Role of thermal friction in relaxation of turbulent Bose-Einstein condensates

In recent experiments, the relaxation dynamics of highly oblate, turbulent Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) was investigated by measuring the vortex decay rates in various sample conditions [Phys. Rev. A $\bf 90$, 063627 (2014)] and, separately, the thermal friction coefficient $\alpha$ for vortex motion was measured from the long-time evolution of a corotating vortex pair in a BEC [Phys. Rev. A $\bf 92$, 051601(R) (2015)]. We present a comparative analysis of the experimental results, and find that the vortex decay rate $\Gamma$ is almost linearly proportional to $\alpha$. We perform numerical simulations of the time evolution of a turbulent BEC using a point-vortex model equipped with longitudinal friction and vortex-antivortex pair annihilation, and observe that the linear dependence of $\Gamma$ on $\alpha$ is quantitatively accounted for in the dissipative point-vortex model. The numerical simulations reveal that thermal friction in the experiment was too strong to allow for the emergence of a vortex-clustered state out of decaying turbulence.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure

A hybrid electronic nose system for monitoring the quality of potable water

This PhD thesis reports on the potential application of an electronic nose to analysing the quality of potable water. The enrichment of water by toxic cyanobacteria is fast becoming a severe problem in the quality of water and a common source of environmental odour pollution. Thus, of particular interest is the classification and early warning of toxic cyanobacteria in water. This research reports upon the first attempt to identify electronically cyanobacteria in water. The measurement system comprises a Cellfacts instrument and a Warwick e-nose specially constructed for the testing of the cyanobacteria in water. The Warwick e- nose employed an array of six commercial odour sensors and was set-up to monitor not only the different strains, but also the growth phases, of cyanobacteria. A series of experiments was carried out to analyse the nature of two closely related strains of cyanobacteria, Microcystis aeruginosa PCC 7806 which produces a toxin and PCC 7941 that does not. Several pre-processing techniques were explored in order to remove the noise factor associated with running the electronic nose in ambient air, and the normalised fractional difference method was found to give the best PCA plot. Three supervised neural networks, MLP, LVQ and Fuzzy ARTMAP, were used and compared for the classification of both two strains and four different growth phases of cyanobacteria (lag, growth, stationary and late stationary). The optimal MLP network was found to classify correctly 97.1 % of unknown non-toxic and 100 % of unknown toxic cyanobacteria. The optimal LVQ and Fuzzy ARTMAP algorithms were able to classify 100% of both strains of cyanobacteria. The accuracy of MLP, LVQ and Fuzzy ARTMAP algorithms with 4 different growth phases of toxic cyanobacteria was 92.3 %, 95.1 % and 92.3 %, respectively. A hybrid e-nose system based on 6 MOS, 6 CP, 2 temperature sensors, 1 humidity sensor and 2 flow sensors was finally developed. Using the hybrid system, data were gathered on six different cyanobacteria cultures for the classification of growth phase. The hybrid resistive nose showed high resolving power to discriminate six growth stages as well as three growth phases. Even though time did not permit many series of the continuous monitoring, because of the relatively long life span (30-40 days) of cyanobacteria, improved results indicate the use of a hybrid nose. The HP 4440 chemical sensor was also used for the discrimination of six different cyanobacteria samples and the comparison with the electronic nose. The hybrid resistive nose based on 6 MOS and 6 CP showed a better resolving power to discriminate six growth stages as well as three growth phases than the HP 4440 chemical sensor. Although the mass analyser detects individual volatile chemicals accurately, it proves no indication of whether the volatile is an odour. The results demonstrate that it is possible to apply the e-nose system for monitoring the quality of potable water. It would be expected that the hybrid e-nose could be applicable to a large number of applications in health and safety with a greater flexibility

Tuning Locality of Pair Coherence in Graphene-based Andreev Interferometers

We report on gate-tuned locality of superconductivity-induced phase-coherent magnetoconductance oscillations in a graphene-based Andreev interferometer, consisting of a T-shaped graphene bar in contact with a superconducting Al loop. The conductance oscillations arose from the flux change through the superconducting Al loop, with gate-dependent Fraunhofer-type modulation of the envelope. We confirm a transitional change in the character of the pair coherence, between local and nonlocal, in the same device as the effective length-to-width ratio of the device was modulated by tuning the pair-coherence length xi(T) in the graphene layer.open1133sciescopu

Rational strategies for enhancing mAb binding to SARS-CoV-2 variants through CDR diversification and antibody-escape prediction

Since the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, dozens of variants of interest and half a dozen variants of concern (VOCs) have been documented by the World Health Organization. The emergence of these VOCs due to the continuous evolution of the virus is a major concern for COVID-19 therapeutic antibodies and vaccines because they are designed to target prototype/previous strains and lose effectiveness against new VOCs. Therefore, there is a need for time- and cost-effective strategies to estimate the immune escape and redirect therapeutic antibodies against newly emerging variants. Here, we computationally predicted the neutralization escape of the SARS-CoV-2 Delta and Omicron variants against the mutational space of RBD-mAbs interfaces. Leveraging knowledge of the existing RBD-mAb interfaces and mutational space, we fine-tuned and redirected CT-p59 (Regdanvimab) and Etesevimab against the escaped variants through complementarity-determining regions (CDRs) diversification. We identified antibodies against the Omicron lineage BA.1 and BA.2 and Delta variants with comparable or better binding affinities to that of prototype Spike. This suggests that CDRs diversification by hotspot grafting, given an existing insight into the Ag-Abs interface, is an exquisite strategy to redirect antibodies against preselected epitopes and combat the neutralization escape of emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants

Transcription-induced active forces suppress chromatin motion by inducing a transient disorder-to-order transition

Recent experiments have shown that the mobility of human interphase chromosome decreases during transcription, and increases upon inhibiting transcription, a finding that is counter-intuitive because it is thought that the active mechanical force ($F$) generated by RNA polymerase II (RNAPII) on chromatin would render it more open and mobile. Inspired by these observations, we use a copolymer model to investigate how $F$ affects the dynamical properties of a single chromatin. The movements of the loci in the gene-rich region are suppressed in an intermediate range of $F$, and are enhanced at small and large $F$ values. In the intermediate $F$, the bond length between consecutive loci increases, becoming commensurate with the location of the minimum in the attractive interaction between the active loci. This results in a transient disorder-to-order transition, leading to the decreased mobility during transcription. Transient ordering of the loci in the gene-rich region might be a mechanism for nucleating a dynamic network involving transcription factors, RNAPII, and chromatin.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, Supplemental Materia

Curvature-induced spin-orbit coupling and spin relaxation in a chemically clean single-layer graphene

The study of spin-related phenomena in materials requires knowledge on the precise form of effective spin-orbit coupling of conducting carriers in the solid-states systems. We demonstrate theoretically that curvature induced by corrugations or periodic ripples in single-layer graphenes generates two types of effective spin-orbit coupling. In addition to the spin-orbit coupling reported previously that couples with sublattice pseudospin and corresponds to the Rashba-type spin-orbit coupling in a corrugated single-layer graphene, there is an additional spin-orbit coupling that does not couple with the pseudospin, which can not be obtained from the extension of the curvature-induced spin-orbit coupling of carbon nanotubes. Via numerical calculation we show that both types of the curvature-induced spin-orbit coupling make the same order of contribution to spin relaxation in chemically clean single-layer graphene with nanoscale corrugation. The spin relaxation dependence on the corrugation roughness is also studied.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Low energy proton-proton scattering in effective field theory

Low energy proton-proton scattering is studied in pionless effective field theory. Employing the dimensional regularization and MS-bar and power divergence subtraction schemes for loop calculation, we calculate the scattering amplitude in 1S0 channel up to next-to-next-to leading order and fix low-energy constants that appear in the amplitude by effective range parameters. We study regularization scheme and scale dependence in separation of Coulomb interaction from the scattering length and effective range for the S-wave proton-proton scattering.Comment: 23 pages, 6 eps figures, revised considerably, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.