18,406 research outputs found
A Symbiotic View Of Life: We Have Never Been Individuals
The notion of the biological individual is crucial to studies of genetics, immunology, evolution, development, anatomy, and physiology. Each of these biological subdisciplines has a specific conception of individuality, which has historically provided conceptual contexts for integrating newly acquired data. During the past decade, nucleic acid analysis, especially genomic sequencing and high-throughput RNA techniques, has challenged each of these disciplinary definitions by finding significant interactions of animals and plants with symbiotic microorganisms that disrupt the boundaries that heretofore had characterized the biological individual. Animals cannot be considered individuals by anatomical or physiological criteria because a diversity of symbionts are both present and functional in completing metabolic pathways and serving other physiological functions. Similarly, these new studies have shown that animal development is incomplete without symbionts. Symbionts also constitute a second mode of genetic inheritance, providing selectable genetic variation for natural selection. The immune system also develops, in part, in dialogue with symbionts and thereby functions as a mechanism for integrating microbes into the animal-cell community. Recognizing the holobiont -the multicellular eukaryote plus its colonies of persistent symbionts-as a critically important unit of anatomy, development, physiology, immunology, and evolution opens up new investigative avenues and conceptually challenges the ways in which the biological subdisciplines have heretofore characterized living entities
Mean-field magnetization relaxation in conducting ferromagnets
Collective ferromagnetic motion in a conducting medium is damped by the
transfer of the magnetic moment and energy to the itinerant carriers. We
present a calculation of the corresponding magnetization relaxation as a
linear-response problem for the carrier dynamics in the effective exchange
field of the ferromagnet. In electron systems with little intrinsic spin-orbit
interaction, a uniform magnetization motion can be formally eliminated by going
into the rotating frame of reference for the spin dynamics. The ferromagnetic
damping in this case grows linearly with the spin-flip rate when the latter is
smaller than the exchange field and is inversely proportional to the spin-flip
rate in the opposite limit. These two regimes are analogous to the
"spin-pumping" and the "breathing Fermi-surface" damping mechanisms,
respectively. In diluted ferromagnetic semiconductors, the hole-mediated
magnetization can be efficiently relaxed to the itinerant-carrier degrees of
freedom due to the strong spin-orbit interaction in the valence bands.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur
Activation analysis of admixtures in certain semiconductive materials
The use of extractions and chromatographic operations to separate macrobases, and to divide elements into groups convenient for gamma-spectrometric analysis is discussed. Methods are described for the activation detection of some impurities in silicon, arsenic, thallium, and trichloromethylsilane, on the basis of the extraction properties of bis(2-chlorethyl ether) and dimethylbenzylalkylammonium chloride. A schematic diagram of the extraction separation of elements-admixture is presented showing the aqueous and organic phases. The content percentage of the various elements are given in tables
Staying true with the help of others: doxastic self-control through interpersonal commitment
I explore the possibility and rationality of interpersonal mechanisms of doxastic self-control, that is, ways in which individuals can make use of other people in order to get themselves to stick to their beliefs. I look, in particular, at two ways in which people can make interpersonal epistemic commitments, and thereby willingly undertake accountability to others, in order to get themselves to maintain their beliefs in the face of anticipated “epistemic temptations”. The first way is through the avowal of belief, and the second is through the establishment of collective belief. I argue that both of these forms of interpersonal epistemic commitment can function as effective tools for doxastic self-control, and, moreover, that the control they facilitate should not be dismissed as irrational from an epistemic perspective
K-Band Spectroscopy of an Obscured Massive Stellar Cluster in the Antennae Galaxies (NGC 4038/4039) with NIRSPEC
We present infrared spectroscopy of the Antennae Galaxies (NGC 4038/4039)
with NIRSPEC at the W. M. Keck Observatory. We imaged the star clusters in the
vicinity of the southern nucleus (NGC 4039) in 0.39" seeing in K-band using
NIRSPEC's slit-viewing camera. The brightest star cluster revealed in the
near-IR (M_K(0) = -17.9) is insignificant optically, but coincident with the
highest surface brightness peak in the mid-IR (12-18 um) ISO image presented by
Mirabel et al (1998). We obtained high signal-to-noise 2.03-2.45 um spectra of
the nucleus and the obscured star cluster at R = 1900.
The cluster is very young (age ~ 4 Myr), massive (M ~ 16E6 M_sun), and
compact (density ~ 115 M_sun pc^(-3) within a 32 pc half-light radius),
assuming a Salpeter IMF (0.1-100 M_sun). Its hot stars have a radiation field
characterized by T_eff ~ 39,000 K, and they ionize a compact HII region with
n_e ~ 10^4 cm^(-3). The stars are deeply embedded in gas and dust (A_V = 9-10
mag), and their strong FUV field powers a clumpy photodissociation region with
densities n_H > 10^5 cm^(-3) on scales of ~ 200 pc, radiating L{H_2 1-0 S(1)}=
9600 L_sun.Comment: 4 pages, 4 embedded figures, uses emulateapj.sty. To appear in ApJL.
Also available at http://astro.berkeley.edu/~agilber
Estimation of pure qubits on circles
Gisin and Popescu [PRL, 83, 432 (1999)] have shown that more information
about their direction can be obtained from a pair of anti-parallel spins
compared to a pair of parallel spins, where the first member of the pair (which
we call the pointer member) can point equally along any direction in the Bloch
sphere. They argued that this was due to the difference in dimensionality
spanned by these two alphabets of states. Here we consider similar alphabets,
but with the first spin restricted to a fixed small circle of the Bloch sphere.
In this case, the dimensionality spanned by the anti-parallel versus parallel
alphabet is now equal. However, the anti-parallel alphabet is found to still
contain more information in general. We generalize this to having N parallel
spins and M anti-parallel spins. When the pointer member is restricted to a
small circle these alphabets again span spaces of equal dimension, yet in
general, more directional information can be found for sets with smaller |N-M|
for any fixed total number of spins. We find that the optimal POVMs for
extracting directional information in these cases can always be expressed in
terms of the Fourier basis. Our results show that dimensionality alone cannot
explain the greater information content in anti-parallel combinations of spins
compared to parallel combinations. In addition, we describe an LOCC protocol
which extract optimal directional information when the pointer member is
restricted to a small circle and a pair of parallel spins are supplied.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figure
Statistically Preserved Structures and Anomalous Scaling in Turbulent Active Scalar Advection
The anomalous scaling of correlation functions in the turbulent statistics of
active scalars (like temperature in turbulent convection) is understood in
terms of an auxiliary passive scalar which is advected by the same turbulent
velocity field. While the odd-order correlation functions of the active and
passive fields differ, we propose that the even-order correlation functions are
the same to leading order (up to a trivial multiplicative factor). The leading
correlation functions are statistically preserved structures of the passive
scalar decaying problem, and therefore universality of the scaling exponents of
the even-order correlations of the active scalar is demonstrated.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let
The case for the development and use of "ecologically valid" measures of executive function in experimental and clinical neuropsychology
This article considers the scientific process whereby new and better clinical tests of executive function might be developed, and what form they might take. We argue that many of the traditional tests of executive function most commonly in use (e.g., the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test; Stroop) are adaptations of procedures that emerged almost coincidentally from conceptual and experimental frameworks far removed from those currently in favour, and that the prolongation of their use has been encouraged by a sustained period of concentration on “construct-driven” experimentation in neuropsychology. This resulted from the special theoretical demands made by the field of executive function, but was not a necessary consequence, and may not even have been a useful one. Whilst useful, these tests may not therefore be optimal for their purpose. We consider as an alternative approach a function-led development programme which in principle could yield tasks better suited to the concerns of the clinician because of the transparency afforded by increased “representativeness” and “generalisability.” We further argue that the requirement of such a programme to represent the interaction between the individual and situational context might also provide useful constraints for purely experimental investigations. We provide an example of such a programme with reference to the Multiple Errands and Six Element tests
Automorphisms of Partially Commutative Groups II: Combinatorial Subgroups
We define several "standard" subgroups of the automorphism group Aut(G) of a
partially commutative (right-angled Artin) group and use these standard
subgroups to describe decompositions of Aut(G). If C is the commutation graph
of G, we show how Aut(G) decomposes in terms of the connected components of C:
obtaining a particularly clear decomposition theorem in the special case where
C has no isolated vertices.
If C has no vertices of a type we call dominated then we give a semi-direct
decompostion of Aut(G) into a subgroup of locally conjugating automorphisms by
the subgroup stabilising a certain lattice of "admissible subsets" of the
vertices of C. We then characterise those graphs for which Aut(G) is a product
(not necessarily semi-direct) of two such subgroups.Comment: 7 figures, 63 pages. Notation and definitions clarified and typos
corrected. 2 new figures added. Appendix containing details of presentation
and proof of a theorem adde
First-principles calculations of magnetization relaxation in pure Fe, Co, and Ni with frozen thermal lattice disorder
The effect of the electron-phonon interaction on magnetization relaxation is
studied within the framework of first-principles scattering theory for Fe, Co,
and Ni by displacing atoms in the scattering region randomly with a thermal
distribution. This "frozen thermal lattice disorder" approach reproduces the
non-monotonic damping behaviour observed in ferromagnetic resonance
measurements and yields reasonable quantitative agreement between calculated
and experimental values. It can be readily applied to alloys and easily
extended by determining the atomic displacements from ab initio phonon spectra
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