39,765 research outputs found
A Pyrrole-Based Triazolium-Phane with Nh and Cationic Ch Donor Groups as a Receptor for Tetrahedral Oxyanions that Functions in Polar Media
The pyrrole-based triazolium-phane 1(4+)center dot 4BF(4)(-) has been prepared via the tetraalkylation of a macrocycle originally prepared via click chemistry. It displays a high selectivity for tetrahedral oxyanions relative to various test monoanions and trigonal planar anions in mixed polar organic-aqueous media. This selectivity is solvent dependent and is less pronounced in acetonitrile. Theoretical calculations were carried out in with the chloride anion in an effort to understand the influence of solvent on the intrinsic hydrogen bonding ability of the donor groups (pyrrole N-H, benzene C-H and triazolium C-H). The host-guest interactions between receptor 1(4+)center dot 4BF(4)(-) and representative tetrahedral oxyanions were further analysed by H-1 NMR spectroscopy, and the findings proved consistent with the differences in the intrinsic strength of the various H-bond donor groups inferred from the electronic structure calculations carried out in methanol, namely that (CH)(+)-anion interactions are less important in an energetic sense than neutral CH-anion interactions in polar media. Single crystal X-ray diffraction analyses of the mixed salts 1(4+)center dot HP2O73-center dot BF4- and 31(4+)center dot 4H(2)PO(4)(-)center dot 8BF(4)(-) confirmed that receptor 1(4+) can bind the pyrophosphate and phosphate anions in the solid state.Cai, Jiajia, Benjamin P. Hay, Neil J. Young, Xiaoping Yang, and Jonathan L. Sessler. "A pyrrole-based triazolium-phane with NH and cationic CH donor groups as a receptor for tetrahedral oxyanions that functions in polar media." Chemical Science 4, no. 4 (Jan., 2013): 1560-1567.Chemistr
Testing the Lorentz and CPT Symmetry with CMB polarizations and a non-relativistic Maxwell Theory
We present a model for a system involving a photon gauge field and a scalar
field at quantum criticality in the frame of a Lifthitz-type non-relativistic
Maxwell theory. We will show this model gives rise to Lorentz and CPT violation
which leads to a frequency-dependent rotation of polarization plane of
radiations, and so leaves potential signals on the cosmic microwave background
temperature and polarization anisotropies.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, accepted on JCAP, a few references adde
Kinase-independent function of RIP1, critical for mature T-cell survival and proliferation.
The death receptor, Fas, triggers apoptotic death and is essential for maintaining homeostasis in the peripheral lymphoid organs. RIP1 was originally cloned when searching for Fas-binding proteins and was later shown to associate also with the signaling complex of TNFR1. Although Fas exclusively induces apoptosis, TNFR1 primarily activates the pro-survival/pro-inflammatory NF-κB pathway. Mutations in Fas lead to lymphoproliferative (lpr) diseases, and deletion of TNFR1 results in defective innate immune responses. However, the function of RIP1 in the adult lymphoid system has not been well understood, primarily owing to perinatal lethality in mice lacking the entire RIP1 protein in germ cells. This current study investigated the requirement for RIP1 in the T lineage using viable RIP1 mutant mice containing a conditional and kinase-dead RIP1 allele. Disabling the kinase activity of RIP1 had no obvious impact on the T-cell compartment. However, T-cell-specific deletion of RIP1 led to a severe T-lymphopenic condition, owing to a dramatically reduced mature T-cell pool in the periphery. Interestingly, the immature T-cell compartment in the thymus appeared intact. Further analysis showed that mature RIP1(-/-) T cells were severely defective in antigen receptor-induced proliferative responses. Moreover, the RIP1(-/-) T cells displayed greatly increased death and contained elevated caspase activities, an indication of apoptosis. In total, these results revealed a novel, kinase-independent function of RIP1, which is essential for not only promoting TCR-induced proliferative responses but also in blocking apoptosis in mature T cells
Distributed Random Process for a Large-Scale Peer-to-Peer Lottery
Most online lotteries today fail to ensure the verifiability of the random
process and rely on a trusted third party. This issue has received little
attention since the emergence of distributed protocols like Bitcoin that
demonstrated the potential of protocols with no trusted third party. We argue
that the security requirements of online lotteries are similar to those of
online voting, and propose a novel distributed online lottery protocol that
applies techniques developed for voting applications to an existing lottery
protocol. As a result, the protocol is scalable, provides efficient
verification of the random process and does not rely on a trusted third party
nor on assumptions of bounded computational resources. An early prototype
confirms the feasibility of our approach
FPTAS for Weighted Fibonacci Gates and Its Applications
Fibonacci gate problems have severed as computation primitives to solve other
problems by holographic algorithm and play an important role in the dichotomy
of exact counting for Holant and CSP frameworks. We generalize them to weighted
cases and allow each vertex function to have different parameters, which is a
much boarder family and #P-hard for exactly counting. We design a fully
polynomial-time approximation scheme (FPTAS) for this generalization by
correlation decay technique. This is the first deterministic FPTAS for
approximate counting in the general Holant framework without a degree bound. We
also formally introduce holographic reduction in the study of approximate
counting and these weighted Fibonacci gate problems serve as computation
primitives for approximate counting. Under holographic reduction, we obtain
FPTAS for other Holant problems and spin problems. One important application is
developing an FPTAS for a large range of ferromagnetic two-state spin systems.
This is the first deterministic FPTAS in the ferromagnetic range for two-state
spin systems without a degree bound. Besides these algorithms, we also develop
several new tools and techniques to establish the correlation decay property,
which are applicable in other problems
Dynamic entanglement in oscillating molecules and potential biological implications
We demonstrate that entanglement can persistently recur in an oscillating
two-spin molecule that is coupled to a hot and noisy environment, in which no
static entanglement can survive. The system represents a non-equilibrium
quantum system which, driven through the oscillatory motion, is prevented from
reaching its (separable) thermal equilibrium state. Environmental noise,
together with the driven motion, plays a constructive role by periodically
resetting the system, even though it will destroy entanglement as usual. As a
building block, the present simple mechanism supports the perspective that
entanglement can exist also in systems which are exposed to a hot environment
and to high levels of de-coherence, which we expect e.g. for biological
systems. Our results furthermore suggest that entanglement plays a role in the
heat exchange between molecular machines and environment. Experimental
simulation of our model with trapped ions is within reach of the current
state-of-the-art quantum technologies.Comment: Extended version, including supplementary information. 9 pages, 8
figure
Parameterized Algorithms for Graph Partitioning Problems
We study a broad class of graph partitioning problems, where each problem is
specified by a graph , and parameters and . We seek a subset
of size , such that is at most
(or at least) , where are constants
defining the problem, and are the cardinalities of the edge sets
having both endpoints, and exactly one endpoint, in , respectively. This
class of fixed cardinality graph partitioning problems (FGPP) encompasses Max
-Cut, Min -Vertex Cover, -Densest Subgraph, and -Sparsest
Subgraph.
Our main result is an algorithm for any problem in
this class, where is the maximum degree in the input graph.
This resolves an open question posed by Bonnet et al. [IPEC 2013]. We obtain
faster algorithms for certain subclasses of FGPPs, parameterized by , or by
. In particular, we give an time algorithm for Max
-Cut, thus improving significantly the best known time
algorithm
Thermodynamic Curvature of the BTZ Black Hole
Some thermodynamic properties of the Ba\~nados-Teitelboim-Zanelli (BTZ) black
hole are studied to get the effective dimension of its corresponding
statistical model. For this purpose, we make use of the geometrical approach to
the thermodynamics: Considering the black hole as a thermodynamic system with
two thermodynamic variables (the mass and the angular momemtum ), we
obtain two-dimensional Riemannian thermodynamic geometry described by positive
definite Ruppeiner metric. From the thermodynamic curvature we find that the
extremal limit is the critical point. The effective spatial dimension of the
statistical system corresponding to the near-extremal BTZ black holes is one.
Far from the extremal point, the effective dimension becomes less than one,
which leads to one possible speculation on the underlying structure for the
corresponding statistical model.Comment: 19 pages, LaTeX with revtex macro, 4 figures in eps file
Halo Sampling, Local Bias and Loop Corrections
We develop a new test of local bias, by constructing a locally biased halo
density field from sampling the dark matter-halo distribution. Our test differs
from conventional tests in that it preserves the full scatter in the bias
relation and it does not rely on perturbation theory. We put forward that bias
parameters obtained using a smoothing scale R can only be applied to computing
the halo power spectrum at scales k ~ 1/R. Our calculations can automatically
include the running of bias parameters and give vanishingly small loop
corrections at low-k. Our proposal results in much better agreement of the
sampling and perturbation theory results with simulations. In particular,
unlike the standard interpretation of local bias in the literature, our
treatment of local bias does not generate a constant power in the low-k limit.
We search for extra noise in the Poisson corrected halo power spectrum at
wavenumbers below its turn-over and find no evidence of significant positive
noise (as predicted by the standard interpretation) while we find evidence of
negative noise coming from halo exclusion for very massive halos. Using
perturbation theory and our non-perturbative sampling technique we also
demonstrate that nonlocal bias effects discovered recently in simulations
impact the power spectrum only at the few percent level in the weakly nonlinear
regime.Comment: 25 pages, 14 figures; V2: significant revision including more details
about halo exclusion and low-k noise. Conclusions unchange
Notes on Matter in Horava-Lifshitz Gravity
We investigate the dynamics of a scalar field governed by the Lifshitz-type
action which should appear naturally in Horava-Lifshitz gravity. The wave of
the scalar field may propagate with any speed without an upper bound. To
preserve the causality, the action cannot have a generic form. Due to the
superluminal propagation, a formation of a singularity may cause the breakdown
of the predictability of the theory. To check whether such a catastrophe could
occur in Horava-Lifshitz gravity, we investigate the dynamics of a dust. It
turns out that the dust does not collapse completely to form a singularity in a
generic situation, but expands again after it attains a maximum energy density.Comment: 14 pages, references adde
- …