Fluctuations and Intrinsic Pinning in Layered Superconductors

A flux liquid can condense into a smectic crystal in a pure layered superconductors with the magnetic field oriented nearly parallel to the layers. If the smectic order is commensurate with the layering, this crystal is {\sl stable} to point disorder. By tilting and adjusting the magnitude of the applied field, both incommensurate and tilted smectic and crystalline phases are found. We discuss transport near the second order smectic freezing transition, and show that permeation modes lead to a small non--zero resistivity and large but finite tilt modulus in the smectic crystal.Comment: 4 pages + 1 style file + 1 figure (as uufile) appended, REVTEX 3.

Density Waves in a Transverse Electric Field

In a quasi-one-dimensional conductor with an open Fermi surface, a Charge or a Spin Density Wave phase can be destroyed by an electric field perpendicular to the direction of high conductivity. This mechanism, due to the breakdown of electron-hole symmetry, is very similar to the orbital destruction of superconductivity by a magnetic field, due to time-reversal symmetry.Comment: 3 pages, Latex, 2 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. B Rapid Com

Non-hermitean delocalization in an array of wells with variable-range widths

Nonhermitean hamiltonians of convection-diffusion type occur in the description of vortex motion in the presence of a tilted magnetic field as well as in models of driven population dynamics. We study such hamiltonians in the case of rectangular barriers of variable size. We determine Lyapunov exponent and wavenumber of the eigenfunctions within an adiabatic approach, allowing to reduce the original d=2 phase space to a d=1 attractor. PACS numbers:05.70.Ln,72.15Rn,74.60.GeComment: 20 pages,10 figure

Dijet production in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with large rapidity gaps at the ATLAS experiment

A 6.8 nb−¹ sample of pp collision data collected under low-luminosity conditions at √s = 7 TeV by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider is used to study diffractive dijet production. Events containing at least two jets with pT > 20 GeV are selected and analysed in terms of variables which discriminate between diffractive and non-diffractive processes. Cross sections are measured differentially in ΔηF, the size of the observable forward region of pseudorapidity which is devoid of hadronic activity, and in an estimator, ξ˜, of the fractional momentum loss of the proton assuming single diffractive dissociation (pp → p X). Model comparisons indicate a dominant non-diffractive contribution up to moderately large ηF and small ξ˜, with a diffractive contribution which is significant at the highest ΔηF and the lowest ξ˜. The rapidity-gap survival probability is estimated from comparisons of the data in this latter region with predictions based on diffractive parton distribution functions

Prenatal Particulate Air Pollution and DNA Methylation in Newborns: An Epigenome-Wide Meta-Analysis

BACKGROUND: Prenatal exposure to air pollution has been associated with childhood respiratory disease and other adverse outcomes. Epigenetics is a suggested link between exposures and health outcomes. OBJECTIVES: We aimed to investigate associations between prenatal exposure to particulate matter (PM) with diameter [Formula: see text] ([Formula: see text]) or [Formula: see text] ([Formula: see text]) and DNA methylation in newborns and children. METHODS: We meta-analyzed associations between exposure to [Formula: see text] ([Formula: see text]) and [Formula: see text] ([Formula: see text]) at maternal home addresses during pregnancy and newborn DNA methylation assessed by Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation450K BeadChip in nine European and American studies, with replication in 688 independent newborns and look-up analyses in 2,118 older children. We used two approaches, one focusing on single cytosine-phosphate-guanine (CpG) sites and another on differentially methylated regions (DMRs). We also related PM exposures to blood mRNA expression. RESULTS: Six CpGs were significantly associ

The valence of experience with faces influences generalized preferences

Although it is well-established that generalized face preferences influence a wide range of social outcomes, little is known about the proximate mechanisms through which such preferences develop. In two experiments we show that preferences for composites of faces that had been seen paired with an aversive auditory stimulus were significantly weaker than preferences for composites of faces that had been seen paired with a relatively neutral auditory stimulus, demonstrating that the valence of participants' experiences with individual faces influences preferences for novel, physically similar faces. While previous findings for experience with faces on subsequent preferences have emphasized the positive effects of familiarity on attraction to novel, physically similar faces, here we emphasize the effects of the valence of peoples' experiences and show that negative experiences can decrease preferences for familiar configurations of facial cues

Age at menarche predicts individual differences in women’s preferences for masculinized male voices in adulthood

Although researchers have suggested that adult women who experienced early puberty may demonstrate particularly strong preferences for masculine men, evidence for such an association is equivocal. Here we show that adult women’s preferences for masculinized male voices (i.e., male voices with lowered pitch) are negatively associated with the age at which they experienced first menses (i.e., age at menarche). Moreover, this relationship was independent of women’s stated preference for long- versus short-term relationships, suggesting that the relationship does not necessarily reflect individual differences in women’s preferred type of relationship. We discuss alternative mechanisms for the relationship between early puberty and women’s masculinity preferences, focusing on the possibility that girls who experience early puberty might learn to associate masculinity with desirable mates because of exposure to particularly masculine males during adolescence

Correlated preferences for men's facial and vocal masculinity

Previous studies have reported variation in women's preferences for masculinity in men's faces and voices. Women show consistent preferences for vocal masculinity, but highly variable preferences for facial masculinity. Within individuals, men with attractive voices tend to have attractive faces, suggesting common information may be conveyed by these cues. Here we tested whether men and women with particularly strong preferences for male vocal masculinity also have stronger preferences for male facial masculinity. We found that masculinity preferences were positively correlated across modalities. We also investigated potential influences on these relationships between face and voice preferences. Women using oral contraceptives showed weaker facial and vocal masculinity preferences and weaker associations between masculinity preferences across modalities than women not using oral contraceptives. Collectively, these results suggest that men's faces and voices may reveal common information about the masculinity of the sender, and that these multiple quality cues could be used in conjunction by the perceiver in order to determine the overall quality of individuals

Adaptation to faces and voices: unimodal, cross-modal, and sex-specific effects

Exposure, or adaptation, to faces or voices biases perceptions of subsequent stimuli, for example, causing faces to appear more normal than they would be otherwise if they are similar to the previously presented stimuli. Studies also suggest that there may be cross-modal adaptation between sound and vision, although the evidence is inconsistent. We examined adaptation effects within and across voices and faces and also tested whether adaptation crosses between male and female stimuli. We exposed participants to sex-typical or sex-atypical stimuli and measured the perceived normality of subsequent stimuli. Exposure to female faces or voices altered perceptions of subsequent female stimuli, and these adaptation effects crossed modality; exposure to voices influenced judgments of faces, and vice versa. We also found that exposure to female stimuli did not influence perception of subsequent male stimuli. Our data demonstrate that recent experience of faces and voices changes subsequent perception and that mental representations of faces and voices may not be modality dependent. Both unimodal and cross-modal adaptation effects appear to be relatively sex-specific

`Eavesdropping' and perceived male dominance rank in humans

Effects of social learning on mate preferences have been observed in a wide range of animal species, including humans. However, it is not known whether social learning also influences other important aspects of social perception in humans. We investigated whether `eavesdropping', a form of social learning whereby observers extract information about individuals' qualities by observing their interactions with others, influences men's perceptions of the dominance of potential rivals. We found that observing the responses of other individuals modulates the perceived dominance of aggressors. Observers rated aggressors' dominance higher when they had previously observed others responding to the aggressor in a fearful, intimidated manner than when they had observed others responding to the aggressor in an angry, aggressive manner. By contrast with this finding for rated dominance, observing identical interactions did not affect observers' perceptions of the trustworthiness of the aggressors. The effect of observing others' responses on the perceived dominance of aggressors demonstrates that eavesdropping influences perceptions of dominance rank among men, which would be adaptive if it reduces the costs (e.g. risk of serious injury and/or loss of resources) that may be associated with acquiring knowledge of others' dominance rank via exclusively self-reliant learning. While previous research on social learning and sexual selection has focused on intersexual interactions (i.e. mate choice copying effects), our findings suggest that eavesdropping may also influence sexual selection for male traits via intrasexual competition