Nucleon Structure from Lattice QCD

Recent advances in lattice field theory, in computer technology and in chiral perturbation theory have enabled lattice QCD to emerge as a powerful quantitative tool in understanding hadron structure. I describe recent progress in the computation of the nucleon form factors and moments of parton distribution functions, before proceeding to describe lattice studies of the Generalized Parton Distributions (GPDs). In particular, I show how lattice studies of GPDs contribute to building a three-dimensional picture of the proton. I conclude by describing the prospects for studying the structure of resonances from lattice QCD.Comment: 6 pages, invited plenary talk at NSTAR 2007, 5-8 September 2007, Bonn, German

Overview of nucleon structure studies

A brief overview of the recent activity in the measurement of the elastic electromagnetic proton and neutron form factors is presented. It is discussed how the quality of the data has been greatly improved by performing double polarization experiments, and the role of two-photon exchange processes will be highlighted. The spatial information on the quark charge distribibutions in the nucleon resulting from the form factors measurements will be discussed, as well as the steady rate of improvements made in the lattice QCD calculations. It is discussed how generalized parton distributions have emerged as a unifying theme in hadron physics linking the spatial densities extracted from form factors with the quark momentum distribution information residing in quark structure functions. The recent progress in the electromagnetic excitation of the $\Delta(1232)$ resonance will also briefly be discussed.Comment: prepared for Proceedings of International Nuclear Physics Conference (INPC07), typos corrected + references adde

Surface Polymer Network Model and Effective Membrane Curvature Elasticity

A microscopic model of a surface polymer network - membrane system is introduced, with contact polymer surface interactions that can be either repulsive or attractive and sliplinks of functionality four randomly distributed over the supporting membrane surface anchoring the polymers to it. For the supporting surface perturbed from a planar configuration and a small relative number of surface sliplinks, we investigate an expansion of the free energy in terms of the local curvatures of the surface and the surface density of sliplinks, obtained through the application of the Balian - Bloch - Duplantier multiple surface scattering method. As a result, the dependence of the curvature elastic modulus, the Gaussian modulus as well as of the spontaneous curvature of the "dressed" membrane, ~{\sl i.e.} polymer network plus membrane matrix, is obtained on the mean polymer bulk end to end separation and the surface density of sliplinks.Comment: 15 pages with one included compressed uuencoded figure

SynerGPT: In-Context Learning for Personalized Drug Synergy Prediction and Drug Design

Predicting synergistic drug combinations can help accelerate discovery of cancer treatments, particularly therapies personalized to a patient's specific tumor via biopsied cells. In this paper, we propose a novel setting and models for in-context drug synergy learning. We are given a small "personalized dataset" of 10-20 drug synergy relationships in the context of specific cancer cell targets. Our goal is to predict additional drug synergy relationships in that context. Inspired by recent work that pre-trains a GPT language model (LM) to "in-context learn" common function classes, we devise novel pre-training schemes that enable a GPT model to in-context learn "drug synergy functions". Our model -- which does not use any textual corpora, molecular fingerprints, protein interaction or any other domain-specific knowledge -- is able to achieve competitive results. We further integrate our in-context approach with a genetic algorithm to optimize model prompts and select synergy candidates to test after conducting a patient biopsy. Finally, we explore a novel task of inverse drug design which can potentially enable the design of drugs that synergize specifically to target a given patient's "personalized dataset". Our findings can potentially have an important impact on precision cancer medicine, and also raise intriguing questions on non-textual pre-training for LMs

Residual Chiral Symmetry Breaking in Domain-Wall Fermions

We study the effective quark mass induced by the finite separation of the domain walls in the domain-wall formulation of chiral fermion as the function of the size of the fifth dimension ($L_s$), the gauge coupling $\beta$ and the physical volume $V$. We measure the mass by calculating the small eigenvalues of the hermitian domain-wall Dirac operator ($H_{\rm DWF}(m_0))$ in the topologically-nontrivial quenched SU(3) gauge configurations. We find that the induced quark mass is nearly independent of the physical volume, decays exponentially as a function of $L_s$, and has a strong dependence on the size of quantum fluctuations controlled by $\beta$. The effect of the choice of the lattice gluon action is also studied.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure

Remote driving as the Failsafe: Qualitative investigation of Users’ perceptions and requirements towards the 5G-enabled Level 4 automated vehicles

AbstractThe Level 4 Automated Vehicles (L4 AV) potentially deliver social, economic, safety and environmental benefits. A key feature for the L4 AV is the failsafe mechanism which ensures the safety of the vehicle without human driver input when reaching system limitations. An important solution for the failsafe is the 5G-enabled teleoperation system controlled by a remote driver. However, understanding end-users’ perception, needs and requirements towards the L4 AV is a significant under-researched area. To fill the research gap, this study conducted semi-structured interviews with 29 potential end-users to qualitatively explore the new driver-automation-remote driver interaction in the L4 AV. Results showed that end-users would like to understand how the remote driver operates the vehicle remotely and would not expect them to be multitasking or distracted. They also show that remote drivers’ sensing and information about the driving environment are important. Remote drivers should also be qualified and experienced drivers and must have undergone background security checks before teleoperating the L4 AV. They require remote drivers based in the same country as the L4 AV to prevent issues such as unfamiliar road layouts, different traffic rules, cultural driving style variations, liability concerns, and time differences from affecting performance. They require the remote drivers to clarify what had happened and explain how they will deal with the situation and operate the vehicle in the situation of failsafe in the L4 AV. Dedicated remote drivers are preferred over random ones. A review and feedback system is important for the end-users to evaluate the services and choose preferred remote drivers. Finally, end-users are concerned about the liability and legal implications of utilising a L4 AV, especially during the period that the L4 AV is being operated by the remote drivers

The spontaneous emergence of ordered phases in crumpled sheets

X-ray tomography is performed to acquire 3D images of crumpled aluminum foils. We develop an algorithm to trace out the labyrinthian paths in the three perpendicular cross sections of the data matrices. The tangent-tangent correlation function along each path is found to decay exponentially with an effective persistence length that shortens as the crumpled ball becomes more compact. In the mean time, we observed ordered domains near the crust, similar to the lamellae phase mixed by the amorphous portion in lyotropic liquid crystals. The size and density of these domains grow with further compaction, and their orientation favors either perpendicular or parallel to the radial direction. Ordering is also identified near the core with an arbitrary orientation, exemplary of the spontaneous symmetry breaking

Domain-Wall Induced Quark Masses in Topologically-Nontrivial Background

In the domain-wall formulation of chiral fermion, the finite separation between domain-walls ($L_s$) induces an effective quark mass ($m_{\rm eff}$) which complicates the chiral limit. In this work, we study the size of the effective mass as the function of $L_s$ and the domain-wall height $m_0$ by calculating the smallest eigenvalue of the hermitian domain-wall Dirac operator in the topologically-nontrivial background fields. We find that, just like in the free case, $m_{\rm eff}$ decreases exponentially in $L_s$ with a rate depending on $m_0$. However, quantum fluctuations amplify the wall effects significantly. Our numerical result is consistent with a previous study of the effective mass from the Gell-Mann-Oakes-Renner relation.Comment: 10 pages, an appendix and minor changes adde

Marine plankton phenology and life history in a changing climate : current research and future directions

© The Authors, 2010. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License. The definitive version was published in Journal of Plankton Research 32 (2010): 1355-1368, doi:10.1093/plankt/fbq062.Increasing availability and extent of biological ocean time series (from both in situ and satellite data) have helped reveal significant phenological variability of marine plankton. The extent to which the range of this variability is modified as a result of climate change is of obvious importance. Here we summarize recent research results on phenology of both phytoplankton and zooplankton. We suggest directions to better quantify and monitor future plankton phenology shifts, including (i) examining the main mode of expected future changes (ecological shifts in timing and spatial distribution to accommodate fixed environmental niches vs. evolutionary adaptation of timing controls to maintain fixed biogeography and seasonality), (ii) broader understanding of phenology at the species and community level (e.g. for zooplankton beyond Calanus and for phytoplankton beyond chlorophyll), (iii) improving and diversifying statistical metrics for indexing timing and trophic synchrony and (iv) improved consideration of spatio-temporal scales and the Lagrangian nature of plankton assemblages to separate time from space changes.This study was supported by NSF grants to R.J.: OCE-0727033, 0815838 and 0732152. NSF grants to A.C.T.: OCE-0535386, 0815051 and 0814413. NSF grant to J.A.R.: OCE 0815336