1,753 research outputs found
A cluster theory for a Janus fluid
Recent Monte Carlo simulations on the Kern and Frenkel model of a Janus fluid
have revealed that in the vapour phase there is the formation of preferred
clusters made up of a well-defined number of particles: the micelles and the
vesicles. A cluster theory is developed to approximate the exact clustering
properties stemming from the simulations. It is shown that the theory is able
to reproduce the micellisation phenomenon.Comment: 27 pages, 8 figures, 6 table
Free expansion of lowest Landau level states of trapped atoms: a wavefunction microscope
We show that for any lowest-Landau-level state of a trapped, rotating,
interacting Bose gas, the particle distribution in coordinate space in a free
expansion (time of flight) experiment is related to that in the trap at the
time it is turned off by a simple rescaling and rotation. When the
lowest-Landau-level approximation is valid, interactions can be neglected
during the expansion, even when they play an essential role in the ground state
when the trap is present. The correlations in the density in a single snapshot
can be used to obtain information about the fluid, such as whether a transition
to a quantum Hall state has occurred.Comment: 5 pages, no figures. v2: discussion of neglect of interactions during
expansion improved, refs adde
HPV-18 transformed cells fail to arrest in G1 in response to quercetin treatment
Previous work with primary human keratinocytes demonstrated that quercetin, a potent mutagen found in high levels in bracken fern (Pteridium aquilinum), arrested cells in G1 with concomitant elevation of the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor (cdki) p27Kip1. Expression of the human papillomavirus type 16 (HPV-16) E6 and E7 oncoproteins, under transcriptional control of a heterologous promoter, in transformed keratinocytes failed to abrogate this arrest [Beniston, R., Campo, M.S., 2003. Quercetin elevates p27(Kip1) and arrests both primary and HPV-16 E6/E7 transformed human keratinocytes in G1. Oncogene 22, 5504–5514]. Given the link between papillomavirus infection, bracken fern in the diet and cancer of the oesophagus in humans, we wished to investigate further whether cells transformed by the whole genome of HPV-16 or HPV-18, with E6 and E7 under the transcriptional control of their respective homologous promoters, would be similarly arrested in G1 by quercetin. In agreement with earlier work, quercetin arrested HPV-16 transformed cells in G1 with an increase in the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor p27Kip1. However, HPV-18 transformed cells did not arrest after quercetin treatment. The failure of HPV-18 transformed cells to arrest in G1 was linked to the up-regulation of the HPV-18 long control region (LCR) by quercetin, maintaining high expression of the viral transforming proteins. Transcriptional up-regulation of the HPV-18 LCR was mediated by a “quercetin responsive element” homologous to the one identified previously in the bovine papillomavirus type 4 (BPV-4) LCR
Revisiting the SN1987A gamma-ray limit on ultralight axion-like particles
We revise the bound from the supernova SN1987A on the coupling of ultralight
axion-like particles (ALPs) to photons. In a core-collapse supernova, ALPs
would be emitted via the Primakoff process, and eventually convert into gamma
rays in the magnetic field of the Milky Way. The lack of a gamma-ray signal in
the GRS instrument of the SMM satellite in coincidence with the observation of
the neutrinos emitted from SN1987A therefore provides a strong bound on their
coupling to photons. Due to the large uncertainty associated with the current
bound, we revise this argument, based on state-of-the-art physical inputs both
for the supernova models and for the Milky-Way magnetic field. Furthermore, we
provide major amendments, such as the consistent treatment of
nucleon-degeneracy effects and of the reduction of the nuclear masses in the
hot and dense nuclear medium of the supernova. With these improvements, we
obtain a new upper limit on the photon-ALP coupling: g_{a\gamma} < 5.3 x
10^{-12} GeV^{-1}, for m_a < 4.4 x 10^{-10} eV, and we also give its dependence
at larger ALP masses. Moreover, we discuss how much the Fermi-LAT satellite
experiment could improve this bound, should a close-enough supernova explode in
the near future.Comment: Accepted for publication in JCAP (December 22nd, 2014
Pair creation: back-reactions and damping
We solve the quantum Vlasov equation for fermions and bosons, incorporating
spontaneous pair creation in the presence of back-reactions and collisions.
Pair creation is initiated by an external impulse field and the source term is
non-Markovian. A simultaneous solution of Maxwell's equation in the presence of
feedback yields an internal current and electric field that exhibit plasma
oscillations with a period tau_pl. Allowing for collisions, these oscillations
are damped on a time-scale, tau_r, determined by the collision frequency.
Plasma oscillations cannot affect the early stages of the formation of a
quark-gluon plasma unless tau_r >> tau_pl and tau_pl approx. 1/Lambda_QCD
approx 1 fm/c.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figure, REVTEX, epsfig.st
Deterministic and stochastic descriptions of gene expression dynamics
A key goal of systems biology is the predictive mathematical description of
gene regulatory circuits. Different approaches are used such as deterministic
and stochastic models, models that describe cell growth and division explicitly
or implicitly etc. Here we consider simple systems of unregulated
(constitutive) gene expression and compare different mathematical descriptions
systematically to obtain insight into the errors that are introduced by various
common approximations such as describing cell growth and division by an
effective protein degradation term. In particular, we show that the population
average of protein content of a cell exhibits a subtle dependence on the
dynamics of growth and division, the specific model for volume growth and the
age structure of the population. Nevertheless, the error made by models with
implicit cell growth and division is quite small. Furthermore, we compare
various models that are partially stochastic to investigate the impact of
different sources of (intrinsic) noise. This comparison indicates that
different sources of noise (protein synthesis, partitioning in cell division)
contribute comparable amounts of noise if protein synthesis is not or only
weakly bursty. If protein synthesis is very bursty, the burstiness is the
dominant noise source, independent of other details of the model. Finally, we
discuss two sources of extrinsic noise: cell-to-cell variations in protein
content due to cells being at different stages in the division cycles, which we
show to be small (for the protein concentration and, surprisingly, also for the
protein copy number per cell) and fluctuations in the growth rate, which can
have a significant impact.Comment: 23 pages, 5 figures; Journal of Statistical physics (2012
Coherent states for exactly solvable potentials
A general algebraic procedure for constructing coherent states of a wide
class of exactly solvable potentials e.g., Morse and P{\"o}schl-Teller, is
given. The method, {\it a priori}, is potential independent and connects with
earlier developed ones, including the oscillator based approaches for coherent
states and their generalizations. This approach can be straightforwardly
extended to construct more general coherent states for the quantum mechanical
potential problems, like the nonlinear coherent states for the oscillators. The
time evolution properties of some of these coherent states, show revival and
fractional revival, as manifested in the autocorrelation functions, as well as,
in the quantum carpet structures.Comment: 11 pages, 4 eps figures, uses graphicx packag
Radiative β decay of the free neutron
The theory of quantum electrodynamics predicts that the β decay of the neutron into a proton, electron, and antineutrino is accompanied by a continuous spectrum of emitted photons described as inner bremsstrahlung. While this phenomenon has been observed in nuclear β decay and electron-capture decay for many years, it has only been recently observed in free-neutron decay. We present a detailed discussion of an experiment in which the radiative decay mode of the free neutron was observed. In this experiment, the branching ratio for this rare decay was determined by recording photons that were correlated with both the electron and proton emitted in neutron decay. We determined the branching ratio for photons with energy between 15 and 340 keV to be (3.09±0.32)×10-3 (68% level of confidence), where the uncertainty is dominated by systematic effects. This value for the branching ratio is consistent with theoretical predictions. The characteristic energy spectrum of the radiated photons, which differs from the uncorrelated background spectrum, is also consistent with the theoretical spectrum
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