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In the title compound, C 40 H 36 B 2 N 4 O 5 , the B—O—B bond angle is 132.75 (13) and the dihedral angle between the benzodiazborole rings is 73.02 (5)°. In the crystal, weak C—H...O interactions link the molecules.
Abstract The effects of climate change on plants and ecosystems are mediated by plant hydraulic traits, including interspecific and intraspecific variability of trait phenotypes. Yet, integrative and realistic studies of hydraulic traits and climate change are rare. In a semiarid grassland, we assessed the response of several plant hydraulic traits to elevated CO 2 (+200 ppm) and warming (+1.5 to 3°C; day to night). For leaves of five dominant species (three graminoids and two forbs), and in replicated plots exposed to 7 years of elevated CO 2 , warming, or ambient climate, we measured: stomatal density and size, xylem vessel size, turgor loss point, and water potential (pre‐dawn). Interspecific differences in hydraulic traits were larger than intraspecific shifts induced by elevated CO 2 and/or warming. Effects of elevated CO 2 were greater than effects of warming, and interactions between treatments were weak or not detected. The forbs showed little phenotypic plasticity. The graminoids had leaf water potentials and turgor loss points that were 10% to 50% less negative under elevated CO 2 ; thus, climate change might cause these species to adjust their drought resistance strategy away from tolerance and toward avoidance. The C4 grass also reduced allocation of leaf area to stomata under elevated CO 2 , which helps explain observations of higher soil moisture. The shifts in hydraulic traits under elevated CO 2 were not, however, simply due to higher soil moisture. Integration of our results with others' indicates that common species in this grassland are more likely to adjust stomatal aperture in response to near‐term climate change, rather than anatomical traits; this contrasts with apparent effects of changing CO 2 on plant anatomy over evolutionary time. Future studies should assess how plant responses to drought may be constrained by the apparent shift from tolerance (via low turgor loss point) to avoidance (via stomatal regulation and/or access to deeper soil moisture).
Neutrinos are perhaps the least understood of the known denizens of the subatomic world. They have nearly no mass, interact only via the weak nuclear force and gravity, and, perhaps most surprising, the three known species of neutrinos can transform from one variant into another. This transformation, called neutrino oscillation, has been demonstrated only relatively recently and has led to speculation that there might be another, even more mysterious, neutrino variant, called the sterile neutrino. While the sterile neutrino remains a hypothetical particle, it is an interesting one and searches for it are a key research focus of the world’s neutrino scientist community.
Metasurfaces offer a compact platform for optical vapor sensing, but their practical deployment has been limited by weak evanescent light–matter interactions and reliance on spectrally resolved instrumentation. Here, we report porous silicon (pSi) metasurfaces for spectrometer-free quantitative detection of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) with strongly enhanced light–matter interaction. The engineered porosity increases sensitivity by >100× relative to non-porous dielectric metasurfaces, enabling limits of detection of 1.65 ppm for methanol and 9.1 ppm for ethanol across a broad dynamic range (<10 ppm to >103 ppm). Imaging-based readout provides a lightweight, spectrometer-free pathway for real-time quantitative sensing. Beyond quantitative detection, the mesoporous architecture introduces adsorption–desorption kinetics as an additional information channel. Analysis of the resulting spatiotemporal signatures enables kinetic fingerprinting without reliance on infrared spectral features or surface functionalization, and a lightweight machine-learning classifier differentiates acetone, methanol, ethanol, and isopropanol with 91.6% accuracy. These results establish porous metasurfaces as spatiotemporal sensing elements that couple quantitative vapor detection with kinetic fingerprinting through real-time dynamical responses, enabling low-cost, high-performance optical sensors.
Terrestrial nanoplastics (NPs) pose a serious threat to agricultural food production systems due to the potential harm of soil-born micro- and macroorganisms that promote soil fertility and ability of NPs to adsorb onto and penetrate into vegetables and other crops. Very little is known about the dispersion, fate and transport of NPs in soils. This is because of the challenges of analyzing terrestrial NPs by conventional microscopic techniques due to the low concentrations of NPs and absence of optical transparency in these systems. Herein, we investigate the potential utility of small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) and Ultra SANS (USANS) to probe the agglomeration behavior of NPs prepared from polybutyrate adipate terephthalate, a prominent biodegradable plastic used in agricultural mulching, in the presence of vermiculite, an artificial soil. SANS with the contrast matching technique was used to study the aggregation of NPs co-dispersed with vermiculite in aqueous media. We determined the contrast match point for vermiculite was 66% D 2 O / 33% H 2 O. At this condition, the signal for vermiculite was ~50–100%-fold lower that obtained using neat H 2 O or D 2 O as solvent. According to SANS and USANS, smaller-sized NPs (50 nm) remained dispersed in water and did not undergo size reduction or self-agglomeration, nor formed agglomerates with vermiculite. Larger-sized NPs (300–1000 nm) formed self-agglomerates and agglomerates with vermiculite, demonstrating their significant adhesion with soil. However, employment of convective transport (simulated by ex situ stirring of the slurries prior to SANS and USANS analyses) reduced the self-agglomeration, demonstrating weak NP-NP interactions. Convective transport also led to size reduction of the larger-sized NPs. Therefore, this study demonstrates the potential utility of SANS and USANS with contrast matching technique for investigating behavior of terrestrial NPs in complex soil systems.
The goals of this project are to develop experimental tools to investigate the dynamics of dissociative electron attachment (DEA) reactions in real time. In a DEA reaction, the attachment of a low energy electron to a molecule results in bond breaking and the fragmentation of the molecule. A new instrument has been designed and is under construction to perform time-resolved photoelectron and photo-fragment spectroscopy following electron transfer from an iodide anion to a molecule within a mass-selected molecular dimer. Iodide binds only weakly through the dipole interaction with many polar molecules, and such molecules forming a dimer with iodide undergo only small changes from the equilibrium geometry in isolation. When the electron is transferred from the iodide, the iodine atom is no longer bound, so the electron transfer step can be considered analogous to electron attachment and brings the key advantage of ultrafast timing precision. The experiments proposed here will establish the experimental tools to interrogate the dynamics of dissociative electron attachment on the fundamental timescales of the nuclear motion, by simultaneously probing the valence electronic structure and the fragmentation pathways.
As the penetration level of power electronics increases and remote photovoltaic (PV) generation is integrated into the alternating current (ac) grid, the short-circuit ratio (SCR) at the point of interconnection of a hybrid PV–energy storage system (ESS) plant may be low. Additionally, the inertia of the alternating current (ac) grid may be low. The low SCRs and inertias can lead to reliability challenges in the power grid. These operating conditions require additional reinforcements, such as synchronous condensers, static var compensators, static synchronous compensators, and high-voltage direct current (HVdc) links/grids. HVdc links or grids may also provide the additional capability of connecting the plant to asynchronous grids and/or connecting asynchronous grids, among others. This scenario leads to discrete development of solar inverters, energy storage inverters, HVdc converters, and several transformers. Some of the problems associated with this discrete development and inverter-based generation include increased cost, lower reliability, and reduced efficiency associated with duplication of power electronics (PEs); competing controls of several individual discrete inverter-based generators due to the presence of multiple PEs, which leads to derating of the system; and transient stability problems arising from inverter-based generation, such as voltage/frequency events leading inverter shutdowns, voltage instability and control interactions in the formed weak grid, and harmonics caused by resonances of multiple inverters.
Nature uses specialized metalloenzymes to carry out small molecule activation reactions, including CO 2 fixation, O 2 activation, and proton reduction, with unparalleled efficiency, rates, and selectivity. The latter reactions are performed by hydrogenases, protein metallo-complexes that interconverts H 2 to protons and electrons (H 2 oxidation) and the reverse reaction (H 2 production) with incredibly low energy input and amazingly fast kinetics. Reproducing both the activity and efficiency of metalloenzymes in sustainable anthropogenic systems remains one of the “holy grails” of inorganic chemistry. However, identifying the precise molecular components responsible for these desirable properties has been challenging in the natural metalloenzymes, hindering efforts to develop analogous processes in synthetic compounds. Considering the inherent complexity of a metalloenzyme and the many interactions, both strong and weak, that contribute to the function of an enzyme, we have elected to model natural metalloenzymes on a biochemical platform. Towards this end, we have a developed structural, functional, and mechanistic mimic of the [Ni-Fe] hydrogenases within a robust protein scaffold, rubredoxin, to understand the influence of the secondary coordination environment on the metal center. This involved preparing a series of three rubredoxin constructs containing a single point mutation at Val positions and making the NMR chemical shift assignments for the paramagnetic (nickel-substituted) and non-paramagnetic (zinc-substituted) form. These physical studies were complemented with in silico molecular dynamic studies on proteins with [Fe-S] clusters to engineer new proton channels to test in vitro . To assist our search for new natural metalloprotein scaffolds within the vast number of sequenced genomes, we created a neural network-based program to identify proteins with specific metal-binding sites. These computational and physical studies with metalloenzymes provide direct insight into the fundamental chemical principles driving the natural systems and offer design principles for developing catalysts that utilize analogous principles.
Static (DC) and dynamic (AC, at 14 MHz and 8 GHz) magnetic susceptibilities of single crystals of a ferromagnetic superconductor, EuFe 2 ( As 1 – x P x ) 2 ( x = 0.23), were measured in pristine state and after different doses of 2.5 MeV electron or 3.5 MeV proton irradiation. The superconducting transition temperature, T c ( H ) , shows an extraordinarily large decrease. It starts at T c ( H = 0 ) ≈ 24 K in the pristine sample for both AC and DC measurements, but moves to almost half of that value after moderate irradiation dose. Remarkably, after the irradiation not only T c moves significantly below the FM transition, its values differ drastically for measurements at different frequencies, ≈16 K in AC measurements and ≈12 K in a DC regime. We attribute such a large difference in T c to the appearance of the spontaneous internal magnetic field below the FM transition, so that the superconductivity develops directly into the mixed spontaneous vortex-antivortex state where the onset of diamagnetism is known to be frequency-dependent. We also examined the response to the applied DC magnetic fields and studied the annealing of irradiated samples, which almost completely restores the superconducting transition. Overall, our results suggest that in EuFe 2 ( As 1 – x P x ) 2 superconductivity is affected by local-moment ferromagnetism mostly via the spontaneous internal magnetic fields induced by the FM subsystem. Another mechanism is revealed upon irradiation where magnetic defects created in ordered Eu 2 + lattice act as efficient pairbreakers leading to a significant T c reduction upon irradiation compared to other 122 compounds. On the other hand, the exchange interactions seem to be weakly screened by the superconducting phase leading to a modest increase of T m (less than 1 K) after the irradiation drives T c to below T m . Our results suggest that FM and SC phases coexist microscopically in the same volume.
T cell function is determined by transcriptional networks that are regulated by epigenetic programming via posttranslational modifications (PTMs) to histone proteins and DNA. Bottom-up mass spectrometry (MS) can identify histone PTMs, whereas intact protein analysis by MS can detect species missed by bottom-up approaches. We used a novel approach of online two-dimensional liquid chromatography-tandem MS with high-resolution reversed-phase liquid chromatography (RPLC), alternating electron transfer dissociation (ETD) and collision-induced dissociation (CID) on precursor ions to maximize fragmentation of uniquely modified species. The first online RPLC separation sorted histone families, then RPLC or weak cation exchange hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography (WCX-HILIC) separated species heavily clad in PTMs. Tentative identifications were assigned by matching proteoform masses to predicted theoretical masses that were verified with tandem MS. We used this innovative approach for histone-intact protein PTM mapping (HiPTMap) to identify and quantify proteoforms purified from CD8 T cells after in vivo influenza infection. Activation significantly altered PTMs following influenza infection, histone maps changed as T cells migrated to the site of infection, and T cells responding to secondary infections had significantly more transcription enhancing modifications. Thus, HiPTMap identified and quantified proteoforms and determined changes in CD8 T cell histone PTMs over the course of infection.
Neutrinos are among the most abundant fundamental particles in the universe, and yet they are so elusive that they pass through almost everything without leaving a trace. For decades, researchers have measured neutrino oscillations in great detail, refining our understanding of the theories. Yet, once again, neutrino shows their incredibly surprising nature through some recent experimental results, suggesting that our current understanding might be incomplete. Several experiments have observed an unexpected difference in the observed neutrino behaviour from what the Standard Model predicts, showing an excess in some cases (e.g. LSND, MiniBooNE) and a deficit of neutrino events in others (e.g. SAGE, GALLEX). These anomalies challenge our conventional theories of standard three neutrino flavors and phenomenologically motivate the sterile neutrino hypothesis, which does not interact through the usual weak force. While some results appear consistent with this idea, others have found no supporting evidence (e.g. MicroBooNE), leaving the question unanswered. NOvA is one such long-baseline neutrino experiment with its Near Detector (ND) at Fermilab and a Far Detector (FD) at 810 km in Minnesota. It uses the NuMI beam as its primary source of neutrinos for oscillation studies. Its two-detector setup, extended baseline, and ability to conduct combined $\nu$-$\bar\nu$ analyses position it to explore these phenomena in new ways. We use the joint $\nu_{\mu}$ and neutral current (NC) disappearance channels to probe active-sterile mixing in the 3+1 model. This analysis utilizes a data sample of 27$\times$10$^{20}$ protons on target (POT) in neutrino mode and 12.5$\times$10$^{20}$ protons on target (POT) in antineutrino mode. We found no evidence of sterile neutrino at 90$\%$ C.L. We present the limits in $\sin^{2}\theta_{24}$ vs $\Delta m^{2}_{41}$, $\sin^{2}\theta_{34}$ vs $\Delta m^{2}_{41}$, and $\sin^{2}2\theta_{\mu\tau}$ vs $\Delta m^{2}_{41}$ parameter spaces. The limits provided by this analysis are world leading in most of the parameter spaces.
Ion diffusion in atmospheric pressure plasmas is examined and particular attention is paid to the fact that ion–ion interactions can be influenced by strong Coulomb coupling. Three regimes are identified. At low ionization fractions (x i ≲ 10 —6 ), standard weakly correlated ion-neutral interactions set the diffusion rate. At moderate ionization fractions (10 —6 ≲ x i ≲ 10 —2 ) there is a transition from ion-neutral to ion–ion collisions setting the diffusion rate. In this regime, the effect of strong Coulomb coupling in ion–ion collisions is accounted for by applying the mean force kinetic theory. Since both ion-neutral and ion–ion interactions contribute a comparable amount to the total diffusion rate, models (such as particle-in-cell or fluid) must account for both contributions. At high ionization fractions (x i ≳ 10 —2 ), strongly correlated ion–ion collisions dominate and the plasma is heated substantially by a disorder-induced heating (DIH) process associated with strong correlations. The temperature increase due to DIH strongly influences the ion diffusion rate. This effect becomes even more important, and occurs at lower ionization fractions, as the pressure increases above atmospheric pressure. In addition to ion diffusion, DIH affects the neutral gas temperature, therefore influencing the neutral diffusion rate. Model predictions are tested using molecular dynamics simulations, which included a Monte Carlo collision routine to simulate the effect of ion-neutral collisions at the lowest ionization fractions. The model and simulations show good agreement over a broad range of ionization fractions. Importantly, the results provide a model for ion diffusion, on a wide range of ionization fractions and pressures, solely considering the elastic contribution to the diffusion coefficient—as an illustration of how strong Coulomb coupling influences diffusion processes in general.
Here, we present a calculation of the radiative capture cross section of the $np→dγ$ reaction in the low-energy range, where the M1 reaction channel dominates. Employing the LENPIC nucleon-nucleon interaction up to the fifth order (N4LO) that is regularized by the semilocal coordinate space regulators, we obtain the initial and final state wave functions, and evaluate the phase shifts of the scattering state and deuteron properties. We derive the transition operator from the chiral effective field theory up to the next-to-next-to leading order (N2LO), where we also regularize the transition operator using regulators consistent with those of the interactions. We compute the capture cross sections, and the results show a converging pattern with the chiral-order expansion of the nucleon-nucleon interaction, where the regulator dependence of the results is weak when higher-order nucleon-nucleon interactions are employed. We quantify the uncertainties of the cross-section results due to the chiral-order truncation. The chirally complete and consistent cross-section results are calculated up to N2LO and they compare well with the experiments and other theoretical predictions.
The atomic nucleus is comprised of a collection of nucleons (protons and neutrons), which are bound together by the nucleon-nucleon (NN) interaction that originates from Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). While most nucleons experience the force from the rest of the nu- cleus as a single net “mean-field” interaction that binds them relatively weakly, a small but impactful fraction are in configurations called “Short-Range Correlations” (SRCs), in which they pair with another nucleon at very short distance to experience strong interactions, sig- nificant binding, and high momentum. Hard, high-energy scattering reactions in which an SRC pair is broken apart, knocking both nucleons out of the nucleus, provide the ability to probe the details of these SRC configurations in the nucleus. Previous measurements have had limited statistics and kinematic reach, and the theoretical tools available were in- sufficient to draw quantitative conclusions regarding the ground-state properties of SRCs. The studies described in this thesis represent the first global analysis of SRC breakup mea- surements in order to present a unified picture of SRCs within light- to medium-size nuclei. This includes the use of a novel theoretical framework, the Generalized Contact Formalism, which connects scattering cross-section measurements and the ground-state properties of the SRC pair, to quantitatively interpret a variety of electron-scattering measurements. This is brought to culmination by a report on the first measurement of SRC pairs via the use of hard meson photoproduction reactions, which, despite differing significantly from the me- chanics of electron-scattering, is well-described under a common framework, pointing to a consistent and universal picture of SRCs across reaction channels. I also report on the first measurement of J/¿ photoproduction in the near- and below-threshold kinematic region, giving the first insights to the gluonic structure of bound nucleons in the large-x “valence” region and providing constraints on a gluonic “EMC effect”. In addition to these studies, I provide details on the search for Primakoff production of axion-like particles using the pho- toproduction data taken for this experiment, and I conclude by describing studies of nucleon spin structure measurements that will be performed at the forthcoming U.S. Electron-Ion Collider.
We report electron transport studies in an encapsulated few-layer WTe 2 at low temperatures and high magnetic fields. The magnetoconductance reveals a temperature-induced crossover between weak antilocalization and weak localization in the quantum diffusive regime. Here we show that the crossover clearly manifests coexistence and competition among several characteristic lengths, including the dephasing length, the spin-flip length, and the mean free path. In addition, low-temperature conductance increases logarithmically with the increase of temperature indicating an interplay of electron-electron interaction (EEI) and spin-orbit coupling (SOC). We demonstrate the existence and quantify the strengths of EEI and SOC which are considered to be responsible for gap opening in the quantum spin Hall state in WTe 2 at the monolayer limit.
The molecular conformation of giant molecule acceptors (GMAs) plays a significant role in regulating the intermolecular interactions and their photovoltaic performances in organic solar cells (OSCs). For the linear GMA GT‐l, the stronger homo‐molecular interaction causes its aggregation being weakly affected by the donor, thus forming an ordered molecular stacking and proper phase separation in its blend film. The star‐shaped GMA GT‐s‐based blend film shows a dominant hetero‐molecular interaction that suppresses the aggregation of the donor and acceptor, resulting in smaller phase separation and more uniform vertical phase distribution. While for another star‐shaped GMA GTs, the weakest hetero‐molecular interaction causes its blend film to form larger phase separation. Therefore, the GT‐l based OSC with PM6 as donor shows the highest charge mobilities, the fastest charge transfer (CT) process, reduced energy loss and less charge recombination, contributing to a higher power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 19.03%. Comparatively, the PCEs of the OSCs based on GTs and GT‐s are 18.05% and 17.58% respectively. Notably, all the three GMAs based OSCs show excellent thermal stability and long‐term storage stability. This study provides a facile strategy by tuning the linking unit and its connecting mode for designing highly efficient and stable organic photovoltaic materials.
We describe the interaction of parallel-propagating Alfvén waves with ion-acoustic waves and other Alfvén waves, in magnetized, high- β collisionless plasmas. This is accomplished through a combination of analytical theory and numerical fluid simulations of the Chew–Goldberger–Low (CGL) magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equations closed by Landau-fluid heat fluxes. An asymptotic ordering is employed to simplify the CGL-MHD equations and derive solutions for the deformation of an Alfvén wave that results from its interaction with the pressure anisotropy generated either by an ion-acoustic wave or another, larger-amplitude Alfvén wave. The difference in time scales of acoustic and Alfvénic fluctuations at high- β means that interactions that are local in wavenumber space yield little modification to either mode within the time it takes the acoustic wave to Landau damp away. Instead, order-unity changes in the amplitude of Alfvénic fluctuations can result after interacting with frequency-matched acoustic waves. Additionally, we show that the propagation speed of an Alfvén-wave packet in an otherwise homogeneous background is a function of its self-generated pressure anisotropy. This allows for the eventual interaction of separate co-propagating Alfvén-wave packets of differing amplitudes. The results of the CGL-MHD simulations agree well with these predictions, suggesting that theoretical models relying on the interaction of these modes should be reconsidered in certain astrophysical environments. Applications of these results to weak Alfvénic turbulence and to the interaction between the compressive and Alfvénic cascades in strong, collisionless turbulence are also discussed.
The standard model of particle physics describes the known fundamental particles and forces that make up our Universe, with the exception of gravity. One of the central features of the standard model is a field that permeates all of space and interacts with fundamental particles. The quantum excitation of this field, known as the Higgs field, manifests itself as the Higgs boson, the only fundamental particle with no spin. In 2012, a particle with properties consistent with the Higgs boson of the standard model was observed by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Since then, more than 30 times as many Higgs bosons have been recorded by the ATLAS experiment, enabling much more precise measurements and new tests of the theory. Here, on the basis of this larger dataset, we combine an unprecedented number of production and decay processes of the Higgs boson to scrutinize its interactions with elementary particles. Interactions with gluons, photons, and W and Z bosons—the carriers of the strong, electromagnetic and weak forces—are studied in detail. Interactions with three third-generation matter particles (bottom (b) and top (t) quarks, and tau leptons (τ)) are well measured and indications of interactions with a second-generation particle (muons, μ) are emerging. These tests reveal that the Higgs boson discovered ten years ago is remarkably consistent with the predictions of the theory and provide stringent constraints on many models of new phenomena beyond the standard model.