375 research outputs found
Resonant tunneling through a C60 molecular junction in liquid environment
We present electronic transport measurements through thiolated C
molecules in liquid environment. The molecules were placed within a
mechanically controllable break junction using a single anchoring group per
molecule. When varying the electrode separation of the C-modified
junctions, we observed a peak in the conductance traces. The shape of the
curves is strongly influenced by the environment of the junction as shown by
measurements in two distinct solvents. In the framework of a simple resonant
tunneling model, we can extract the electronic tunneling rates governing the
transport properties of the junctions.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures. To appear in Nanotechnolog
Genus bounds for minimal surfaces arising from min-max constructions
In this paper we prove genus bounds for closed embedded minimal surfaces in a
closed 3-dimensional manifold constructed via min-max arguments. A stronger
estimate was announced by Pitts and Rubistein but to our knowledge its proof
has never been published. Our proof follows ideas of Simon and uses an
extension of a famous result of Meeks, Simon and Yau on the convergence of
minimizing sequences of isotopic surfaces. This result is proved in the second
part of the paper.Comment: Accepted for publication on Journal for Pure and Applied Mathematic
Congenital Prosopagnosia: Multistage Anatomical and Functional Deficits in Face Processing Circuitry
Face recognition is a primary social skill which depends on a distributed neural network. A pronounced face recognition deficit in the absence of any lesion is seen in congenital prosopagnosia. This study investigating 24 congenital prosopagnosic subjects and 25 control subjects aims at elucidating its neural basis with fMRI and voxel-based morphometry. We found a comprehensive behavioral pattern, an impairment in visual recognition for faces and buildings that spared long-term memory for faces with negative valence. Anatomical analysis revealed diminished gray matter density in the bilateral lingual gyrus, the right middle temporal gyrus, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. In most of these areas, gray matter density correlated with memory success. Decreased functional activation was found in the left fusiform gyrus, a crucial area for face processing, and in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, whereas activation of the medial prefrontal cortex was enhanced. Hence, our data lend strength to the hypothesis that congenital prosopagnosia is explained by network dysfunction and suggest that anatomic curtailing of visual processing in the lingual gyrus plays a substantial role. The dysfunctional circuitry further encompasses the fusiform gyrus and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which may contribute to their difficulties in long-term memory for complex visual information. Despite their deficits in face identity recognition, processing of emotion related information is preserved and possibly mediated by the medial prefrontal cortex. Congenital prosopagnosia may, therefore, be a blueprint of differential curtailing in networks of visual cognition
Octopamine and dopamine mediate waggle dance following and information use in honeybees
Honeybees can be directed to profitable food sources by following waggle dances performed by other bees. Followers can often choose between using this social information or relying on memories about food sources they have visited in the past, so-called private information. While the circumstances that favour the use of either social or private information have received considerable attention, still little is known about the neurophysiological basis of information use. We hypothesized that octopamine and dopamine, two biogenic amines with important functions in reward signalling and learning, affect dance use in honeybees. We orally administered octopamine and dopamine when bees collected food at artificial feeders and tested if this affected interest in dance information about a new food source. We predicted that octopamine reduces interest in dances and strengthens private information use via an increase in the perceived value of the previously exploited resource. Since dopamine has been shown to lower reward perception, we expected it to act in the opposite direction. Octopamine-treated foragers indeed followed 32% fewer dances than control bees and increased the use of private information. Conversely, dopamine-treated bees followed dances 15% longer than control bees, but surprisingly did not use social information more. Overall, our results suggest that biogenic amine signalling affects interactions among dancers and dance followers and, thus, information flow about high-quality food sources
Genetik der kongenitalen Prosopagnosie
Diese Arbeit stellt sechs Familien mit kongenitaler Prosopagnosie mit insgesamt 31 Betroffenen ueber drei und mehr Generationen vor. Die klinischen Symptome sind in allen Faellen aehnlich, begleitende Agnosien liegen in der Regel nicht vor; ein Gehirnschaden oder ein Geburtstrauma ist in keinem der Faelle bekannt. Alle Betroffenen sind sozial gut integriert. Die Segregation der Prosopagnosie ist in allen Familien mit einer autosomal dominanten Vererbung vereinbar. Von 90 Familienmitgliedern tragen 31 das Merkmal der kongenitalen Prosopagnosie, davon 20 Frauen und 11 Maenner. Angesichts der großen Anzahl von Betroffenen ueberrascht es, dass die angeborene Form bislang nur anekdotisch beschrieben wurde und keinen Eintrag in die OMIM Datenbank gefunden hat
Effective interaction between molecules in the BEC regime of a superfluid Fermi gas
We investigate the effective interaction between Cooper-pair molecules in the
st rong-coupling BEC regime of a superfluid Fermi gas with a Feshbach
resonance. Our work uses a path integral formulation and a renormalization
group (RG) analy sis of fluctuations in a single-channel model. We show that a
physical cutoff en ergy originating from the finite molecular
binding energy is the key to understanding the interaction between molecules in
the BEC regime. Our work t hus clarifies recent results by showing that is a {\it ba re} molecular scattering length while is the low energy molecular scattering length
renormalized to include high-energy scat tering up to (here is the scattering length between Fermi atoms). We also include many-body
effects at finite temperatures. We find that is strongly dependent
on temperature, vanishing at , consistent with the earlier Bose gas
results of Bijlsma and Stoof.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure
Transition Temperature of a Uniform Imperfect Bose Gas
We calculate the transition temperature of a uniform dilute Bose gas with
repulsive interactions, using a known virial expansion of the equation of
state. We find that the transition temperature is higher than that of an ideal
gas, with a fractional increase K_0(na^3)^{1/6}, where n is the density and a
is the S-wave scattering length, and K_0 is a constant given in the paper. This
disagrees with all existing results, analytical or numerical. It agrees exactly
in magnitude with a result due to Toyoda, but has the opposite sign.Comment: Email correspondence to [email protected] ; 2 pages using REVTe
Transition temperature of a dilute homogeneous imperfect Bose gas
The leading-order effect of interactions on a homogeneous Bose gas is
theoretically predicted to shift the critical temperature by an amount
\Delta\Tc = # a_{scatt} n^{1/3} T_0 from the ideal gas result T_0, where
a_{scatt} is the scattering length and n is the density. There have been
several different theoretical estimates for the numerical coefficient #. We
claim to settle the issue by measuring the numerical coefficient in a lattice
simulation of O(2) phi^4 field theory in three dimensions---an effective theory
which, as observed previously in the literature, can be systematically matched
to the dilute Bose gas problem to reproduce non-universal quantities such as
the critical temperature. We find # = 1.32 +- 0.02.Comment: 4 pages, submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett; minor changes due to
improvement of analysis in the longer companion pape
Conserving Gapless Mean-Field Theory for Bose-Einstein Condensates
We formulate a conserving gapless mean-field theory for Bose-Einstein
condensates on the basis of a Luttinger-Ward thermodynamic functional. It is
applied to a weakly interacting uniform gas with density and s-wave
scattering length to clarify its fundamental thermodynamic properties. It
is found that the condensation here occurs as a first-order transition. The
shift of the transition temperature from the ideal-gas result
is positive and given to the leading order by , in agreement with a couple of previous estimates. The theory is
expected to form a new theoretical basis for trapped Bose-Einstein condensates
at finite temperatures.Comment: Minor errors remove
- …