8,733 research outputs found
Effect of antimony on the eutectic reaction of heavy section spheroidal graphite castings
There is a strong demand for heavy section castings made of spheroidal graphite with a fully ferritic matrix, e.g. for manufacturing hubs for windmills. Such castings with slow solidification process are prone to graphite degeneration that leads to a dramatic decrease of the mechanical properties of the cast parts. Chunky graphite is certainly the most difficult case of graphite degeneracy, though it has long been known that the limited and controlled addition of antimony may help eliminate it. The drawback of this remedy is that too large Sb additions lead to other forms of degenerate graphite, and also that antimony is a pearlite promoter. As part of an investigation aimed at mastering low level additions to cast iron melts before casting, solidification of large blocks with or without Sb added was followed by thermal analysis. Comparison of the cooling curves and of the microstructures of these different castings gives suggestions to understand the controlling nucleation and growth mechanisms for chunky graphite cells
Parallels of human language in the behavior of bottlenose dolphins
A short review of similarities between dolphins and humans with the help of
quantitative linguistics and information theory
Stochastic model of transcription factor-regulated gene expression
We consider a stochastic model of transcription factor (TF)-regulated gene
expression. The model describes two genes: Gene A and Gene B which synthesize
the TFs and the target gene proteins respectively. We show through analytic
calculations that the TF fluctuations have a significant effect on the
distribution of the target gene protein levels when the mean TF level falls in
the highest sensitive region of the dose-response curve. We further study the
effect of reducing the copy number of Gene A from two to one. The enhanced TF
fluctuations yield results different from those in the deterministic case. The
probability that the target gene protein level exceeds a threshold value is
calculated with a knowledge of the probability density functions associated
with the TF and target gene protein levels. Numerical simulation results for a
more detailed stochastic model are shown to be in agreement with those obtained
through analytic calculations. The relevance of these results in the context of
the genetic disorder haploinsufficiency is pointed out. Some experimental
observations on the haploinsufficiency of the tumour suppressor gene, Nkx3.1,
are explained with the help of the stochastic model of TF-regulated gene
expression.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figures. Accepted for publication in Physical Biolog
Scale-free Networks from Optimal Design
A large number of complex networks, both natural and artificial, share the
presence of highly heterogeneous, scale-free degree distributions. A few
mechanisms for the emergence of such patterns have been suggested, optimization
not being one of them. In this letter we present the first evidence for the
emergence of scaling (and smallworldness) in software architecture graphs from
a well-defined local optimization process. Although the rules that define the
strategies involved in software engineering should lead to a tree-like
structure, the final net is scale-free, perhaps reflecting the presence of
conflicting constraints unavoidable in a multidimensional optimization process.
The consequences for other complex networks are outlined.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures. Submitted to Europhysics Letters. Additional
material is available at http://complex.upc.es/~sergi/software.ht
Charge control in laterally coupled double quantum dots
We investigate the electronic and optical properties of InAs double quantum
dots grown on GaAs (001) and laterally aligned along the [110] crystal
direction. The emission spectrum has been investigated as a function of a
lateral electric field applied along the quantum dot pair mutual axis. The
number of confined electrons can be controlled with the external bias leading
to sharp energy shifts which we use to identify the emission from neutral and
charged exciton complexes. Quantum tunnelling of these electrons is proposed to
explain the reversed ordering of the trion emission lines as compared to that
of excitons in our system.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures submitted to PRB Rapid Com
Magnetism in Dense Quark Matter
We review the mechanisms via which an external magnetic field can affect the
ground state of cold and dense quark matter. In the absence of a magnetic
field, at asymptotically high densities, cold quark matter is in the
Color-Flavor-Locked (CFL) phase of color superconductivity characterized by
three scales: the superconducting gap, the gluon Meissner mass, and the
baryonic chemical potential. When an applied magnetic field becomes comparable
with each of these scales, new phases and/or condensates may emerge. They
include the magnetic CFL (MCFL) phase that becomes relevant for fields of the
order of the gap scale; the paramagnetic CFL, important when the field is of
the order of the Meissner mass, and a spin-one condensate associated to the
magnetic moment of the Cooper pairs, significant at fields of the order of the
chemical potential. We discuss the equation of state (EoS) of MCFL matter for a
large range of field values and consider possible applications of the magnetic
effects on dense quark matter to the astrophysics of compact stars.Comment: To appear in Lect. Notes Phys. "Strongly interacting matter in
magnetic fields" (Springer), edited by D. Kharzeev, K. Landsteiner, A.
Schmitt, H.-U. Ye
Higgs- and Goldstone bosons-mediated long range forces
In certain mild extensions of the Standard Model, spin-independent long range
forces can arise by exchange of two very light pseudoscalar spin--0 bosons. In
particular, we have in mind models in which these bosons do not have direct
tree level couplings to ordinary fermions. Using the dispersion theoretical
method, we find a behaviour of the potential for the exchange of very
light pseudoscalars and a dependence if the pseudoscalars are true
massless Goldstone bosons.Comment: 13 pages (REVTeX), 2 figure
Decoupling of defect and short-range order contributions to resistivity recovery measurements in binary alloys
© 2014 American Physical Society. We report a new and improved approach that uses low-temperature resistivity recovery measurements to study the defect kinetics in metallic binary alloys. This method is able to decouple the effect related to the irradiation defect contribution to the resistivity from that of the short-range order, which is enhanced by the free migration of defects. This approach can provide reliable experimental data which are more suitable for comparisons with current computational models. Furthermore, the difference in this method with respect to the classical one is that our method gives information concerning the role of vacancies and interstitials on short-range order. The method is applied to a model alloy Fe-5%Cr, of interest for fusion applications, where short-range order effects have been previously found to play a role.Peer Reviewe
Long range neutrino forces in the cosmic relic neutrino background
Neutrinos mediate long range forces among macroscopic bodies in vacuum. When
the bodies are placed in the neutrino cosmic background, these forces are
modified. Indeed, at distances long compared to the scale , the relic
neutrinos completely screen off the 2-neutrino exchange force, whereas for
small distances the interaction remains unaffected.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figure
Zipf's Law : Balancing signal usage cost and communication efficiency
Copyright: © 2015 Salge et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are creditedWe propose a model that explains the reliable emergence of power laws (e.g., Zipf's law) during the development of different human languages. The model incorporates the principle of least effort in communications, minimizing a combination of the information-Theoretic communication inefficiency and direct signal cost. We prove a general relationship, for all optimal languages, between the signal cost distribution and the resulting distribution of signals. Zipf's law then emerges for logarithmic signal cost distributions, which is the cost distribution expected for words constructed from letters or phonemes. Copyright:Peer reviewedFinal Published versio
- …