196 research outputs found
Geometrical Frustration: A Study of 4d Hard Spheres
The smallest maximum kissing-number Voronoi polyhedron of 3d spheres is the
icosahedron and the tetrahedron is the smallest volume that can show up in
Delaunay tessalation. No periodic lattice is consistent with either and hence
these dense packings are geometrically frustrated. Because icosahedra can be
assembled from almost perfect tetrahedra, the terms "icosahedral" and
"polytetrahedral" packing are often used interchangeably, which leaves the true
origin of geometric frustration unclear. Here we report a computational study
of freezing of 4d hard spheres, where the densest Voronoi cluster is compatible
with the symmetry of the densest crystal, while polytetrahedral order is not.
We observe that, under otherwise comparable conditions, crystal nucleation in
4d is less facile than in 3d. This suggest that it is the geometrical
frustration of polytetrahedral structures that inhibits crystallization.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures; revised interpretatio
On colouring point visibility graphs
In this paper we show that it can be decided in polynomial time whether or
not the visibility graph of a given point set is 4-colourable, and such a
4-colouring, if it exists, can also be constructed in polynomial time. We show
that the problem of deciding whether the visibility graph of a point set is
5-colourable, is NP-complete. We give an example of a point visibility graph
that has chromatic number 6 while its clique number is only 4
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Effects of the Mycoparasite Sphaerellopsis filum on Overwintering Survival of Stem Rust in Perennial Ryegrass
Sphaerellopsis filum is a mycoparasite of Puccinia graminis subsp. graminicola, a rust fungus that causes widespread crop damage on perennial ryegrass grown for seed. In observations taken over the winter months, S. filum was found naturally colonizing 2% of P. graminis subsp. graminicola uredinia on first-year plantings and 25% of the uredinia on second-year plantings of perennial ryegrass. In controlled experiments conducted in glasshouses and growth chambers, S. filum applied to rust-inoculated plants reduced the lifetime spore production of P. graminis subsp. graminicola pustules by half, from 39,000 to 18,000 spores/pustule. Mist duration, temperature, and P. graminis subsp. graminicola pustule age at the time of S. filum inoculation had significant effects on the proportion of P. graminis subsp. graminicola pustules infected by S. filum. Fifty percent of all P. graminis subsp. graminicola pustules were infected when S. filum was inoculated onto erumpent pustules and incubated above 5°C for 48 h while exposed to mist. Plants inoculated with both fungi under controlled conditions and then planted into the field had a significantly greater proportion of P. graminis subsp. graminicola pustules infected with S. filum, and a significantly reduced P. graminis subsp. graminicola overwintering population, compared with plants inoculated with P. graminis subsp. graminicola only. First-year stands of perennial ryegrass treated in the field with monthly applications of S. filum had more than 10 times the proportion of pustules infected with S. filum and 50% less P. graminis subsp. graminicola disease compared with the nontreated controls. In comparison, plants with one application of fungicide during the winter had 98% lower P. graminis subsp. graminicola severity than the P. graminis subsp. graminicola-only control There were no effects of S. filum or fungicide application on rust severity in 2- or 3-year-old perennial ryegrass stands
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Infection of Brachypodium distachyon by Formae Speciales of Puccinia graminis: Early Infection Events and Host-Pathogen Incompatibility
Puccinia graminis causes stem rust, a serious disease of cereals and forage grasses. Important formae speciales of P. graminis
and their typical hosts are P. graminis f. sp. tritici (Pg-tr) in wheat and barley, P. graminis f. sp. lolii (Pg-lo) in perennial ryegrass
and tall fescue, and P. graminis f. sp. phlei-pratensis (Pg-pp) in timothy grass. Brachypodium distachyon is an emerging
genetic model to study fungal disease resistance in cereals and temperate grasses. We characterized the P. graminis-
Brachypodium pathosystem to evaluate its potential for investigating incompatibility and non-host resistance to P. graminis.
Inoculation of eight Brachypodium inbred lines with Pg-tr, Pg-lo or Pg-pp resulted in sporulating lesions later accompanied
by necrosis. Histological analysis of early infection events in one Brachypodium inbred line (Bd1-1) indicated that Pg-lo and
Pg-pp were markedly more efficient than Pg-tr at establishing a biotrophic interaction. Formation of appressoria was
completed (60–70% of germinated spores) by 12 h post-inoculation (hpi) under dark and wet conditions, and after 4 h of
subsequent light exposure fungal penetration structures (penetration peg, substomatal vesicle and primary infection
hyphae) had developed. Brachypodium Bd1-1 exhibited pre-haustorial resistance to Pg-tr, i.e. infection usually stopped at
appressorial formation. By 68 hpi, only 0.3% and 0.7% of the Pg-tr urediniospores developed haustoria and colonies,
respectively. In contrast, development of advanced infection structures by Pg-lo and Pg-pp was significantly more common;
however, Brachypodium displayed post-haustorial resistance to these isolates. By 68 hpi the percentage of urediniospores
that only develop a haustorium mother cell or haustorium in Pg-lo and Pg-pp reached 8% and 5%, respectively. The
formation of colonies reached 14% and 13%, respectively. We conclude that Brachypodium is an apt grass model to study
the molecular and genetic components of incompatiblity and non-host resistance to P. graminis
On Approximately Symmetric Informationally Complete Positive Operator-Valued Measures and Related Systems of Quantum States
We address the problem of constructing positive operator-valued measures
(POVMs) in finite dimension consisting of operators of rank one which
have an inner product close to uniform. This is motivated by the related
question of constructing symmetric informationally complete POVMs (SIC-POVMs)
for which the inner products are perfectly uniform. However, SIC-POVMs are
notoriously hard to construct and despite some success of constructing them
numerically, there is no analytic construction known. We present two
constructions of approximate versions of SIC-POVMs, where a small deviation
from uniformity of the inner products is allowed. The first construction is
based on selecting vectors from a maximal collection of mutually unbiased bases
and works whenever the dimension of the system is a prime power. The second
construction is based on perturbing the matrix elements of a subset of mutually
unbiased bases.
Moreover, we construct vector systems in \C^n which are almost orthogonal
and which might turn out to be useful for quantum computation. Our
constructions are based on results of analytic number theory.Comment: 29 pages, LaTe
The strong thirteen spheres problem
The thirteen spheres problem is asking if 13 equal size nonoverlapping
spheres in three dimensions can touch another sphere of the same size. This
problem was the subject of the famous discussion between Isaac Newton and David
Gregory in 1694. The problem was solved by Schutte and van der Waerden only in
1953.
A natural extension of this problem is the strong thirteen spheres problem
(or the Tammes problem for 13 points) which asks to find an arrangement and the
maximum radius of 13 equal size nonoverlapping spheres touching the unit
sphere. In the paper we give a solution of this long-standing open problem in
geometry. Our computer-assisted proof is based on a enumeration of the
so-called irreducible graphs.Comment: Modified lemma 2, 16 pages, 12 figures. Uploaded program packag
Gain More for Less: The Surprising Benefits of QoS Management in Constrained NDN Networks
Quality of Service (QoS) in the IP world mainly manages forwarding resources,
i.e., link capacities and buffer spaces. In addition, Information Centric
Networking (ICN) offers resource dimensions such as in-network caches and
forwarding state. In constrained wireless networks, these resources are scarce
with a potentially high impact due to lossy radio transmission. In this paper,
we explore the two basic service qualities (i) prompt and (ii) reliable traffic
forwarding for the case of NDN. The resources we take into account are
forwarding and queuing priorities, as well as the utilization of caches and of
forwarding state space. We treat QoS resources not only in isolation, but
correlate their use on local nodes and between network members. Network-wide
coordination is based on simple, predefined QoS code points. Our findings
indicate that coordinated QoS management in ICN is more than the sum of its
parts and exceeds the impact QoS can have in the IP world
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