Charging Spectrum of a Small Wigner Crystal Island

Charging of a clean two-dimensional island is studied in the regime of small concentration of electrons when they form the Wigner crystal. The number of electrons in the island is assumed to be not too big (N < 100). It is shown that the total energy of the island as a function of N has a quasi-periodic component of a universal shape, that is independent of the form of electron-electron interactions. These oscillations are caused by the combination of the geometric effects associated with packing of the triangular lattice into the circular island. These effects are: the shell effect, associated with starting a new crystalline row, and the so-called confinement polaronic effect. In the presence of close metallic gates, which eliminate the long-range part of the electron-electron interactions, the oscillations of the energy bring about simultaneous entering of the dot by a few electrons.Comment: 8 pages, Latex, 8 Postscript pages are include

Location, Location, Location: The Cancer Stem Cell Niche

The existence of a stem cell niche, or physiological microenvironment, consisting of specialized cells that directly and indirectly participate in stem cell regulation has been verified for mammalian adult stem cells in the intestinal, neural, epidermal, and hematopoietic systems. In light of these findings, it has been proposed that a “cancer stem cell niche” also exists and that interactions with this tumor niche may specify a self-renewing population of tumor cells. We discuss emerging data that support the idea of a veritable cancer stem cell niche and propose several models for the relationship between cancer cells and their niches

Screening of a hypercritical charge in graphene

Screening of a large external charge in graphene is studied. The charge is assumed to be displaced away or smeared over a finite region of the graphene plane. The initial decay of the screened potential with distance is shown to follow the 3/2 power. It gradually changes to the Coulomb law outside of a hypercritical core whose radius is proportional to the external charge.Comment: (v1) 4 pages, 1 figure (v2) Much improved introduction; extended range of numeric

Higher twist jet broadening and classical propagation

The transverse broadening of jets produced in deep-inelastic scattering (DIS) off a large nucleus is studied in the collinear limit. A class of medium enhanced higher twist corrections are re-summed to calculate the transverse momentum distribution of the produced collinear jet. In contrast to previous approaches, resummation of the leading length enhanced higher twist corrections is shown to lead to a two dimensional diffusion equation for the transverse momentum of the propagating jet. Results for the average transverse momentum obtained from this approach are then compared to the broadening expected from a classical Langevin analysis for the propagation of the jet under the action of the fluctuating color Lorentz force inside the nucleons. The set of approximations that lead to identical results from the two approaches are outlined. The relationship between the momentum diffusion constant $D$ and the transport coefficient $\hat{q}$ is explicitly derived.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures, revtex4, references added, typos corrected, discussion update

Hard collinear gluon radiation and multiple scattering in a medium

The energy loss of hard jets produced in the Deep-Inelastic scattering (DIS) off a large nucleus is considered in the collinear limit. In particular, the single gluon emission cross section due to multiple scattering in the medium is calculated. Calculations are carried out in the higher-twist scheme, which is extended to include contributions from multiple transverse scatterings on both the produced quark and the radiated gluon. The leading length enhanced parts of these power suppressed contributions are resummed. Various interferences between such diagrams lead to the Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal (LPM) effect. We resum the corrections from an arbitrary number of scatterings and isolate the leading contributions which are suppressed by one extra power of the hard scale $Q^{2}$. All powers of the emitted gluon forward momentum fraction $y$ are retained. We compare our results with the previous calculation of single scattering per emission in the higher-twist scheme as well as with multiple scattering resummations in other schemes. It is found that the leading ($1/Q^2$) contribution to the double differential gluon production cross section, in this approach, is equivalent to that obtained from the single scattering calculation once the transverse momentum of the final quark is integrated out. We comment on the generalization of this formalism to Monte-Carlo routines.Comment: 30 pages, 7 figures, revtex4, typos correcte

When Should One Substract Background Fluorescence in Two Color Microarrays?

Two color microarrays are a powerful tool for genomic analysis, but have noise components that make inferences regarding gene expression inefficient and potentially misleading. Background fluorescence,whether attributable to non-specific binding or other sources,is an important component of noise. The decision to subtract fluorescence surrounding spots of hybridization from spot fluorescence has been controversial, with no clear criteria for determining circumstances that may favor, or disfavor, background subtraction. While it is generally accepted that subtracting background reduces bias but increases variance in the estimates of the ratios of interest, no formal analysis of the bias-variance trade off of background subtraction has been undertaken. In this paper, we use simulation to systematically examine the bias-variance trade off under a variety of possible experimental conditions. Our simulation is based on data obtained from two self versus self microarray experiments and is free of distributional assumptions. Our results identify factors that are important for determining whether to background subtract, including the correlation of foreground to background intensity ratios. Using these results we develop recommendations for diagnostic visualizations that can help decisions about background subtraction

Advances and challenges in umbilical cord blood and tissue bioprocessing: procurement and storage

Umbilical cord tissue and blood is banked to complement the rapidly advancing field of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine for both autologous and allogeneic therapeutic applications. Whilst many problems concerning the use of the hematopoietic and multipotential mesenchymal stromal cells contained therein may be addressed through the future development of GMP-compliant manufacturing strategies, collection and bioprocessing of these tissues can be optimised in the present to maximise clinical outcomes. In this review, we describe current procurement, processing and storage approaches for umbilical cord blood and tissue; current challenges and how these may be met to augment translation and use of therapeutics harnessing their derivatives

Dynamical frictional phenomena in an incommensurate two-chain model

Dynamical frictional phenomena are studied theoretically in a two-chain model with incommensurate structure. A perturbation theory with respect to the interchain interaction reveals the contributions from phonons excited in each chain to the kinetic frictional force. The validity of the theory is verified in the case of weak interaction by comparing with numerical simulation. The velocity and the interchain interaction dependences of the lattice structure are also investigated. It is shown that peculiar breaking of analyticity states appear, which is characteristic to the two-chain model. The range of the parameters in which the two-chain model is reduced to the Frenkel-Kontorova model is also discussed.Comment: RevTex, 9 pages, 7 PostScript figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Photon bremsstrahlung and diffusive broadening of a hard jet

The photon bremsstrahlung rate from a quark jet produced in deep-inelastic scattering (DIS) off a large nucleus is studied in the collinear limit. The leading medium-enhanced higher twist corrections which describe the multiple scattering of the jet in the nucleus are re-summed to all orders of twist. The propagation of the jet in the absence of further radiative energy loss is shown to be governed by a transverse momentum diffusion equation. We compute the final photon spectrum in the limit of soft photons, taking into account the leading and next-to-leading terms in the photon momentum fraction y. In this limit, the photon spectrum in a physical gauge is shown to arise from two interfering sources: one where the initial hard scattering produces an off-shell quark which immediately radiates the photon and then undergoes subsequent soft re-scattering; alternatively the quark is produced on-shell and propagates through the medium until it is driven off-shell by re-scattering and radiates the photon. Our result has a simple formal structure as a product of the photon splitting function, the quark transverse momentum distribution coming from a diffusion equation and a dimensionless factor which encodes the effect of the interferences encountered by the propagating quark over the length of the medium. The destructive nature of such interferences in the small y limit are responsible for the origin of the Landau-Pomeranchuck-Migdal (LPM) effect. Along the way we also discuss possible implications for quark jets in hot nuclear matter.Comment: 24 pages, 3 figures, Revtex

Lineage dynamics of murine pancreatic development at single-cell resolution.

Organogenesis requires the complex interactions of multiple cell lineages that coordinate their expansion, differentiation, and maturation over time. Here, we profile the cell types within the epithelial and mesenchymal compartments of the murine pancreas across developmental time using a combination of single-cell RNA sequencing, immunofluorescence, in situ hybridization, and genetic lineage tracing. We identify previously underappreciated cellular heterogeneity of the developing mesenchyme and reconstruct potential lineage relationships among the pancreatic mesothelium and mesenchymal cell types. Within the epithelium, we find a previously undescribed endocrine progenitor population, as well as an analogous population in both human fetal tissue and human embryonic stem cells differentiating toward a pancreatic beta cell fate. Further, we identify candidate transcriptional regulators along the differentiation trajectory of this population toward the alpha or beta cell lineages. This work establishes a roadmap of pancreatic development and demonstrates the broad utility of this approach for understanding lineage dynamics in developing organs