Order-disorder transition in nanoscopic semiconductor quantum rings

Using the path integral Monte Carlo technique we show that semiconductor quantum rings with up to six electrons exhibit a temperature, ring diameter, and particle number dependent transition between spin ordered and disordered Wigner crystals. Due to the small number of particles the transition extends over a broad temperature range and is clearly identifiable from the electron pair correlation functions.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, For recent information on physics of small systems see http://www.smallsystems.d

A simplified particulate model for coarse-grained hemodynamics simulations

Human blood flow is a multi-scale problem: in first approximation, blood is a dense suspension of plasma and deformable red cells. Physiological vessel diameters range from about one to thousands of cell radii. Current computational models either involve a homogeneous fluid and cannot track particulate effects or describe a relatively small number of cells with high resolution, but are incapable to reach relevant time and length scales. Our approach is to simplify much further than existing particulate models. We combine well established methods from other areas of physics in order to find the essential ingredients for a minimalist description that still recovers hemorheology. These ingredients are a lattice Boltzmann method describing rigid particle suspensions to account for hydrodynamic long range interactions and---in order to describe the more complex short-range behavior of cells---anisotropic model potentials known from molecular dynamics simulations. Paying detailedness, we achieve an efficient and scalable implementation which is crucial for our ultimate goal: establishing a link between the collective behavior of millions of cells and the macroscopic properties of blood in realistic flow situations. In this paper we present our model and demonstrate its applicability to conditions typical for the microvasculature.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figure

3D simulations of gas puff effects on edge plasma and ICRF coupling in JET

Recent JET (ITER-Like Wall) experiments have shown that the fueling gas puffed from different locations of the vessel can result in different scrape-off layer (SOL) density profiles and therefore different radio frequency (RF) coupling. To reproduce the experimental observations, to understand the associated physics and to optimize the gas puff methods, we have carried out three-dimensional (3D) simulations with the EMC3-EIRENE code in JET-ILW including a realistic description of the vessel geometry and the gas injection modules (GIMs) configuration. Various gas puffing methods have been investigated, in which the location of gas fueling is the only variable parameter. The simulation results are in quantitative agreement with the experimental measurements. They confirm that compared to divertor gas fueling, mid-plane gas puffing increases the SOL density most significantly but locally, while top gas puffing increases it uniformly in toroidal direction but to a lower degree. Moreover, the present analysis corroborates the experimental findings that combined gas puff scenarios-based on distributed main chamber gas puffing-can be effective in increasing the RF coupling for multiple antennas simultaneously. The results indicate that the spreading of the gas, the local ionization and the transport of the ionized gas along the magnetic field lines connecting the local gas cloud in front of the GIMs to the antennas are responsible for the enhanced SOL density and thus the larger RF coupling

Intravenous mesenchymal stem cell therapy for traumatic brain injury.

OBJECT: Cell therapy has shown preclinical promise in the treatment of many diseases, and its application is being translated to the clinical arena. Intravenous mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) therapy has been shown to improve functional recovery after traumatic brain injury (TBI). Herein, the authors report on their attempts to reproduce such observations, including detailed characterizations of the MSC population, non-bromodeoxyuridine-based cell labeling, macroscopic and microscopic cell tracking, quantification of cells traversing the pulmonary microvasculature, and well-validated measurement of motor and cognitive function recovery. METHODS: Rat MSCs were isolated, expanded in vitro, immunophenotyped, and labeled. Four million MSCs were intravenously infused into Sprague-Dawley rats 24 hours after receiving a moderate, unilateral controlled cortical impact TBI. Infrared macroscopic cell tracking was used to identify cell distribution. Immunohistochemical analysis of brain and lung tissues 48 hours and 2 weeks postinfusion revealed transplanted cells in these locations, and these cells were quantified. Intraarterial blood sampling and flow cytometry were used to quantify the number of transplanted cells reaching the arterial circulation. Motor and cognitive behavioral testing was performed to evaluate functional recovery. RESULTS: At 48 hours post-MSC infusion, the majority of cells were localized to the lungs. Between 1.5 and 3.7% of the infused cells were estimated to traverse the lungs and reach the arterial circulation, 0.295% reached the carotid artery, and a very small percentage reached the cerebral parenchyma (0.0005%) and remained there. Almost no cells were identified in the brain tissue at 2 weeks postinfusion. No motor or cognitive functional improvements in recovery were identified. CONCLUSIONS: The intravenous infusion of MSCs appeared neither to result in significant acute or prolonged cerebral engraftment of cells nor to modify the recovery of motor or cognitive function. Less than 4% of the infused cells were likely to traverse the pulmonary microvasculature and reach the arterial circulation, a phenomenon termed the pulmonary first-pass effect, which may limit the efficacy of this therapeutic approach. The data in this study contradict the findings of previous reports and highlight the potential shortcomings of acute, single-dose, intravenous MSC therapy for TBI

Transport Phenomena and Structuring in Shear Flow of Suspensions near Solid Walls

In this paper we apply the lattice-Boltzmann method and an extension to particle suspensions as introduced by Ladd et al. to study transport phenomena and structuring effects of particles suspended in a fluid near sheared solid walls. We find that a particle free region arises near walls, which has a width depending on the shear rate and the particle concentration. The wall causes the formation of parallel particle layers at low concentrations, where the number of particles per layer decreases with increasing distance to the wall.Comment: 14 pages, 14 figure

Optimization of chaotic micromixers using finite time Lyapunov exponents

In microfluidics mixing of different fluids is a highly non-trivial task due to the absence of turbulence. The dominant process allowing mixing at low Reynolds number is therefore diffusion, thus rendering mixing in plain channels very inefficient. Recently, passive chaotic micromixers such as the staggered herringbone mixer were developed, allowing efficient mixing of fluids by repeated stretching and folding of the fluid interfaces. The optimization of the geometrical parameters of such mixer devices is often performed by time consuming and expensive trial and error experiments. We demonstrate that the application of the lattice Boltzmann method to fluid flow in highly complex mixer geometries together with standard techniques from statistical physics and dynamical systems theory can lead to a highly efficient way to optimize micromixer geometries. The strategy applies massively parallel fluid flow simulations inside a mixer, where massless and noninteracting tracer particles are introduced. By following their trajectories we can calculate finite time Lyapunov exponents in order to quantify the degree of chaotic advection inside the mixer. The current report provides a review of our results published in [1] together with additional details on the simulation methodology

Capillary filling with wall corrugations] Capillary filling in microchannels with wall corrugations: A comparative study of the Concus-Finn criterion by continuum, kinetic and atomistic approaches

We study the impact of wall corrugations in microchannels on the process of capillary filling by means of three broadly used methods - Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Lattice-Boltzmann Equations (LBE) and Molecular Dynamics (MD). The numerical results of these approaches are compared and tested against the Concus-Finn (CF) criterion, which predicts pinning of the contact line at rectangular ridges perpendicular to flow for contact angles theta > 45. While for theta = 30, theta = 40 (no flow) and theta = 60 (flow) all methods are found to produce data consistent with the CF criterion, at theta = 50 the numerical experiments provide different results. Whilst pinning of the liquid front is observed both in the LB and CFD simulations, MD simulations show that molecular fluctuations allow front propagation even above the critical value predicted by the deterministic CF criterion, thereby introducing a sensitivity to the obstacle heigth.Comment: 25 pages, 8 figures, Langmuir in pres

Observation of confined current ribbon in JET plasmas

we report the identification of a localised current structure inside the JET plasma. It is a field aligned closed helical ribbon, carrying current in the same direction as the background current profile (co-current), rotating toroidally with the ion velocity (co-rotating). It appears to be located at a flat spot in the plasma pressure profile, at the top of the pedestal. The structure appears spontaneously in low density, high rotation plasmas, and can last up to 1.4 s, a time comparable to a local resistive time. It considerably delays the appearance of the first ELM.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure