6,402 research outputs found
Stochastic Description of a Bistable Frustrated Unit
Mixed positive and negative feedback loops are often found in biological
systems which support oscillations. In this work we consider a prototype of
such systems, which has been recently found at the core of many genetic
circuits showing oscillatory behaviour. Our model consists of two interacting
species A and B, where A activates not only its own production, but also that
of its repressor B. While the self-activation of A leads already to a bistable
unit, the coupling with a negative feedback loop via B makes the unit
frustrated. In the deterministic limit of infinitely many molecules, such a
bistable frustrated unit is known to show excitable and oscillatory dynamics,
depending on the maximum production rate of A which acts as a control
parameter. We study this model in its fully stochastic version and we find
oscillations even for parameters which in the deterministic limit are deeply in
the fixed-point regime. The deeper we go into this regime, the more irregular
these oscillations are, becoming finally random excitations whenever
fluctuations allow the system to overcome the barrier for a large excursion in
phase space. The fluctuations can no longer be fully treated as a perturbation.
The smaller the system size (the number of molecules), the more frequent are
these excitations. Therefore, stochasticity caused by demographic noise makes
this unit even more flexible with respect to its oscillatory behaviour.Comment: 28 pages, 17 figure
The Spartan 1 mission
The first Spartan mission is documented. The Spartan program, an outgrowth of a joint Naval Research Laboratory (NRL)/National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)-Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) development effort, was instituted by NASA for launching autonomous, recoverable payloads from the space shuttle. These payloads have a precise pointing system and are intended to support a wide range of space-science observations and experiments. The first Spartan, carrying an NRL X-ray astronomy instrument, was launched by the orbiter Discovery (STS51G) on June 20, 1985 and recovered successfully 45 h later, on June 22. During this period, Spartan 1 conducted a preprogrammed series of observations of two X-ray sources: the Perseus cluster of galaxies and the center of our galaxy. The mission was successful from both on engineering and a scientific viewpoint. Only one problem was encountered, the attitude control system (ACS) shut down earlier than planned because of high attitude control system gas consumption. A preplanned emergency mode then placed Spartan 1 into a stable, safe condition and allowed a safe recovery. The events are described of the mission and presents X-ray maps of the two observed sources, which were produced from the flight data
Exactly solvable statistical model for two-way traffic
We generalize a recently introduced traffic model, where the statistical
weights are associated with whole trajectories, to the case of two-way flow. An
interaction between the two lanes is included which describes a slowing down
when two cars meet. This leads to two coupled five-vertex models. It is shown
that this problem can be solved by reducing it to two one-lane problems with
modified parameters. In contrast to stochastic models, jamming appears only for
very strong interaction between the lanes.Comment: 6 pages Latex, submitted to J Phys.
Scaling behavior in the -relaxation regime of a supercooled Lennard-Jones mixture
We report the results of a molecular dynamics simulation of a supercooled
binary Lennard-Jones mixture. By plotting the self intermediate scattering
functions vs. rescaled time, we find a master curve in the -relaxation
regime. This master curve can be fitted well by a power-law for almost three
decades in rescaled time and the scaling time, or relaxation time, has a
power-law dependence on temperature. Thus the predictions of
mode-coupling-theory on the existence of a von Schweidler law are found to hold
for this system; moreover, the exponents in these two power-laws are very close
to satisfying the exponent relationship predicted by the mode-coupling-theory.
At low temperatures, the diffusion constants also show a power-law behavior
with the same critical temperature. However, the exponent for diffusion differs
from that of the relaxation time, a result that is in disagreement with the
theory.Comment: 8 pages, RevTex, four postscript figures available on request,
MZ-Physics-10
Abelian symmetries in multi-Higgs-doublet models
N-Higgs doublet models (NHDM) are a popular framework to construct
electroweak symmetry breaking mechanisms beyond the Standard model. Usually,
one builds an NHDM scalar sector which is invariant under a certain symmetry
group. Although several such groups have been used, no general analysis of
symmetries possible in the NHDM scalar sector exists. Here, we make the first
step towards this goal by classifying the elementary building blocks, namely
the abelian symmetry groups, with a special emphasis on finite groups. We
describe a strategy that identifies all abelian groups which are realizable as
symmetry groups of the NHDM Higgs potential. We consider both the groups of
Higgs-family transformations only and the groups which also contain generalized
CP transformations. We illustrate this strategy with the examples of 3HDM and
4HDM and prove several statements for arbitrary N.Comment: 33 pages, 2 figures; v2: conjecture 3 is proved and becomes theorem
3, more explanations of the main strategy are added, matches the published
versio
On the reconstruction of planar lattice-convex sets from the covariogram
A finite subset of is said to be lattice-convex if is
the intersection of with a convex set. The covariogram of
is the function associating to each u \in
\integer^d the cardinality of . Daurat, G\'erard, and Nivat and
independently Gardner, Gronchi, and Zong raised the problem on the
reconstruction of lattice-convex sets from . We provide a partial
positive answer to this problem by showing that for and under mild extra
assumptions, determines up to translations and reflections. As a
complement to the theorem on reconstruction we also extend the known
counterexamples (i.e., planar lattice-convex sets which are not
reconstructible, up to translations and reflections) to an infinite family of
counterexamples.Comment: accepted in Discrete and Computational Geometr
Heat transport in model jammed solids
We calculate numerically the normal modes of vibrations in 3D jammed packings
of soft spheres as a function of the packing fraction and obtain the energy
diffusivity, a spectral measure of transport that controls sound propagation
and thermal conductivity. The crossover frequency between weak and strong
phonon scattering is controlled by the coordination and shifts to zero as the
system is decompressed towards the critical packing fraction at which rigidity
is lost. Below the crossover, the diffusivity displays a power-law divergence
with inverse frequency, which suggests that the vibrational modes are primarily
transverse waves, weakly scattered by disorder. Above it, a large number of
modes appear whose diffusivity plateaus at a nearly constant value independent
of the inter-particle potential, before dropping to zero above the Anderson
localization frequency. The thermal conductivity of a marginally jammed solid
just above the rigidity threshold is calculated and related to the one measured
experimentally at room temperature for most glasses.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figure
Density waves and density fluctuations in granular flow
We simulate the granular flow in a narrow pipe with a lattice-gas automaton
model. We find that the density in the system is characterized by two features.
One is that spontaneous density waves propagate through the system with
well-defined shapes and velocities. The other is that density waves are so
distributed to make the power spectra of density fluctuations as
noise. Three important parameters make these features observable and they are
energy dissipation, average density and the rougness of the pipe walls.Comment: Latex (with ps files appended
- …