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Vertical-axis wind turbines -- The current status of an old technology
Vertical-axis wind turbine technology is not well understood, even though the earliest wind machines rotated about a vertical axis. The operating environment of a vertical-axis wind turbine is quite complex, but detailed analysis capabilities have been developed and verified over the last 30 years. Although vertical-axis technology has not been widely commercialized, it exhibits both advantages and disadvantages compared to horizontal-axis technology, and in some applications, it appears to offer significant advantages
Spatio-temporal patterns generated by Salmonella typhimurium
We present experimental results on the bacterium Salmonella typhimurium which show that cells of chemotactic strains aggregate in response to gradients of amino acids, attractants that they themselves excrete. Depending on the conditions under which cells are cultured, they form periodic arrays of continuous or perforated rings, which arise sequentially within a spreading bacterial lawn. Based on these experiments, we develop a biologically realistic cell-chemotaxis model to describe the self-organization of bacteria. Numerical and analytical investigations of the model mechanism show how the two types of observed geometric patterns can be generated by the interaction of the cells with chemoattractant they produce
Flattening fixed-angle chains is strongly NP-hard
12th International Symposium, WADS 2011, New York, NY, USA, August 15-17, 2011. ProceedingsPlanar configurations of fixed-angle chains and trees are well studied in polymer science and molecular biology. We prove that it is strongly NP-hard to decide whether a polygonal chain with fixed edge lengths and angles has a planar configuration without crossings. In particular, flattening is NP-hard when all the edge lengths are equal, whereas a previous (weak) NP-hardness proof used lengths that differ in size by an exponential factor. Our NP-hardness result also holds for (nonequilateral) chains with angles in the range [60° − ε,180°], whereas flattening is known to be always possible (and hence polynomially solvable) for equilateral chains with angles in the range (60°,150°) and for general chains with angles in the range [90°,180°]. We also show that the flattening problem is strongly NP-hard for equilateral fixed-angle trees, even when every angle is either 90° or 180°. Finally, we show that strong NP-hardness carries over to the previously studied problems of computing the minimum or maximum span (distance between endpoints) among non-crossing planar configurations
Detection of Pathogens with Impedance Analysis in a Lab on a Chip
In this work, we demonstrate an impedance approach to detect pathogens bound to magnetic beads. The approach was demonstrated with C-Albicans. We show that when an appropriate frequency is applied to two electrodes present in a microfluidic channel the impedance change in the detection volume can be used to distinguish between unbound beads and beads bound to pathogens. Furthermore, we present a model to relate measured impedance changes to an effective particle diameter
Neutral Pions and Eta Mesons as Probes of the Hadronic Fireball in Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions around 1A GeV
Chemical and thermal freeze-out of the hadronic fireball formed in symmetric
collisions of light, intermediate-mass, and heavy nuclei at beam energies
between 0.8A GeV and 2.0A GeV are discussed in terms of an equilibrated,
isospin-symmetric ideal hadron gas with grand-canonical baryon-number
conservation. For each collision system the baryochemical potential mu_B and
the chemical freeze-out temperature T_c are deduced from the inclusive neutral
pion and eta yields which are augmented by interpolated data on deuteron
production. With increasing beam energy mu_B drops from 800 MeV to 650 MeV,
while T_c rises from 55 MeV to 90 MeV. For given beam energy mu_B grows with
system size, whereas T_c remains constant. The centrality dependence of the
freeze-out parameters is weak as exemplified by the system Au+Au at 0.8A GeV.
For the highest beam energies the fraction of nucleons excited to resonance
states reaches freeze-out values of nearly 15 %, suggesting resonance densities
close to normal nuclear density at maximum compression. In contrast to the
particle yields, which convey the status at chemical freeze-out, the shapes of
the related transverse-mass spectra do reflect thermal freeze-out. The observed
thermal freeze-out temperatures T_th are equal to or slightly lower than T_c,
indicative of nearly simultaneous chemical and thermal freeze-out.Comment: 42 pages, 12 figure
Bounds on masses of bulk fields in string compactifications
In string compactification on a manifold X, in addition to the string scale
and the normal scales of low-energy particle physics, there is a Kaluza-Klein
scale 1/R associated with the size of X. We present an argument that generic
string models with low-energy supersymmetry have, after moduli stabilization,
bulk fields with masses which are parametrically lighter than 1/R. We discuss
the implications of these light states for anomaly mediation and gaugino
mediation scenarios.Comment: 15 page
Monte Carlo Methods for Estimating Interfacial Free Energies and Line Tensions
Excess contributions to the free energy due to interfaces occur for many
problems encountered in the statistical physics of condensed matter when
coexistence between different phases is possible (e.g. wetting phenomena,
nucleation, crystal growth, etc.). This article reviews two methods to estimate
both interfacial free energies and line tensions by Monte Carlo simulations of
simple models, (e.g. the Ising model, a symmetrical binary Lennard-Jones fluid
exhibiting a miscibility gap, and a simple Lennard-Jones fluid). One method is
based on thermodynamic integration. This method is useful to study flat and
inclined interfaces for Ising lattices, allowing also the estimation of line
tensions of three-phase contact lines, when the interfaces meet walls (where
"surface fields" may act). A generalization to off-lattice systems is described
as well.
The second method is based on the sampling of the order parameter
distribution of the system throughout the two-phase coexistence region of the
model. Both the interface free energies of flat interfaces and of (spherical or
cylindrical) droplets (or bubbles) can be estimated, including also systems
with walls, where sphere-cap shaped wall-attached droplets occur. The
curvature-dependence of the interfacial free energy is discussed, and estimates
for the line tensions are compared to results from the thermodynamic
integration method. Basic limitations of all these methods are critically
discussed, and an outlook on other approaches is given
Lubricating Bacteria Model for Branching growth of Bacterial Colonies
Various bacterial strains (e.g. strains belonging to the genera Bacillus,
Paenibacillus, Serratia and Salmonella) exhibit colonial branching patterns
during growth on poor semi-solid substrates. These patterns reflect the
bacterial cooperative self-organization. Central part of the cooperation is the
collective formation of lubricant on top of the agar which enables the bacteria
to swim. Hence it provides the colony means to advance towards the food. One
method of modeling the colonial development is via coupled reaction-diffusion
equations which describe the time evolution of the bacterial density and the
concentrations of the relevant chemical fields. This idea has been pursued by a
number of groups. Here we present an additional model which specifically
includes an evolution equation for the lubricant excreted by the bacteria. We
show that when the diffusion of the fluid is governed by nonlinear diffusion
coefficient branching patterns evolves. We study the effect of the rates of
emission and decomposition of the lubricant fluid on the observed patterns. The
results are compared with experimental observations. We also include fields of
chemotactic agents and food chemotaxis and conclude that these features are
needed in order to explain the observations.Comment: 1 latex file, 16 jpeg files, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Curved Tails in Polymerization-Based Bacterial Motility
The curved actin ``comet-tail'' of the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes is a
visually striking signature of actin polymerization-based motility. Similar
actin tails are associated with Shigella flexneri, spotted-fever Rickettsiae,
the Vaccinia virus, and vesicles and microspheres in related in vitro systems.
We show that the torque required to produce the curvature in the tail can arise
from randomly placed actin filaments pushing the bacterium or particle. We find
that the curvature magnitude determines the number of actively pushing
filaments, independent of viscosity and of the molecular details of force
generation. The variation of the curvature with time can be used to infer the
dynamics of actin filaments at the bacterial surface.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, Latex2
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