptions on the properties of the microscopic interaction sufficient for a satisfactory reproduction of the phase diagram topology of globular protein solutions.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures, Proc. of Conference "Structural Arrest Transitions in Colloidal Systems with Short-Range Attractions", Messina (ITALY) 17-20 December 200

Proteomic identification of in vivo substrates for matrix metalloproteinases 2 and 9 reveals a mechanism for resolution of inflammation.

Clearance of allergic inflammatory cells from the lung through matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) is necessary to prevent lethal asphyxiation, but mechanistic insight into this essential homeostatic process is lacking. In this study, we have used a proteomics approach to determine how MMPs promote egression of lung inflammatory cells through the airway. MMP2- and MMP9-dependent cleavage of individual Th2 chemokines modulated their chemotactic activity; however, the net effect of complementing bronchoalveolar lavage fluid of allergen-challenged MMP2(-/-)/MMP9(-/-) mice with active MMP2 and MMP9 was to markedly enhance its overall chemotactic activity. In the bronchoalveolar fluid of MMP2(-/-)/MMP9(-/-) allergic mice, we identified several chemotactic molecules that possessed putative MMP2 and MMP9 cleavage sites and were present as higher molecular mass species. In vitro cleavage assays and mass spectroscopy confirmed that three of the identified proteins, Ym1, S100A8, and S100A9, were substrates of MMP2, MMP9, or both. Function-blocking Abs to S100 proteins significantly altered allergic inflammatory cell migration into the alveolar space. Thus, an important effect of MMPs is to differentially modify chemotactic bioactivity through proteolytic processing of proteins present in the airway. These findings provide a molecular mechanism to explain the enhanced clearance of lung inflammatory cells through the airway and reveal a novel approach to target new therapies for asthma

Structure-based design and synthesis of antiparasitic pyrrolopyrimidines targeting pteridine reductase 1

The treatment of Human African Trypanosomiasis remains a major unmet health need in sub-Saharan Africa. Approaches involving new molecular targets are important and pteridine reductase 1 (PTR1), an enzyme that reduces dihydrobiopterin in Trypanosoma spp. has been identified as a candidate target and it has been shown previously that substituted pyrrolo[2,3-d]pyrimidines are inhibitors of PTR1 from T. brucei (J. Med. Chem. 2010, 53, 221-229). In this study, 61 new pyrrolo[2,3-d]pyrimidines have been prepared, designed with input from new crystal structures of 23 of these compounds complexed with PTR1, and evaluated in screens for enzyme inhibitory activity against PTR1 and in vitro antitrypanosomal activity. 8 compounds were sufficiently active in both screens to take forward to in vivo evaluation. Thus although evidence for trypanocidal activity in a stage I disease model in mice was obtained, the compounds were too toxic to mice for further development

Multifractal stationary random measures and multifractal random walks with log-infinitely divisible scaling laws

We define a large class of continuous time multifractal random measures and processes with arbitrary log-infinitely divisible exact or asymptotic scaling law. These processes generalize within a unified framework both the recently defined log-normal Multifractal Random Walk (MRW) [Bacry-Delour-Muzy] and the log-Poisson "product of cynlindrical pulses" [Barral-Mandelbrot]. Our construction is based on some ``continuous stochastic multiplication'' from coarse to fine scales that can be seen as a continuous interpolation of discrete multiplicative cascades. We prove the stochastic convergence of the defined processes and study their main statistical properties. The question of genericity (universality) of limit multifractal processes is addressed within this new framework. We finally provide some methods for numerical simulations and discuss some specific examples.Comment: 24 pages, 4 figure

Entanglement Sharing in the Two-Atom Tavis-Cummings Model

Individual members of an ensemble of identical systems coupled to a common probe can become entangled with one another, even when they do not interact directly. We investigate how this type of multipartite entanglement is generated in the context of a system consisting of two two-level atoms resonantly coupled to a single mode of the electromagnetic field. The dynamical evolution is studied in terms of the entanglements in the different bipartite partitions of the system, as quantified by the I-tangle. We also propose a generalization of the so-called residual tangle that quantifies the inherent three-body correlations in our tripartite system. This enables us to completely characterize the phenomenon of entanglement sharing in the case of the two-atom Tavis-Cummings model, a system of both theoretical and experimental interest.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, submitted to PRA, v3 contains corrections to small error