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Studies aluminum impurities on silicon wafer surfaces using total reflection x-ray fluorescence using synchrotron radiation from the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory. Observation of an inelastic resonance scattering due to resonant x-ray Raman scattering for primary exciton energies below the Si K absorption edge.

Summary. The outcome of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection and the likelihood of a sustained virological response (SVR) to antiviral therapy depends on both viral and host characteristics. In vitro studies demonstrated that bile acids (BA) interfere with antiviral interferon effects. We investigate the influence of plasma BA concentrations and an ABCB11 polymorphism associated with lower transporter expression on viral load and SVR. Four hundred and fifty-one Caucasian HCV-patients treated with PEG-interferon and ribavirin were included in the study. ABCB11 1331T>C was genotyped, and plasma BA levels were determined. The 1331C allele was slightly overrepresented in HCV-patients compared to controls. In HCV-patients, a significant difference between patients achieving SVR vs non-SVR was observed for HCV-2/3 (5 vs 9 μ m; P = 0.0001), while median BA levels in HCV-1 were marginally elevated. Normal BA levels <8 μ m were significantly associated with SVR (58.3% vs 36.3%; OR 2.48; P = 0.0001). This difference was significant for HCV-2/3 (90.7% vs 67.6%; P = 0.002) but marginal in HCV-1 (38.7% vs 27.8%; P = 0.058). SVR rates were equivalent between ABCB11 genotypes for HCV-1, but increased for HCV-2/3 (TT 100% vs CC 78%; OR 2.01; P = 0.043). IL28B genotype had no influence on these associations. No correlation between BA levels and HCV RNA was detected for any HCV genotype. The higher allelic frequency of ABCB11 1331C in HCV-patients compared to controls may indirectly link increased BA to HCV chronicity. Our data support a role for BA as host factor affecting therapy response in HCV-2/3 patients, whereas a weaker association was found for HCV-1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study tensor products Vλ ⊗ Vμ of irreducible representations of a connected, simply-connected, complex reductive group G. In general, such a tensor product is no longer irreducible. A fundamental question is how the irreducible components are embedded in the tensor product. A special component of the tensor product is the so-called Cartan component Vλ+μ which is the component with maximal highest weight. It appears exactly once in the decomposition. Another interesting subset of Vλ ⊗ Vμ is the set of decomposable tensors. The following question arises in this context: Is the set of decomposable tensors in the Cartan component of such a tensor product given as the closure of the G-orbit of a highest weight vector? If this is the case, we say that the Cartan component is small. We give a characterization and a combinatorial description of representations with small Cartan components. Our results show that in general Cartan components are small. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ion-implanted gold in polycrystalline aluminum was studied with energies ranging from 100 keV to 500 keV and a dose density of 1 × 1016 ions/cm2. The centroid depths of the implantation profiles were determined by Angle-Resolved Self-Ratio X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometry using synchrotron radiation of the electron storage ring ELSA at the University of Bonn. A linear correlation between the implantation energy and the centroid depth of the profile was found. Comparing these results to TRIM calculations a range enhancement of the experimental data up to 10% is observed. X-ray Absorption Near Edge Structure (XANES) spectroscopy was used at the Au-LIII edge to investigate surface modification due to the implantation process on a microscopic scale. For all energies the implantation leads to nanocrystalline precipitates of the intermetallic compound AuAl2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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