10,369 research outputs found
Thermal and stress analysis of an Attached Inflatable Decelerator /AID/ deployed in the Mars and Earth atmospheres
Trajectory, thermodynamic, and stress analyses of spacecraft inflatable decelerators in Mars and Earth atmosphere
Consequences of Zeeman Degeneracy for van der Waals Blockade between Rydberg Atoms
We analyze the effects of Zeeman degeneracies on the long-range interactions
between like Rydberg atoms, with particular emphasis on applications to quantum
information processing using van der Waals blockade. We present a general
analysis of how degeneracies affect the primary error sources in blockade
experiments, emphasizing that blockade errors are sensitive primarily to the
weakest possible atom-atom interactions between the degenerate states, not the
mean interaction strength. We present explicit calculations of the van der
Waals potentials in the limit where the fine-structure interaction is large
compared to the atom-atom interactions. The results are presented for all
potential angular momentum channels invoving s, p, and d states. For most
channels there are one or more combinations of Zeeman levels that have
extremely small dipole-dipole interactions and are therefore poor candidates
for effective blockade experiments. Channels with promising properties are
identified and discussed. We also present numerical calculations of Rb and Cs
dipole matrix elements and relevant energy levels using quantum defect theory,
allowing for convenient quantitative estimates of the van der Waals
interactions to be made for principal quantum numbers up to 100. Finally, we
combine the blockade and van der Waals results to quantitatively analyze the
angular distribution of the blockade shift and its consequence for angular
momentum channels and geometries of particular interest for blockade
experiments with Rb.Comment: 16 figure
Toxoplasma gondii profilin does not stimulate an innate immune response through bovine or human TLR5
Toxoplasma gondii is responsible for one of the most prevalent infections in people. T. gondii profilin (TgPr) is a protein integral to parasite movement and cellular invasion. Murine TLR has been described to bind TgPr. Furthermore, more recently, human TLR5 has been described to recognise recombinant TgPr, as well as bacterial flagellin. In addition to infections in humans, T. gondii infects farm animals, but little information is available about its innate recognition. We aimed to investigate whether, similarly to their human orthologue, bovine and porcine TLR5 could also be stimulated by TgPr by using a combination of reporter cell lines expressing full length TLR5 from each species as well as primary cells. Although human and bovine TLR5-transfected cells responded to flagellin, no response was detected upon stimulation
with profilin. Furthermore, TgPr failed to elicit IL-6 secretion in human peripheral blood mononuclear cells and CD14Ăľ monocytes. In contrast, exposure of RAW cells, known to express TLR11 to TgPr, slightly increased the IL-6 response. Our data cast doubts on the possibility that profilin is a specific ligand for human TLR5 and bovine TLR5. This leaves the immunogenic properties of this potential target antigen uncharacterised outside of the murine system
Fluctuations and Pinch-Offs Observed in Viscous Fingering
Our experiments on viscous (Saffman-Taylor) fingering in Hele-Shaw channels
reveal several phenomena that were not observed in previous experiments. At low
flow rates, growing fingers undergo width fluctuations that intermittently
narrow the finger as they evolve. The magnitude of these fluctuations is
proportional to Ca^{-0.64}, where Ca is the capillary number, which is
proportional to the finger velocity. This relation holds for all aspect ratios
studied up to the onset of tip instabilities. At higher flow rates, finger
pinch-off and reconnection events are observed. These events appear to be
caused by an interaction between the actively growing finger and suppressed
fingers at the back of the channel. Both the fluctuation and pinch-off
phenomena are robust but not explained by current theory.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures; to appear in Proceedings of the Seventh
Experimental Chaos Conferenc
Fluctuations and Pinch-Offs Observed in Viscous Fingering
Our experiments on viscous (Saffman-Taylor) fingering in Hele-Shaw channels
reveal several phenomena that were not observed in previous experiments. At low
flow rates, growing fingers undergo width fluctuations that intermittently
narrow the finger as they evolve. The magnitude of these fluctuations is
proportional to Ca^{-0.64}, where Ca is the capillary number, which is
proportional to the finger velocity. This relation holds for all aspect ratios
studied up to the onset of tip instabilities. At higher flow rates, finger
pinch-off and reconnection events are observed. These events appear to be
caused by an interaction between the actively growing finger and suppressed
fingers at the back of the channel. Both the fluctuation and pinch-off
phenomena are robust but not explained by current theory.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures; to appear in Proceedings of the Seventh
Experimental Chaos Conferenc
Axionic D3-D7 Inflation
We study the motion of a D3 brane moving within a Type IIB string vacuum
compactified to 4D on K3 x T_2/Z_2 in the presence of D7 and O7 planes. We work
within the effective 4D supergravity describing how the mobile D3 interacts
with the lightest bulk moduli of the compactification, including the effects of
modulus-stabilizing fluxes. We seek inflationary solutions to the resulting
equations, performing our search numerically in order to avoid resorting to
approximate parameterizations of the low-energy potential. We consider
uplifting from D-terms and from the supersymmetry-breaking effects of anti-D3
branes. We find examples of slow-roll inflation (with anti-brane uplifting)
with the mobile D3 moving along the toroidal directions, falling towards a
D7-O7 stack starting from the antipodal point. The inflaton turns out to be a
linear combination of the brane position and the axionic partner of the K3
volume modulus, and the similarity of the potential along the inflaton
direction with that of racetrack inflation leads to the prediction n_s \le 0.95
for the spectral index. The slow roll is insensitive to most of the features of
the effective superpotential, and requires a one-in-10^4 tuning to ensure that
the torus is close to square in shape. We also consider D-term inflation with
the D3 close to the attractive D7, but find that for a broad (but not
exhaustive) class of parameters the conditions for slow roll tend to
destabilize the bulk moduli. In contrast to the axionic case, the best
inflationary example of this kind requires the delicate adjustment of potential
parameters (much more than the part-per-mille level), and gives inflation only
at an inflection point of the potential (and so suffers from additional
fine-tuning of initial conditions to avoid an overshoot problem).Comment: 29 pages, 5 figure
Combatting electoral traces: the Dutch tempest discussion and beyond
In the Dutch e-voting debate, the crucial issue leading to the abandonment of all electronic voting machines was compromising radiation, or tempest. Other countries, however, do not seem to be bothered by this risk. In this paper, we use actor-network theory to analyse the socio-technical origins of the Dutch tempest issue in e-voting, and its consequences for e-voting beyond the Netherlands. We introduce the term electoral traces to denote any physical, digital or social evidence of a voter's choices in an election. From this perspective, we provide guidelines for risk analysis as well as an overview of countermeasures
A comparison of robust Mendelian randomization methods using summary data.
The number of Mendelian randomization (MR) analyses including large numbers of genetic variants is rapidly increasing. This is due to the proliferation of genome-wide association studies, and the desire to obtain more precise estimates of causal effects. Since it is unlikely that all genetic variants will be valid instrumental variables, several robust methods have been proposed. We compare nine robust methods for MR based on summary data that can be implemented using standard statistical software. Methods were compared in three ways: by reviewing their theoretical properties, in an extensive simulation study, and in an empirical example. In the simulation study, the best method, judged by mean squared error was the contamination mixture method. This method had well-controlled Type 1 error rates with up to 50% invalid instruments across a range of scenarios. Other methods performed well according to different metrics. Outlier-robust methods had the narrowest confidence intervals in the empirical example. With isolated exceptions, all methods performed badly when over 50% of the variants were invalid instruments. Our recommendation for investigators is to perform a variety of robust methods that operate in different ways and rely on different assumptions for valid inferences to assess the reliability of MR analyses
On Bouncing Brane-Worlds, S-branes and Branonium Cosmology
We present several higher-dimensional spacetimes for which observers living
on 3-branes experience an induced metric which bounces. The classes of examples
include boundary branes on generalised S-brane backgrounds and probe branes in
D-brane/anti D-brane systems. The bounces we consider normally would be
expected to require an energy density which violates the weak energy condition,
and for our co-dimension one examples this is attributable to bulk curvature
terms in the effective Friedmann equation. We examine the features of the
acceleration which provides the bounce, including in some cases the existence
of positive acceleration without event horizons, and we give a geometrical
interpretation for it. We discuss the stability of the solutions from the point
of view of both the brane and the bulk. Some of our examples appear to be
stable from the bulk point of view, suggesting the possible existence of stable
bouncing cosmologies within the brane-world framework.Comment: 35 pages, 7 figures, JHEP style. Title changed and references adde
Effective Actions, Boundaries and Precision Calculations of Casimir Energies
We perform the matching required to compute the leading effective boundary
contribution to the QED lagrangian in the presence of a conducting surface,
once the electron is integrated out. Our result resolves a confusion in the
literature concerning the interpretation of the leading such correction to the
Casimir energy. It also provides a useful theoretical laboratory for
brane-world calculations in which kinetic terms are generated on the brane,
since a lot is known about QED near boundaries.Comment: 5 pages. revtex; Added paragraphs describing finite-conductivity
effects and effects due to curvatur
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