8,900 research outputs found
A unique facility for V/STOL aircraft hover testing
The Langley Impact Dynamics Research Facility (IDRF) was modified to obtain static force and moment data and to allow assessment of aircraft handling qualities during dynamic tethered hover flight. Test probe procedures were also established. Static lift and control measurements obtained are presented along with results of limited dynamic tethered hover flight
A "partitioned leaping" approach for multiscale modeling of chemical reaction dynamics
We present a novel multiscale simulation approach for modeling stochasticity
in chemical reaction networks. The approach seamlessly integrates
exact-stochastic and "leaping" methodologies into a single "partitioned
leaping" algorithmic framework. The technique correctly accounts for stochastic
noise at significantly reduced computational cost, requires the definition of
only three model-independent parameters and is particularly well-suited for
simulating systems containing widely disparate species populations. We present
the theoretical foundations of partitioned leaping, discuss various options for
its practical implementation and demonstrate the utility of the method via
illustrative examples.Comment: v4: 12 pages, 5 figures, final accepted version. Error found and
fixed in Appendi
Robust Trapped-Ion Quantum Logic Gates by Continuous Dynamical Decoupling
We introduce a novel scheme that combines phonon-mediated quantum logic gates
in trapped ions with the benefits of continuous dynamical decoupling. We
demonstrate theoretically that a strong driving of the qubit decouples it from
external magnetic-field noise, enhancing the fidelity of two-qubit quantum
gates. Moreover, the scheme does not require ground-state cooling, and is
inherently robust to undesired ac-Stark shifts. The underlying mechanism can be
extended to a variety of other systems where a strong driving protects the
quantum coherence of the qubits without compromising the two-qubit couplings.Comment: Slightly longer than the published versio
StochKit-FF: Efficient Systems Biology on Multicore Architectures
The stochastic modelling of biological systems is an informative, and in some
cases, very adequate technique, which may however result in being more
expensive than other modelling approaches, such as differential equations. We
present StochKit-FF, a parallel version of StochKit, a reference toolkit for
stochastic simulations. StochKit-FF is based on the FastFlow programming
toolkit for multicores and exploits the novel concept of selective memory. We
experiment StochKit-FF on a model of HIV infection dynamics, with the aim of
extracting information from efficiently run experiments, here in terms of
average and variance and, on a longer term, of more structured data.Comment: 14 pages + cover pag
Malaria in Northern Ireland
The clinical features, parasitology and prophylactic history of 67 patients who imported malaria to Northern Ireland between 1974 and 1983 are reported. P. falciparum infections were encountered more frequently than anticipated from current United Kingdom experience. The clinical implications of these findings are discussed
Enhancement of the stability of genetic switches by overlapping upstream regulatory domains
We study genetic switches formed from pairs of mutually repressing operons.
The switch stability is characterised by a well defined lifetime which grows
sub-exponentially with the number of copies of the most-expressed transcription
factor, in the regime accessible by our numerical simulations. The stability
can be markedly enhanced by a suitable choice of overlap between the upstream
regulatory domains. Our results suggest that robustness against biochemical
noise can provide a selection pressure that drives operons, that regulate each
other, together in the course of evolution.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, RevTeX
Stronger computational modelling of signalling pathways using both continuous and discrete-state methods
Starting from a biochemical signalling pathway model expresses in a process algebra enriched with quantitative information, we automatically derive both continuous-space and discrete-space representations suitable for numerical evaluation. We compare results obtained using approximate stochastic simulation thereby exposing a flaw in the use of the differentiation procedure producing misleading results
Number of adaptive steps to a local fitness peak
We consider a population of genotype sequences evolving on a rugged fitness
landscape with many local fitness peaks. The population walks uphill until it
encounters a local fitness maximum. We find that the statistical properties of
the walk length depend on whether the underlying fitness distribution has a
finite mean. If the mean is finite, all the walk length cumulants grow with the
sequence length but approach a constant otherwise. Experimental implications of
our analytical results are also discussed
Calibrating AIS images using the surface as a reference
A method of evaluating the initial assumptions and uncertainties of the physical connection between Airborne Imaging Spectrometer (AIS) image data and laboratory/field spectrometer data was tested. The Tuscon AIS-2 image connects to lab reference spectra by an alignment to the image spectral endmembers through a system gain and offset for each band. Images were calibrated to reflectance so as to transform the image into a measure that is independent of the solar radiant flux. This transformation also makes the image spectra directly comparable to data from lab and field spectrometers. A method was tested for calibrating AIS images using the surface as a reference. The surface heterogeneity is defined by lab/field spectral measurements. It was found that the Tuscon AIS-2 image is consistent with each of the initial hypotheses: (1) that the AIS-2 instrument calibration is nearly linear; (2) the spectral variance is caused by sub-pixel mixtures of spectrally distinct materials and shade, and (3) that sub-pixel mixtures can be treated as linear mixtures of pure endmembers. It was also found that the image can be characterized by relatively few endmembers using the AIS-2 spectra
Numerical simulation of unconstrained cyclotron resonant maser emission
When a mainly rectilinear electron beam is subject to significant magnetic compression, conservation of magnetic moment results in the formation of a horseshoe shaped velocity distribution. It has been shown that such a distribution is unstable to cyclotron emission and may be responsible for the generation of Auroral Kilometric Radiation (AKR) an intense rf emission sourced at high altitudes in the terrestrial auroral magnetosphere. PiC code simulations have been undertaken to investigate the dynamics of the cyclotron emission process in the absence of cavity boundaries with particular consideration of the spatial growth rate, spectral output and rf conversion efficiency. Computations reveal that a well-defined cyclotron emission process occurs albeit with a low spatial growth rate compared to waveguide bounded simulations. The rf output is near perpendicular to the electron beam with a slight backward-wave character reflected in the spectral output with a well defined peak at 2.68GHz, just below the relativistic electron cyclotron frequency. The corresponding rf conversion efficiency of 1.1% is comparable to waveguide bounded simulations and consistent with the predictions of kinetic theory that suggest efficient, spectrally well defined radiation emission can be obtained from an electron horseshoe distribution in the absence of radiation boundaries.Publisher PD
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