Cynodontin,the tetrahydroxyanthraquinone ofCurvularia andDrechslera species

Summary The red anthraquinone derivative isolated from several Drechslera and Curvularia species has been identified as cynodontin (1,4,5,8-tetrahydroxy-2-methylanthraquinone), and not as 1,4,5,8-tetrahydroxy-2,6-dimethylanthraquinone as reported earlier. Both pigments showed similar physico-chemical properties. A good distinction could be obtained by gas-liquid chromatography.     

Stereospecificity of allantoin degradation inStreptococcus allantoicus

Zusammenfassung Die Stereospezifität der Enzyme des Allantoinabbaus inStreptococcus allantoicus und die optische Drehung der Reaktionsprodukte wurde bestimmt. Allantoinase war aspezifisch, während Allantoate-amidohydrolase ausschliesslich (-)-Ureidoglykolate bildete. Diese Substanz wurde durch (-)-Ureidoglykolase hydrolysiert.     

Granular physics: creating a dry variety of quicksand

Sand can normally support a weight by relying on internal force chains. Here we weaken this force-chain structure in very fine sand by allowing air to flow through it: we find that the sand can then no longer support weight, even when the air is turned off and the bed has settled--a ball sinks into the sand to a depth of about five diameters. The final depth of the ball scales linearly with its mass and, above a threshold mass, a jet is formed that shoots sand violently into the air.     

The building blocks of planets within the 'terrestrial' region of protoplanetary disks

Our Solar System was formed from a cloud of gas and dust. Most of the dust mass is contained in amorphous silicates, yet crystalline silicates are abundant throughout the Solar System, reflecting the thermal and chemical alteration of solids during planet formation. (Even primitive bodies such as comets contain crystalline silicates.) Little is known about the evolution of the dust that forms Earth-like planets. Here we report spatially resolved detections and compositional analyses of these building blocks in the innermost two astronomical units of three proto-planetary disks. We find the dust in these regions to be highly crystallized, more so than any other dust observed in young stars until now. In addition, the outer region of one star has equal amounts of pyroxene and olivine, whereas the inner regions are dominated by olivine. The spectral shape of the inner-disk spectra shows surprising similarity with Solar System comets. Radial-mixing models naturally explain this resemblance as well as the gradient in chemical composition. Our observations imply that silicates crystallize before any terrestrial planets are formed, consistent with the composition of meteorites in the Solar System.     

Quantum Mechanics and Computation

In quantum computation non classical features such as superposition states and entanglement are used to solve problems in new ways, impossible on classical digital computers.We illustrate by Deutsch algorithm how a quantum computer can use superposition states to outperform any classical computer. We comment on the view of a quantum computer as a massive parallel computer and recall Amdahls law for a classical parallel computer. We argue that the view on quantum computation as a massive parallel computation disregards the presence of entanglement in a general quantum computation and the non classical way in which parallel results are combined to obtain the final output.