There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

抗原变异可使得多种致病微生物易于逃避宿主免疫应答。表达在感染红细胞表面的恶性疟原虫红细胞表面蛋白1（PfPMP1）与感染红细胞、内皮细胞、树突状细胞以及胎盘的单个或多个受体作用，在黏附及免疫逃避中起关键的作用。每个单倍体基因组var基因家族编码约60种成员，通过启动转录不同的var基因变异体为抗原变异提供了分子基础。

疟原虫var基因转换速率变化导致抗原变异[英]／Paul H, Robert P, Christodoulou Z, et al//Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A

Although gold is the subject of one of the most ancient themes of investigation in science, its renaissance now leads to an exponentially increasing number of publications, especially in the context of emerging nanoscience and nanotechnology with nanoparticles and self-assembled monolayers (SAMs). We will limit the present review to gold nanoparticles (AuNPs), also called gold colloids. AuNPs are the most stable metal nanoparticles, and they present fascinating aspects such as their assembly of multiple types involving materials science, the behavior of the individual particles, size-related electronic, magnetic and optical properties (quantum size effect), and their applications to catalysis and biology. Their promises are in these fields as well as in the bottom-up approach of nanotechnology, and they will be key materials and building block in the 21st century. Whereas the extraction of gold started in the 5th millennium B.C. near Varna (Bulgaria) and reached 10 tons per year in Egypt around 1200-1300 B.C. when the marvelous statue of Touthankamon was constructed, it is probable that “soluble” gold appeared around the 5th or 4th century B.C. in Egypt and China. In antiquity, materials were used in an ecological sense for both aesthetic and curative purposes. Colloidal gold was used to make ruby glass 293 Chem. Rev. 2004, 104, 293−346

Gold nanoparticles: assembly, supramolecular chemistry, quantum-size-related properties, and applications toward biology, catalysis, and nanotechnology.

Surface plasmons are waves that propagate along the surface of a conductor. By altering the structure of a metal's surface, the properties of surface plasmons--in particular their interaction with light--can be tailored, which offers the potential for developing new types of photonic device. This could lead to miniaturized photonic circuits with length scales that are much smaller than those currently achieved. Surface plasmons are being explored for their potential in subwavelength optics, data storage, light generation, microscopy and bio-photonics.

/pdf/surface-plasmon-subwavelength-optics-5e55p12p4o.pdf

Surface plasmon subwavelength optics

Deposits of clastic carbonate-dominated (calciclastic) sedimentary slope systems in the rock record have been identified mostly as linearly-consistent carbonate apron deposits, even though most ancient clastic carbonate slope deposits fit the submarine fan systems better. Calciclastic submarine fans are consequently rarely described and are poorly understood. Subsequently, very little is known especially in mud-dominated calciclastic submarine fan systems. Presented in this study are a sedimentological core and petrographic characterisation of samples from eleven boreholes from the Lower Carboniferous of Bowland Basin (Northwest England) that reveals a >250 m thick calciturbidite complex deposited in a calciclastic submarine fan setting. Seven facies are recognised from core and thin section characterisation and are grouped into three carbonate turbidite sequences. They include: 1) Calciturbidites, comprising mostly of highto low-density, wavy-laminated bioclast-rich facies; 2) low-density densite mudstones which are characterised by planar laminated and unlaminated muddominated facies; and 3) Calcidebrites which are muddy or hyper-concentrated debrisflow deposits occurring as poorly-sorted, chaotic, mud-supported floatstones. These

Phd by thesis

When both electric and magnetic mechanisms contribute to a particular nonlinear optical process, there exists the possibility for nonlinear interference, often characterized by constructive or destructive interference in the radiation pattern of harmonics and mix waves. However, observation of a significant effect from nonlinear interference requires careful balancing of the various contributions. For this purpose, we propose an artificial metamaterial, using the formalism of nonlinear magnetoelectric coupling to simultaneously engineer the nonlinear polarization and magnetization. We confirm our predictions of nonlinear interference with both simulations and experiment, demonstrating unidirectional wave mixing in two microwave metamaterials. Our results point toward an ever wider range of nonlinear properties, in which nonlinear interference is just one of many potential applications.

Nonlinear interference and unidirectional wave mixing in metamaterials.

We derive a general expression for the material properties of a compensating bilayer, which is a pair of material layers which transfer the field distribution from one side of the bilayer to the other with resolution limited only by the deviation of the material properties from specified values. One of the layers can be free space, a special case of which is the perfect lens, but the layers need not have equal thickness. Compensating a thick layer of free space with a thin layer creates a focusing device with increased working distance, and employs an anisotropic material. It is also possible to achieve compensation of materials with property tensors that are neither positive nor negative definite. In this case, we refer to such media as indefinite, and we analyse, in detail, bilayers of these media which support coupling of internal propagating waves to incident waves of any transverse wave vector. In this case, we find that the enhanced spatial resolution provided by large transverse wave vectors is far less sensitive to loss than that of the perfect lens.

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1367-2630/7/1/162/pdf

Sub-diffraction imaging with compensating bilayers

ictor Veselago, in a paper 1 published in 1967, pondered the consequences for electromagnetic waves interacting with a hypothetical material for which both the electric permittivity, e , and the magnetic permeability, µ, were simultaneously negative. As no naturally occurring material or compound has ever been demonstrated with negative e and µ, Veselago wondered whether this apparent asymmetry in material properties was just happenstance, or perhaps had a more fundamental origin. Veselago concluded that not only should such materials be possible but, if ever found, would exhibit remarkable properties unlike those of any known materials, giving a twist to virtually all electromagnetic phenomena. So why are there no materials with negative e and µ? We first need to understand what it means to have a negative e or µ, and how it occurs in materials. The Drude-Lorentz model of a material is a good starting point, as it conceptually replaces the atoms and molecules of a real material by a set of harmonically bound electron oscillators, resonant at some frequency 0 ω . At

/pdf/reversing-light-negative-refraction-2xibtwxzju.pdf

Reversing Light: Negative Refraction

We demonstrate an electrolyte-based voltage tunable vanadium dioxide (VO2) memory metasurface. Large spatial scale, low voltage, non-volatile switching of terahertz (THz) metasurface resonances is achieved through voltage application using an ionic gel to drive the insulator-to-metal transition in an underlying VO2 layer. Positive and negative voltage application can selectively tune the metasurface resonance into the “off” or “on” state by pushing the VO2 into a more conductive or insulating regime respectively. Compared to graphene based control devices, the relatively long saturation time of resonance modification in VO2 based devices suggests that this voltage-induced switching originates primarily from electrochemical effects related to oxygen migration across the electrolyte–VO2 interface.

http://absimage.aps.org/image/MAR15/MWS_MAR15-2014-003737.pdf

Voltage switching of a VO$_2$ memory metasurface using ionic gel

A metasurface that absorbs waves from all directions of incidence can be achieved if the surface impedance is made to vary as a function of incidence angle in a specific manner. Here we show that a periodic array of planar nanoparticles coupled to a metal film can act as an absorbing metasurface with an angle-dependent impedance. Through a semi-analytical calculation based on coupled-mode theory, we find the perfect absorbing condition is equivalent to balancing the Ohmic and radiative losses of the nanoparticles at normal incidence. Absorption over a wide range of incidence angles can then be obtained by tailoring the scattered far-field pattern of the individual planar nanoparticles such that their radiative losses remain constant. The theory provides a means of understanding the behavior of perfect absorbing structures that have been observed experimentally or numerically, reconciling previously published theories and enabling the optimization of absorbing surfaces.

David R. Smith

Papers

Nonlinear interference and unidirectional wave mixing in metamaterials.

Sub-diffraction imaging with compensating bilayers

Reversing Light: Negative Refraction

Voltage switching of a VO$_2$ memory metasurface using ionic gel

Theory of patch-antenna metamaterial perfect absorbers