2,775 research outputs found
Evaluation of Waterhyacinth and Paddy Straw Waste for Culture of Oyster Mushrooms
Waterhyacinth (
Eichhornia crassipes
(Mart.) Solms.) was
evaluated at ratios of 25, 50 and 75% with paddy straw (
Oryza
sativa
L.) for oyster mushroom (
Pleurotus sajor-caju)
cultivation.
There was an increase in yield with decreasing ratio
waterhyacinth
Length control of microtubules by depolymerizing motor proteins
In many intracellular processes, the length distribution of microtubules is
controlled by depolymerizing motor proteins. Experiments have shown that,
following non-specific binding to the surface of a microtubule, depolymerizers
are transported to the microtubule tip(s) by diffusion or directed walk and,
then, depolymerize the microtubule from the tip(s) after accumulating there. We
develop a quantitative model to study the depolymerizing action of such a
generic motor protein, and its possible effects on the length distribution of
microtubules. We show that, when the motor protein concentration in solution
exceeds a critical value, a steady state is reached where the length
distribution is, in general, non-monotonic with a single peak. However, for
highly processive motors and large motor densities, this distribution
effectively becomes an exponential decay. Our findings suggest that such motor
proteins may be selectively used by the cell to ensure precise control of MT
lengths. The model is also used to analyze experimental observations of
motor-induced depolymerization.Comment: Added section with figures and significantly expanded text, current
version to appear in Europhys. Let
Gas permeation through a polymer network
We study the diffusion of gas molecules through a two-dimensional network of
polymers with the help of Monte Carlo simulations. The polymers are modeled as
non-interacting random walks on the bonds of a two-dimensional square lattice,
while the gas particles occupy the lattice cells. When a particle attempts to
jump to a nearest-neighbor empty cell, it has to overcome an energy barrier
which is determined by the number of polymer segments on the bond separating
the two cells. We investigate the gas current as a function of the mean
segment density , the polymer length and the probability
for hopping across segments. Whereas decreases monotonically with
for fixed , its behavior for fixed and increasing
depends strongly on . For small, non-zero , appears to increase
slowly with . In contrast, for , it is dominated by the underlying
percolation problem and can be non-monotonic. We provide heuristic arguments to
put these interesting phenomena into context.Comment: Dedicated to Lothar Schaefer on the occasion of his 60th birthday. 11
pages, 3 figure
Interferometric probes of many-body localization
We propose a method for detecting many-body localization (MBL) in disordered
spin systems. The method involves pulsed, coherent spin manipulations that
probe the dephasing of a given spin due to its entanglement with a set of
distant spins. It allows one to distinguish the MBL phase from a
non-interacting localized phase and a delocalized phase. In particular, we show
that for a properly chosen pulse sequence the MBL phase exhibits a
characteristic power-law decay reflecting its slow growth of entanglement. We
find that this power-law decay is robust with respect to thermal and disorder
averaging, provide numerical simulations supporting our results, and discuss
possible experimental realizations in solid-state and cold atom systems.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Stress, heat shock proteins & biotechnological interventions. In: Winter School on Impact of Climate Change on Indian Marine Fisheries held at CMFRI, Cochin 18.1.2008 to 7.2.2008
Fish are exposed to stressors in nature, as well as in artificial conditions such as in aquaculture, or in
the laboratory. The increasing contamination of bodies of natural freshwater and marine ecosystem around
the world by anthropogenic substances is one category of environmental stressor. Various stressors, such as
grading, transportation, and vaccination, are necessary components of modern intensive fish culture. The
response of the fish to such stressors involves all levels of organization, from the cell, to the individual
organism, to the structure of the population. In as much as the responses of the fish to a stressor is the
essence of maintaining homeostasis, it is not surprising that fish respond to a variety of stressors in a
generalized way at all these levels of organization. Stress is most often associated with a negative perspective.
This is natural as the word and concept in common use is generally associated with a system that is severely
challenged, and often fatigued. Experimental biologists are all involved in the practice of systematically
imposing some perturbation and measuring a response
Frustration and glassiness in spin models with cavity-mediated interactions
We show that the effective spin-spin interaction between three-level atoms
confined in a multimode optical cavity is long-ranged and sign-changing, like
the RKKY interaction; therefore, ensembles of such atoms subject to frozen-in
positional randomness can realize spin systems having disordered and frustrated
interactions. We argue that, whenever the atoms couple to sufficiently many
cavity modes, the cavity-mediated interactions give rise to a spin glass. In
addition, we show that the quantum dynamics of cavity-confined spin systems is
that of a Bose-Hubbard model with strongly disordered hopping but no on-site
disorder; this model exhibits a random-singlet glass phase, absent in
conventional optical-lattice realizations. We briefly discuss experimental
signatures of the realizable phases.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure
Bopyrid isopods parasitizing on the cultured fresh water prawn, macrobrachium malcolmsonii in South India
The bopyrid isopods are common in wild Macrobrachium
spp. but not common in aquaculture condition.
This is the first study that reports the parasitizing of bopyrid isopods on the cultured M. malcolmsonii. Bopyrid isopod (Probopyrus buitendijki) was identified in the branchial cavities of the freshwater prawn, M.malcolmsonii fromgrow-out culture pond at Kuriyamangalam, India. Macrobrachium malcolmsonii is a new host for P. buitendijki. A total of 1323 M. malcolmsonii were checked for this study. The overall prevalence of the parasitic infestation was reached 46.2 %. The parasitic infection was higher in female (83 %) than in male (3.4 %). Highest prevalence of infestation was found in the median size group (7–8 cm) (58.7 %). Infected females were not berried unlike uninfected prawns. The parasites cause infertility and does not found any organ deformities due to the infestation. The parasite was inversely attached in the gill chamber with no lesion on the gill but the infected branchial chamber became bulged
Spin-Electron-Phonon Excitation in Re-based Half-Metallic Double Perovskites
A remarkable hardening (~ 30 cm-1) of the normal mode of vibration associated
with the symmetric stretching of the oxygen octahedra for the Ba2FeReO6 and
Sr2CrReO6 double perovskites is observed below the corresponding magnetic
ordering temperatures. The very large magnitude of this effect and its absence
for the anti-symmetric stretching mode provide evidence against a conventional
spin-phonon coupling mechanism. Our observations are consistent with a
collective excitation formed by the combination of the vibrational mode with
oscillations of local Fe or Cr 3d and Re 5d occupations and spin magnitudes.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure
Strong clustering of non-interacting, passive sliders driven by a Kardar-Parisi-Zhang surface
We study the clustering of passive, non-interacting particles moving under
the influence of a fluctuating field and random noise, in one dimension. The
fluctuating field in our case is provided by a surface governed by the
Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) equation and the sliding particles follow the local
surface slope. As the KPZ equation can be mapped to the noisy Burgers equation,
the problem translates to that of passive scalars in a Burgers fluid. We study
the case of particles moving in the same direction as the surface, equivalent
to advection in fluid language. Monte-Carlo simulations on a discrete lattice
model reveal extreme clustering of the passive particles. The resulting Strong
Clustering State is defined using the scaling properties of the two point
density-density correlation function. Our simulations show that the state is
robust against changing the ratio of update speeds of the surface and
particles. In the equilibrium limit of a stationary surface and finite noise,
one obtains the Sinai model for random walkers on a random landscape. In this
limit, we obtain analytic results which allow closed form expressions to be
found for the quantities of interest. Surprisingly, these results for the
equilibrium problem show good agreement with the results in the non-equilibrium
regime.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figure
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