New antibiotics,trichopolyns A and B: Isolation and biological activity

Summary Polypeptide antibiotics, trichopolyns A and B, were isolated from the culture broth ofTrichoderma polysporum (Link ex Pers) Rifai (TMI 60146). Assessment of biological activity of the antibiotics against microorganisms was made.Acknowledgment. We are most grateful to Central Research Division, Takeda Chemical Industry Co. Limited, for determination of antifungal and antibacterial spectra.     

Enhancement of macrophage colony-stimulating factor in mice by carbon particle

Summary Carbon particles enhance hemopoiesis in irradiated mice. Serum from carbon-treated mice stimulated macrophage colony formation, and inhibited granulocyte colony formation. The finding suggests that carbon-treatment modulates the hemopoietic environment through the monocyte-macrophage system.This work was supported in part by Grants-in-Aid for Cancer Research from the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, Japan.     

How Cooper pairs vanish approaching the Mott insulator in Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+delta

The antiferromagnetic ground state of copper oxide Mott insulators is achieved by localizing an electron at each copper atom in real space (r-space). Removing a small fraction of these electrons (hole doping) transforms this system into a superconducting fluid of delocalized Cooper pairs in momentum space (k-space). During this transformation, two distinctive classes of electronic excitations appear. At high energies, the mysterious 'pseudogap' excitations are found, whereas, at lower energies, Bogoliubov quasi-particles-the excitations resulting from the breaking of Cooper pairs-should exist. To explore this transformation, and to identify the two excitation types, we have imaged the electronic structure of Bi(2)Sr(2)CaCu(2)O(8+delta) in r-space and k-space simultaneously. We find that although the low-energy excitations are indeed Bogoliubov quasi-particles, they occupy only a restricted region of k-space that shrinks rapidly with diminishing hole density. Concomitantly, spectral weight is transferred to higher energy r-space states that lack the characteristics of excitations from delocalized Cooper pairs. Instead, these states break translational and rotational symmetries locally at the atomic scale in an energy-independent way. We demonstrate that these unusual r-space excitations are, in fact, the pseudogap states. Thus, as the Mott insulating state is approached by decreasing the hole density, the delocalized Cooper pairs vanish from k-space, to be replaced by locally translational- and rotational-symmetry-breaking pseudogap states in r-space.     

Electron-phonon coupling reflecting dynamic charge inhomogeneity in copper oxide superconductors

The attempt to understand copper oxide superconductors is complicated by the presence of multiple strong interactions in these systems. Many believe that antiferromagnetism is important for superconductivity, but there has been renewed interest in the possible role of electron-lattice coupling. The conventional superconductor MgB2 has a very strong electron-lattice coupling, involving a particular vibrational mode (phonon) that was predicted by standard theory and confirmed quantitatively by experiment. Here we present inelastic scattering measurements that show a similarly strong anomaly in the Cu-O bond-stretching phonon in the copper oxide superconductors La(2-x)Sr(x)CuO4 (with x = 0.07, 0.15). Conventional theory does not predict such behaviour. The anomaly is strongest in La(1.875)Ba(0.125)CuO4 and La(1.48)Nd(0.4)Sr(0.12)CuO4, compounds that exhibit spatially modulated charge and magnetic order, often called stripe order; it occurs at a wave vector corresponding to the charge order. These results suggest that this giant electron-phonon anomaly, which is absent in undoped and over-doped non-superconductors, is associated with charge inhomogeneity. It follows that electron-phonon coupling may be important to our understanding of superconductivity, although its contribution is likely to be indirect.