Extracellular fibrils are involved in cell cohesion and cell development in Myxococcus xanthus. One group of social motility mutants, Dsp, is unable to produce extracellular fibrils; these mutants also lose the abilities to cohere and to develop. Extracellular fibrils isolated from vegetative wild-type cells and added to Dsp cells fully restored the abilities of these cells to cohere and to undergo normal morphological development. The fibrils thus mimic the ability of intact, wild-type cells to carry out the same rescue. Optimal cohesion rescue by fibrils required calcium and magnesium ions, did not require protein synthesis, but was energy dependent, i.e., sodium azide and sodium cyanide blocked rescue. Cohesion rescue was also blocked by the diazo dye Congo red. Cohesion rescue is genus specific, i.e., isolated fibrils did not cause the cohesion of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Bacillus subtilis, Proteus mirabilis, Escherichia coli, or the related myxobacterium Stigmatella aurantiaca. Developmental rescue of Dsp by isolated fibrils included aggregation, fruiting body formation, and myxospore morphogenesis. Developmental gene expression in the Dsp mutant was only partially rescued by the isolated fibrils.

Samples of Pd/SiO2 with average cluster size of palladium (d(Pd)) ranging from 1 to 10 nm were prepared by different methods, such as incipient wetness impregnation (IW), ion exchange (IE), and sol-gel (SG). The dispersion (D(Pd)) for prepared Pd/SiO2 samples varied with the method of preparation and showed a trend of IW < IE < SG. Chemical interaction between the dispersed nanopalladium and hydrogen gas was calorimetrically studied as a function of hydrogen uptake. Measured profiles of interaction energy vary with the d(Pd) of studied samples. The initial heat of hydrogen chemisorption (Q(Hi)) also steeply increases for particles with d(Pd) smaller than 2 nm.

Anisotropic Fe K-edge and As K-edge X-ray absorption near edge spectrum (XANES) measurements on superconducting (Tc = 52 K) (Sm0.95La0.05)FeAs(O0.85F0.15) field-aligned microcrystalline powder are presented. The angular dependence of Fe pre-edge peak (dipole transition of Fe-1s electrons to Fe-3d/As-4p hybrid bands) relative to the tetragonal ab-plane of aligned powder indicates larger density of state (DOS) along the c-axis, and is consistent with the LDA band structure calculation. The anisotropic Fe K-edge spectra exhibit a chemical shift to lower energy compared to FeO which are closely related to the itinerant character of Fe 2+ -3d 6 orbitals. The anisotropic As K-edge spectra are more or less the mirror images of Fe K-edge due to the symmetrical Fe-As hybridiztion in the FeAs layer. Angular dependence of As main peak (dipole transition of As-1s electrons to higher energy hybrid bands) was observed suggesting character of As-4d eg orbitals.

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