Molecular mapping and characterization of the silkworm apodal mutant.

The morphological diversity of insects is important for their survival; in essence, it results from the differential expression of genes during development of the insect body. The silkworm apodal (ap) mutant has degraded thoracic legs making crawling and eating difficult and the female is sterile, which is an ideal subject for studying the molecular mechanisms of morphogenesis. Here, we confirmed that the infertility of ap female moths is a result of the degradation of the bursa copulatrix. Positional cloning of ap locus and expression analyses reveal that the Bombyx mori sister of odd and bowl (Bmsob) gene is a strong candidate for the ap mutant. The expression of Bmsob is down-regulated, while the corresponding Hox genes are up-regulated in the ap mutant compared to the wild type. Analyses with the dual luciferase assay present a declined activity of the Bmsob promoter in the ap mutant. Furthermore, we demonstrate that Bmsob can inhibit Hox gene expression directly and by suppressing the expression of other genes, including the BmDsp gene. The results of this study are an important contribution to our understanding of the diversification of insect body plan.

Optical characteristics of bending multimode superstructure fiber gratings.

The dispersion characteristics of superstructure fiber gratings written in multimode fibers and side-polished multimode fibers are investigated at different bending curvatures. The experimental results show that the group time delay in multimode superstructure fiber gratings can be tuned more easily than that of superstructure gratings in single-mode fiber. This method can provide tunable dispersion of superstructure fiber gratings by controlling the bending curvatures for application in dispersion compensators, fiber sensors, or suitable optical filters of optical communication systems.

High-sensitivity temperature-independent differential pressure sensor using fiber Bragg gratings.

By means of novel packaged-structure design, a temperature independent differential pressure sensor based on fiber Bragg gratings with high sensitivity is experimentally demonstrated. The differential pressure sensitivity of the sensor can reach to 821.87nm/MPa. This device can also be used for simultaneous measurement of temperature and differential pressure, which is suitable for applications involving measurement of liquid level, liquid density or specific gravity detection.

Shift in room-temperature photoluminescence of low-fluence Si+-implanted SiO2 films subjected to rapid thermal annealing.

We experimentally demonstrate the effect of the rapid thermal annealing (RTA) in nitrogen flow on photoluminescence (PL) of SiO2 films implanted by different doses of Si+ ions. Room-temperature PL from 400-nm-thick SiO2 films implanted to a dose of 3×1016 cm-2 shifted from 2.1 to 1.7 eV upon increasing RTA temperature (950-1150 °C) and duration (5-20 s). The reported approach of implanting silicon into SiO2 films followed by RTA may be effective for tuning Si-based photonic devices.