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A custom-built gas cluster ion source with an energy up to 20 keV is constructed. Ar, CO2, N2, and O2 are used as the working gases. The clusters are formed by metal conical nozzles with critical diameters of 65−135 um and a cone angle of 14°. To facilitate evacuation of the chambers we use the pulse mode of nozzle feeding. This allows an increase in the gas pressure in the stagnation zone (inlet pressure) up to 15 bar. The current of the clusters with an energy of 20 keV is 20 µA; the maximal current density is 3 µA/cm2. The mass spectra of the argon clusters formed at different pressures and electron ionization energy are studied by time-of-flight spectroscopy. The inlet pressure dependence of the mean cluster size is considered as a function of the condensation parameter Г*. An argon cluster beam is used to smooth the surface of the titanium coating and pressed silicon nanopowder. The roughness of the Ti coating surface decreases from 3.7 to 0.8 nm; the removal of microparticles from the surface is also observed. In the case of the surface of Si, besides the smoothing effect the formation of 100 nm craters is observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We obtain an exact estimate for the first-order absolute moment of Stancu Beta operators by means of the Stirling formula and integral operations. Then we use this estimate for establishing a theorem on approximation of absolutely continuous functions by Stancu Beta operators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AKT pathway has a critical role in mediating signaling transductions for cell proliferation, differentiation and survival. Previous studies have shown that AKT activation is achieved through a series of phosphorylation steps: first, AKT is phosphorylated at Thr-450 by JNK kinases to prime its activation; then, phosphoinositide-dependent kinase 1 phosphorylates AKT at Thr-308 to expose the Ser-473 residue; and finally, AKT is phosphorylated at Ser-473 by several kinases (PKD2 and others) to achieve its full activation. For its inactivation, the PH-domain containing phosphatases dephosphorylate AKT at Ser-473, and protein serine/threonine phosphatase-2A (PP-2A) dephosphorylates it at Thr-308. However, it remains unknown regarding which phosphatase dephosphorylates AKT at Thr-450 during its inactivation. In this study, we present both in vitro and in vivo evidence to show that protein serine/threonine phosphatase-1 (PP-1) is a major phosphatase that directly dephosphorylates AKT to modulate its activation. First, purified PP-1 directly dephosphorylates AKT in vitro. Second, immunoprecipitation and immunocolocalization showed that PP-1 interacts with AKT. Third, stable knock down of PP-1α or PP-1β but not PP-1γ, PP-2Aα or PP-2Aβ by shRNA leads to enhanced phosphorylation of AKT at Thr-450. Finally, overexpression of PP-1α or PP-1β but not PP-1γ, PP-2Aα or PP-2Aβ results in attenuated phosphorylation of AKT at Thr-450. Moreover, our results also show that dephosphorylation of AKT by PP-1 significantly modulates its functions in regulating the expression of downstream genes, promoting cell survival and modulating differentiation. These results show that PP-1 acts as a major phosphatase to dephosphorylate AKT at Thr-450 and thus modulate its functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

¶In order to further understand the land–atmosphere interactions and increase the predictability of climate models, it is very important to investigate the effects of land-surface heterogeneities. In this paper, we considered roughness-length and stomatal-resistance heterogeneities in the regional climate model RegCM2 (Giorgi et al., 1993) that employs BATS (Dickinson et al., 1993) as the land surface scheme. In representing the subgrid heterogeneities, a computationally efficient method, which is a combination of the mosaic approach and the analytical type of the statistical-dynamical approach, is applied. The method is also characterized by converting the probability distribution of fundamental variables to probability distributions of derived quantities. By using the 3-month observational data of 1991 Meiyu season over China, we conducted coupled-model experiments, and found that: (i) For the whole model domain, the consideration of the two heterogeneities, in which intrapatch variability plays a very important role, greatly affects the simulations for the surface flux, wind, temperature and precipitation fields. (ii) The temperature and heat fluxes are quite sensitive to the heterogeneities, which displays the following rule: for a sub-region, the mean sensible heat flux decreases, the mean latent heat flux increases, and the mean surface temperature decreases with the increase of the heterogeneities. Furthermore, the mean latent heat flux is more sensitive to the heterogeneities than the mean sensible heat flux. (iii) It seems that the influence of stomatal-resistance heterogeneity on the latent heat flux is greater than that of roughness-length heterogeneity. Therefore, it is necessary to appropriately represent subgrid land-surface heterogeneities so as to improve regional climate modeling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]