Some investigations of refractory metal systems of thermionic interest

Investigating interdiffusion of W-Ta, W-Mo, and W-Nb systems in refractory temperature rang

Gene-history correlation and population structure

Correlation of gene histories in the human genome determines the patterns of genetic variation (haplotype structure) and is crucial to understanding genetic factors in common diseases. We derive closed analytical expressions for the correlation of gene histories in established demographic models for genetic evolution and show how to extend the analysis to more realistic (but more complicated) models of demographic structure. We identify two contributions to the correlation of gene histories in divergent populations: linkage disequilibrium, and differences in the demographic history of individuals in the sample. These two factors contribute to correlations at different length scales: the former at small, and the latter at large scales. We show that recent mixing events in divergent populations limit the range of correlations and compare our findings to empirical results on the correlation of gene histories in the human genome.Comment: Revised and extended version: 26 pages, 5 figures, 1 tabl

Hamilton--Jacobi theory for continuation of magnetic field across a toroidal surface supporting a plasma pressure discontinuity

The vanishing of the divergence of the total stress tensor (magnetic plus kinetic) in a neighborhood of an equilibrium plasma containing a toroidal surface of discontinuity gives boundary and jump conditions that strongly constrain allowable continuations of the magnetic field across the surface. The boundary conditions allow the magnetic fields on either side of the discontinuity surface to be described by surface magnetic potentials, reducing the continuation problem to that of solving a Hamilton--Jacobi equation. The characteristics of this equation obey Hamiltonian equations of motion, and a necessary condition for the existence of a continued field across a general toroidal surface is that there exist invariant tori in the phase space of this Hamiltonian system. It is argued from the Birkhoff theorem that existence of such an invariant torus is also, in general, sufficient for continuation to be possible. An important corollary is that the rotational transform of the continued field on a surface of discontinuity must, generically, be irrational.Comment: Prepared for submission to Phys. Letts.

Galaxy Distances in the Nearby Universe: Corrections For Peculiar Motions

By correcting the redshift--dependent distances for peculiar motions through a number of peculiar velocity field models, we recover the true distances of a wide, all-sky sample of nearby galaxies (~ 6400 galaxies with velocities cz<5500 km/s), which is complete up to the blue magnitude B=14 mag. Relying on catalogs of galaxy groups, we treat ~2700 objects as members of galaxy groups and the remaining objects as field galaxies. We model the peculiar velocity field using: i) a cluster dipole reconstruction scheme; ii) a multi--attractor model fitted to the Mark II and Mark III catalogs of galaxy peculiar velocities. According to Mark III data the Great Attractor has a smaller influence on local dynamics than previously believed, whereas the Perseus-Pisces and Shapley superclusters acquire a specific dynamical role. Remarkably, the Shapley structure, which is found to account for nearly half the peculiar motion of the Local Group, is placed by Mark III data closer to the zone of avoidance with respect to its optical position. Our multi--attractor model based on Mark III data favors a cosmological density parameter Omega ~ 0.5 (irrespective of a biasing factor of order unity). Differences among distance estimates are less pronounced in the ~ 2000 - 4000 km/s distance range than at larger or smaller distances. In the last regions these differences have a serious impact on the 3D maps of the galaxy distribution and on the local galaxy density --- on small scales.Comment: 24 pages including (9 eps figures and 7 tables). Figures 1,2,3,4 are available only upon request. Accepted by Ap

Designing optimal urban transport strategies : the role of individual policy instruments and the impact of financial constraints

This paper presents a methodology for the design of optimal transport strategies and the case study results of the methodology for the City of Edinburgh, using the two multi-modal transport/land-use models MARS and TPM. First, a range of policy instruments are optimised in turn and their relative impacts explored. Second, optimisations with and without financial constraints are performed and compared. Although both models produce similar optimal policies, the relative contribution of the instruments differs between models as does the impact on outcome indicators. It is also shown that by careful design it is possible to identify a strategy which costs no more than the do-minimum but which can generate substantial additional benefits. The optimisation methodology is found to be robust, and is able to be used with different transport models, and with and without financial constraints

Chemically engineering ligand selectivity at the free fatty acid receptor 2 based on pharmacological variation between species orthologs

When it is difficult to develop selective ligands within a family of related G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), chemically engineered receptors activated solely by synthetic ligands (RASSLs) are useful alternatives for probing receptor function. In the present work, we explored whether a RASSL of the free fatty acid receptor 2 (FFA2) could be developed on the basis of pharmacological variation between species orthologs. For this, bovine FFA2 was characterized, revealing distinct ligand selectivity compared with human FFA2. Homology modeling and mutational analysis demonstrated a single mutation in human FFA2 of C4.57G resulted in a human FFA2 receptor with ligand selectivity similar to the bovine receptor. This was exploited to generate human FFA2-RASSL by the addition of a second mutation at a known orthosteric ligand interaction site, H6.55Q. The resulting FFA2-RASSL displayed a &gt;100-fold loss of activity to endogenous ligands, while responding to the distinct ligand sorbic acid with pEC(50) values for inhibition of cAMP, 5.83 ± 0.11; Ca(2+) mobilization, 4.63 ± 0.05; ERK phosphorylation, 5.61 ± 0.06; and dynamic mass redistribution, 5.35 ± 0.06. This FFA2-RASSL will be useful in future studies on this receptor and demonstrates that exploitation of pharmacological variation between species orthologs is a powerful method to generate novel chemically engineered GPCRs