Relationship between science and technology

Do economic advances spring directly from fundamental scientific discoveries? The early history of the transistor suggests that the situation is not nearly so simple as this.     

Relationships between vegetation and stomata, and between vegetation and pollen surface soil in Yunnan, Southwest China

Surface pollen and stomata of 61 samples collected in a study area ranging from tropical seasonal rainforest to oak forest(Quercus spinosa) in the Yulong Snow Mountain region in Yunnan,China,are used to distinguish vegetation communities.The results show that tropical seasonal rainforest(and mountain rainforest),south subtropical evergreen broad-leaved forest,and Quercus shrub are distinguished effectively from other vegetation types by analysis of surface pollen.The south subtropical evergreen broad-leaved forest,Pinus kesiya forest and evergreen broadleaf forest are distinguished effectively from other types of vegetation by pollen analysis.However,P.yunnanensis forest is not distinguished from other vegetation types,and P.armandii,P.densata forest and temperate deciduous conifer mixed forest are not distinguished.The over-representation of Pinus pollen is the main reason that these vegetation communities are not distinguished from each other.Conifer stomata analysis is an effective tool for identifying and distinguishing different types of coniferous forest,and this method performs well even with a small number of sampling points.     

Triplet-singlet spin relaxation via nuclei in a double quantum dot

The spin of a confined electron, when oriented originally in some direction, will lose memory of that orientation after some time. Physical mechanisms leading to this relaxation of spin memory typically involve either coupling of the electron spin to its orbital motion or to nuclear spins. Relaxation of confined electron spin has been previously measured only for Zeeman or exchange split spin states, where spin-orbit effects dominate relaxation; spin flips due to nuclei have been observed in optical spectroscopy studies. Using an isolated GaAs double quantum dot defined by electrostatic gates and direct time domain measurements, we investigate in detail spin relaxation for arbitrary splitting of spin states. Here we show that electron spin flips are dominated by nuclear interactions and are slowed by several orders of magnitude when a magnetic field of a few millitesla is applied. These results have significant implications for spin-based information processing.     

Alzheimer’s disease: the impact of age-related changes in reproductive hormones

Recent findings from the Womens Health Initiative (WHI) have raised considerable concern over prolonged use of opposed and unopposed oral conjugated equine estrogen (CEE), given the increased risk of serious adverse effects, including stroke and venous thromboembolic complications. Furthermore, results from the WHI Memory Study (WHIMS) indicated that over 5 years of therapy with Prempro impaired performance on global cognitive tests and nearly doubled the risk of dementia. These surprising findings were contradictory to cumulative evidence from basic science, epidemiological and some intervention studies suggesting hormone therapy was cardioprotective and could potentially reduce the risk of dementia. This review paper focuses on the neurobiology of estrogen, summarizing the clinical evidence for neuroprotective and cognition-enhancing efficacy of estrogen. Further, the paper briefly discusses variables that may account for the unexpected findings of WHIMS, and offers suggestions for future research.