Non-stoichiometric oxide and metal interfaces and reactions

We have employed a combination of experimental surface science techniques and density functional calculations to study the reduction of TiO2(110) surfaces through the doping with submonolayer transition metals. We concentrate on the role of Ti adatoms in self doping of rutile and contrast the behaviour to that of Cr. DFT+U calculations enable identification of probable adsorption structures and their spectroscopic characteristics. Adsorption of both metals leads to a broken symmetry and an asymmetric charge transfer localised around the defect site of a mixed localised/delocalised character. Charge transfer creates defect states with Ti 3d character in the band gap at similar to 1-eV binding energy. Cr adsorption, however, leads to a very large shift in the valence-band edge to higher binding energy and the creation of Cr 3d states at 2.8-eV binding energy. Low-temperature oxidation lifts the Ti-derived band-gap states and modifies the intensity of the Cr features, indicative of a change of oxidation state from Cr3+ to Cr4+. Higher temperature processing leads to a loss of Cr from the surface region, indicative of its substitution into the bulk

Immunosuppression Has Long-Lasting Effects on Circulating Follicular Regulatory T Cells in Kidney Transplant Recipients

Background: FoxP3+ follicular regulatory T cells (Tfr) have been identified as the cell population controlling T follicular helper (Tfh) cells and B cells which, are both involved in effector immune responses against transplanted tissue. Methods: To understand the biology of Tfr cells in kidney transplant patients treated with tacrolimus and mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) combination immunosuppression, we measured circulating (c)Tfh and cTfr cells in peripheral blood by flow cytometry in n = 211 kidney transplant recipients. At the time of measurement patients were 5–7 years after transplantation. Of this cohort of patients, 23.2% (49/211) had been previously treated for rejection. Median time after anti-rejection therapy was 4.9 years (range 0.4–7 years). Age and gender matched healthy individuals served as controls. Results: While the absolute numbers of cTfh cells were comparable between kidney transplant recipients and healthy controls, the numbers of cTfr cells were 46% lower in immunosuppressed recipients (p < 0.001). More importantly, in transplanted patients, the ratio of cTfr to cTfh was decreased (median; 0.10 vs. 0.06), indicating a disruption of the balance between

Open data from the third observing run of LIGO, Virgo, KAGRA, and GEO

The global network of gravitational-wave observatories now includes five detectors, namely LIGO Hanford, LIGO Livingston, Virgo, KAGRA, and GEO 600. These detectors collected data during their third observing run, O3, composed of three phases: O3a starting in 2019 April and lasting six months, O3b starting in 2019 November and lasting five months, and O3GK starting in 2020 April and lasting two weeks. In this paper we describe these data and various other science products that can be freely accessed through the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center at https://gwosc.org. The main data set, consisting of the gravitational-wave strain time series that contains the astrophysical signals, is released together with supporting data useful for their analysis and documentation, tutorials, as well as analysis software packages

Open Data from the Third Observing Run of LIGO, Virgo, KAGRA, and GEO

Calibration of the LIGO strain data was performed with a GstLAL-based calibration software pipeline (Viets et al. 2018). Calibration of the Virgo strain data was performed with C-based software (Acernese et al. 2022b). Data quality products and event-validation results were computed using the DMT (https://labcit.ligo.caltech.edu/~jzweizig/DMT-Project. html), DQR (https://docs.ligo.org/detchar/data-quality-report/), DQSEGDB (Fisher et al. 2021), gwdetchar (Macloed et al. 2021a), hveto (Smith et al. 2011), iDQ (Essick et al. 2020), and Omicron (Robinet et al. 2020) software packages and contribut- ing software tools. Analyses relied upon the LALSuite software library (LIGO Scientific Collaboration 2018). PESummary was used to postprocess and collate parameter estimation results (Hoy & Raymond 2021). For an exhaustive list of the software used for searching the GW signals and characterizing their source, see Abbott et al. (2021c). Plots were prepared with Matplotlib (Hunter 2007), seaborn (Waskom 2021), GWSumm (Macleod et al. 2021b), and GWpy (Macleod et al. 2021c). NumPy (Harris et al. 2020) and SciPy (Virtanen et al. 2020) were used in the preparation of the manuscript. This material is based upon work supported by NSF’s LIGO Laboratory which is a major facility fully funded by the National Science Foundation. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the support of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) of the United Kingdom, the Max- Planck-Society (MPS), and the State of Niedersachsen/ Germany for support of the construction of Advanced LIGO and construction and operation of the GEO 600 detector. Additional support for Advanced LIGO was provided by the Australian Research Council. The authors gratefully acknowl- edge the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) for the construction and operation of the Virgo detector and the creation and support of the EGO consortium. The authors also gratefully acknowledge research support from these agencies as well as by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India, the Department of Science and Technology, India, the Science & Engineering Research Board (SERB), India, the Ministry of Human Resource Development, India, the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI), the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación and Ministerio de Universidades, the Conselleria de Fons Europeus, Universitat i Cultura and the Direcció General de Política Universitaria i Recerca del Govern de les Illes Balears, the Conselleria d'Innovació, Universitats, Ciència i Societat Digital de la Generalitat Valenciana and the CERCA Programme Generalitat de Catalunya, Spain, the National Science Centre of Poland and the European Union – European Regional Development Fund; Foundation for Polish Science (FNP), the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, the Russian Science Foundation, the European Commission, the European Social Funds (ESF), the European Regional Development Funds (ERDF), the Royal Society, the Scottish Funding Council, the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance, the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA), the French Lyon Institute of Origins (LIO), the Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FRS- FNRS), Actions de Recherche Concertées (ARC) and Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek – Vlaanderen (FWO), Belgium, the Paris Île-de-France Region, the National Research, Development and Innovation Office Hungary (NKFIH), the National Research Foundation of Korea, the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council Canada, Canadian Founda- tion for Innovation (CFI), the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovations, the International Center for Theoretical Physics South American Institute for Fundamental Research (ICTP-SAIFR), the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), the Leverhulme Trust, the Research Corporation, the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Taiwan, the United States Department of Energy, and the Kavli Foundation. The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the NSF, STFC, INFN, and CNRS for provision of computational resources. This work was supported by MEXT, JSPS Leading-edge Research Infrastructure Program, JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Specially Promoted Research 26000005, JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas 2905: JP17H06358, JP17H06361 and JP17H06364, JSPS Core-to- Core Program A, Advanced Research Networks, JSPS Grant- in-Aid for Scientific Research (S) 17H06133 and 20H05639, JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Transformative Research Areas (A) 20A203: JP20H05854, the joint research program of the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research, University of Tokyo, National Research Foundation (NRF), Computing Infrastruc- ture Project of Global Science experimental Data hub Center (GSDC) at KISTI, Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI), and Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) in Korea, Academia Sinica (AS), AS Grid Center (ASGC) and the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) in Taiwan under grants including the Rising Star Program and Science Vanguard Research Program, Advanced Technology Center (ATC) of NAOJ, and Mechanical Engineering Center of KEK.Peer reviewe

Search for eccentric black hole coalescences during the third observing run of LIGO and Virgo

Despite the growing number of binary black hole coalescences confidently observed through gravitational waves so far, the astrophysical origin of these binaries remains uncertain. Orbital eccentricity is one of the clearest tracers of binary formation channels. Identifying binary eccentricity, however, remains challenging due to the limited availability of gravitational waveforms that include the effects of eccentricity. Here, we present observational results for a waveform-independent search sensitive to eccentric black hole coalescences, covering the third observing run (O3) of the LIGO and Virgo detectors. We identified no new high-significance candidates beyond those that have already been identified with searches focusing on quasi-circular binaries. We determine the sensitivity of our search to high-mass (total source-frame mass M > 70 M⊙) binaries covering eccentricities up to 0.3 at 15 Hz emitted gravitational-wave frequency, and use this to compare model predictions to search results. Assuming all detections are indeed quasi-circular, for our fiducial population model, we place a conservative upper limit for the merger rate density of high-mass binaries with eccentricities 0 < e ≤ 0.3 at 16.9 Gpc−3 yr−1 at the 90% confidence level

AOTF microscope for imaging with increased speed and spectral versatility

We have developed a new fluorescence microscope that addresses the spectral and speed limitations of current light microscopy instrumentation. In the present device, interference and neutral density filters normally used for fluorescence excitation and detection are replaced by acousto-optic tunable filters (AOTFs). Improvements are described, including the use of a dispersing prism in conjunction with the imaging AOTF and an oblique-illumination excitation scheme, which together enable the AOTF microscope to produce images comparable to those obtained with conventional fluorescence instruments. The superior speed and spectral versatility of the AOTF microscope are demonstrated by a ratio image pair acquired in 3.5 ms and a micro-spectral absorbance measurement of hemoglobin through a cranial window in a living mouse

Influence of halogen substitution on optical property of mixed-valence gold halide investigated by photoacoustic spectroscopy

Influence of halogen substitution on the absorption spectra in the mixed-valence gold halide Cs$_2$Au$_2$X$_6$ (X = Cl, Br, and I) has been investigated by means of photoacoustic (PA) spectroscopy in the energy range of 1.0~3.5 eV at 300 K. The optical gap ($E_{\rm gap}$), which is assigned to the charge transfer from Au$^+$5dx$^2$-y$^2$ to Au$^{3+}$5dx$^2$-y$^2$ levels, shows a red shift from 1.61 eV for X = Cl to 1.18 eV for X = I. We have ascribed the reduced $E_{\rm gap}$-value to the suppression of the structural distortion of AuX$_4^-$