121,831 research outputs found
Analysis of the Movement of Chlamydomonas Flagella: The Function of the Radial-spoke System Is Revealed by Comparison of Wild-type and Mutant Flagella
The mutation uni-1 gives rise to uniflagellate Chlamydomonas cells which rotate around a fixed point in the microscope field, so that the flagellar bending pattern can be photographed easily . This has allowed us to make a detailed analysis of the wild-type flagellar bending pattern and the bending patterns of flagella on several mutant strains. Cells containing uni-1, and recombinants of uni-1 with the suppressor mutations, sup(_pf)-1 and sup(_pf)-3, show the typical asymmetric bending pattern associated with forward swimming in Chlamydomonas,
although sup(_pf)-1 flagella have about one-half the normal beat frequency, apparently as the result of defective function of the outer dynein arms. The pf-17 mutation has been shown to produce nonmotile flagella in which radial spoke heads and five characteristic axonemal
polypeptides are missing. Recombinants containing pf-17 and either sup(_pf)-1 or sup(_pf)-3 have
motile flagella, but still lack radial-spoke heads and the associated polypeptides . The flagellar
bending pattern of these recombinants lacking radial-spoke heads is a nearly symmetric, large
amplitude pattern which is quite unlike the wild-type pattern . However, the presence of an
intact radial-spoke system is not required to convert active sliding into bending and is not
required for bend initiation and bend propagation, since all of these processes are active in the
sup(_pf) pf-17 recombinants. The function of the radial-spoke system appears to be to convert the
symmetric bending pattern displayed by these recombinants into the asymmetric bending
pattern required for efficient swimming, by inhibiting the development of reverse bends during
the recovery phase of the bending cycle
Remark on approximation in the calculation of the primordial spectrum generated during inflation
We re-examine approximations in the analytical calculation of the primordial
spectrum of cosmological perturbation produced during inflation. Taking two
inflation models (chaotic inflation and natural inflation) as examples, we
numerically verify the accuracy of these approximations.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, to appear in PR
Systemic risk in dynamical networks with stochastic failure criterion
Complex non-linear interactions between banks and assets we model by two
time-dependent Erd\H{o}s Renyi network models where each node, representing
bank, can invest either to a single asset (model I) or multiple assets (model
II). We use dynamical network approach to evaluate the collective financial
failure---systemic risk---quantified by the fraction of active nodes. The
systemic risk can be calculated over any future time period, divided on
sub-periods, where within each sub-period banks may contiguously fail due to
links to either (i) assets or (ii) other banks, controlled by two parameters,
probability of internal failure and threshold ("solvency" parameter).
The systemic risk non-linearly increases with and decreases with average
network degree faster when all assets are equally distributed across banks than
if assets are randomly distributed. The more inactive banks each bank can
sustain (smaller ), the smaller the systemic risk---for some values
in I we report a discontinuity in systemic risk. When contiguous spreading
becomes stochastic (ii) controlled by probability ---a condition for the
bank to be solvent (active) is stochastic---the systemic risk decreases with
decreasing . We analyse asset allocation for the U.S. banks.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure
Fully Coherent X-ray Pulses from a Regenerative Amplifier Free Electron Laser
We propose and analyze a novel regenerative amplifier free electron laser
(FEL) to produce fully coherent x-ray pulses. The method makes use of
narrow-bandwidth Bragg crystals to form an x-ray feedback loop around a
relatively short undulator. Self-amplified spontaneous emission (SASE) from the
leading electron bunch in a bunch train is spectrally filtered by the Bragg
reflectors and is brought back to the beginning of the undulator to interact
repeatedly with subsequent bunches in the bunch train. The FEL interaction with
these short bunches not only amplifies the radiation intensity but also
broadens its spectrum, allowing for effective transmission of the x-rays
outside the crystal bandwidth. The spectral brightness of these x-ray pulses is
about two to three orders of magnitude higher than that from a single-pass SASE
FEL.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure
Limits of sympathetic cooling of fermions: The role of the heat capacity of the coolant
The sympathetic cooling of an initially degenerate Fermi gas by either an
ideal Bose gas below or an ideal Boltzmann gas is investigated. It is
shown that the efficiency of cooling by a Bose gas below is by no means
reduced when its heat capacity becomes much less than that of the Fermi gas,
where efficiency is measured by the decrease in the temperature of the Fermi
gas per number of particles evaporated from the coolant. This contradicts the
intuitive idea that an efficient coolant must have a large heat capacity. In
contrast, for a Boltzmann gas a minimal value of the ratio of the heat
capacities is indeed necessary to achieve T=0 and all of the particles must be
evaporated.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Reduced magnetohydrodynamic theory of oblique plasmoid instabilities
The three-dimensional nature of plasmoid instabilities is studied using the
reduced magnetohydrodynamic equations. For a Harris equilibrium with guide
field, represented by \vc{B}_o = B_{po} \tanh (x/\lambda) \hat{y} + B_{zo}
\hat{z}, a spectrum of modes are unstable at multiple resonant surfaces in the
current sheet, rather than just the null surface of the polodial field , which is the only resonant surface in 2D or in
the absence of a guide field. Here is the asymptotic value of the
equilibrium poloidal field, is the constant equilibrium guide field,
and is the current sheet width. Plasmoids on each resonant surface
have a unique angle of obliquity . The resonant
surface location for angle is x_s = - \lambda \arctanh (\tan \theta
B_{zo}/B_{po}), and the existence of a resonant surface requires . The most unstable angle is oblique, i.e. and , in the constant- regime, but parallel, i.e.
and , in the nonconstant- regime. For a fixed angle
of obliquity, the most unstable wavenumber lies at the intersection of the
constant- and nonconstant- regimes. The growth rate of this mode is
, in which
, is the Alfv\'{e}n speed, is the current sheet
length, and is the Lundquist number. The number of plasmoids scales as .Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, to be published in Physics of Plasma
Non-Thermal Production of WIMPs and the Sub-Galactic Structure of the Universe
There is increasing evidence that conventional cold dark matter (CDM) models
lead to conflicts between observations and numerical simulations of dark matter
halos on sub-galactic scales. Spergel and Steinhardt showed that if the CDM is
strongly self-interacting, then the conflicts disappear. However, the
assumption of strong self-interaction would rule out the favored candidates for
CDM, namely weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), such as the
neutralino. In this paper we propose a mechanism of non-thermal production of
WIMPs and study its implications on the power spectrum. We find that the
non-vanishing velocity of the WIMPs suppresses the power spectrum on small
scales compared to what it obtained in the conventional CDM model. Our results
show that, in this context, WIMPs as candidates for dark matter can work well
both on large scales and on sub-galactic scales.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures; typo corrected; to appear in PR
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