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Monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides favor the formation of a variety of excitonic quasiparticles, and can serve as an ideal material for exploring room-temperature many-body effects in two-dimensional systems. Here, using mechanically exfoliated monolayer WS2 and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy, exciton emission peaks are confirmed through temperature-dependent and electric-field-tuned PL spectroscopy. The dependence of exciton concentration on the excitation power density at room temperature is quantitatively analyzed. Exciton concentrations covering four orders of magnitude are divided into three stages. Within the low carrier concentration stage, the system is dominated by excitons, with a small fraction of trions and localized excitons. At the high carrier concentration stage, the localized exciton emission from defects coincides with the emission peak position of trions, resulting in broad spectral characteristics at room temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using potassium nitrate, strontium nitrate, and potassium perchlorate as the oxidizing agents, the ignition and combustion behaviors of magnesium powders with different specific surface area were studied. The ignition temperature (Te) was extrapolated using a differential thermal analyzer, and the pyrotechnic spontaneous reaction temperature (Ts) was inferred from the temperature curve by inflection point analysis. The results showed that Ts has much better reproducibility than the extrapolated Te in characterizing the ignition of the pyrotechnic formulations. Increasing the specific surface area of the magnesium powder resulted in decreased Ts of the pyrotechnics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

N-acyl-homoserine lactones (AHLs), are widely conserved signal molecules present in quorum-sensing systems of many Gram-negative bacteria. AHLs molecules mediate the expression of virulence genes of a range of bacterial pathogens. Recently, it has been reported that AiiA protein, which widely exists in Bacillus species, can inactivate the AHLs by hydrolyzing the lactone bond of AHLs, thus attenuate the diseases caused by the expression of virulence genes of bacterial pathogens. Bacillus thuringiensis, a type of Gram-positive bacteria, has been used extensively as a microbial insecticide in the last few decades. However, most of important insecticidal B. thuringiensis strains have not been exploited for bacterial disease control because they usually do not produce antibiotics that are effective against bacteria and fungi. The discovery of AiiA protein in B. thuringiensis shows the application potential of B. thuringiensis on biocontrol against bacterial diseases. In this study, in order to construct the B. thuringiensis recombinant strain that has high expression of AiiA protein, the promoter of insecticidal crystal protein coding gene cry3Aa of B. thuringiensis was selected. The promoter of gene cry3Aa is a non-sporulation promoter, it promotes the transcription earlier and longer than the promoters of other cry genes. The promoter of AiiA protein coding gene aiiA was replaced with the promoter of gene cry3Aa by overlapping PCR, resulting fusion gene pro3A-aiiA. The gene pro3A-aiiA was inserted into shuttle vector pHT304 at site BamH I / Sph I , resulting recombinant plasmid pBMB686. The plasmid pBMB686 was introduced into B. thuringiensis acrystalliferous strain BMB171, the resulting strain BMB686 had a higher and more stable expression level of protein AiiA comparing with the parental strain BMB171. Furthermore, the strain BMB686 exhibited stronger ability of AHLs inactivation and much more effective restraint to the potato's soft rot disease caused by Erwinia carotovora than those of the parental strain BMB171. From these results, it was concluded that the B. thuringiensis strain harvesting the fusion gene pro3A-aiiA may be utilized in the future to control bacterial diseases which are mediated by the AHL quorum-sensing signals.

The resolution recognization sites of transposon Tn4430 of Bacillus thuringiensis was inserted into cloning vector pRSET B and pUC19, resulting recombinant plasmids pBMB1201 and pBMB1202. Both of the mini res fragments, BamHI/HindIII fragment in pBMB1201 and EcoRI/HindIII fragment in pBMB1202, were ligated to the 3.3 kb EcoRI/HindIII fragment of shuttle vector pHT3101, which contained the ori. Ec, ampr and emr antibiotic resistant genes, resulting recombinant plasmid pBMB1203. After deleted the BamHI and EcoRI sites which located ouside the two res sites, resolution vector pBMB1204 was resulted. There are multiple cloning sites between two copies of resolution sites which have the same direction. The plasmid replication origin ori44, which come from B. thuringiensis sub sp. kurstaki strain YBT-1520, was inserted into the multiple cloning sites of pBMB1204 and then resolution shuttle vector pBMB1205 was obtained. With spectinomycin resistant gene as target, it was found that the resolution rate is 100% and the stability of the resolved plasmid is 93%. Using this shuttle vector, antibiotic resistance markers and other non-B. thuringiensis DNA can be selectively eliminated after the selection of transformants by antibiotic resistance marker. This vector is very useful to solve the gene safety problem while has no effect on target gene expression.