Modern Physics Letters B

One of the most important biological processes is the dynamic folding and unfolding of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). The folding process is crucial for DNA to fit within the boundaries of the cell, while the unfolding process is essential for DNA replication and transcription. To accommodate both processes, the cell employs a highly active folding mechanism that has been the subject of intense study over the last few decades. Still, many open questions remain. What are the pathways for folding or unfolding? How does the folding equilibrium shift? And, what is the energy landscape for a particular process? Here, we review these emerging questions and the in vitro, optical methods that have provided answers, introducing the topic for those physicists seeking to step into biology. Specifically, we discuss two iconic experiments for DNA folding, the tethered particle motion (TPM) experiment and the optical tweezers experiment.

For low voltage electrophoresis chip, there is always a problem that the samples are truncated and peaks are broadened, as well as longer time for separation. In this paper, a low voltage electrophoresis separation model was established, and the separation conditions were discussed. A new driving mode was proposed for applying low voltage, which was called multi-segments synchronized scanning. By using this driving mode, the reversed electric field that existed between the multi-segments can enrich samples and shorten the sample zone. The low voltage electrophoresis experiments using multi-segments synchronized scanning were carried out by home-made silicon-PDMS-based chip. The fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) labeled lysine and phenylalanine mixed samples with the concentration of 10${}^{-4}$ mol/L were successfully separated under the optimal conditions of 10 mmol/L borax buffer (pH = 10.0), 200 V/cm separation electric field and electrode switch time of 2.5 s. The separation was completed with a resolution of 2.0, and the peak time for lysine and phenylalanine was 4 min and 6 min, respectively.

We propose the entire mean weighted first-passage time (EMWFPT) for the first time in the literature. The EMWFPT is obtained by the sum of the reciprocals of all nonzero Laplacian eigenvalues on weighted networks. Simplified calculation of EMWFPT is the key quantity in the study of infinite families of weighted tree networks, since the weighted complex systems have become a fundamental mechanism for diverse dynamic processes. We base on the relationships between characteristic polynomials at different generations of their Laplacian matrix and Laplacian eigenvalues to compute EMWFPT. This technique of simplified calculation of EMWFPT is significant both in theory and practice. In this paper, firstly, we introduce infinite families of weighted tree networks with recursive properties. Then, we use the sum of the reciprocals of all nonzero Laplacian eigenvalues to calculate EMWFPT, which is equal to the average of MWFPTs over all pairs of nodes on infinite families of weighted networks. In order to compute EMWFPT, we try to obtain the analytical expressions for the sum of the reciprocals of all nonzero Laplacian eigenvalues. The key step here is to calculate the constant terms and the coefficients of first-order terms of characteristic polynomials. Finally, we obtain analytically the closed-form solutions to EMWFPT on the weighted tree networks and show that the leading term of EMWFPT grows superlinearly with the network size.

Since molybdenum (Mo) thin film has been used widely recently, it attracts plenty of attention, like it is a good candidate of back contact material for CuIn${}_{1-x}$Ga${}_x$Se${}_{2-y}$S${}_y$ (CIGSeS) solar cells development; thanks to its more conductive and higher adhesive property. Besides, molybdenum thin film is an ideal material for aluminum nitride (AlN) thin film preparation and attributes to the tiny (−1.0%) lattice mismatch between Mo and AlN. As we know that the quality of Mo thin film is mainly dependent on process conditions, it brings a practical significance to study the influence of process parameters on Mo thin film properties. In this work, various sputtering conditions are employed to explore the feasibility of depositing a layer of molybdenum film with good quality by DC reactive magnetron sputtering. The influence of process parameters such as power, gas flow, substrate temperature and process time on the crystallinity and crystal orientation of Mo thin films is investigated. X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements and atomic force microscope (AFM) are used to characterize the properties and surface roughness, respectively. According to comparative analysis on the results, process parameters are optimized. The full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the rocking curves of the (110) Mo is decreased to 2.7${}^{\circ }$, and the (110) Mo peaks reached $1.2\times 10^5$ counts. The grain size and the surface roughness have been measured as 20 Å and 3.8 nm, respectively, at 200${}^{\circ }$C.

Estimation of ion channel parameters is crucial to spike initiation of neurons. The biophysical neuron models have numerous ion channel parameters, but only a few of them play key roles in the firing patterns of the models. So we choose three parameters featuring the adaptation in the Ermentrout neuron model to be estimated. However, the traditional particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is still easy to fall into local optimum and has the premature convergence phenomenon in the study of some problems. In this paper, we propose an improved method that uses a concave function and dynamic logistic chaotic mapping mixed to adjust the inertia weights of the fitness value, effectively improve the global convergence ability of the algorithm. The perfect predicting firing trajectories of the rebuilt model using the estimated parameters prove that only estimating a few important ion channel parameters can establish the model well and the proposed algorithm is effective. Estimations using two classic PSO algorithms are also compared to the improved PSO to verify that the algorithm proposed in this paper can avoid local optimum and quickly converge to the optimal value. The results provide important theoretical foundations for building biologically realistic neuron models.

Hexagonal yttrium manganites, YMnO₃, are interesting materials for their multiferroic behavior. Substituting suitable cations either at the Y-site or Mn-site offers great opportunities to produce a variety of manganites and tune their properties. Nanocrystalline yttrium iron manganites with the compositional formula Y${}_{1-x}$Fe${}_x$MnO₃, $x$ = 0.0, 0.10, 0.15, 0.20 and 0.25, were synthesized by sol–gel autocombustion method. The prepared samples were heated at 1100${}^{\circ }$C for 1 h. Another set of samples with compositional formula YFe${}_x$Mn${}_{1-x}$O₃, $x$ = 0.0, 0.10, 0.15, 0.20 and 0.25, were also synthesized by the same method and heated at 1100${}^{\circ }$C for 1 h. Various characterizations were done on these manganite systems synthesized by substituting iron at different sites. X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique studied the structure of the samples and analysis of XRD patterns confirmed the formation of hexagonal phase in the samples. Structural parameters such as lattice constants, crystallite size, theoretical density, etc. were determined using the XRD data. The unit cell dimensions have been found to agree with the standard data and the Debye–Scherrer crystallite size obtained from XRD data ranges from 42 nm to 77 nm. The room temperature frequency variations of electrical properties such as dielectric constant, dielectric loss and AC conductivity were measured in the range of 100 Hz–2 MHz and the variations showed a dispersive behavior for all the samples. The various measurements and the results obtained were studied and discussed in the paper.

This paper reports on semilocal and hybrid density functional analysis of charge-transition levels of native defects in BaF₂ structure. The transition level is defined as the Fermi level where two defect charge states have the same formation energy. The errors arising from the small supercell size effects have been relieved through extrapolating the formation energies to the limit of infinite supercell size. The level placement in the corrected band gap is achieved using a correction factor obtained from the difference between the valence band maxima in semilocal and hybrid calculations. The band gap size from hybrid calculation is validated using the full-potential, linearized augmented planewave method with the modified Becke–Johnson exchange potential. Our results are sufficiently accurate and, thus, significant for direct comparison with experiments.

In this paper, the effects of a repulsive scattering center on the ground-state energy and spin properties of a three-electron parabolic quantum dot are investigated theoretically by means of configuration interaction method. Phase transition from a weakly correlated regime to a strongly correlated regime is examined from several strengths and positions of Gaussian impurity. Numerical results reveal that the transition from spin-1/2 to spin-3/2 state depends strongly on the location of the impurity which accordingly states the controllability of the spin polarization. Moreover, broken circular symmetry results in more pronounced electronic charge localization.

In this paper, Ag nanoparticles were successfully prepared by chemical reduction, and then Ag/ZnO composite particles were successfully prepared and deposited onto glass substrates to form Ag/ZnO thin films. Hereafter, the structure, the morphology and the metal enhanced fluorescence (MEF) property of Ag nanoparticles and ZnO/Ag composite particles were studied by XRD, SEM, EDS, TEM, UV-vis absorption and fluorescence (FL) spectrometer. The results showed that the average size of Ag nanoparticles increased with the increase of prepared time. Moreover, ZnO layer consisted of polycrystalline structure and amorphous interface layer, but nano-Ag particle was polycrystalline structure. Annealing process was carried out to investigate the influence of annealing process parameters on MEF property of Ag/ZnO composite structure. Due to annealing treatment, the amorphous component of Ag/ZnO thin films was reduced, which might improve the density of Ag/ZnO thin films and the diameter of composite particles. Furthermore, FL enhancement phenomenon of fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) molecules might be attributed to the joint influence of the roughness and the density of these films and the average diameter of composite particles.

With the increasing development of wireless sensor network (WSN), power supply for WSN nodes had attracted increasing attention, and the energy harvesting system based on Karman vortex street has been widely used in underwater WSN. But the research of the influences of affecting factors towards the energy harvesting system is yet to be completed. So, in this paper, an underwater flow-induced vibration energy harvesting system based on Karman vortex street was proposed and tested. The influence of bluff body geometry and flow velocity towards the performance of the energy harvesting has been researched. The results showed that the output voltage increased as the diameter of bluff body and the water velocity increase. The power generation efficiency was the best when the shape of bluff body was circular.

The roles of the trading time risks (TTRs) on stock investment return and risks are investigated in the condition of stock price crashes with Hushen300 data (CSI300) and Dow Jones Industrial Average (ˆDJI), respectively. In order to describe the TTR, we employ the escape time that the stock price drops from the maximum to minimum value in a data window length (DWL). After theoretical and empirical research on probability density function of return, the results in both ˆDJI and CSI300 indicate that: (i) As increasing DWL, the expectation of returns and its stability are weakened. (ii) An optimal TTR is related to a maximum return and minimum risk of stock investment in stock price crashes.

In this work, the dependence of Shafranov parameter on plasma internal inductance has been studied by using the solution of Grad–Shafranov equation (GSE) for Hefei Tokamak-7. The Shafranov parameter was obtained from the solution of GSE, using the expansion of free functions, which is quadratic in flux function. Then, we can find the dependence of Shafranov parameter on plasma internal inductance.

n-MoS₂/p-Si heterojunction solar cells were simulated by using Analysis of Microelectronic and Photonic Structures (AMPS-1D) software. In order to fundamentally understand the mechanism of such kind of cells, the effects of electron affinity, band gap and thickness for MoS₂, as well as the donor concentration in Si layer on the devices performance were simulated and discussed in detail. The effects of defect states in Si layer and at n-MoS₂/p-Si interface on the performance of devices were also simulated. It is demonstrated that two-dimensional monolayer MoS₂ with the highest band gap of 1.8 eV is the optimized option for ideal devices which can give out the highest efficiency over 19.0%. Si layer with higher acceptor concentration is more likely to be recommended in achieving higher power conversion efficiency if defect level can be effectively controlled. The defect states in Si layer and at MoS₂/Si interface were identified to influence the performance of the devices significantly.

The microelectromechanical system (MEMS) quasi-end-fire array antenna based on a liquid crystal polymer (LCP) substrate is designed and fabricated in this paper. The maximum radiation direction of the antenna tends to the cone axis forming an angle less than 90${}^{\circ }$, which satisfies the proximity detection system applied at the forward target detection. Furthermore, the proposed antenna is fed at the ended side in order to save internal space. Moreover, the proposed antenna takes small covering area of the proximity detection system. The proposed antenna is fabricated by using the flexible MEMS process, and the measurement results agree well with the simulation results. This is the first time that a conical conformal array antenna is fabricated by the flexible MEMS process to realize the quasi-end-fire radiation. A pair of conformal MEMS array antennas resonates at 14.2 GHz with its mainlobes tending to the cone axis forming a 30${}^{\circ }$ angle and a 31${}^{\circ }$ angle separately, and the gains achieved are 1.82 dB in two directions, respectively. The proposed antenna meets the performance requirements for the proximity detection system which has vast application prospects.