Hearing in Drosophila depends on the transduction of antennal vibration into receptor potentials by ciliated sensory neurons in Johnston's organ, the antennal chordotonal organ. We previously found that a Drosophila protein in the vanilloid receptor subfamily (TRPV) channel subunit, Nanchung (NAN), is localized to the chordotonal cilia and required to generate sound-evoked potentials (Kim et al., 2003). Here, we show that the only other Drosophila TRPV protein is mutated in the behavioral mutant inactive (iav). The IAV protein forms a hypotonically activated channel when expressed in cultured cells; in flies, it is specifically expressed in the chordotonal neurons, localized to their cilia and required for hearing. IAV and NAN are each undetectable in cilia of mutants lacking the other protein, indicating that they both contribute to a heteromultimeric transduction channel in vivo. A functional green fluorescence protein-IAV fusion protein shows that the channel is restricted to the proximal cilium, constraining models for channel activation.

Several transient receptor potential channels were recently found to be activated by temperature stimuli in vitro. Their physiological and behavioral roles are largely unknown. From a temperature-preference behavior screen of 27,000 Drosophila melanogaster P-insertion mutants, we isolated a gene, named pyrexia (pyx), encoding a new transient receptor potential channel. Pyx was opened by temperatures above 40 degrees C in Xenopus laevis oocytes and HEK293T cells. It was ubiquitously expressed along the dendrites of a subset of peripheral nervous system neurons and was more permeable to K(+) than to Na(+). Although some pyx alleles resulted in abnormal temperature preferences, pyx null flies did not have significantly different temperature preferences than wild-type flies. But 60% of pyx null flies were paralyzed within 3 min of exposure to 40 degrees C, whereas only 9% of wild-type flies were paralyzed by the same stimulus. From these findings, we propose that the primary in vivo role of Pyx is to protect flies from high-temperature stress.

In this paper, we present a numerical method for evaluating the full Wigner function throughout a device by solving a steady-state quantum kinetic equation in two dimensions, in the linearresponse regime. This method has two advantages over conventional treatments of mesoscopic devices. First, dissipative processes can be included within the device, thus allowing a smooth transition from the quantum to the semiclassical regime. Second, the contacts are treated in the same manner as in semiclassical device analysis. A short phase-breaking time can be used in the contact regions so that oscillations in the electron density due to interference e6'ects die out quickly; this is particularly useful when obtaining self-consistent solutions with the Poisson equation. Any quantity of interest, such as electron density or current density per unit energy, can be computed throughout the entire device. We will first show that under low-bias, low-temperature conditions, the diagonal elements of the Wigner function can be used to define a local electrochemical potential (p) that lends insight into the internal transport physics. We show that separate electrochemical potentials pL and p& for leftand right-moving electrons show unphysical behavior when defined in a local sense. But sensible results are obtained when these potentials are defined in an average sense over regions the size of a de Broglie wavelength. We then examine the diKculties associated with measuring p, with numerical examples. Next, we use the local electrochemical potential profile to clarify the nature of the spreading resistance associated with the narrowing of a current lead. Finally, we show that the electrostatic potential (P) can be viewed as a convolution of p with a screening function and present example computations of P.

We report a study of the effect of the growth base pressure on the thermoelectric (TE) properties of indium antimonide (InSb) nanowires (NWs) synthesized using a vapour-liquid-solid method at different base pressures varying from ambient to high vacuum.A suspended device was used to characterize the TE properties of the NWs, which are zinc-blende structure with 1 1 0 growth direction based on transmission electron microscopy (TEM) characterization of the same NWs assembled on the suspended device. The obtained Seebeck coefficient is negative, with the magnitude being smaller than the literature bulk values and increasing with decreasing growth base pressure. These results are attributed to the loss of In from the source materials due to oxidation by residual oxygen in the growth environment and the consequent formation of Sb-doped NWs. The electron mobility and lattice thermal conductivity in the NWs are lower than the corresponding bulk values because of both surface scattering and stronger dopant scattering in the Sb-doped NWs. Based on these findings, it is suggested that growth from In-rich source materials can be used to achieve composition stoichiometry in the NWs so as to increase the Seebeck coefficient and TE figure of merit.

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