5,145 research outputs found
Amp\`ere-Class Pulsed Field Emission from Carbon-Nanotube Cathodes in a Radiofrequency Resonator
Pulsed field emission from cold carbon-nanotube cathodes placed in a
radiofrequency resonant cavity was observed. The cathodes were located on the
backplate of a conventional -cell resonant cavity operating at
1.3-GHz and resulted in the production of bunch train with maximum average
current close to 0.7 Amp\`ere. The measured Fowler-Nordheim characteristic,
transverse emittance, and pulse duration are presented and, when possible,
compared to numerical simulations. The implications of our results to
high-average-current electron sources are briefly discussed.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures; submitted to Applied Physics Letter
On the Asymptotic Stability of De-Sitter Spacetime: a non-linear perturbative approach
We derive evolution and constraint equations for second order perturbations
of flat dust homogeneous and isotropic solutions to the Einstein field
equations using all scalar, vector and tensor perturbation modes. We show that
the perturbations decay asymptotically in time and that the solutions converge
to the De-Sitter solution. By induction, this result is valid for perturbations
of arbitrary order. This is in agreement with the cosmic no-hair conjecture of
Gibbons and Hawking.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figure
Polarized distribution of HCO3- transport in human normal and cystic fibrosis nasal epithelia
The polarized distribution of HCO3â transport was investigated in human nasal epithelial cells from normal and cystic fibrosis (CF) tissues. To test for HCO3â transport via conductive versus electroneutral Clâ/HCO3â exchange (anion exchange, AE) pathways, nasal cells were loaded with the pH probe 2âČ,7âČ-bis(carboxyethyl)-5(6)-carboxyfluorescein and mounted in a bilateral perfusion chamber. In normal, but not CF, epithelia, replacing mucosal Clâ with gluconate caused intracellular pH (pHi) to increase, and the initial rates (ÎpH minâ1) of this increase were modestly augmented (âŒ26 %) when normal cells were pretreated with forskolin (10 ÎŒm). Recovery from this alkaline shift was dependent on mucosal Clâ, was insensitive to the AE inhibitor 4,4âČ-diisothiocyanatodihydrostilbene-2,2âČ-disulfonic acid (H2DIDS; 1.5 mm), but was sensitive to the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) channel inhibitor diphenylamine-2-carboxylate (DPC; 100 ÎŒm). In contrast, removal of serosal Clâ caused pHi to alkalinize in both normal and CF epithelia. Recovery from this alkaline challenge was dependent on serosal Clâ and blocked by H2DIDS. Additional studies showed that serosally applied Ba2+ (5.0 mm) in normal, but not CF, cells induced influx of HCO3â across the apical membrane that was reversibly blocked by mucosal DPC. In a final series of studies, normal and CF cells acutely alkaline loaded by replacing bilateral Krebs bicarbonate Ringer (KBR) with Hepes-buffered Ringer solution exhibited basolateral, but not apical, recovery from an alkaline challenge that was dependent on Clâ, independent of Na+ and blocked by H2DIDS. We conclude that: (1) normal, but not CF, nasal epithelia have a constitutively active DPC-sensitive HCO3â influx/efflux pathway across the apical membrane of cells, consistent with the movement of HCO3â via CFTR; and (2) both normal and CF nasal epithelia have Na+-independent, H2DIDS-sensitive AE at their basolateral domain
RLZAP: Relative Lempel-Ziv with Adaptive Pointers
Relative Lempel-Ziv (RLZ) is a popular algorithm for compressing databases of
genomes from individuals of the same species when fast random access is
desired. With Kuruppu et al.'s (SPIRE 2010) original implementation, a
reference genome is selected and then the other genomes are greedily parsed
into phrases exactly matching substrings of the reference. Deorowicz and
Grabowski (Bioinformatics, 2011) pointed out that letting each phrase end with
a mismatch character usually gives better compression because many of the
differences between individuals' genomes are single-nucleotide substitutions.
Ferrada et al. (SPIRE 2014) then pointed out that also using relative pointers
and run-length compressing them usually gives even better compression. In this
paper we generalize Ferrada et al.'s idea to handle well also short insertions,
deletions and multi-character substitutions. We show experimentally that our
generalization achieves better compression than Ferrada et al.'s implementation
with comparable random-access times
Exact steady-state velocity of ratchets driven by random sequential adsorption
We solve the problem of discrete translocation of a polymer through a pore,
driven by the irreversible, random sequential adsorption of particles on one
side of the pore. Although the kinetics of the wall motion and the deposition
are coupled, we find the exact steady-state distribution for the gap between
the wall and the nearest deposited particle. This result enables us to
construct the mean translocation velocity demonstrating that translocation is
faster when the adsorbing particles are smaller. Monte-Carlo simulations also
show that smaller particles gives less dispersion in the ratcheted motion. We
also define and compare the relative efficiencies of ratcheting by deposition
of particles with different sizes and we describe an associated
"zone-refinement" process.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures New asymptotic result for low chaperone density
added. Exact translocation velocity is proportional to (chaperone
density)^(1/3
On the String Consensus Problem and the Manhattan Sequence Consensus Problem
In the Manhattan Sequence Consensus problem (MSC problem) we are given
integer sequences, each of length , and we are to find an integer sequence
of length (called a consensus sequence), such that the maximum
Manhattan distance of from each of the input sequences is minimized. For
binary sequences Manhattan distance coincides with Hamming distance, hence in
this case the string consensus problem (also called string center problem or
closest string problem) is a special case of MSC. Our main result is a
practically efficient -time algorithm solving MSC for sequences.
Practicality of our algorithms has been verified experimentally. It improves
upon the quadratic algorithm by Amir et al.\ (SPIRE 2012) for string consensus
problem for binary strings. Similarly as in Amir's algorithm we use a
column-based framework. We replace the implied general integer linear
programming by its easy special cases, due to combinatorial properties of the
MSC for . We also show that for a general parameter any instance
can be reduced in linear time to a kernel of size , so the problem is
fixed-parameter tractable. Nevertheless, for this is still too large
for any naive solution to be feasible in practice.Comment: accepted to SPIRE 201
Stable Isotropic Cosmological Singularities in Quadratic Gravity
We show that, in quadratic lagrangian theories of gravity, isotropic
cosmological singularities are stable to the presence of small scalar, vector
and tensor inhomogeneities. Unlike in general relativity, a particular exact
isotropic solution is shown to be the stable attractor on approach to the
initial cosmological singularity. This solution is also known to act as an
attractor in Bianchi universes of types I, II and IX, and the results of this
paper reinforce the hypothesis that small inhomogeneous and anisotropic
perturbations of this attractor form part of the general cosmological solution
to the field equations of quadratic gravity. Implications for the existence of
a 'gravitational entropy' are also discussed.Comment: 18 pages, no figure
On the Decoherence of Primordial Fluctuations During Inflation
We study the process whereby quantum cosmological perturbations become
classical within inflationary cosmology. By setting up a master-equation
formulation we show how quantum coherence for super-Hubble modes can be
destroyed by their coupling to the environment provided by sub-Hubble modes. We
identify what features the sub-Hubble environment must have in order to
decohere the longer wavelengths, and identify how the onset of decoherence (and
how long it takes) depends on the properties of the sub-Hubble physics which
forms the environment. Our results show that the decoherence process is largely
insensitive to the details of the coupling between the sub- and super-Hubble
scales. They also show how locality implies, quite generally, that the
decohered density matrix at late times is diagonal in the field representation
(as is implicitly assumed by extant calculations of inflationary density
perturbations). Our calculations also imply that decoherence can arise even for
couplings which are as weak as gravitational in strength.Comment: 31 pages, 1 figur
From Skew-Cyclic Codes to Asymmetric Quantum Codes
We introduce an additive but not -linear map from
to and exhibit some of its interesting
structural properties. If is a linear -code, then is an
additive -code. If is an additive cyclic code then
is an additive quasi-cyclic code of index . Moreover, if is a module
-cyclic code, a recently introduced type of code which will be
explained below, then is equivalent to an additive cyclic code if is
odd and to an additive quasi-cyclic code of index if is even. Given any
-code , the code is self-orthogonal under the trace
Hermitian inner product. Since the mapping preserves nestedness, it can be
used as a tool in constructing additive asymmetric quantum codes.Comment: 16 pages, 3 tables, submitted to Advances in Mathematics of
Communication
Cation distribution in manganese cobaltite spinels Co3âxMnxO4 (0 †x †1) determined by thermal analysis
Thermogravimetric analysis was used in order to study the reduction in air of submicronic powders of Co3âx Mn x O4 spinels, with 0 †x †1. For x = 0 (i.e. Co3O4), cation reduction occurred in a single step. It involved the CoIII ions at the octahedral sites, which were reduced to Co2+ on producing CoO. For 0 < x †1, the reduction occurred in two stages at increasing temperature with increasing amounts of manganese. The first step corresponded to the reduction of octahedral CoIII ions and the second was attributed to the reduction of octahedral Mn4+ ions to Mn3+. From the individual weight losses and the electrical neutrality of the lattice, the CoIII and Mn4+ ion concentrations were calculated. The distribution of cobalt and manganese ions present on each crystallographic site of the spinel was determined. In contrast to most previous studies that took into account either CoIII and Mn3+ or Co2+, CoIII and Mn4+ only, our thermal analysis study showed that Co2+/CoIII and Mn3+/Mn4+ pairs occupy the octahedral sites. These results were used to explain the resistivity measurements carried out on dense ceramics prepared from our powders sintered at low temperature (700â750 °C) in a Spark Plasma Sintering apparatus
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