Thurston equivalence of topological polynomials

We answer Hubbard's question on determining the Thurston equivalence class of ``twisted rabbits'', i.e. images of the ``rabbit'' polynomial under n-th powers of the Dehn twists about its ears. The answer is expressed in terms of the 4-adic expansion of n. We also answer the equivalent question for the other two families of degree-2 topological polynomials with three post-critical points. In the process, we rephrase the questions in group-theoretical language, in terms of wreath recursions.Comment: 40 pages, lots of figure

Feasibility Study of a Rotorcraft Health and Usage Monitoring System ( HUMS): Usage and Structural Life Monitoring Evaluation

The objective of this study was to evaluate two techniques, Flight Condition Recognition (FCR) and Flight Load Synthesis (FLS), for usage monitoring and assess the potential benefits of extending the retirement intervals of life-limited components, thus reducing the operator's maintenance and replacement costs. Both techniques involve indirect determination of loads using measured flight parameters and subsequent fatigue analysis to calculate the life expended on the life-limited components. To assess the potential benefit of usage monitoring, the two usage techniques were compared to current methods of component retirement. In addition, comparisons were made with direct load measurements to assess the accuracy of the two techniques. The data that was used for the evaluation of the usage monitoring techniques was collected under an independent HUMS Flight trial program, using a commercially available HUMS and data recording system. The usage data collect from the HUMS trial aircraft was analyzed off-line using PC-based software that included the FCR and FLS techniques. In the future, if the technique prove feasible, usage monitoring would be incorporated into the onboard HUMS

Lateral transport of thermal capillary waves

We demonstrate that collective motion of interfacial fluctuations can occur at the interface between two coexisting thermodynamic phases. Based on computer simulation results for driven diffusive Ising and Blume-Capel models, we conjecture that the thermal capillary waves at a planar interface travel along the interface if the lateral order parameter current j_op(y) is an odd function of the distance y from the interface and hence possesses opposite directions in the two phases. Such motion does not occur if j_op(y) is an even function of y. A discrete Gaussian interface model with effective dynamics exhibits similiar transport phenomena but with a simpler dispersion relation. These findings open up avenues for controlled interfacial transport on the nanoscale.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figure

Molecular properties of human Guanylate Cyclase-Activating Protein 3 (GCAP3) and its possible association with Retinitis Pigmentosa

The cone-specific guanylate cyclase-activating protein 3 (GCAP3), encoded by the GUCA1C gene, has been shown to regulate the enzymatic activity of membrane-bound guanylate cyclases (GCs) in bovine and teleost fish photoreceptors, to an extent comparable to that of the paralog protein GCAP1. To date, the molecular mechanisms underlying GCAP3 function remain largely unexplored. In this work, we report a thorough characterization of the biochemical and biophysical properties of human GCAP3, moreover, we identified an isolated case of retinitis pigmentosa, in which a patient carried the c.301G>C mutation in GUCA1C, resulting in the substitution of a highly conserved aspartate residue by a histidine (p.(D101H)). We found that myristoylated GCAP3 can activate GC1 with a similar Ca2+-dependent profile, but significantly less efficiently than GCAP1. The non-myristoylated form did not induce appreciable regulation of GC1, nor did the p.D101H variant. GCAP3 forms dimers under physiological conditions, but at odds with its paralogs, it tends to form temperature-dependent aggregates driven by hydrophobic interactions. The peculiar properties of GCAP3 were confirmed by 2 ms molecular dynamics simulations, which for the p.D101H variant highlighted a very high structural flexibility and a clear tendency to lose the binding of a Ca2+ ion to EF3. Overall, our data show that GCAP3 has unusual biochemical properties, which make the protein significantly different from GCAP1 and GCAP2. Moreover, the newly identified point mutation resulting in a substantially unfunctional protein could trigger retinitis pigmentosa through a currently unknown mechanism

Progress in finite temperature lattice QCD

I review recent progress in finite temperature lattice calculations, including the determination of the transition temperature, equation of state, screening of static quarks and meson spectral functions.Comment: 8 pages, LaTeX, uses iopart.cls, invited talk presented at Strangeness in Quark Matter 2007 (SQM 2007), Levoca, Slovakia, June 24-29, 200

Quarkonium in Hot Medium

I review recent progress in studying quarkonium properties in hot medium as well as possible consequences for quarkonium production in heavy ion collisions.Comment: Invited talk at SQM 2009, Buzios, Brazil, Sep. 27 -Oct. 2 2009, LaTeX, 8 pages,3 figures; typos corrected, references adde

Spectrum of the U(1) staggered Dirac operator in four dimensions

We compare the low-lying spectrum of the staggered Dirac operator in the confining phase of compact U(1) gauge theory on the lattice to predictions of chiral random matrix theory. The small eigenvalues contribute to the chiral condensate similar as for the SU(2) and SU(3) gauge groups. Agreement with the chiral unitary ensemble is observed below the Thouless energy, which is extracted from the data and found to scale with the lattice size according to theoretical predictions.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

An Analysis of Private School Closings

We add to the small literature on private school supply by exploring exits of K-12 private schools. We find that the closure of private schools is not an infrequent event, and use national survey data from the National Center for Education Statistics to study closures of private schools. We assume that the probability of an exit is a function of excess supply of private schools over the demand, as well as the school's characteristics such as age, size, and religious affiliation. Our empirical results generally support the implications of the model. Working Paper 07-0