Introduction Tularemia and spotted fever group rickettsioses (SFG) can be transmitted by ticks and have a number of common clinical symptoms. Most characteristic are a maculopapular or vesicular rash or an eschar at the site of the tick or insect bite accompanied by painful lymph nodes. The aim of this study was to determine whether Rickettsia spp./Francisella tularensis mixed infections occurr...

Sum frequency generation (SFG) vibrational spectra of cadmium arachidate multilayer films adsorbed on a substrate with high nonresonant susceptibility, i.e., gold, and on a low nonresonant susceptibility substrate, i.e., fused quartz, have been investigated in the C-H stretching region in air. The films were formed by Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) deposition and their spectra recorded using SFG spectr...

Sum frequency generation ~SFG! vibrational spectroscopy is used to study the adsorption of CO at ;1 atm pressure on Pt nanoparticle arrays and Pt thin films. The SFG signal of CO adsorbed on platinum particles of 45 nm diameter is ;10 000 times larger than from CO on smooth Pt films. The large enhancement is explained by plasmon resonance and Maxwell–Garnett theory. The Pt arrays are prepared u...

Previous non-invasive studies have proposed that the deeply seated region of the medial frontal cortex engages in conflict processing in humans, but its core region has remained to be elucidated. By means of direct cortical stimulation, which excels other techniques in temporal and spatial resolutions and in the capacity of producing transient, functional impairment even in the deeply located c...

The surfaces of secondary organic aerosol particles are notoriously difficult to access experimentally, even though they are the key location where exchange between the aerosol particle phase and its gas phase occurs. Here, we overcome this difficulty by applying standard and sub- 1 cm(-1) resolution vibrational sum frequency generation (SFG) spectroscopy to detect C-H oscillators at the surfac...

The infrared-visible sum-frequency generation (SFG) vibrational spectroscopy was used to probe enzymatic activity of Thermomyces lanuginosus lipase (TLL) at air/water interface. A monolayer of amphiphilic O-palmitoyl-2,3-dicyanohydroquinone (PDCHQ), containing target ester group and two CN groups serving as vibrational markers, was utilized as an enzyme substrate. SFG data revealed the detailed...

The zoonotic transmission cycles of Rickettsia rickettsii and other spotted fever group (SFG) rickettsiae in Latin America have usually been associated with rural or sylvatic environments, although domestic dogs can be implicated in more populated settings. In this study, exposure of dogs to SFG rickettsiae in the Greater Metropolitan Area of Costa Rica was investigated. Dogs from sites associa...

We describe temporal compression of ultrabroadband, few microjoule mid-infrared (mid-IR) pulses from a noncollinear optical parametric amplifier (NOPA) employed in a sum-frequency generation (SFG) vibrational spectroscopic system, operating in total-internal-reflection geometry. The propagation of the mid-IR beam through optical materials results in a significant temporal chirp at the probed in...

Vibrational sum frequency generation (SFG) spectroscopy has been utilized to study the spatial orientation and alignment of Re(CO)3Cl(dcbpy) (dcbpy = 4,4′-dicarboxy2,2′-bipyridine) (or ReC0A) on the (001) and (110) surfaces of rutile single-crystalline TiO2. The SFG intensity of the CO stretching modes shows an isotropic distribution on the (001) surface and an anisotropic distribution on the (...