6,893 research outputs found
Are Radio Pulsars Strange Stars ?
A remarkably precise observational relation for pulse core component widths
of radio pulsars is used to derive stringent limits on pulsar radii, strongly
indicating that pulsars are strange stars rather than neutron stars. This is
achieved by inclusion of general relativistic effects due to the pulsar mass on
the size of the emission region needed to explain the observed pulse widths,
which constrain the pulsar masses to be less than 2.5 Solar masses and radii to
be smaller than 10.5 km.Comment: v.2 : 12 pages including 3 figures and 2 tables, LaTex, uses epsfig.
This version has one extra figure, few lines of new text and typos fixe
Pressure-dependent transition from atoms to nanoparticles in magnetron sputtering: Effect on WSi2 film roughness and stress
We report on the transition between two regimes from several-atom clusters to
much larger nanoparticles in Ar magnetron sputter deposition of WSi2, and the
effect of nanoparticles on the properties of amorphous thin films and
multilayers. Sputter deposition of thin films is monitored by in situ x-ray
scattering, including x-ray reflectivity and grazing incidence small angle
x-ray scattering. The results show an abrupt transition at an Ar background
pressure Pc; the transition is associated with the threshold for energetic
particle thermalization, which is known to scale as the product of the Ar
pressure and the working distance between the magnetron source and the
substrate surface. Below Pc smooth films are produced, while above Pc roughness
increases abruptly, consistent with a model in which particles aggregate in the
deposition flux before reaching the growth surface. The results from WSi2 films
are correlated with in situ measurement of stress in WSi2/Si multilayers, which
exhibits a corresponding transition from compressive to tensile stress at Pc.
The tensile stress is attributed to coalescence of nanoparticles and the
elimination of nano-voids.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figures; v3: published versio
SOLUTION STRUCTURE OF THE TOXIC E. COLI PEPTIDE, TISB
poster abstractAntibiotics act by interfering in bacterial metabolism. Thus, antibiotics are only effective against metabolically active bacteria while dormant cells are highly tolerant to antibiotics. Such persistent bacterial cells may be the main culprits in chronic infectious diseases resistance to antimicrobial thera-py. In Escherichia coli, expression of a toxic peptide, TisB, sends cells into dormancy by decreasing the proton motive force thus decreasing ATP levels. TisB is a 29 amino acid residue peptide with 70% hydrophobic residues. It has a predicted alpha helical transmembrane domain spanning residues 6 - 28. In membrane channel studies, ion transport is observed with TisB and with some TisB mutants. As a preliminary to combining multi-dimensional NMR spectroscopy with circular dichroism to determine the structure of the TisB membrane ion transport complex in lipid micelles, NMR spectroscopy is used to determine the structure of TisB in ethanol
An optimal gap theorem
By solving the Cauchy problem for the Hodge-Laplace heat equation for
-closed, positive -forms, we prove an optimal gap theorem for
K\"ahler manifolds with nonnegative bisectional curvature which asserts that
the manifold is flat if the average of the scalar curvature over balls of
radius centered at any fixed point is a function of .
Furthermore via a relative monotonicity estimate we obtain a stronger
statement, namely a `positive mass' type result, asserting that if is
not flat, then for any
Unification, KK-thresholds and the top Yukawa coupling in F-theory GUTs
In a class of F-theory SU(5) GUTs the low energy chiral mass spectrum is
obtained from rank one fermion mass textures with a hierarchical structure
organised by U(1) symmetries embedded in the exceptional E_8 group. In these
theories chiral fields reside on matter `curves' and the tree level masses are
computed from integrals of overlapping wavefuctions of the particles at the
triple intersection points. This calculation requires knowledge of the exact
form of the wavefuctions. In this work we propose a way to obtain a reliable
estimate of the various quantities which determine the strength of the Yukawa
couplings. We use previous analysis of KK threshold effects to determine the
(ratios of) heavy mass scales of the theory which are involved in the
normalization of the wave functions. We consider similar effects from the
chiral spectrum of these models and discuss possible constraints on the
emerging matter content. In this approach, we find that the Yukawa couplings
can be determined solely from the U(1) charges of the states in the
`intersection' and the torsion which is a topological invariant quantity. We
apply the results to a viable SU(5) model with minimal spectrum which satisfies
all the constraints imposed by our analysis. We use renormalization group
analysis to estimate the top and bottom masses and find that they are in
agreement with the experimental values.Comment: 28 pages, 2 figure
Who are the preferential targets for intervention programs related to the female condom among sex workers in Southern China?
The authors used a cluster analysis approach to investigate which female sex workers (FSW) are preferential targets for female condom (FC) intervention programs in southern China. Cross-sectional 6-month (N = 316) and 12-month (N = 217) postintervention surveys of FSW were analyzed. Based on FC attitudes and beliefs, initially suggesting FC use to a partner, practicing insertion, total times ever used, and willingness to use in the future, cluster analysis apportioned women into two clusters, with 50.6% and 58.1% of participants in the likely future FC users group at 6 months and 12 months, respectively. Likely future FC users tended to be from boarding houses, older, currently or previously married, experienced with childbirth, with current multiple sex partners, longer history of sex work, and more unprotected sexual encounters. Focusing FC programs on sectors of the community with more FSW who are likely to use FC may be more costeffective for enhancing FC acceptability and usage. © 2013 The Guilford Press
Emitter-site selective photoelectron circular dichroism of trifluoromethyloxirane
The angle-resolved inner-shell photoionization of R-trifluoromethyloxirane,
C3H3F3O, is studied experimentally and theoretically. Thereby, we investigate
the photoelectron circular dichroism (PECD) for nearly-symmetric O 1s and F 1s
electronic orbitals, which are localized on different molecular sites. The
respective dichroic and angular distribution parameters
are measured at the photoelectron kinetic energies from 1 to 16 eV by using
variably polarized synchrotron radiation and velocity map imaging spectroscopy.
The present experimental results are in good agreement with the outcome of ab
initio electronic structure calculations. We report a sizable chiral asymmetry
of up to about 9% for the K-shell photoionization of oxygen atom.
For the individual fluorine atoms, the present calculations predict asymmetries
of similar size. However, being averaged over all fluorine atoms, it drops down
to about 2%, as also observed in the present experiment. Our study demonstrates
a strong emitter- and site-sensitivity of PECD in the one-photon inner-shell
ionization of this chiral molecule
Mean Field Behavior of Cluster Dynamics
The dynamic behavior of cluster algorithms is analyzed in the classical mean
field limit. Rigorous analytical results below establish that the dynamic
exponent has the value for the Swendsen-Wang algorithm and
for the Wolff algorithm.
An efficient Monte Carlo implementation is introduced, adapted for using
these algorithms for fully connected graphs. Extensive simulations both above
and below demonstrate scaling and evaluate the finite-size scaling
function by means of a rather impressive collapse of the data.Comment: Revtex, 9 pages with 7 figure
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