126,882 research outputs found
Finding antipodal point grasps on irregularly shaped objects
Two-finger antipodal point grasping of arbitrarily shaped smooth 2-D and 3-D objects is considered. An object function is introduced that maps a finger contact space to the object surface. Conditions are developed to identify the feasible grasping region, F, in the finger contact space. A âgrasping energy functionâ, E , is introduced which is proportional to the distance between two grasping points. The antipodal points correspond to critical points of E in F. Optimization and/or continuation techniques are used to find these critical points. In particular, global optimization techniques are applied to find the âmaximalâ or âminimalâ grasp. Further, modeling techniques are introduced for representing 2-D and 3-D objects using B-spline curves and spherical product surfaces
Energetics of Protein-DNA Interactions
Protein-DNA interactions are vital for many processes in living cells,
especially transcriptional regulation and DNA modification. To further our
understanding of these important processes on the microscopic level, it is
necessary that theoretical models describe the macromolecular interaction
energetics accurately. While several methods have been proposed, there has not
been a careful comparison of how well the different methods are able to predict
biologically important quantities such as the correct DNA binding sequence,
total binding free energy, and free energy changes caused by DNA mutation. In
addition to carrying out the comparison, we present two important theoretical
models developed initially in protein folding that have not yet been tried on
protein-DNA interactions. In the process, we find that the results of these
knowledge-based potentials show a strong dependence on the interaction distance
and the derivation method. Finally, we present a knowledge-based potential that
gives comparable or superior results to the best of the other methods,
including the molecular mechanics force field AMBER99
Inconsistency of Naive Dimensional Regularizations and Quantum Correction to Non-Abelian Chern-Simons-Matter Theory Revisited
We find the inconsistency of dimensional reduction and naive dimensional
regularization in their applications to Chern-Simons type gauge theories.
Further we adopt a consistent dimensional regularization to investigate the
quantum correction to non-Abelian Chern-Simons term coupled with fermionic
matter. Contrary to previous results, we find that not only the Chern-Simons
coefficient receives quantum correction from spinor fields, but the spinor
field also gets a finite quantum correction.Comment: 19 pages, RevTex, Feynman diagrams drawn by FEYNMAN routin
Accurate Reaction-Diffusion Operator Splitting on Tetrahedral Meshes for Parallel Stochastic Molecular Simulations
Spatial stochastic molecular simulations in biology are limited by the
intense computation required to track molecules in space either in a discrete
time or discrete space framework, meaning that the serial limit has already
been reached in sub-cellular models. This calls for parallel simulations that
can take advantage of the power of modern supercomputers; however exact methods
are known to be inherently serial. We introduce an operator splitting
implementation for irregular grids with a novel method to improve accuracy, and
demonstrate potential for scalable parallel simulations in an initial MPI
version. We foresee that this groundwork will enable larger scale, whole-cell
stochastic simulations in the near future.Comment: 33 pages, 10 figure
Determining the strange and antistrange quark distributions of the nucleon
The difference between the strange and antistrange quark distributions,
\delta s(x)=s(x)-\sbar(x), and the combination of light quark sea and strange
quark sea, \Delta (x)=\dbar(x)+\ubar(x)-s(x)-\sbar(x), are originated from
non-perturbative processes, and can be calculated using non-perturbative models
of the nucleon. We report calculations of and using
the meson cloud model. Combining our calculations of with
relatively well known light antiquark distributions obtained from global
analysis of available experimental data, we estimate the total strange sea
distributions of the nucleon.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures; talk given by F.-G. at QNP0
Nuclear matter symmetry energy and the neutron skin thickness of heavy nuclei
Correlations between the thickness of the neutron skin in finite nuclei and
the nuclear matter symmetry energy are studied in the Skyrme Hartree-Fock
model. From the most recent analysis of the isospin diffusion data in heavy-ion
collisions based on an isospin- and momentum-dependent transport model with
in-medium nucleon-nucleon cross sections, a value of MeV for the
slope of the nuclear symmetry energy at saturation density is extracted, and
this imposes stringent constraints on both the parameters in the Skyrme
effective interactions and the neutron skin thickness of heavy nuclei.
Predicted thickness of the neutron skin is fm for Pb,
fm for Sn, and fm for Sn.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, revised version, to appear in PR
Further analysis of field effects on liquids and solidification
Numerical calculations of the magnitude of external field effects on liquids are presented to describe how external fields can influence the substructure of the field. Quantitative estimates of magnetic and gravitational effects are reported on melts of metals and semiconductors. The results are condensed in tables which contain the input data for calculation of the field effects on diffusion coefficient, solidification rate and for calculation of field forces on individual molecules in the melt
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