493 research outputs found
Mechanisms of eye development and evolution of the arthropod visual system: The lateral eyes of myriapoda are not modified insect ommatidia
AbstractThe lateral eyes of Crustacea and Insecta consist of many single optical units, the ommatidia, that are composed of a small, strictly determined and evolutionarily conserved set of cells. In contrast, the eyes of Myriapoda (millipedes and centipedes) are fields of optical units, the lateral ocelli, each of which is composed of up to several hundreds of cells. For many years these striking differences between the lateral eyes of Crustacea/Insecta versus Myriapoda have puzzled evolutionary biologists, as the Myriapoda are traditionally considered to be closely related to the Insecta. The prevailing hypothesis to explain this paradox has been that the myriapod fields of lateral ocelli derive from insect compound eyes by disintegration of the latter into single ommatidia and subsequent fusion of several ommatidia to form multicellular ocelli. To provide a fresh view on this problem, we counted and mapped the arrangement of ocelli during postembryonic development of a diplopod. Furthermore, the arrangement of proliferating cells in the eyes of another diplopod and two chilopods was monitored by labelling with the mitosis marker bromodeoxyuridine. Our results confirm that during eye growth in Myriapoda new elements are added to the side of the eye field, which extend the rows of earlier-generated optical units. This pattern closely resembles that in horseshoe crabs (Chelicerata) and Trilobita. We conclude that the trilobite, xiphosuran, diplopod and chilopod mechanism of eye growth represents the ancestral euarthropod mode of visual-system formation, which raises the possibility that the eyes of Diplopoda and Chilopoda may not be secondarily reconstructed insect eyes
A river model of space
Within the theory of general relativity gravitational phenomena are usually
attributed to the curvature of four-dimensional spacetime. In this context we
are often confronted with the question of how the concept of ordinary physical
three-dimensional space fits into this picture. In this work we present a
simple and intuitive model of space for both the Schwarzschild spacetime and
the de Sitter spacetime in which physical space is defined as a specified set
of freely moving reference particles. Using a combination of orthonormal basis
fields and the usual formalism in a coordinate basis we calculate the physical
velocity field of these reference particles. Thus we obtain a vivid description
of space in which space behaves like a river flowing radially toward the
singularity in the Schwarzschild spacetime and radially toward infinity in the
de Sitter spacetime. We also consider the effect of the river of space upon
light rays and material particles and show that the river model of space
provides an intuitive explanation for the behavior of light and particles at
and beyond the event horizons associated with these spacetimes.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figure
Susceptibility characterization of beam pipe radiated noise for the PXD detector in Belle II experiment
The new Pixel Vertex Detector (PXD) used in the upgrade of the high energy physics experiment Belle II is based on the DEPFET technology. Since the PXD is 2 mm far from the beam pipe, the effects of radiated interferences may be taken into account. Though the EM wave associated to the beam is very well confined (skin depth), the beam pipe is grounded to the accelerator and it may have noise currents on its external face due to pumps, auxiliary electronics, power converters, etc. which may produce radiated noise (H field). This analysis is part of the EMC approach that covers the analysis of the emissions and immunity characteristics, as well as the coupling phenomena and grounding issues to define the susceptibility levels required to ensure the successful integration of the detector and, specifically, to achieve the designed performance of the front-end electronics
Dynamical structure factor of the anisotropic Heisenberg chain in a transverse field
We consider the anisotropic Heisenberg spin-1/2 chain in a transverse
magnetic field at zero temperature. We first determine all components of the
dynamical structure factor by combining exact results with a mean-field
approximation recently proposed by Dmitriev {\it et al}., JETP 95, 538 (2002).
We then turn to the small anisotropy limit, in which we use field theory
methods to obtain exact results. We discuss the relevance of our results to
Neutron scattering experiments on the 1D Heisenberg chain compound .Comment: 13 pages, 14 figure
Isosbestic points in the spectral function of correlated electrons
We investigate the properties of the spectral function A(omega,U) of
correlated electrons within the Hubbard model and dynamical mean-field theory.
Curves of A(omega,U) vs. omega for different values of the interaction U are
found to intersect near the band-edges of the non-interacting system. For a
wide range of U the crossing points are located within a sharply confined
region. The precise location of these 'isosbestic points' depends on details of
the non-interacting band structure. Isosbestic points of dynamic quantities
therefore provide valuable insights into microscopic energy scales of
correlated systems.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure
Testing one-body density functionals on a solvable model
There are several physically motivated density matrix functionals in the
literature, built from the knowledge of the natural orbitals and the occupation
numbers of the one-body reduced density matrix. With the help of the equivalent
phase-space formalism, we thoroughly test some of the most popular of those
functionals on a completely solvable model.Comment: Latex, 16 pages, 4 figure
New Results for the Correlation Functions of the Ising Model and the Transverse Ising Chain
In this paper we show how an infinite system of coupled Toda-type nonlinear
differential equations derived by one of us can be used efficiently to
calculate the time-dependent pair-correlations in the Ising chain in a
transverse field. The results are seen to match extremely well long large-time
asymptotic expansions newly derived here. For our initial conditions we use new
long asymptotic expansions for the equal-time pair correlation functions of the
transverse Ising chain, extending an old result of T.T. Wu for the 2d Ising
model. Using this one can also study the equal-time wavevector-dependent
correlation function of the quantum chain, a.k.a. the q-dependent diagonal
susceptibility in the 2d Ising model, in great detail with very little
computational effort.Comment: LaTeX 2e, 31 pages, 8 figures (16 eps files). vs2: Two references
added and minor changes of style. vs3: Corrections made and reference adde
Novel loss-of-function variants in CDC14A are associated with recessive sensorineural hearing loss in Iranian and Pakistani patients
CDC14A encodes the Cell Division Cycle 14A protein and has been associated with autosomal recessive non-syndromic hearing loss (DFNB32), as well as hearing impairment and infertile male syndrome (HIIMS) since 2016. To date, only nine variants have been associated in patients whose initial symptoms included moderate-to-profound hearing impairment. Exome analysis of Iranian and Pakistani probands who both showed bilateral, sensorineural hearing loss revealed a novel splice site variant (c.1421+2T>C, p.?) that disrupts the splice donor site and a novel frameshift variant (c.1041dup, p.Ser348Glnfs*2) in the gene CDC14A, respectively. To evaluate the pathogenicity of both loss-of-function variants, we analyzed the effects of both variants on the RNA-level. The splice variant was characterized using a minigene assay. Altered expression levels due to the c.1041dup variant were assessed using RT-qPCR. In summary, cDNA analysis confirmed that the c.1421+2T>C variant activates a cryptic splice site, resulting in a truncated transcript (c.1414_1421del, p.Val472Leufs*20) and the c.1041dup variant results in a defective transcript that is likely degraded by nonsense-mediated mRNA decay. The present study functionally characterizes two variants and provides further confirmatory evidence that CDC14A is associated with a rare form of hereditary hearing loss
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