1,721,021 research outputs found

    Photoacoustic studies of non-radiative relaxation of excited-states in melanin

    No full text
    Photoacoustic measurements made at various chopping frequencies on dense acqueous melanin suspensions have revealed a significant dependence upon pH and redox state. It is shown that such behaviour, differing from the simple predictions of the Rosencwaig-Gersho theory, can be explained in terms of finite carrier diffusion and recombination times. The implications of these findings with respect to the amorphous semiconductor model proposed to describe the dynamic role of epidermal melanin are discussed. From the experimental data, values of physical parameters were calculated which allow a qualitative correlation between chemical states and electronic behaviour and, consequently, some aspects of the molecular biology of the melanosome, founded on a rigorous base

    Quenching of the excited states of 8-methoxypsoralen by synthetic eumelanin

    No full text
    The interaction of 8-methoxypsoralen (8-MOP) with synthetic eumelanin was investigated using static and time-resolved fluoresence and pulsed photoacoustic calorimetry. Spectroscopic data indicate the absence of interaction in the ground state, whereas the singlet excited state of 8-MOP is quenched by the pigment; the average fluorescence lifetimes are independent of the melanin concentration, thus indicating a static mechanism. Photoacoustic data show that the quenching process involves an increased intersystem crossing probability, which is almost unaffected by the presence of oxygen, as expected for a molecule essentially acting as a type I photosensitizing agent

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

    Full text link
    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
    corecore