S and D Wave Mixing in High TcT_c Superconductors

For a tight binding model with nearest neighbour attraction and a small orthorhombic distortion, we find a phase diagram for the gap at zero temperature which includes three distinct regions as a function of filling. In the first, the gap is a mixture of mainly $d$-wave with a smaller extended $s$-wave part. This is followed by a region in which there is a rapid increase in the $s$-wave part accompanied by a rapid increase in relative phase between $s$ and $d$ from 0 to $\pi$. Finally, there is a region of dominant $s$ with a mixture of $d$ and zero phase. In the mixed region with a finite phase, the $s$-wave part of the gap can show a sudden increase with decreasing temperature accompanied with a rapid increase in phase which shows many of the characteristics measured in the angular resolved photoemission experiments of Ma {\em et al.} in $\rm Bi_2Sr_2CaCu_2O_8$Comment: 12 pages, RevTeX 3.0, 3 PostScript figures uuencoded and compresse

Technology and Discourse: A Comparison of Face-to-face and Telephone Employment Interviews

Very little research has investigated the comparability of telephone and face-to-face employment interviews. This exploratory study investigated interviewers' questioning strategies and applicants' causal attributions produced during semi structured telephone and face-to-face graduate recruitment interviews (N=62). A total of 2044 causal attributions were extracted from verbatim transcripts of these 62 interviews. It was predicted that an absence of visual cues would lead applicants to produce, and interviewers to focus on, information that might reduce the comparative anonymity of telephone interviews. Results indicate that applicants produce more personal causal attributions in telephone interviews. Personal attributions are also associated with higher ratings in telephone, but not face-to-face interviews. In face-to-face interviews, applicants who attributed outcomes to more global causes received lower ratings. There was also a non-significant tendency for interviewers to ask more closed questions in telephone interviews. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed

An In-Out Approach to Disjunctive Optimization

Abstract. Cutting plane methods are widely used for solving convex optimization problems and are of fundamental importance, e.g., to pro-vide tight bounds for Mixed-Integer Programs (MIPs). This is obtained by embedding a cut-separation module within a search scheme. The importance of a sound search scheme is well known in the Constraint Programming (CP) community. Unfortunately, the “standard ” search scheme typically used for MIP problems, known as the Kelley method, is often quite unsatisfactory because of saturation issues. In this paper we address the so-called Lift-and-Project closure for 0-1 MIPs associated with all disjunctive cuts generated from a given set of elementary disjunction. We focus on the search scheme embedding the generated cuts. In particular, we analyze a general meta-scheme for cutting plane algorithms, called in-out search, that was recently proposed by Ben-Ameur and Neto [1]. Computational results on test instances from the literature are presented, showing that using a more clever meta-scheme on top of a black-box cut generator may lead to a significant improvement

Observation of exclusive DVCS in polarized electron beam asymmetry measurements

We report the first results of the beam spin asymmetry measured in the reaction e + p -> e + p + gamma at a beam energy of 4.25 GeV. A large asymmetry with a sin(phi) modulation is observed, as predicted for the interference term of Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering and the Bethe-Heitler process. The amplitude of this modulation is alpha = 0.202 +/- 0.028. In leading-order and leading-twist pQCD, the alpha is directly proportional to the imaginary part of the DVCS amplitude.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

A Kinematically Complete Measurement of the Proton Structure Function F2 in the Resonance Region and Evaluation of Its Moments

We measured the inclusive electron-proton cross section in the nucleon resonance region (W < 2.5 GeV) at momentum transfers Q**2 below 4.5 (GeV/c)**2 with the CLAS detector. The large acceptance of CLAS allowed for the first time the measurement of the cross section in a large, contiguous two-dimensional range of Q**2 and x, making it possible to perform an integration of the data at fixed Q**2 over the whole significant x-interval. From these data we extracted the structure function F2 and, by including other world data, we studied the Q**2 evolution of its moments, Mn(Q**2), in order to estimate higher twist contributions. The small statistical and systematic uncertainties of the CLAS data allow a precise extraction of the higher twists and demand significant improvements in theoretical predictions for a meaningful comparison with new experimental results.Comment: revtex4 18 pp., 12 figure

Green function techniques in the treatment of quantum transport at the molecular scale

The theoretical investigation of charge (and spin) transport at nanometer length scales requires the use of advanced and powerful techniques able to deal with the dynamical properties of the relevant physical systems, to explicitly include out-of-equilibrium situations typical for electrical/heat transport as well as to take into account interaction effects in a systematic way. Equilibrium Green function techniques and their extension to non-equilibrium situations via the Keldysh formalism build one of the pillars of current state-of-the-art approaches to quantum transport which have been implemented in both model Hamiltonian formulations and first-principle methodologies. We offer a tutorial overview of the applications of Green functions to deal with some fundamental aspects of charge transport at the nanoscale, mainly focusing on applications to model Hamiltonian formulations.Comment: Tutorial review, LaTeX, 129 pages, 41 figures, 300 references, submitted to Springer series "Lecture Notes in Physics

Human macrophages differentiated in the presence of vitamin D3 restrict dengue virus infection and innate responses by downregulating mannose receptor expression

ABSTARCT: Severe dengue disease is associated with high viral loads and overproduction of pro-inflammatory cytokines, suggesting impairment in the control of dengue virus (DENV) and the mechanisms that regulate cytokine production. Vitamin D3 has been described as an important modulator of immune responses to several pathogens. Interestingly, increasing evidence has associated vitamin D with decreased DENV infection and early disease recovery, yet the molecular mechanisms whereby vitamin D reduces DENV infection are not well understood. METHODS AND PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Macrophages represent important cell targets for DENV replication and consequently, they are key drivers of dengue disease. In this study we evaluated the effect of vitamin D3 on the differentiation of monocyte-derived macrophages (MDM) and their susceptibility and cytokine response to DENV. Our data demonstrate that MDM differentiated in the presence of vitamin D3 (D3-MDM) restrict DENV infection and moderate the classical inflammatory cytokine response. Mechanistically, vitamin D3-driven differentiation led to reduced surface expression of C-type lectins including the mannose receptor (MR, CD206) that is known to act as primary receptor for DENV attachment on macrophages and to trigger of immune signaling. Consequently, DENV bound less efficiently to vitamin D3-differentiated macrophages, leading to lower infection. Interestingly, IL-4 enhanced infection was reduced in D3-MDM by restriction of MR expression. Moreover, we detected moderate secretion of TNF-α, IL-1β, and IL-10 in D3-MDM, likely due to less MR engagement during DENV infection. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our findings reveal a molecular mechanism by which vitamin D counteracts DENV infection and progression of severe disease, and indicates its potential relevance as a preventive or therapeutic candidate

Preconditioning Newton-Krylov Methods in Non-Convex Large Scale Optimization

We consider an iterative preconditioning technique for non-convex large scale optimization. First, we refer to the solution of large scale indefinite linear systems by using a Krylov subspace method, and describe the iterative construction of a preconditioner which does not involve matrices products or matrices storage. The set of directions generated by the Krylov subspace method is used, as by product, to provide an approximate inverse preconditioner. Then, we experience our preconditioner within Truncated Newton schemes for large scale unconstrained optimization, where we generalize the truncation rule by Nash–Sofer (Oper. Res. Lett. 9:219–221, 1990) to the indefinite case, too. We use a Krylov subspace method to both approximately solve the Newton equation and to construct the preconditioner to be used at the current outer iteration. An extensive numerical experience shows that the proposed preconditioning strategy, compared with the unpreconditioned strategy and PREQN (Morales and Nocedal in SIAM J. Optim. 10:1079–1096, 2000), may lead to a reduction of the overall inner iterations. Finally, we show that our proposal has some similarities with the Limited Memory Preconditioners (Gratton et al. in SIAM J. Optim. 21:912–935, 2011)

Tensor Polarization of the phi meson Photoproduced at High t

As part of a measurement of the cross section of $\phi$ meson photoproduction to high momentum transfer, we measured the polar angular decay distribution of the outgoing $K^+$ in the channel $\phi \to K^+K^-$ in the $\phi$ center-of-mass frame (the helicity frame). We find that s-channel helicity conservation (SCHC) holds in the kinematical range where $t$-channel exchange dominates (up to $-t \sim 2.5$ GeV$^2$ for $E_{\gamma}$=3.6 GeV). Above this momentum, $u$-channel production of a $\phi$ meson dominates and induces a violation of SCHC. The deduced value of the $\phi NN$ coupling constant lies in the upper range of previously reported values.Comment: 6 pages; 5 figure