A younger age for the universe

Hydroxyl super rotors from vacuum ultraviolet photodissociation of water

Hydroxyl radicals (OH) play a central role in the interstellar medium. Here, we observe highly rotationally excited OH radicals with energies above the bond dissociation energy, termed OH "super rotors", from the vacuum ultraviolet photodissociation of water. The most highly excited OH(X) super rotors identified at 115.2 nm photolysis have an internal energy of 4.86 eV. A striking enhancement in the yield of vibrationally-excited OH super rotors is detected when exciting the bending vibration of the water molecule. Theoretical analysis shows that bending excitation enhances the probability of non-adiabatic coupling between the [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] states of water at collinear O-H-H geometries following fast internal conversion from the initially excited [Formula: see text] state. The present study illustrates a route to produce extremely rotationally excited OH(X) radicals from vacuum ultraviolet water photolysis, which may be related to the production of the highly rotationally excited OH(X) radicals observed in the interstellar medium.

Side-Chain Dynamics of an α-Helical Polypeptide Monitored by Fluorescence

The "blob" model, developed to analyze the fluorescence decays of polymers randomly labeled with pyrene, has been applied to a series of pyrene-labeled poly(glutamic acid)s (PyPGA) in DMF and carbonated buffer solutions at pH 9. Poly(glutamic acid) (PGA) exists in the ionized form in the buffer solutions as poly(sodium glutamate) (PGNa). PGA adopts an alpha-helical conformation in DMF, whereas in aqueous solution PGNa is a random coil. Fluorescence, UV-vis absorption, and circular dichroism measurements indicate that in our studies pyrene pendants attached themselves along PGA in a clustered manner. Simulations were carried out to establish that the geometry of the PGA alpha-helix induces the high level of pyrene clustering. Since the level of pyrene clustering decreased with lower pyrene content, information about naked PGA was retrieved by extrapolating the trends obtained by fluorescence to zero pyrene content. Analysis of the fluorescence decays demonstrated that during its lifetime an excited pyrene probes a 32 amino acid section of the PGA alpha-helix. This result was supported by molecular mechanics optimizations. This study establishes that the blob model, originally used to monitor the encounters between pyrenes attached randomly onto a polymer adopting a random coil conformation, can also be applied to study the dynamics of the side chains of structured proteins. Since the blob model helps in monitoring the encounters between amino acids in the initial state (i.e., random coil) and in the final state (i.e., structured protein) of the folding pathway of a protein, it could be applicable to the study of protein folding.

Extremely rotationally excited OH from water (HOD) photodissociation through conical intersection

Photodissociation of HOD from the B state has been studied using the Rydberg "tagging" time-of-flight technique. Experimental results indicate that extreme rotational excitation in the OH(X,v = 0) product ( N up to 50 or so) is produced through the conical intersection dissociation pathway such that some of the OH product states lie above the O((3)P)+H dissociation limit, which are supported only through large centrifugal barriers. The population distribution for OH(X,v = 0) also shows an alternation with N, similar to that observed for H(2)O that is attributed to dynamical interference. The tunneling rates of these extremely rotationally excited OH molecules are also analyzed.

Characterizing the peak in the cosmic microwave background angular power spectrum

A peak has been unambiguously detected in the cosmic microwave background angular spectrum. Here we characterize its properties with fits to phenomenological models. We find that the TOCO and BOOM/NA data determine the peak location to be in the range 175-243 and 151-259, respectively (at 95% confidence) and determine the peak amplitude to be between approximately 70 and 90 &mgr;K. The peak shape is consistent with inflation-inspired flat, cold dark matter plus cosmological constant models of structure formation with adiabatic, nearly scale invariant initial conditions. It is inconsistent with open models and presents a great challenge to defect models.