3,651 research outputs found
Tradeoff between short-term and long-term adaptation in a changing environment
We investigate the competition dynamics of two microbial or viral strains
that live in an environment that switches periodically between two states. One
of the strains is adapted to the long-term environment, but pays a short-term
cost, while the other is adapted to the short-term environment and pays a cost
in the long term. We explore the tradeoff between these alternative strategies
in extensive numerical simulations, and present a simple analytic model that
can predict the outcome of these competitions as a function of the mutation
rate and the time scale of the environmental changes. Our model is relevant for
arboviruses, which alternate between different host species on a regular basis.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, PRE in pres
Poisoning of Hydrogen Dissociation at Pd (100) by Adsorbed Sulfur Studied by ab initio Quantum Dynamics and ab initio Molecular Dynamics
We report calculations of the dissociative adsorption of H_2 at Pd (100)
covered with 1/4 monolayer of sulfur using quantum dynamics as well as
molecular dynamics and taking all six degrees of freedom of the two H atoms
fully into account. The ab initio potential-energy surface (PES) is found to be
very strongly corrugated. In particular we discuss the influence of tunneling,
zero-point vibrations, localization of the nuclei's wave function when narrow
valleys of the PES are passed, steering of the approaching H_2 molecules
towards low energy barrier configurations, and the time scales of the center of
mass motion and the other degrees of freedom. Several ``established'' concepts,
which were derived from low-dimensional dynamical studies, are shown to be not
valid.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Surf. Sci. Lett. Other related
publications can be found at http://www.rz-berlin.mpg.de/th/paper.htm
Effects of Neutron Irradiation on Carbon Doped MgB2 Wire Segments
We have studied the evolution of superconducting and normal state properties
of neutron irradiated Mg(BC) wire segments as a function
of post exposure annealing time and temperature. The initial fluence fully
suppressed superconductivity and resulted in an anisotropic expansion of the
unit cell. Superconductivity was restored by post-exposure annealing. The upper
critical field, H(T=0), approximately scales with T starting with an
undamaged T near 37 K and H(T=0) near 32 T. Up to an annealing
temperature of 400 C the recovery of T tends to coincide with a
decrease in the normal state resistivity and a systematic recovery of the
lattice parameters. Above 400 C a decrease in order along the c- direction
coincides with an increase in resistivity, but no apparent change in the
evolution of T and H. To first order, it appears that carbon doping
and neutron damaging effect the superconducting properties of MgB
independently
Anisotropic magnetoresistance in a 2DEG in a quasi-random magnetic field
We present magnetotransport results for a 2D electron gas (2DEG) subject to
the quasi-random magnetic field produced by randomly positioned sub-micron Co
dots deposited onto the surface of a GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure. We observe
strong local and non-local anisotropic magnetoresistance for external magnetic
fields in the plane of the 2DEG. Monte-Carlo calculations confirm that this is
due to the changing topology of the quasi-random magnetic field in which
electrons are guided predominantly along contours of zero magnetic field.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Systematic study of the two band/two gap superconductivity in carbon-substituted MgB2 by point-contact spectroscopy
Point-contact measurements on the carbon-substituted Mg(BC)
filament/powder samples directly reveal a retention of the two superconducting
energy gaps in the whole doping range from to . The
large gap on the -band is decreased in an essentially linear fashion
with increasing the carbon concentrations. The changes in the the small gap
up to 3.8 % C are proportionally smaller and are more difficult
to detect but for the heavily doped sample with and
K both gaps are still present, and significantly reduced, consistent with a
strong essentially linear, reduction of each gap with the transition
temperature.Comment: 5 eps figure
Co-Evolution of quasispecies: B-cell mutation rates maximize viral error catastrophes
Co-evolution of two coupled quasispecies is studied, motivated by the
competition between viral evolution and adapting immune response. In this
co-adaptive model, besides the classical error catastrophe for high virus
mutation rates, a second ``adaptation-'' catastrophe occurs, when virus
mutation rates are too small to escape immune attack. Maximizing both regimes
of viral error catastrophes is a possible strategy for an optimal immune
response, reducing the range of allowed viral mutation rates to a minimum. From
this requirement one obtains constraints on B-cell mutation rates and receptor
lengths, yielding an estimate of somatic hypermutation rates in the germinal
center in accordance with observation.Comment: 4 pages RevTeX including 2 figure
Superconducting and Normal State Properties of Neutron Irradiated MgB2
We have performed a systematic study of the evolution of the superconducting
and normal state properties of neutron irradiated MgB wire segments as a
function of fluence and post exposure annealing temperature and time. All
fluences used suppressed the transition temperature, Tc, below 5 K and expanded
the unit cell. For each annealing temperature Tc recovers with annealing time
and the upper critical field, Hc2(T=0), approximately scales with Tc. By
judicious choice of fluence, annealing temperature and time, the Tc of damaged
MgB2 can be tuned to virtually any value between 5 and 39 K. For higher
annealing temperatures and longer annealing times the recovery of Tc tends to
coincide with a decrease in the normal state resistivity and a systematic
recovery of the lattice parameters.Comment: Updated version, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Magnetic Photon Splitting: Computations of Proper-time Rates and Spectra
The splitting of photons in the presence of an intense magnetic field has
recently found astrophysical applications in polar cap models of gamma-ray
pulsars and in magnetar scenarios for soft gamma repeaters. Numerical
computation of the polarization-dependent rates of this third order QED process
for arbitrary field strengths and energies below pair creation threshold is
difficult: thus early analyses focused on analytic developments and simpler
asymptotic forms. The recent astrophysical interest spurred the use of the
S-matrix approach by Mentzel, Berg and Wunner to determine splitting rates. In
this paper, we present numerical computations of a full proper-time expression
for the rate of splitting that was obtained by Stoneham, and is exact up to the
pair creation threshold. While the numerical results derived here are in accord
with the earlier asymptotic forms due to Adler, our computed rates still differ
by as much as factors of 3 from the S-matrix re-evaluation of Wilke and Wunner,
reflecting the extreme difficulty of generating accurate S-matrix numerics for
fields below about \teq{4.4\times 10^{13}}Gauss. We find that our proper-time
rates appear very accurate, and exceed Adler's asymptotic specializations
significantly only for photon energies just below pair threshold and for
supercritical fields, but always by less than a factor of around 2.6. We also
provide a useful analytic series expansion for the scattering amplitude valid
at low energies.Comment: 13 pages, AASTeX format, including 3 eps figures, ApJ in pres
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