Publications

The Role of Kinetic Inductance in Metal Optics

A simple LC circuit model recovers the surface plasmon dispersion relation. The model clearly reveals the role of kinetic inductance in shaping the dispersion and other key properties of surface plasmons.

Habitat Heterogeneity and The Functional Signifiance of Fish in River Food Webs

Predation by fish (roach, Hesperoleucas symmetricus, and steelhead Oncorhynchus mykiss) produced strong cascading effects on biota associated with boulder—bedrock substrates in pools of a northern California river, but not on gravel—dwelling biota. Enclosure—exclosure experiments in the South Fork Eel River of northern California (39°44' N, 123°39'W) showed that fish, by suppressing densities of damselfly nymphs and other small predators, released algivorous chironomids (Pseudochironomus richardsoni) from predation. Chironomids in turn dramatically reduced algal standing crops. In contrast, fish had little effect on algae or invertebrates associated with gravel. Gravel—dwelling heptageniid mayflies were behaviorally inhibited from using tops of stones in fish enclosures, and stone surfaces had more chironomid tubes in fish enclosures than in fish exclosures. However, no effects on epilithic algae or densities of invertebrates comparable to those of biota on boulder—bedrock substrates were detected. These spatially varying predator effects in a river parallel results from marine benthic systems, where strong effects of large predators documented for rocky intertidal habitats and unvegetated soft bottoms are not conspicuous in seagrass beds.

Cognitive Behavioural Processes across Psychological Disorders (DRAFT)

Polymers for 193-nm Microlithography: Regioregular 2-Alkoxycarbonylnortricyclene Polymers by Controlled Cyclopolymerization of Bulky Ester Derivatives of Norbornadiene

Double duty for the tert-butyl residue: The bulky substituent in monomer 1 favors free-radical cyclopolymerization with maleic anhydride to give the regioregular nortricyclene copolymer 2. When the polymer is irradiated with a photoacid generator, the tert-butyl ester is cleaved and the polymer becomes soluble in aqueous base. This type of copolymer can be used in 193-nm microlithography; images with resolutions of less than 200 nm have been obtained.

EIS Studies of Porous Oxygen Electrodes with Discrete Particles [J. Electrochem. Soc., 150, E423 (2003)]

Possible Detection of SN 2007pk in X-Rays with Swift

Interparticle Phase-Separation Dynamics in Dense Agglomerates of Lithium Iron Phosphate Nanoparticles

Abstract not Available.

Coexistent Fluid-Phase Equilibria in Biomembranes with Bending Elasticity

Rejoinder to Taxonomy of Health Networks and Systems: A Reassessment

Regio non grata

CCDC 1537038: Experimental Crystal Structure Determination

An entry from the Cambridge Structural Database, the world’s repository for small molecule crystal structures. The entry contains experimental data from a crystal diffraction study. The deposited dataset for this entry is freely available from the CCDC and typically includes 3D coordinates, cell parameters, space group, experimental conditions and quality measures.

Beliefs About the Utility of Presleep Worry: An Investigation of Individuals with Insomnia and Good Sleepers

CCDC 1975407: Experimental Crystal Structure Determination

An entry from the Cambridge Structural Database, the world’s repository for small molecule crystal structures. The entry contains experimental data from a crystal diffraction study. The deposited dataset for this entry is freely available from the CCDC and typically includes 3D coordinates, cell parameters, space group, experimental conditions and quality measures.

A Droplet Microfluidic Platform for Automating Genetic Engineering

We present a water-in-oil droplet microfluidic platform for transformation, culture and expression of recombinant proteins in multiple host organisms including bacteria, yeast and fungi. The platform consists of a hybrid digital microfluidic/channel-based droplet chip with integrated temperature control to allow complete automation and integration of plasmid addition, heat-shock transformation, addition of selection medium, culture, and protein expression. The microfluidic format permitted significant reduction in consumption (100-fold) of expensive reagents such as DNA and enzymes compared to the benchtop method. The chip contains a channel to continuously replenish oil to the culture chamber to provide a fresh supply of oxygen to the cells for long-term (∼5 days) cell culture. The flow channel also replenished oil lost to evaporation and increased the number of droplets that could be processed and cultured. The platform was validated by transforming several plasmids into Escherichia coli including plasmids containing genes for fluorescent proteins GFP, BFP and RFP; plasmids with selectable markers for ampicillin or kanamycin resistance; and a Golden Gate DNA assembly reaction. We also demonstrate the applicability of this platform for transformation in widely used eukaryotic organisms such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Aspergillus niger. Duration and temperatures of the microfluidic heat-shock procedures were optimized to yield transformation efficiencies comparable to those obtained by benchtop methods with a throughput up to 6 droplets/min. The proposed platform offers potential for automation of molecular biology experiments significantly reducing cost, time and variability while improving throughput.

Effective mass and Fermi surface complexity factor from ab initio band structure calculations

Abstract The effective mass is a convenient descriptor of the electronic band structure used to characterize the density of states and electron transport based on a free electron model. While effective mass is an excellent first-order descriptor in real systems, the exact value can have several definitions, each of which describe a different aspect of electron transport. Here we use Boltzmann transport calculations applied to ab initio band structures to extract a density-of-states effective mass from the Seebeck Coefficient and an inertial mass from the electrical conductivity to characterize the band structure irrespective of the exact scattering mechanism. We identify a Fermi Surface Complexity Factor: $${N}_{{\rm{v}}}^{\ast }{K}^{\ast }$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>N</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>v</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>*</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:msubsup> <mml:msup> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>K</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>*</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:msup> </mml:math> from the ratio of these two masses, which in simple cases depends on the number of Fermi surface pockets $$({N}_{{\rm{v}}}^{\ast })$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>(</mml:mo> <mml:mrow> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>N</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>v</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>*</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:msubsup> </mml:mrow> <mml:mo>)</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> and their anisotropy K * , both of which are beneficial to high thermoelectric performance as exemplified by the high values found in PbTe. The Fermi Surface Complexity factor can be used in high-throughput search of promising thermoelectric materials.

IUPAC-IUGS recommendation on the half life of 87Rb

Program evaluation: resource for decision making

Formal program evaluation is an important resource for health care decision making. It is necessary in situations where traditional organizational evaluative capabilities an no longer meet the requirements of the job at hand.

Precursor Reaction Pathway Leading to BiFeO3 Formation: Insights from Text-Mining and Chemical Reaction Network Analyses

BiFeO3 (BFO) is a next-generation non-toxic multiferroic material with applications in sensors, memory devices, and spintronics, where its crystallinity and crystal structure directly influence its functional properties. Designing sol-gel syntheses that result in phase-pure BFO remains a challenge due to the complex interactions between metal complexes in the precursor solution. Here, we combine text-mined data and chemical reaction network (CRN) analysis to obtain novel insight into BFO sol-gel precursor chemistry. We perform text-mining analysis of 340 synthesis recipes with the emphasis on phase-pure BFO and identify trends in the use of precursor materials, including that nitrates are the preferred metal salts, 2-methoxyethanol (2ME) is the dominant solvent, and adding citric acid as a chelating agent frequently leads to phase-pure BFO. Our CRN analysis reveals that the thermodynamically favored reaction mechanism between bismuth nitrate and 2ME interaction involves partial solvation followed by dimerization, contradicting assumptions in previous literature. We suggest that further oligomerization, facilitated by nitrite ion bridging, is critical for achieving the pure BFO phase.