Funnels in Energy Landscapes

Local minima and the saddle points separating them in the energy landscape are known to dominate the dynamics of biopolymer folding. Here we introduce a notion of a "folding funnel" that is concisely defined in terms of energy minima and saddle points, while at the same time conforming to a notion of a "folding funnel" as it is discussed in the protein folding literature.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, submitted to European Conference on Complex Systems 200

Embedding the Reissner-Nordstrom spacetime in Euclidean and Minkowski spaces

We examine embedding diagrams of hypersurfaces in the Reissner-Nordstrom black hole spacetime. These embedding diagrams serve as useful tools to visualize the geometry of the hypersurfaces and of the whole spacetime in general.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figure

Behavior that Hurts: Theoretical Orientation, Terminology, and Diagnosis of Self-injury

Self-injurious behavior prevalence continues to rise in both adolescent and adult non-clinical populations and within adolescent and adult clinical populations. Despite a large volume of literature regarding the antecedents and functions of self-injury, exploration of clinician factors in regard to these clients is sparse. This study examined the associations among 346 doctoral level clinicians\u27 theoretical orientations, preferred terminology to describe self-injurious behaviors, and preferred diagnoses for clients who engage in self-injury. Therapist variables such as age, years in practice, and gender were examined for their association with terminology and diagnostic preferences. Chi-square analyses were conducted for the two-way interactions and a multi-way frequency analysis using loglinear modeling was used to examine the possible interaction of three categorical variables. Significant associations were found between theoretical orientation and preferred diagnosis, preferred terminology and preferred diagnosis, and theoretical orientation, preferred terminology, and preferred diagnosis together. Additionally, age, years in practice, and gender were significantly associated with preferred terminology, but not with preferred diagnosis. Clinical implications and limitations are discussed as well as suggestions for future research

The Contribution of the Cosmological Constant to the Relativistic Bending of Light Revisited

We study the effect of the cosmological constant $\Lambda$ on the bending of light by a concentrated spherically symmetric mass. Contrarily to previous claims, we show that when the Schwarzschild-de Sitter geometry is taken into account, $\Lambda$ does indeed contribute to the bending.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Wormholes, Gamma Ray Bursts and the Amount of Negative Mass in the Universe

In this essay, we assume that negative mass objects can exist in the extragalactic space and analyze the consequences of their microlensing on light from distant Active Galactic Nuclei. We find that such events have very similar features to some observed Gamma Ray Bursts and use recent satellite data to set an upper bound to the amount of negative mass in the universe.Comment: Essay awarded ``Honorable Mention'' in the Gravity Foundation Research Awards, 199

Global embedding of the Kerr black hole event horizon into hyperbolic 3-space

An explicit global and unique isometric embedding into hyperbolic 3-space, H^3, of an axi-symmetric 2-surface with Gaussian curvature bounded below is given. In particular, this allows the embedding into H^3 of surfaces of revolution having negative, but finite, Gaussian curvature at smooth fixed points of the U(1) isometry. As an example, we exhibit the global embedding of the Kerr-Newman event horizon into H^3, for arbitrary values of the angular momentum. For this example, considering a quotient of H^3 by the Picard group, we show that the hyperbolic embedding fits in a fundamental domain of the group up to a slightly larger value of the angular momentum than the limit for which a global embedding into Euclidean 3-space is possible. An embedding of the double-Kerr event horizon is also presented, as an example of an embedding which cannot be made global.Comment: 16 pages, 13 figure

Meson Mass Splittings in the Nonrelativistic Model

Mass splittings between isodoublet meson pairs and between $0^{-}$ and $1^{-}$ mesons of the same valence quark content are computed in a detailed nonrelativistic model. The field theoretic expressions for such splittings are shown to reduce to kinematic and Breit-Fermi terms in the nonrelativistic limit. Algebraic results thus obtained are applied to the specific case of the linear-plus-Coulomb potential, with resultant numbers compared to experiment.Comment: 29 pages with 2 tables and 4 figures, LBL-32872 and UCB-PTH-92/3

DNA hybridization catalysts and catalyst circuits

Practically all of life's molecular processes, from chemical synthesis to replication, involve enzymes that carry out their functions through the catalysis of metastable fuels into waste products. Catalytic control of reaction rates will prove to be as useful and ubiquitous in DNA nanotechnology as it is in biology. Here we present experimental results on the control of the decay rates of a metastable DNA "fuel". We show that the fuel complex can be induced to decay with a rate about 1600 times faster than it would decay spontaneously. The original DNA hybridization catalyst [15] achieved a maximal speed-up of roughly 30. The fuel complex discussed here can therefore serve as the basic ingredient for an improved DNA hybridization catalyst. As an example application for DNA hybridization catalysts, we propose a method for implementing arbitrary digital logic circuits

Energetics in Condensate Star and Wormholes

It is known that the total gravitational energy in localized sources having static spherical symmetry and satisfying energy conditions is negative (attractive gravity). A natural query is how the gravitational energy behaves under circumstances where energy conditions are violated. To answer this, the known expression for the gravitational energy is suitably modified to account for situations like the ones occurring in wormhole spacetime. It is then exemplified that in many cases the modified expression yields desirable answers. The implications are discussed.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figure, references added, To appear in PR