Gene Expression Noise Facilitates Adaptation and Drug Resistance Independently of Mutation

We show that the effect of stress on the reproductive fitness of noisy cell populations can be modelled as first-passage time problem, and demonstrate that even relatively short-lived fluctuations in gene expression can ensure long-term survival of a drug-resistant population. We examine how this effect contributes to the development of drug-resistant cancer cells, and demonstrate that permanent immunity can arise independently of mutations.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Pseudogap, van Hove Singularity, Maximum in Entropy and Specific Heat for Hole-Doped Mott Insulators

The first indication of a pseudogap in cuprates came from a sudden decrease of NMR Knight shift at a doping-dependent temperature $T^*(\delta)$. Since then, experiments have found phase transitions at a lower $T^*_\text{phase}(\delta)$. Using plaquette cellular dynamical mean-field for the square-lattice Hubbard model at high temperature, where the results are reliable, we show that $T^*(\delta)$ shares many features of $T^*_\text{phase}(\delta)$. The remarkable agreement with several experiments, including quantum critical behavior of the electronic specific heat, supports the view that the pseudogap is controlled by a finite-doping extension of the Mott transition. We propose further experimental tests.Comment: LaTeX, 2 figures, 6 page

Technical improvements and performances of SpIOMM: an imaging Fourier transform spectrometer for astronomy

We present the most recent technical improvements on SpIOMM, an Imaging Fourier Transform Spectrometer (IFTS) attached to the 1.6 telescope of the Mont M\'egantic Observatory. The recent development of SpIOMM demonstrates that the concept of IFTS for ground telescopes is a promising astronomical 3D spectroscopy technique for multi-object spectroscopy and multi-band imaging. SpIOMM has been developed through a collaboration between Universit\'e Laval and the industry (ABB Bomem). It is designed for optical observations from the near UV (350 nm) to the near IR (850 nm) with variable spectral resolution. The circular FOV of the instrument covers 12 arcmin in diameter. We have recently improved the servo system algorithm which now controls the mirror displacement and alignment at a rate of ~7000Hz. Hardware improvements to the servo and the metrology system will be described along with their impacts on performance in the laboratory and in observing conditions. The instrument has successfully been operated at the 1.6 meter telescope this year using the revised control systems and acquired several datacubes. We will discuss some issues regarding the sensitivity to environmental conditions implied by the use of such an instrument. An overview of the datacube reduction procedure will show some solutions proposed for observational problems encountered that affect the quality of the data such as sky transmission variations, wind, changing gravity vector and temperature.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, to appear in "Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy II", SPIE conference, Marseille, 23-28 June 200

Fermi Arcs From Dynamical Variational Monte Carlo

Variational Monte Carlo is a many-body numerical method that scales well with system size. It has been extended to study the Green function only recently by Charlebois and Imada (2020). Here we generalize the approach to systems with open boundary conditions in the absence of translational invariance. Removing these constraints permits the application of embedding techniques like Cluster perturbation theory (CPT). This allows us to solve an enduring problem in the physics of the pseudogap in cuprate high-temperature superconductors, namely the existence or absence of Fermi arcs in the one-band Hubbard model. We study the behavior of the Fermi surface and of the density of states as a function of hole doping for clusters of up to 64 sites, well beyond the reach of modern exact diagonalization solvers. We observe that the technique reliably captures the transition from a Mott insulator at half filling to a pseudogap, evidenced by the formation of Fermi arcs, and finally to a metallic state at large doping. The ability to treat large clusters with quantum cluster methods helps to minimize potential finite size effects and enables the study of systems with long range orders, which will help extend the reach of these already powerful methods and provide important insights on the nature of various strongly correlated many-electron systems, including the high-T$_c$ cuprate superconductors.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure