869 research outputs found
Decoherence Strength of Multiple Non-Markovian Environments
It is known that one can characterize the decoherence strength of a Markovian
environment by the product of its temperature and induced damping, and order
the decoherence strength of multiple environments by this quantity. We show
that for non-Markovian environments in the weak coupling regime there also
exists a natural (albeit partial) ordering of environment-induced
irreversibility within a perturbative treatment. This measure can be applied to
both low-temperature and non-equilibrium environments.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, v3 included figure, appendix, and clarification of
result
Exact analytical solutions to the master equation of quantum Brownian motion for a general environment
We revisit the model of a quantum Brownian oscillator linearly coupled to an
environment of quantum oscillators at finite temperature. By introducing a
compact and particularly well-suited formulation, we give a rather quick and
direct derivation of the master equation and its solutions for general spectral
functions and arbitrary temperatures. The flexibility of our approach allows
for an immediate generalization to cases with an external force and with an
arbitrary number of Brownian oscillators. More importantly, we point out an
important mathematical subtlety concerning boundary-value problems for
integro-differential equations which led to incorrect master equation
coefficients and impacts on the description of nonlocal dissipation effects in
all earlier derivations. Furthermore, we provide explicit, exact analytical
results for the master equation coefficients and its solutions in a wide
variety of cases, including ohmic, sub-ohmic and supra-ohmic environments with
a finite cut-off.Comment: 37 pages (26 + appendices), 14 figures; this paper is an evolution of
arXiv:0705.2766v1, but contains far more general and significant results; v2
minor changes, double column, improved Appendix
Rheology of a confined granular material
We study the rheology of a granular material slowly driven in a confined
geometry. The motion is characterized by a steady sliding with a resistance
force increasing with the driving velocity and the surrounding relative
humidity. For lower driving velocities a transition to stick-slip motion
occurs, exhibiting a blocking enhancement whith decreasing velocity. We propose
a model to explain this behavior pointing out the leading role of friction
properties between the grains and the container's boundary.Comment: 9 pages, 3 .eps figures, submitted to PR
Classification of protein interaction sentences via gaussian processes
The increase in the availability of protein interaction studies in textual format coupled with the demand for easier access to the key results has lead to a need for text mining solutions. In the text processing pipeline, classification is a key step for extraction of small sections of relevant text. Consequently, for the task of locating protein-protein interaction sentences, we examine the use of a classifier which has rarely been applied to text, the Gaussian processes (GPs). GPs are a non-parametric probabilistic analogue to the more popular support vector machines (SVMs). We find that GPs outperform the SVM and na\"ive Bayes classifiers on binary sentence data, whilst showing equivalent performance on abstract and multiclass sentence corpora. In addition, the lack of the margin parameter, which requires costly tuning, along with the principled multiclass extensions enabled by the probabilistic framework make GPs an appealing alternative worth of further adoption
Does a Computer have an Arrow of Time?
In [Sch05a], it is argued that Boltzmann's intuition, that the psychological
arrow of time is necessarily aligned with the thermodynamic arrow, is correct.
Schulman gives an explicit physical mechanism for this connection, based on the
brain being representable as a computer, together with certain thermodynamic
properties of computational processes. [Haw94] presents similar, if briefer,
arguments. The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the support for
the link between thermodynamics and an arrow of time for computers. The
principal arguments put forward by Schulman and Hawking will be shown to fail.
It will be shown that any computational process that can take place in an
entropy increasing universe, can equally take place in an entropy decreasing
universe. This conclusion does not automatically imply a psychological arrow
can run counter to the thermodynamic arrow. Some alternative possible explana-
tions for the alignment of the two arrows will be briefly discussed.Comment: 31 pages, no figures, publication versio
Magnetization dynamics with a spin-transfer torque
The magnetization reversal and dynamics of a spin valve pillar, whose lateral
size is 6464 nm, are studied by using micromagnetic simulation in
the presence of spin transfer torque. Spin torques display both characteristics
of magnetic damping (or anti-damping) and of an effective magnetic field. For a
steady-state current, both M-I and M-H hysteresis loops show unique features,
including multiple jumps, unusual plateaus and precessional states. These
states originate from the competition between the energy dissipation due to
Gilbert damping and the energy accumulation due to the spin torque supplied by
the spin current. The magnetic energy oscillates as a function of time even for
a steady-state current. For a pulsed current, the minimum width and amplitude
of the spin torque for achieving current-driven magnetization reversal are
quantitatively determined. The spin torque also shows very interesting thermal
activation that is fundamentally different from an ordinary damping effect.Comment: 15 figure
Fluctuations of an evaporating black hole from back reaction of its Hawking radiation: Questioning a premise in earlier work
This paper delineates the first steps in a systematic quantitative study of
the spacetime fluctuations induced by quantum fields in an evaporating black
hole. We explain how the stochastic gravity formalism can be a useful tool for
that purpose within a low-energy effective field theory approach to quantum
gravity. As an explicit example we apply it to the study of the
spherically-symmetric sector of metric perturbations around an evaporating
black hole background geometry. For macroscopic black holes we find that those
fluctuations grow and eventually become important when considering sufficiently
long periods of time (of the order of the evaporation time), but well before
the Planckian regime is reached. In addition, the assumption of a simple
correlation between the fluctuations of the energy flux crossing the horizon
and far from it, which was made in earlier work on spherically-symmetric
induced fluctuations, is carefully analyzed and found to be invalid. Our
analysis suggests the existence of an infinite amplitude for the fluctuations
of the horizon as a three-dimensional hypersurface. We emphasize the need for
understanding and designing operational ways of probing quantum metric
fluctuations near the horizon and extracting physically meaningful information.Comment: 10 pages, REVTeX; minor changes, a few references added and a brief
discussion of their relevance included. To appear in the proceedings of the
10th Peyresq meeting. Dedicated to Rafael Sorkin on the occasion of his 60th
birthda
Resistance to erythropoiesis stimulating agents in patients treated with online hemodiafiltration and ultrapure low-flux hemodialysis: Results from a randomized controlled trial (CONTRAST)
Resistance to erythropoiesis stimulating agents (ESA) is common in patients undergoing chronic hemodialysis (HD) treatment. ESA responsiveness might be improved by enhanced clearance of uremic toxins of middle molecular weight, as can be obtained by hemodiafiltration (HDF). In this analysis of the randomized controlled CONvective TRAnsport STudy (CONTRAST; NCT00205556), the effect of online HDF on ESA resistance and iron parameters was studied. This was a prespecified secondary endpoint of the main trial. A 12 months' analysis of 714 patients randomized to either treatment with online post-dilution HDF or continuation of low-flux HD was performed. Both groups were treated with ultrapure dialysis fluids. ESA resistance, measured every three months, was expressed as the ESA index (weight adjusted weekly ESA dose in daily defined doses [DDD]/hematocrit). The mean ESA index during 12 months was not different between patients treated with HDF or HD (mean difference HDF versus HD over time 0.029 DDD/kg/Hct/week [20.024 to 0.081]; P = 0.29). Mean transferrin saturation ratio and ferritin levels during the study tended to be lower in patients treated with HDF (22.52% [24.72 to 20.31]; P = 0.02 and 249 ng/mL [2103 to 4]; P = 0.06 respectively), although there was a trend for those patients to receive slightly more iron supplementation (7.1 mg/week [20.4 to 14.5]; P = 0.06). In conclusion, compared to low-flux HD with ultrapure dialysis fluid, treatment with online HDF did not result in a decrease in ESA resistance
A Taxonomy of Causality-Based Biological Properties
We formally characterize a set of causality-based properties of metabolic
networks. This set of properties aims at making precise several notions on the
production of metabolites, which are familiar in the biologists' terminology.
From a theoretical point of view, biochemical reactions are abstractly
represented as causal implications and the produced metabolites as causal
consequences of the implication representing the corresponding reaction. The
fact that a reactant is produced is represented by means of the chain of
reactions that have made it exist. Such representation abstracts away from
quantities, stoichiometric and thermodynamic parameters and constitutes the
basis for the characterization of our properties. Moreover, we propose an
effective method for verifying our properties based on an abstract model of
system dynamics. This consists of a new abstract semantics for the system seen
as a concurrent network and expressed using the Chemical Ground Form calculus.
We illustrate an application of this framework to a portion of a real
metabolic pathway
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