322 research outputs found
Competing field pulse induced dynamic transition in Ising models
The dynamic magnetization-reversal phenomena in the Ising model under a
finite-duration external magnetic field competing with the existing order for
has been discussed. The nature of the phase boundary has been
estimated from the mean-field equation of motion. The susceptibility and
relaxation time diverge at the MF phase boundary. A Monte Carlo study also
shows divergence of relaxation time around the phase boundary. Fluctuation of
order parameter also diverge near the phase boundary. The behavior of the
fourth order cumulant shows two distinct behavior: for low temperature and
pulse duration region of the phase boundary the value of the cumulant at the
crossing point for different system sizes is much less than that corersponding
to the static transition in the same dimension which indicate a new
universality class for the dynamic transition. Also, for higher temperature and
pulse duration, the transition seem to fall in a mean-field like
weak-singularity universality class.Comment: 12 pages, 17 ps & eps figures, to appear in a Special Issue of Phase
Transitions (2004), Ed. S. Pur
Economic Inequality: Is it Natural?
Mounting evidences are being gathered suggesting that income and wealth
distribution in various countries or societies follow a robust pattern, close
to the Gibbs distribution of energy in an ideal gas in equilibrium, but also
deviating significantly for high income groups. Application of physics models
seem to provide illuminating ideas and understanding, complimenting the
observations.Comment: 7 pages, 2 eps figs, 2 boxes with text and 2 eps figs; Popular review
To appear in Current Science; typos in refs and text correcte
Money in Gas-Like Markets: Gibbs and Pareto Laws
We consider the ideal-gas models of trading markets, where each agent is
identified with a gas molecule and each trading as an elastic or
money-conserving (two-body) collision. Unlike in the ideal gas, we introduce
saving propensity of agents, such that each agent saves a fraction
of its money and trades with the rest. We show the steady-state money
or wealth distribution in a market is Gibbs-like for , has got a
non-vanishing most-probable value for and Pareto-like when
is widely distributed among the agents. We compare these results with
observations on wealth distributions of various countries.Comment: 4 pages, 2 eps figures, in Conference Procedings of International
Conference on "Unconventional Applications of Statistical Physics", Kolkata,
India, March 2003; paper published in Physica Scripta T106 (2003) 3
Back to the Future: Lessons Learned in Modern Target-based and Whole-Cell Lead Optimization of Antimalarials
Antimalarial drug discovery has historically benefited from the whole-cell (phenotypic) screening approach to identify lead molecules in the search for new drugs. However over the past two decades there has been a shift in the pharmaceutical industry to move away from whole-cell screening to target-based approaches. As part of a Wellcome Trust and Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) funded consortium to discover new blood-stage antimalarials, we used both approaches to identify new antimalarial chemotypes, two of which have progressed beyond the lead optimization phase and display excellent in vivo efficacy in mice. These two advanced series were identified through a cell-based optimization devoid of target information and in this review we summarize the advantages of this approach versus a target-based optimization. Although the each lead optimization required slightly different medicinal chemistry strategies, we observed some common issues across the different the scaffolds which could be applied to other cell based lead optimization programs
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